Done Being A Fool: I Touch, I Rise

In the sects that train cultivators, a man's spirit root is the thing that decides what he can become, and it can be cut out of him. Su Fan had been playing the fool for ten years inside his own sect when he met an empress. She undressed for him and he thought he had reached the top of his life. Then she drew a blade and cut his spirit root away. While he lay waiting to die she put a qilin god into his body. She had been dosed with a very strong aphrodisiac and told him she needed his body to work it out of her, and that she had done this to him only so he would survive the night. After that night he woke a power he had not had before. Touching a woman sends heat through her. Touching a beast or a corpse pulls the spirit energy out of it and into him, and his strength climbs with every touch. He goes back to the sect and finds that his master has been attacked and killed. Su Fan is made acting head of the sect, with everything the position carries. He keeps up the act of the fool so that the people who want him dead will show themselves, and they keep trying.