56 - Chapter 55 - Day 2180

Adya: We need to create cultivation manuals, but they can’t be too impressive.

Sai: Yes, there are several catalogued manuals. We can choose a few general purpose ones that will work for our army. That way they will be useful and it will look like we are using them.

Mai: Don’t forget, they will need to look old. We will need to age the manuals. If they look new that will raise questions about who is producing them. We need them to look like family heirlooms that have been discovered.

The three spent some time planning on which cultivation manuals to choose from. In the end they decided that it made sense to have a set of manuals that went from basic up to advanced, that could be used by the outer, inner, and core disciples. The advantage would be that the cultivation manuals could be switched up as people advance with no issues. The disadvantage was that these would be middle of the road cultivation manuals, not really advanced enough to be coveted.

Adya had already purchased multiple empty books, and so spent some time creating the manuals. They were designed to look like working copies that had been corrected as someone went through the arduous process of creating their own methods. Adya went so far as to use different scripts, allowing for changes in language over time, different inks and writing styles to give the impression of something that had been created across generations. She would need to get supplies from the kitchen to age them. It would take time for them to look aged, then dry out so that no one would suspect that the manuals were recently created.

She decided to ask Sally to get the items for her. It would be too suspicious if she went down to the kitchen herself. Once she had given Sally the instructions, she went through her plan once more.

She would contact the elder that had sent Jarel. The elder was the only one who had known about her before she lost her protection. That meant that they were not against her. The fact the other elders had only learned about her after her protection dropped meant that they did not want to protect her. There was no way she could trust them.

She would have to see what the Elder wanted from her. She would then present the idea of the mana coin artifact as a way to hide her importance. She would use Rory as a front for the formations. He would be protected by the fact he had a loyalty formation that would prevent him from revealing his secrets.

Sai: No it won’t. He has a soul mark. He will need to have a visible formation that he can show as an excuse.

Adya: Yes I had missed that. I will need to go and do that today.

Then she would use Jarel as a house retainer to apply for Sect/Clan status. They would send an investigator to confirm that her house had access to cultivation manuals, funds and had cultivators to confirm the status. She would need her mother to be the face of that. It would look very strange if a young girl was creating a sect.

She would create the mana compression artifacts, and the elder could use it as a way to empower their allies and weaken their enemies.

She still needed a way to launder her supply of mana stones/coins. One of her biggest strengths was curbed due to her not being able to publicly leverage her real wealth.

That should allow her to hide in plain sight for some time and give her time to increase her cultivation and more importantly build real strength. She also wanted to have time to further her research. There was so much she could do, but she needed time and privacy for that.

Mai: This is the ideal path. No plan survives contact with the enemy. This is going to go wrong. It’s just a case of working out how badly and what we can do to mitigate the damage.

Adya: I know. Things are going too well. This status is unlikely to continue.The fact we can create soul marks, and take over other’s formations have made things too easy for me. The heavens do not like it when cultivators do not struggle for their success. Whatever advantages the system is providing, the heavens will challenge.

Adya had spent a long time cultivating in her previous lives and had seen the path taken by many friends, disciples and even enemies. The only constant had been the wrath of the heavens. That world may not have had a system directing cultivation. However, Adya refused to believe that anything could suppress the heavens. It was more likely that the system either worked with or was subordinated to the true heavens. She found it hard to fathom anything that could subjugate the will of creation itself. And if she was wrong, the implications were even more terrifying.

While she was lost in her musings, Sally returned with the supplies from the kitchen. Adya continued with her musing and review of her plans and contingencies while she worked on aging the three manuals she had created. She wanted to show her mother the finished product. It would be hard for Gauri to lie to the investigator. So it was better for her to believe what they needed the investigator to accept.

Adya was able to use her environmental dominion skill to heat the manuals, after applying colours to the pages to make it look like they had aged in a dry environment over a long time period. It also gave her skills a workout, but it was not enough to push the skill over level 100. She had a feeling that to get over level 100 for any skill she would need to do something extraordinary.

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Adya: Once our current tasks are done, we need to make sure we plan training to see if we can push the skills forward.

Sai: It is likely that we will need to find novel uses for the skills to force it to evolve. Either that or learn another skill that can potentially merge with it.

It took Adya most of the day to get the manuals in the right condition. She was starting to get concerned that Jarel had not returned yet. He had said that it should not take him very long to retrieve the scroll.

Adya really needed a way to track and communicate at a distance. This lack of information was frustrating to her.

