[World Gate Recharging. Time Until Ready: 2 days]

I couldn’t sleep. I stayed awake as the sun rose, sitting atop the roof of my own manor as the dunes cast great shadows across the sand. In the distance, a huge stone pillar of white stone polished to a shine reflected the sun’s rays directly into my eyes.

Verdant, grass covered ground surrounded the obelisk, with Cacti popping out of the sand. A pool of water accumulated beneath it.

After building Sandgrave, we had slowly worked to install the formations every mile. There were four visible pillar formations positioned at the cardinal directions from Sandgrave, each one marking the way to the city through the ever changing sand, and providing water for travelers. They pulled the water qi from the air, using it as fuel to pull water toward themselves, condensing it and dropping it onto the ground.

The formations had been an invention of the mortal colleges I funded — formations shifted not to combat or defense, but infrastructure.

For the Feng Dynasty, they cost practically nothing. We had accomplished so much.

I leaned back against the protruding stone bricks behind me and closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun sink into my robes.

[World Gate Recharging. Time Until Ready: 1 days]

My eyes snapped open. It was almost time. I thought with the last tick of the timer before its activation done, the nervous energy would leave me, and I could finally sleep.

I was wrong.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a huge caravan cresting the horizon. Wagons led by great, qi infused beasts of burden pulled loads of trade. At their front were the wagons of nobles.

The trade wagons disembarked, freeing their animals to drink greedily from the oasis of water just out of the city, while the others trundled forward. Sand covered curtains flapped in the wind of the desert. The robed teamsters began to tie the creatures to wooden pillars standing out of the sand around the oasis.

Two of the huge, earth element turtles began to bite down and eat the sand itself. A few wagons continued approaching the city and the gate began to rumble open. I stood with a stretch and took the stairs leaning down into my own expansive estate.

“Young Master!” Two men saluted and offered shallow bows as I stepped down into the party room beneath the stairs. An expansive upper level looked down upon the foyer of my estates primary building.

“Find the head attendant and prepare a reception for nobility.” I said. I was exhausted after a night without sleep. I could skip training today to be fully prepared to dive back into the Savage Expanse.

I hoped there was another goblin infestation to clean up.

My attendants rushed to work. There was a lot to be done. For my part, I changed into robes fit to greet the nobles and took my place at the head seat. It was an hour before the visiting dignitaries trundled their way inside, all old men taking seats below mine — only after they offered bows and kindly smalltalk. They looked down imperiously on the servants filling the plates around them.

“Greetings to the honorable Second Young Master Feng. I am called Feng Haolin. Our branch family connects much of the country in trade, guarding the caravans that deliver our spirit stone…” The merchant trailed off as I looked away from him and to Feng Wen. “Sandgrave truly is as… industrious as they say. To stand such a city within a place so… desolate… is truly a marvel. And for mortals to survive here. I come bearing a letter from the Feng Patriarch.”

The merchant bowed and offered a sealed scroll, which an attendant pulled from his hand and brought to the head of the table.

Feng Wen and I exchanged a glance.

“For Feng Wen.” The attendant said, presenting the sealed scroll to Wen.

It had caught me off guard, I leaned back in my seat, eyeing Feng Wen, who tucked the scroll away.

Feng Wen and Feng Fang sat beside me instead of below me. They earned the curious or angry glares of several of the visiting nobles for their seats.

The rest of the meeting proceeded normally. Small talk between the nobles, each of them offering me their blessings, elbowing and networking and the endless power struggle to acquire more capital. Trade deals began to brew in the quiet corners of the room. Then the attendants showed them to the empty estates we reserved for nobles — the exact same we reserved for use as prisons.

When the room had emptied of every noble, Feng Wen pulled out the scroll and popped it open, reading through it in just a moment. He made a noise of disapproval.

“Word of the tournament?” I asked.

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“Worse.” Wen said, tucking the scroll away within his robes. He folded his hands and stared over the room. “When I attended the tournament, my guardian brought me directly there. I was was the initiator. I reached the Third Realm at seventeen — the tournament was called for me. The road there was trivial — I waited for a month at the tournament, recovering for the trip and preparing.”

“And?” Feng Fang said. “You should have plenty of time if you leave today, right? Then you can beat them all and come right back here.” Fang slapped me on the shoulder.

“Feng Jin has already arrived by now.” Wen said. He was still staring out of the room. “The tournament isn’t set up for anyone else to win. The rest of the cultivators haven’t reached the Third Realm. The trip there for us will be rife with challenge — we will be heading outside of the Feng Dynasty and into unconquered mountains. This tournament is designed for Feng Jin’s sake, to establish him as the head of the entire social group being inducted to the tournament. Winning it… probably won’t be possible. But if Sai here can cheat hard enough, then second place is attainable.”

I tapped my fingers on the table.

