Chapter 337: Chapter 255: Sect Competition and Volunteers_2
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“There’s one more thing I need to remind you of; when you are expelling the spiritual beasts, you mustn’t be lethal. Some of them have grown naturally and wander within the sect. For these, no one will hold you accountable if you kill them. However, some may be raised by other cultivators. If you kill this latter group, you could face a hefty claim for damages. Of course, your task wouldn’t be considered successfully completed either.”
“Thank you for the reminder, Senior. Jiang Cheng understands.”
“Hmm, good, as long as you know the measure, we’ll get in touch about other matters later.”
After Elder Yang left, only Jiang Cheng and Liu Qing remained.
Jiang Cheng didn’t rush to drive away the spiritual beasts in the valley. The first thing he did was to survey the terrain to decide from which direction to start and where to herd the beasts from and to.
Once he had a clear understanding of the terrain and the direction to drive them, Jiang Cheng again didn’t rush to drive away the spiritual beasts.
Instead, he first roughly tallied up the types of spiritual beasts he needed to deal with.
Here, the spiritual beasts mainly referred to those above the Qi Cultivation Stage.
Many small insects with unique talents were not among the targets to be driven away.
Small creatures, such as rabbits and mice, were also not part of the expulsion targets.
The main spiritual beasts Jiang Cheng needed to drive away were mostly medium to large ones like wild boars, dogs, cats, deer, snakes, and tigers, as well as the more dangerous venomous bees and other harmful beasts.
The cultivation of these spiritual beasts should at most not exceed the Core Formation Stage, because any higher and they would, like Senior Yusheng, be assigned roles by Tongtian Sect and then sent out on missions.
Of course, there is a difference between spiritual beasts and monsters.
Spiritual beasts are always beasts, but monsters can transform into humans.
Having the ability to transform is one of the key indicators to distinguish between spiritual beasts and monsters.
Driving spiritual beasts is a technical job, with the main difficulty not being capturing them, but rather finding and capturing them.
As suggested by the word ‘spiritual’ in their name, these beasts are not ordinary wild animals.
For ordinary wild animals, Jiang Cheng’s divine sense could sweep over them and accurately locate their position.
But spiritual beasts, having evolved, naturally possess an ability akin to ‘invisibility,’ which makes them difficult to detect and locate with ordinary divine sense. Sometimes divine sense is even less useful than eyesight.
The task of driving the beasts out of a large valley was a huge undertaking for Jiang Cheng alone, evidently very difficult.
If he were to try capturing them one area at a time, it would be uncertain when he would finish.
Even if he did finish, the slightest inattention would allow other regional spiritual beasts to move into the cleared areas.
This meant that all his efforts would be in vain, unknowingly working to expand other spiritual beasts’ territories.
From this perspective, for Jiang Cheng to think he could handle the spiritual beasts of a large valley on his own was quite fantastical.
No matter how hard he worked, other regional spiritual beasts, following their instincts, would fill the ecological void left by the absence of their kind.
Even if he could catch the majority of the spiritual beasts in the valley, the ones from outside would rapidly take their place, quickly replenishing their numbers within the valley.
It can be said that, as long as the ecological balance of the valley isn’t destroyed, simply relying on catching beasts to clear out the spiritual beasts is nearly impossible.
And if the valley’s ecology were destroyed, then it wouldn’t meet the conditions for the sect’s grand competition.
It’s an unsolvable vicious cycle.
Normal solutions one might think of are either to deploy a large force, methodically advance step by step, turn over every inch of soil, and forcibly drive the spiritual beasts out of the valley.
Or to directly request Liu Qing to take action. Ordinary spiritual beasts could avoid Jiang Cheng’s Core Formation Stage divine sense, but could they really avoid Liu Qing’s Mahayana Realm divine sense?
Or more directly, get Liu Qing to purely scare the spiritual beasts. That would definitely work like a charm.
Of course, asking Liu Qing to take action is just a joke.
And deploying a large force isn’t feasible either. Where could Jiang Cheng find so many people to carry out a carpet-style expulsion?
Especially given the constraint of not harming the spiritual beasts.
However, the challenging task wasn’t enough to stump Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng quickly came up with his own solution.
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It was known that the number of spiritual beasts in the forest existed in a dynamic equilibrium, where fewer would become more, and more would become fewer. As long as the environmental carrying capacity didn’t change, the number of spiritual beasts would remain stable.
Thus, Jiang Cheng could exploit this point and do the exact opposite.
If the spiritual beasts outside the valley could follow their instincts and move into the valley to fill ecological positions, then the spiritual beasts within the valley could also, due to an excess of competitors, follow their instincts and move out of the valley into the wilderness to survive.
