The Lang Clan had formed their new home out of a rough circle of small mountains, and relied heavily upon the Banyan Building techniques. The Prosperity Company buildings had been replaced in the intervening years, but the Lang Clan preferred to maintain the mystical forest feel they had grown used to. The buildings grown out of trees were astounding not just from an artistic standpoint, but also because of all the amenities seamlessly hidden within them. Hot and cold plumbing, heating and cooling of the air. So many comfortable things were seamlessly integrated into the still living buildings. It also meant the outsides of them still had small animals, birds, and insects living among the branches and upon the soil of each of the tree homes. The homes had floors and walls that could be heated or cooled, saunas, showers, baths, indoor ponds and aquariums. Cooking and food storage were a little more energy intensive, but Blastids could solve those problems while also powering blow dryers, vacuums, lighting, music players, and telephones to name just a few.

It was a place of modern earth conveniences, but made almost entirely out of living beings. News also spread quickly of his return and with the highest members of the Clan wanting to celebrate it became a clan wide festival without any formal announcement or planning. Technically, everyone was family which meant their enthusiasm for the event spread rapidly so even those Sage had not only never met, but hadn’t even been born when he last visited were still excited to join the party welcoming him home. Decorations were easy, as over the years they’d figured out even more nuanced ways to use the Banyan building, making buds bloom in a whole rainbow of colors, with hundreds of scents and thousands of varieties of flower. A feast followed, and Sage met with grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in droves. It also meant he had to hand out a lot of gifts, but that was simple enough because of the Inner World.

In fact, the finale for the festivities was taking the whole Clan to visit the Inner World. For one day, the whole clan got quiet, left with only the Dragoons to defend the place while the whole of the Clan spent a few years on vacation. It wasn’t just a vacation, as it was also an educational trip to update the clan of all the advancements that had taken place. While the Clan had many amenities on the outside world, they had been away from the Inner World for the better part of a hundred thousand years. The whole civilization had crumbled apart and rose again more than once in that time period. Even the oldest members of the research team were at least a dozen generations removed from Sage’s immediate family. For those on the Inner World it was a meeting with their ancestors and some enjoyed connecting with these descendants more than exploring the world, but most were busy learning of all the changes.

Compared to the living amenities of the outside world, the Inner World had diverged quite a bit. The Banyan Building technology still formed the basis of most structures, and Bio-computers were all over the place, but now Blastids had been relegated to power sources. Magic Tools had gone through a mechanical revolution, pushing them beyond Earth’s capabilities by a large margin. Mechanical devices using living creatures as a power source, and the addition of supernatural abilities through formations. The vehicles he used in the Tianxia Capital, and even the Shifting Jade Mountain were used because the mainstream technology from the Inner World would stand out too much.

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The truth of things was that Sage no longer knew how most of the technology of the Inner World worked. The research team and the engineers and inventors on the Inner World had moved far beyond the times when he was running everything directly. All he did was give them a starting point by listing the basic idea of all the devices he’d remembered from Earth. He’d also add more input whenever his memory was jogged. When a new problem appeared, or a new technology reminded him of something else, he would often remember an Earth device and then describe how it worked, or at least how it worked in his own estimation. For example, a jet engine. He knew only that it had a series of fans inside, from his memory of a cross section he’d seen. Sketching out the design he remembered, his description of how it worked was that the fans in front sucked air through the intake. Each layer of fans compressed that air, and then near the back fuel was added. Upon ignition the next layer of fans were driven by the force of the combustion, being used to turn the fans in the front while the majority of the energy continued on through a narrow nozzle to create thrust.

Sage himself had no idea how exactly the fans were all geared or attached together. He also had no idea how they even started the thing, let alone the most optimal shape for the fan blades. Worse yet, he still had never found a substitute fuel to use for combustion. He’d previously theorized that the Laws of the world here were different than Earth, which altered the way chemistry worked in subtle ways. The researchers were stumped by this idea for years, as every fuel they tested out did not react the way they wanted, either being too low in energy, or the complete opposite and destroying the test device. The research stalled out for thousands of years until a variation of the Fire Blossom poison was created to fill the role. Special Blastids were bred to produce the new poison, which combusted in a more regular and even manner than the original poison.

That was about as much as Sage knew about the device, and he’d moved on to providing input on aircraft shapes and the aerodynamics of wings. A field of study that was used to help optimize the Shifting Jade Mountain later, and which also led to the Flying Wing that had been part of the trade. The Flying Wing’s design methodology was the same as the other flying machines, but it was the equivalent of a scooter in comparison to the supercars that were currently being used on the Inner World. Aircraft were designed to account for aerodynamic lift, drag and turbulence, even if those things didn’t always apply. The Laws of Wind and other similar problems could completely alter how those things interacted with a vehicle and so their core systems were backup flight systems like a Flying Ship. Their smaller size made them much faster than the much larger Flying Ships, even when they couldn’t take advantage of their aerodynamic properties. It was also even more true given the level of armaments they could carry. A Flying Ship was large enough to carry huge sect defending or attacking formations, which the aircraft could not do, but instead they could carry weapons powered by high level Blastids. The weapons development programs were even more advanced than the others, as that had been one of the main purposes behind creating Blastids in the first place.

The Lang Clan had a busy few years ahead of them, learning about how to use everything so they could further improve their capabilities once they were back. They also spent many days together, celebrating on this vacation as a family, trying to make up for the time that they’d been apart.

There’s certainly something strangely fulfilling about having so many descendants you haven’t even met them all.