She sent Sally to get Evelin, telling her to come and see her urgently. Evelin arrived very quickly.

“Evelin,” said Adya without preamble. “Jarel is missing, he was supposed to be back by now. Do you know what is going on?”

“He had taken instructions for some of the others,” said Evelin. “I am trying to get all of our assets back before you take the next step. Still he should have been back by now.”

“Do you know where he was headed?” asked Adya.

“He gave me a general direction,” said Evelin. “Not an exact location. I will need to send out a team to look for him.”

“Please do that,” said Adya. “I also need to go to the city. There has been an oversight in my plans.”

“That is risky now that we are moving forward,” said Evelin.

“Not much we can do,” said Adya. “We will need to minimise the risk and proceed anyway.”

“I understand,” said Evelin. “Give me an hour, and I will make the arrangements. Let me send out a team to look for Jarel.”

Adya checked on the manuals once again, checking every part of every page of all three, and was satisfied with the way they looked. It would be difficult for anyone to realise that they were just penned. She collected them and left for her mother’s office.

On the way she let Sally know that when Evelin came looking for her, to send her to Gauri’s office. She knocked and entered. By now the guards were used to little Adya randomly coming and going from the office.

“Greetings mother,” said Adya. “I hope you are not too busy.”

“Well, not really,” said Gauri. “I was informed by the cultivators that we are to lock down for the time being, due to an unspecified risk. So I am just catching up on some paperwork.”

“Sorry about that,” said Adya. She had just left Evelin to manage the details. “I came here to tell you that my plans are moving forward. I also will need to inform you about what to expect.”

“What do you have to be sorry about?” asked Gauri. “And you are ready to tell me your plans, finally I get to see what you have been plotting.”

Adya handed the three manuals to Gauri. “Take a look,” said she.

Gauri’s face drained of colour as she flipped through the manuals. She recognised what they were, and more importantly their value, especially as a set.

“Where…how…did you get these?” she asked in a breathless whisper.

“They are our legacy,” said Adya with a smirk on her face. “We found them by accident. We are going to use them as the foundation to apply for sect status for the house of Gurg.”

“We are going to be a cultivation clan?” asked Gauri in shock. “Is this because of your master?”

“We will apply on our own,” said Adya. “We will have retainers to support us until the family can take up the burden. Sorry, but your workload is going to increase immensely.”

“This will also stop a lot of our enemies,” said Gauri, thinking through the implications if Adya’s plans worked out.

“It will stop our current enemies,” replied Adya. “It will make us much more powerful enemies. Things will get worse before they get better.”

“Who is representing the house?” asked Gauri. “Your master? A retainer?”

“No mother,” said Adya. “I plan for it to be you. We will be a matriarchal clan. It can’t be me for obvious reasons, not for several years at least. You have a lot of reading to do.”

“This is not the entirety of your plan,” said Gauri. “You are still not telling me all of it.”

“I can’t mother,” said Adya. “They will send out at least a tier 7 cultivator, maybe even a tier 8, to investigate our claims. You will need to liaise with them extensively. You are not able to control your physiological and neurological responses to fool the senses of someone that powerful. It’s better if you don’t know. I will tell you when I can.”

Adya spent some time guiding Gauri through the cultivation manuals. Just as they were finishing up, there was a knock on the door and Evelin entered.

“I am ready,” said Adya. “Mother, I am going to visit Rory.”

With that she left for the city with Evelin, Dexter and a coterie of guards. She was sure Evelin had arranged for a team of cultivators to shadow them as well. Once they were well on their way Adya asked Evelin about Jarel.

“We have sent out multiple teams to search for him,” said Evelin. “He should have been back by midday at the latest. It is concerning that we have not heard anything. I have sent people who can travel the fastest. We should have reports by the time we come back.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Adya. “I am going to ask Rory to come back to the estate with us. Check if we need to protect any of his staff.”

“If we do, then we will bring them back to the estate too,” said Evelin. “That way I can add his protective detail to the rest. It would be easier for us to protect everyone together.”

“Do you have designs for the formations the council uses to communicate?” asked Adya. “I just realised that most people are going to other sects to use their formations to report back. If I know what we need, we should work on creating our own. It would also make it much easier for us to get news.”

“I think one of the cultivators has access to the formations,” said Evelin. “It would be better to wait until the sect has officially been formed. Otherwise the investigator may not be happy.”

“I won’t start the work,” said Adya. “But I can start to plan it out. That will speed up the process immensely.”