Horse 20, Year 8693 Of The Grand Wulin Era, Avarius Goldscale

The news came while I was working on a damaged golem, trying to figure out how it did what it did, how to replicate it, and how to fix it. The golem in question was something Uncle Marcus and Uncle Alim had found on a trip into a ruin, and kept because it could be useful. Uncle Alim knew enough about it to repair it, but he had similar models that were currently working, and wanted to test if any of the sect's young artificers and alchemists and the like could figure it out.

The golem had a special ability, to self-repair and upgrade itself by absorbing minerals, metals, and other materials. This process relied on its core, which was a large, pure mana crystal somewhat resembling the Crystal Shard formed in the Shard Formation Stage,inscribed with various runes and conduits carved into it. The runes provided function, and the conduits were like a meridian network,  moving mana around the core structure and into the various wires .devices, and crystals that were the internal parts of the golem. I guess you could say it was more a robot than a pure golem, but those two categories were pretty much the same thing in this world. The core was damaged, a few key runes and mana conduits broken or obliterated.These runes were in charge of the golem's self repair ability and the absorption and transmission of mana and other energies.  I could tell this from looking at the rest of the core , and what should be in those places, but was unsure how to fix them without compromising more of the runes or causing the core to overload and explode.

At the current moment, I'd given up on repairs, and decided to attempt to create another core like the original one, to see what an undamaged core should function like. To that end, I'd borrowed a golem of the same model,  graciously loaned to me by Uncle Alim, with a gentle reminder to neither blow it or myself up. Did things really explode that often during my experiments? Thinking back on it, I'd managed to make a lot of things explode while experimenting, the list including weapons, training dummies, various furniture, lab equipment, a rune that was supposed to suppress explosions, a cake I'd baked for Alex's last birthday,a bag of chemically inert sand, the last six inches of my tail (which had since grown back), and the fruit juice I'd been drinking that morning. At the time, I figured that perhaps I should study explosion Dao, gain some control and weaponize this unfortunate fault. I would later end up becoming one of the greatest experts to ever exist when it came to explosions, but that was far in the future, and the overly-serious little brat I was then would never have thought his attempts to be less wasteful and not embarrass himself would lead to something that cool.

While I was memorizing the runic patterns and mana conduits of the intact core, comparing them to the broken one, and shaping an as yet unaltered mana crystal into the right size and shape for the core I intended to make, the communicator on my wrist buzzed,and I gently, almost lazily, tapped the screen on top of it with a claw. It had a lot of functions, including access to that virtual-reality internet thing that Alex introduced when talking about his birthday, but the one currently being used was the voice transmission function.

"All Myriad Existences Sect personnel please report to the auditorium of the Recreational Palace, we have an important announcement to make. This concerns the futures of all Sect members, their families, and the mortals and sect-less cultivators within our territory, so try to make it snappy!" Mom's voice blared in my head, and I assumed everyone else who was part of the sect was hearing it as well.

I put away my experimental materials into the Spacial Ring on my right hand, and gloomily marched out of my room towards the Recreational Palace, grumpy about my experiment being interrupted. The Recreational Palace was actually a really fun place, it was the sect's designated "Kick back, relax, and enjoy stuff" zone, with everything from pools, to little food stalls, sparring arenas, virtual combat simulators, all sorts of interesting games and activities,  roller coasters and the like, and there were even things like exercise classes or people sharing their memories publicly as if they were movies or TV shows. It was fairly comprehensive, and there were even parts dedicated solely to adults that kids like myself could only try to figure out and were not allowed into. There were also various meeting places for clubs and groups of friends, auditoriums with stages for plays or for important announcements or sect meetings, and other things of that nature.