Therefore, Jiang Cheng’s choice was to “rent” a batch of spiritual beasts from a cultivation base.
The advantage of cultivating spiritual beasts was that they bore marks in the form of magical treasures, so there was no need to worry about losing them if they ran off.
What Jiang Cheng did, then, was release a large number of the same type of cultivated spiritual beasts into the valley.
If a valley’s prey could sustain the survival of three tigers, then the environmental capacity of the valley for tigers would be three.
By releasing ten farmed tigers into the valley, Jiang Cheng caused an immediate increase to thirteen tigers in the valley, and the valley’s resources simply could not sustain the survival of thirteen tigers.
Thus, the tigers had only two choices: to compete with each other, eliminating their own kind, or to migrate outwards, leaving the valley.
Since there were marks present, Jiang Cheng was able to observe the status and position of the tigers he had released to prevent them from competing with one another but simply to force out the native tigers!
Once the tiger balance was achieved, Jiang Cheng continued by releasing deer, wild boars, and other animals to squeeze out the native deer and wild boars from the valley. And so on and so forth.
By constantly releasing and recollecting cultivated spiritual beasts, Jiang Cheng applied the environmental balance mechanism to the extreme, effortlessly creating a large area of “spiritual beast-free” forest and handed it over to the Internal Affairs Hall on the eve of the sect competition. The Internal Affairs Hall then set up formations to meet the grounds requirements for the sect competition.
Elder Yang was very satisfied with Jiang Cheng’s work.
He suggested to Jiang Cheng, “Jiang Cheng, our Internal Affairs Hall is preparing for the sect competition and is currently short of hands. If you are not too busy, I recommend that you volunteer with us at the Internal Affairs Hall. You’ll just need to work on maintaining order during the competition. We’ll pay you a thousand contribution points a day, how does that sound?”
Jiang Cheng did some quick calculations and found the wage level very appealing, so he agreed.
After becoming a volunteer, Jiang Cheng’s work was much easier than driving out spiritual beasts.
Since volunteers mainly dealt with maintaining order, one could say that as long as the competition went smoothly, Jiang Cheng could easily earn a good income by just strolling around.
Naturally, on the flip side, an incident would be a big deal if Jiang Cheng handled it improperly.
Different from Jiang Cheng, Yue Linger’s sect, although also newly established, had a master unlike Yun Shu who was content with laying low. They still wanted to use more resources to make a mark.
Thus, Yue Linger and Shen Menghan were sent by their sect to actively participate in the sect competition. Their achievements would be converted into points and added to their sect’s tally.
Unlike Lin Yao or Liang Lu, Yue Linger and Shen Menghan were not adept at combat.
Fortunately, thanks to Jiang Cheng’s talismans protecting them, they frequently achieved victories amidst the curses and yells from the opposing side, despite the close calls.
The only thing that hindered their progress was how many talismans Jiang Cheng was willing to give.
Anyway, Jiang Cheng’s stance was that they should not be reckless; it was enough for Core Formation Stage cultivators to fight against Core Formation Stage opponents. If they encountered a prodigy, they should admit defeat, aiming for a slightly above average performance that would live up to their master’s training.
Yue Linger and Shen Menghan thoroughly implemented Jiang Cheng’s combat strategies, and of course, they couldn’t do otherwise as there were no new talismans available.
But accidents do happen.
One day, Yue Linger and a Core Formation Stage sect member were competing on the platform. After narrowly winning by using one of Jiang Cheng’s talismans, Yue Linger bowed out without giving it much thought.
Little did she know that her defeated sect member was not convinced and wanted to challenge her to a private fight off the platform.
Volunteer Jiang Cheng promptly stepped in to maintain order and proposed, “Private fights are against the sect rules. If you really want to compete, I can give each of you one powerful electric shock talisman. You can use it on yourselves, and then judge the outcome based on injuries sustained, this way it won’t be against the sect rules.”
The sect member retorted, “Why should I listen to you?”
Jiang Cheng tugged at his red armband, “I’m a volunteer, would I lie to you?”
The sect member thought it made sense and decisively used the electric shock talisman on himself, then turned charred black with smoke rising from his head, and said to Yue Linger, “Your turn now!”
Without waiting for Yue Linger to respond, Jiang Cheng generously spoke for her, “No need for the electricity, she concedes.”
The sect member was initially pleased, thinking he had proven himself stronger than Yue Linger.
Then, he saw Yue Linger and Jiang Cheng laughing and talking, and he immediately felt that something was off.
“Hold on, you guys were in cahoots from the beginning?”