The Programmer Cultivator

Chapter 338 - 40: New Alias

After all, it wasn’t a formal Dao discussion conference, so the senior figures hadn’t engaged in any serious discourse.

In the afternoon, Zhang Deming left the Mountain Peak Cloud Pool.

Qian Ruyan and her party didn’t leave; they stayed behind.

As requested, he had one month to devise a satisfactory plan for the client. After that, they would negotiate the delivery date for the completed bead set.

After returning to the Flying Spring Waterfall, Zhang Deming received another message. It stated that if he lacked the necessary Techniques for the order and needed others, he could go to the Scripture Pavilion on Spirit Nurturing Peak.

As long as the Techniques were for the order, Zhang Deming could use Spirit Stones as payment at the Spirit Nurturing Peak’s Scripture Pavilion and wouldn’t have to spend Contribution Points. This was a privilege of custom-made orders.

This was also in line with the typical process for custom orders. After all, when something is tailor-made, the creator isn’t expected to know every required Skill.

This was also why, in the Spirit Nurturing Master profession, custom orders couldn’t be strictly categorized by price tiers. The prices were often inconsistent, sometimes with enormous disparities.

As the Spirit Nurturing Master profession became more widespread, Spirit Nurturing Bead sets had become formally classified. They were roughly divided into three types.

The first type was called a Magic Set. This consisted of a set of several, or even over a dozen, Spirit Nurturing Beads for a single Technique. The exact number of beads depended on the success rate of creating them.

The key was to ensure that a single set would, in most cases, be enough to achieve Enlightenment Dao. There was no specific number of beads required, although the industry did have a common standard for reference.

The second type was the so-called Ordinary Inheritance Set. A Spirit Nurturing Master would create a set of beads using several, or even dozens, of the Techniques they had already mastered.

Once combined, they formed an Inheritance Set. These were offered as signature products for clients to choose from. A client with more specific demands could even select and reconfigure a custom set from among these existing bead sets.

While such orders could be a good match for the client, a Spirit Nurturing Master’s repertoire of Techniques is ultimately limited, so there were bound to be aspects that weren’t a perfect fit.

Thus, one could only say they tried their best to match the client’s needs. These were considered ordinary orders, and their process had been standardized.

These bead sets had a relatively stable market price, with minor fluctuations, based on the number of Techniques, their combination, and other factors.

The third type was the custom-made Inheritance Bead Set. Strictly speaking, it was actually a subset of the second type.

However, there was a key difference. The second type was assembled from the Techniques the Spirit Nurturing Master already knew, but custom orders were not.

For these, the Spirit Nurturing Master designed a "cultivation path" bead set, tailored specifically for the client.

With these orders, the client could also make certain choices based on their own interests, selecting the Techniques they wanted.

This was a fundamental difference and the reason why private custom orders couldn’t have a standardized price. It wasn’t about making do with what was available; it was about selecting the most suitable Techniques for the client and assembling them into a set.

A crucial aspect of this was that a set might include Techniques the Spirit Nurturing Master didn’t even know.

So how could they create a Spirit Nurturing Bead for a Technique they didn’t know?

They had to learn it.

In other words, a Spirit Nurturing Master had to specifically learn these Techniques just for that one set of beads. Of course, to actually complete such an order, there couldn’t be too many unfamiliar Techniques involved.

Even so, that didn’t diminish the unique nature of the process.

Other people poured immense effort into learning just one or two Techniques for their own cultivation, yet a Spirit Nurturing Master had to learn one or more Techniques for a single order, and also develop them to a high level of proficiency.

Although once a Technique was learned it expanded their personal repertoire, making future custom orders easier, this unique aspect couldn’t be overlooked.

That was why custom-made orders could never have a standard price, nor could they ever be systematized.

Custom-making was, truly, a high-end luxury service.

Consequently, completion times for custom orders were never fixed. A timeframe spanning a century wasn’t unheard of. After all, there was no guarantee that a Spirit Nurturing Master could learn a required Technique instantly.

...

That night, Zhang Deming began working on his first true order—and a private custom one at that.

First, it was an Inheritance Set, and what’s more, the most complete type of Inheritance Bead Set.

What defined an Inheritance Set? It was a set of beads containing the Techniques required to ensure the user could break through their cultivation bottlenecks.

The simplest version consisted of the initial Entry-Level Technique, a Tier Two Foundation Establishment Technique, and the three key Techniques for Tai Chi Three Lives.

These five Techniques formed the most basic Tier Three Inheritance Set, just enough for a Cultivator to barely reach the Duality stage.

It was a bare-bones set, but with these five Skill beads, a person could cultivate in seclusion with no issues up until the Duality stage.

And what did a complete Inheritance Set require?

It required Zhang Deming to create a comprehensive Inheritance Bead Set that covered all aspects of cultivation and self-preservation.

In other words, in addition to the basic Inheritance Bead Set, it also had to include methods for combat, survival, escape, recovery, and so on.

Once the client had absorbed the entire set of beads, they would become an exceptionally competent Cultivator, with no need to comprehend any other Techniques.

This was the so-called "most complete Inheritance Set," and it was why Spirit Nurturing Masters were so highly valued and heavily supported by the major powers.

It was also why Hongmeng was now scrambling for resources, and the Second Generation of Cultivators had begun to flourish.

Spirit Nurturing Masters could, in a way, use a "cramming" method to rapidly mass-produce Cultivators. Of course, success was never one-hundred-percent guaranteed.

Zhang Deming wasn’t too worried about the order, however. His Vine Technique—the Jade Demon Blood-Sucking Vine—was part of the Flower Wood Dao, after all.

’It’s already quite comprehensive, even if the "Flower Dao" part of it only includes Poison Control.

But that’s no problem. If the client really needs more, I can just find a couple of Flower Wood Techniques and mix them in.’