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I figured I'd console myself after this oh-so-important meeting with some food that was extremely sugary and tasted good while not being very good for me, and then splash around in a pool for a while before I went back to my experiments. It seemed like it'd be a productive use of my time, as everyone needed to relax sometimes, even me. I wasn't planning to slack off because I was in a bad mood, not at all. As you can see, I was bad at lying to myself, but still managed to fall for that bad lie. I arrived at the relevant auditorium half an hour later,and sank into one of the many comfy armchairs that were this auditorium's form of those weird uncomfortable folding seats I'd seen in other auditoriums outside the sect. I looked up at the stage, and my parents, Alex's parents,  Uncle Gao, and a few of the Sect's other Elders (Andrew Summerwind had become one recently, by working his way up to a position of authority in the Sect's alchemy department), stood there, along with that Grandpa General, Quintus Maximus Optimus, as well as a few other men and women in the uniforms of Sol Magnan generals and government personnel.

Mom turned towards the audience, clearing her throat loudly and waiting for everyone to quiet down and focus on her. Her human form had long silver hair like mine, with golden-yellow eyes, and her facial features were pretty similar to my own, but with thicker eyebrows and lips, a more pronounced chin, and higher cheekbones. She was tall and somewhat willowy, but that was only in proportion to how overall huge she was, she actually had relatively broad shoulders and wide hips for a woman her height. She was not neccesarily as muscular as Aunt Hilde, but still had enough muscle to show that she wasn't a pushover in a physical fight. Standing there in front of everyone, the space where she was gave off an aura of casual strength, as if she was always subtly reminding you that she could crush stones into powder with her bare hands.

Looking at Dad next to her, he was actually kinda short, now that I had grown up enough to realize it, only around 5 feet 4 inches to mom's 6 feet six inches. I guess when you aren't quite a kid anymore, adults aren't all titans. He was a very thin and overall delicate looking man, with features even softer than my own. He seemed more bored with what was going on than anything else, his usual perpetual grin replaced with an annoyed grimace.He was often described (in whispers he wasn't supposed to hear) as cute. Despite his entirely nonthreatening appearance, he gave off an aura of mystery and a sense that he was much more than he appeared. Any idiot who judged him by appearance soon learned that Theodore Goldscale, for all that his apparent softness, had a sharp mind and sharper abilities.

When the audience did focus, she spoke, her voice carrying across the auditorium, yet sounding as if she was calmly talking to each person ,right in front of them.It was a neat trick involving a little bit of illusion-type Dao Insight, combined with a mass Voice Transmission. Slightly inefficient and wasteful of mana, but it was definitely a cool way to grab people's attention and hold onto it. "The Myriad Existences Sect has officially declared an alliance with the Sol Magna Empire! The purpose of this alliance is to exchange knowledge and resources easily, as well as to learn from one another's cultures, traditions and institutions while helping each other to improve. There's also the side benefit of this alliance presenting a strong front to our mutual enemy, the Frost Walker kingdom, and their attempts to expand across the whole Earth Dragon continent. They have some foolish claim about how it should be theirs because they're descended from the top echelons of the Earth Dragon Empire, before the gods ended that empire for its hubris and imperialist expansion, but it's just a cover for their nationalist views and hatred of cultures not their own, as well as their greed. Any questions?"

Nobody asked a thing, but it was apparent to the members of the Myriad Existences Sect that we were allying with a lesser evil to face a greater one, in hopes to turn that lesser evil into a true ally. I figured the questions would come later, when  people were no longer spellbound by mom's neat trick and unlikely to attempt to form any sort of mob if the answers pressed the wrong buttons.

"Well that's good, then. The contract that our alliance was formed under will be available in the library one week from now for public reading, and the exact terms of it and how they affect individuals, the sect as a whole, and our new allies will be clearly explained in relevant documents that will also be available at that time. You're free to go, but remember that we will be having a party to celebrate the alliance a week from today, and invitations will be sent out to all guests tomorrow. You will be allowed, and even expected, to bring one or two guests of your own, if you receive an invitation. That's all folks, enjoy yourselves." Mom cut off the voice transmission, and disappeared in a flash of light, probably off to gorge herself on food and then rest in a lava pool to relax. Look, she was a Crystal Soul stage cultivator and a dragon to boot, she would easily be able to deal with and even enjoy the intensity of lava.