“We’ll need two days to leave. I have to make some preparations.” We hadn’t clued Feng Fang in on how exactly the legacy in the precursor ruined worked. He knew it could make me stronger. He didn’t know the extent of it, or the fantastical nature of its power. “Where is the tournament?”

“Beyond the Stormwall at the western edge of this desert. The mountains there form a natural formation. Storm qi is trapped between the peaks; the sky there is black and ever boiling. In the valley’s heart rests the closest storm pavillion. It accumulates power over the course of years. The winner of the tournament is granted the privilege to cultivate within it, allowing them to temper their body and race through the Foundation Establishment realm.”

“Fang, can you — ”

“I’ll care for the citiess while you’re out and about.” Fang said, standing. Then he frowned. “Even if I hate the paperwork. There’s going to be so many messenger scrolls…”

“Good. I’ve got one last piece of business to attend to.”

I pushed myself off my seat and headed for one of the colleges built into Sandgrave. They were an offshoot of the school of geologists, calling themselves students of the dao of materials.

They owed me some silver.

The banquet hall where we met nobles was attached to the largest road in the city, and the dinner itself had taken more than an hour between the pleasantries and eating. Night had fallen as we left. The city was coming to life.

Stalls unfolded in the street, selling food and goods and books. Sandgrave had a lucrative market for study publications; mortal scholars from across the country and even from foreign countries had begun to recognize it as a hub of knowledge built in the heart of a desert.

Street sweepers pushed back the sand that the wind had blown into the city during the day, and the city’s spirit-glass industry began to roar to life with the smoke of distant bellows. Lantern-lighters refueled the spirit-stone illuminating the streets.

Every guard I passed offered clasped-fist salutes.

I moved through all of it, taking turns at whimsy as I headed toward the mortal college. In my own city, I needed no guards.

The entire city was depressed below the sand, the dunes stripped away and walled out. Much of the city’s urban infrastructure was carved into the very stone beneath the desert. Stair cases opened downward into the small tunnels of underground apartments.

Beyond those was the colleges of Sandgrave. They were among the oldest structures of the city, growing out from the wall of the city and stretching forward in huge, sand colored constructions. The exterior was rough, a sand colored plaster hiding the building materials beneath. Dozens of small glass windows shown into the night.

Young men and women dressed as scholars scattered or saluted as I opened the door and stepped inside and headed for a connected forge room at the edge of the school.

Inside, the scholars were covered in sand and dirt. They wore yellow tinted glass goggles tied to their head with leather bands. A bearded elder turned and smiled at me.

“Teacher Lao.” I greeted him with a nod.

“Second Young Master!” Lao shouted with enthusiasm, throwing his hands up into the air. They were calloused and covered in dirt. The end of his salt-and-pepper beard was singed, the hairs burnt and curled up. “We’ve reproduced a few of the coins as you’ve asked! What fascinating materials! Each of the coins contained the same precise mixture of materials — a silver alloy! Alas, I couldn’t find what properties they imbued in it with this.”

“That’s fantastic, Teacher Lao. How many did you manage to make?”

Lao snapped his fingers twice, and two assistants ran and carried over a small, ornate chest. Both of them were bulky, giant men, with visible muscle rippling through the openings in their scholar robes. They were almost panting when they dropped the chest onto the ground and pulled it open.

The contents were hundreds of identical silver coins to the ones Poppy had handed me, complete with the complex embossment in the perfectly round coins.

If I was going to cheat, it wouldn’t be enough to cheat at cultivating. I had to cheat in the other world too. It’s not like I was robbing anyone — silver is silver! It’s the exact same as our spirit-coin currency.

Though, how they gained levels or mana through these coins I didn’t understand. Surely they had some value to the cultivators that extracted them.

“Will this be enough? We’re producing another batch as we speak!” Teacher Lao said.

“This will be plenty.” I replied, loading a bag with as many as I could reasonably carry.

Unfortunately, securing a small spiritual storage ring would take months. I wouldn’t be able to buy one before the tournament.

But maybe I could find something similar with this much silver.

I retreated to my room to rest and recover. When night fell, I sat atop the roof, overlooking Sandgrave. Stars blanketed the sky above the city.

Life was calling me to leave everything I had built behind. For more than a decade, I was told I would become a king, only to have it all ripped away.

Now, this ancestors legacy had given me the power to rule again. I wouldn’t let it slip by. Why should I be reactive while countless mortals suffer?

It is thanks to the mortals I empowered that I gained the legacy. It was through them that we built this city, that we went digging beneath the sand. Why stop at five territories?

The Patriarch was worse than a bad father. Looking back on him, now, I knew what he was.

He was evil.

The Grim Tempest who abandoned their children across the world are little better. I held no hope of overthrowing them.

But once I reached the status of Inner Disciple in the Grim Tempest?

I would claim the Feng Dynasty as my own.

[World Gate Recharged!]

[Available destinations: Ludus Arbor]

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