"… And, another checkpoint complete," I muttered even as I put the finishing touches on another formation, about to fill with more plants letting out constant Qi that could refill my boat. Since I needed them to accumulate Qi, I decided to add ten of them in a row before I started expanding them horizontally.
It was a long, tedious work, even with the formations, one that took a month. It was long, backbreaking work, and even with my formation, alchemy, and spiritual plant tending to work in tandem, I didn't come anywhere near matching the output of a spirit vein.
No wonder cultivators didn't bother to grow endless plants and forests made of spirit plants. Killing each other to take over spirit veins was far more efficient.
Unfortunately, even as I spent a month exploring the misty mountains, I wasn't able to find a lot. I had learned more about the Everdawn Empire, added details to the map I had in my possession, and discovered several fragmented martial arts manuals that were based on Everdawn intent that could be used as reference material, but that was it.
Of all the gains, the increasing command of their language had been the biggest.
I had a feeling that to find something more useful, I needed to go deeper. However, my priority wasn't to discover a higher grade Everdawn style, but material from the intact sects. I had already been reluctant to use the Everdawn Essence considering how I had first received the Everdawn Saber, but then I had discovered the truth behind the stone gate.
Everdawn Essence was tangled with the concept of the province too much for me to dare to tangle it even if it wasn't somehow linked with the mist and and the ongoing conspiracy.
Three excellent reasons not to use it directly. Still, it was valuable as a reference material, particularly the way it focused on the purity of the Essence. The other martial arts did not, including the Black Tiger Onslaught I had received as an improved reward. They relied on practice and strength, while the essence grew and purified on its own.
That difference was why I was searching for the rebellious sects. I need to see if their style was closer to the Everdawn Empire, or the modern martial arts.
Unfortunately, discovering an intact sect wasn't as easy. I had discovered a few locations based on the historical documents, but considering I found those locations in reference to the glorious victories of the Empire, destroyed even before the mist had descended, the lack of useful material was not a surprise.
When it came to discovering the direction of an intact sect, it was not simple. Considering they were in hiding even before the mysterious destruction of the Empire, it would probably take months. I didn't even have a clue about their fate. Whether they had been destroyed, or they had simply joined with the Qi cultivators and turned into martial arts school, I couldn't even make a guess.
I might need to build some kind of giant formation to search, but Qi spending was a problem. Such a formation would have to stretch for a long distance, which was difficult even if I didn't have to add a lot of auxiliary features to keep it reasonably hidden.
It would have strained the capacity of the spirit vein, let alone the gardens. Unfortunately, transferring or channeling all that Qi was also a challenge.
It was another reason I wanted to create all those safe houses. I wanted to collect enough Qi to use searching formations on a local scale.
Luckily, not everything going as badly as my fruitless search. The conspiracy was growing slower than I expected, with them focusing on raising their new recruits to the second realm. However, it was a slow process. None of the recruits had managed to break through the limits and reach the Connate realm, and they had consumed multiple martial aptitude pills — mostly Profound Grade, with a few Yellow Grade mixed in for the best performers.
It was a valuable detail. The conspiracy was one of Kartpa Valley — unless it was a giant false flag operation — and I was very aware of the potency of their Alchemy technique. Even if Heaven and Earth Grade pills were not easy, mass producing Black Grade pills should be achievable.
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The fact that they could not suggest that either the conspiracy wasn't an important activity to assign resources, or whoever arranging it couldn't afford to mobilize the true extent of their resources.
Either way, it was better than trying to face one of the four overlords directly.
Speaking of Alchemy, I had managed to make some progress with the Kartpa Alchemy Technique, finally bringing it to Major Familiarity. A part of it was Janassa's rapidly improving cultivation. Her understanding of her gate transformation technique was solid enough, and the limitless Qi I provided to her allowed her to reach the Ninth Stage, and comfortably focus on the next stage.
In comparison, even with the notes she was redeeming from the 'mystic land' the improvement in her alchemy technique was slow.
Well, slow from my perspective. Since people considered reaching to Beginner Stage a great achievement, any improvement in less than a month was a great achievement. Since increasing her capabilities in such a short term was not an option, I decided to focus on the easier path.
Helping her reach the Foundation Establishment.
The higher her cultivation, the higher my multipliers would be, and her comprehension increasing would be a bonus. Together, I should be able to improve the technique to Perfection without wasting years.
It was not just my impatience that drew me to act. I didn't have years, not with the conspiracy in progress, putting a timeline to my activities. I certainly had weeks, and probably still had months.
But I didn't have years.
And, I had a huge advantage. Janassa's cultivation technique included a method to establish her foundation, which meant I didn't need to spend months to help her learn one. It was good, as finding the necessary techniques had proved challenging.
I failed to find any in the cultivator market. Even getting one from my prisoner didn't work. Unlike his sword technique, he seemed determined not to blab about his foundation, even as a casual insult. His attitude showed that internal cultivation was treated as a true secret, while external techniques were only strategically critical.
That led me to wonder just how depressed Aisnam was when I first met with her for her to share the secrets of her gate transformation technique. Or maybe, it was just negligence, assuming that a martial artist could never understand the true depths.
Of course, if I didn't have more urgent tasks, I could have probably discovered the necessary technique and arranged for someone to teach me. With the System, there were many methods. But, since Janassa had her technique, it wasn't critical.
The critical part was to find the recipe for the Foundation Establishment Pill, which proved to be very elusive.
It was not a surprise. From what I had seen, sects controlled the smaller cultivation families through two methods: occupying Qi-rich locations and limiting the number of Foundation Establishment pills on the market. For cultivation families, Foundation Establishment was the peak, while sect cultivators clearly treated that as a point of entry.
The easiest way to achieve that was to limit the number of Foundation Establishment Pills on the market and make sure that they created a monopoly so that they could 'reward' the loyalty of their followers.
It was still more inefficient than just taking over their territory, which seemed silly at face value, but the more I understood providence thanks to the Kartpa Alchemy Technique, the more I realized there was a deeper intention.
When cultivators said they didn't want to be tainted by karma, they were being serious.
However, their indirect method of control meant that finding even a fragmented recipe on the market was impossible. Apparently, when sects banned something, they took its eradication seriously.
Luckily, I didn't actually need a recipe. I had the ability to reverse engineer a pill thanks to the Kartpa technique. It should be more than doable. Then, all I needed was to launder the recipe through Janassa to get the improved version, and I could refine as many pills as I needed.
Of course, I couldn't just sell them. The sects would hunt me down at the mere suggestion.
Not that it mattered. One thing I didn't lack was things to sell. It was finding the market I could sell without being killed was the challenge.
Speaking of it, I had three options to get the pill. I could try to find and rob the cultivation families. I might try to sneak into my fake mystic land, which had several sect cultivators still exploring. Or, I could purchase one from the Treasure Pavilion.
The first was out because I didn't even know where I could find the cultivation families. Finding their secret bases would be challenging, and discovering their treasury would be even more difficult. And, even then, there was no guarantee that they would have one.
At face value, trying to get one through the sect disciples at the mystic lands was doable. It was safer than going myself and buying one from the Treasure Pavilion. At first, I had just assumed the Treasure Pavilion was an opportunistic seller. But, the more I learned about the cultivation world, the more intimidating it became.
Why they were only purchasing the remains of the Everdawn Empire. And, why the sects allowed it to operate even when it sold items like Foundation Establishment Pills?
No, if the choice was between trying to trick a few spoiled sect disciples and potentially entering the radar of a mysterious organization by bringing them a lot of treasure they had been searching for, I would have chosen the former without blinking.
Luckily, that wasn't my only option.