Luna's innocent mind had entirely missed why the others might find the thought of a demon, and a Vampire pairing might be disturbing, so she just changed topics to the upcoming dinner.
"Hey, there are a lot of new people here. I think we know that one. It's the lady who was sitting next to us in the auditorium and the guy who got all pissed off when he lost his gambling money. Oh, the guy who can't eat peanut butter is here too. Hi people." She called out, waving happily.
"Hello, Miss Luna and the Forbidden Treasure Sect. Thank you to the Shadowed Blade Sect for hosting a celebration dinner tonight so that our Male Elders could attend. The Lotus Blossom is a kind sect, but the rules so somewhat limit the guest list." The Elder, who had been sitting next to them for the entire competition, greeted the group.
"Fantastic battle strategy, Sect Master Cain. Congratulations on your win." An Elder in red robes with a matching dyed beard greeted Cain.
"Thank you. I would have to place it rather low on the scale of strategic victories, but it was effective." Cain agreed.
Once he had greeted Cain and moved on, a procession of meaningless platitudes from Cultivators that wanted to try to get in his good books began, keeping Cain occupied for most of the evening.
By comparison, the Disciples had it easy. The ones who wanted to get answers from them were mostly all other disciples, curious about cultivation techniques, breakthrough methods, and other technical information that would help their quest to gain power.
The real winners of the day were the Shadowed Blade Sect, whose food and hospitality were the talk of the encampment by the end of the evening, with everyone raving about how welcoming they were and the special dishes that they had prepared just for the victory celebration of a small Sect that couldn't bring them much benefit.
Unlike many of the Sects who wanted to suck up to Cain, the Shadowed Blade was in no real danger of being overrun by him, no matter what tricks he used against them, as they had Divine Realm Cultivators in this world who could crush such a force in an instant.
It was clear to Cain that many of the other Sects were bitter about this fact, as their Sect Masters were often stuck in the later stages of Immortal, while their Core Strength was in either the late Spirit Realm or early into their Immortality.
Again, this made Cain wonder if he had been brought to a beginner's area for the Immortal Plane, but the Elders of the Shadowed Blade assured him that this was normal for any Immortal world. Only one in fifty could ever reach those heights, but it was an incredible difference compared to the lower Planes.
They had a point, Cain's world had evicted him even before he had made it close to Immortality, so the fact that the whole world wasn't full of Immortals did make some sense here.
Plus, there was the horny bard factor to account for, where the suave among the Cultivators talked themselves under many skirts and had large numbers of children. If everyone made it to Immortality, the place would be positively overrun with humans.
When it got close to Midnight, Cain went to search for his Disciples, planning to take them back to Camp so they could get up early to get seats for the Inner Sect competition beginning in the morning.
Now that they weren't competitors, they would have to queue with everyone else to get into the Stadium, and he had been told that the lines were far worse than they were for the outer Sect competition. The line for the Outer Sect fights was already hours long, just after dawn, so if they wanted to get a seat, they would have to be there very early.
The only saving grace was that due to the power level of the fights, they would be using all four stadiums at the same time, giving the combatants room to move. That meant four times as many seats would be available to meet the demand, and he just had to pick the one with the least exciting sounding matches and, therefore, the shortest lines.
"You look like you're contemplating something." The man with Violet eyes asked Cain, appearing out of nowhere.
"How to get good seats for tomorrow's competition. I am told it will be stupidly crowded since everyone who has been relaxing out here will want to be in a stadium to watch the matches." Cain replied, getting used to the man's randomness.
"Go to stadium four. It is the women's division, and it is usually only half full of old perverts and the female Sects. You will likely get priority seating if you show up there since your team is all female and won the entire Outer Sect division." The man replied as if it was obvious.
"See, this is where a guide comes in handy. I didn't realize that they were segregated for the Inner Sect fights. That will make things more interesting." Cain agreed.
"And then you can create yourself a harem of new beauties. That's a useful skill to have, but I don't think my wife would approve of me using it." The cultivator laughed.
"I'm not certain mine would either. That's why I don't make a Harem out of them." Cain replied, making him laugh even harder.
"Well, good luck tomorrow. I'm out again. This game of tag is getting intense." The man left again without warning, leaving Cain confused about what he meant, but this time he noticed something change. Just after he left, a few new faces appeared, in the same outfit that he was wearing, but looking incredibly annoyed.
[I think he is training his disciples in search techniques] Oath Breaker offered.
That made a lot of sense to Cain. If he was powerful enough to vanish from where he was without any warning, there must be some way to track someone using a skill like that to travel, and it would be necessary for his Disciples to learn it.
He did feel a little bad for them, though. If they were in training, they had been searching for him for most of a week now without luck.
"Alright, we can return to the tent. I have learned everything that I need to know for the night." Luna informed Cain as he watched the black-robed Cultivators search the area with some sort of skill before sighing and vanishing again.
"You learned how to make the Cherry Chocolate Cake without needing Mythic Cherries?" Cain asked.
"I also learned how to make a new form of puff with whipped cream in the middle. But yes, I learned how to make the good cake with common ingredients." Luna agreed.
Penny looked less annoyed than Cain expected, so she must have accepted that Luna would be making baked goods on a regular basis beginning tomorrow, or she had concocted a plan to thwart Luna from becoming too hyper from the enhanced cherries.
When he had tracked down the whole group, including Jen, who seemed to be incredibly popular with the young men, Cain led the group back to their tent for the evening.
Bright and early in the morning, Cain created puppets to make a meal for the Sect and woke up his Disciples.
"Come on. We are going to watch the Inner Sect ladies fight. We need to cheer on the Lotus Blossom, and there is food ready." Cain called into the other side of the tent, where a pile of bodies had formed around Penny in her oversized wolf transformation.
"We are going to miss the chefs once you leave this place, even if you are training replacements." Elder Ling sighed, the pout on her now youthful face tempting Cain to pinch her cheeks.
"It will be a hard adjustment, but I have left the Puppets here so that they can run the classes while we are at the competition, so nobody is missing out on training. They will be capable of making decent meals in no time, trust me."
"Where were you headed before you got sidetracked and ended up here?" One of the Disciples who had been talking with Luna asked curiously.
"We were going to go to Dragon Mountain and see if the Ancient Dragon had an interesting quest for us. My disciples' method relies on experiences to build their strength at its maximum potential, so simply sitting around actually slows their progress.
Well, unless we keep running into people like the Red Scorpions who volunteer to be made an example of and help them grow." Cain added.
"I don't think you're going to run into another Sect that foolhardy for a while. Not after what happened the last time, but there is the scavenger hunt if you are staying here until the very end.
It's an event for the Sects to partake in on their way home. The hosts hide a number of magical items and rare resources through the region, and the Sects heading home hunt for them as they leave." She offered.
A whole season here was much too long, they would want to be gone before that, or they would be headed to Dragon Mountain just as winter began to set in.
Cain wasn't too worried about the weather at home, but the weather here could be much different and much more dangerous. Not to mention the chances of being attacked in a snowstorm.
"I will keep it in mind, but I think we will likely leave before then so that we can get to our next destination before the winter gets too bad."
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