The breakfast was heartwarming. The present issues were bound to be discussed at some point but in the duration of the breakfast, no one raised such questions. After the five of them finished the breakfast, it was time to discuss the ongoing problem the clan was facing. Although the preparations were made, the logistics remained to be discussed with Kumari and Keshab.
Keshab had said that he had prepared some trump cards for the clan but didn’t exactly tell Punya what they were. When asked, Keshab replied he wanted Punya to be as surprised as the two major clans. As for Kumari, she was refining pills non-stop and Punya didn’t know how many she had refined. Most of the pills she had refined went to the Battle hall members.
As for the clan, most of the second-grade high-tier pills were refined by Kumari and the remaining by the first elder. Right now most of the materials for second-grade alchemy are used up. Although the clan members had returned with a large amount of resources from the outpost, most of them were first-grade materials. The second-grade resources were scarce in the outer region of the Bareback mountains and although they had started exploring the inner region, they had just started and hadn’t reached far.
The Bareback mountains were vast and even with all the Battle hall members exploring, it may take decades to fully explore just their allotted area. Even if they explored it, they may not be able to comb every inch of it. The mountains were just that vast. As for the returned Battle hall members they were secretly placed at various strategic places where the defense was weak or they were purposely made to appear weak.
Most of the members previously placed on the array nodes were replaced by the Battle hall members. This was not only due to trust issues but because the Battle hall members could defend against most of the spies among clan members. This could somewhat make things easier. The five family members talked about the problems and shared the solutions, some solutions offered were elegant and simple whereas some were either not feasible or they didn’t have that much time left. The discussion went on for half an hour.
Amrit went to the underground training hall to practice his moves. Everything was coming nicely, he was rapidly making progress. He had improved more these past few days than he had this month. Every move was connected and he was gradually reaching the perfection stage in both arts. The only regret was that the bottleneck for his cultivation hadn’t budged an inch. If he could have broken through to the foundation building realm before the battle, then he would have a chance at survival.
And he had a feeling when he broke through the foundation building realm, he would have access to more secrets of his inheritance and his strength would skyrocket. It looks like luck didn’t favor him. While it felt like he was running out of time, his strength was increasing at a rapid pace.
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After breakfast, Radha felt urgency from the present situation and headed towards the training room. Increasing cultivation at a rapid pace was not a feasible option but she could increase her strength with the illusion array however small the increase would be. Although she had reached the peak of the eighth stage of the foundation building realm, she knew she wouldn’t be able to break through to the ninth stage in a year or two.
The rapid progress now was due to years of accumulated cultivation. Her foundation had recovered but there were still injuries left behind, it would need a higher-grade pill to recover without any hidden injuries. As for her battle prowess, while she was training the Battle hall members, she corrected her flaws by watching their mistakes. Sometimes a little bit of inspiration can be a game-changer.
As for Kumari, she had been refining pills without rest. Previously she could easily refine top-quality pills and now she had truly reached the peak of top-quality pills. She could easily refine four pills from one set of materials. But lately, she had reached a bottleneck. Although she had been refining pills without break and became very familiar with various types of pills, she couldn’t refine perfect quality pills or five pills from one set of materials.
She had refined various kinds of pills from the inheritance related to healing, cultivation increasing, short-term boosters, or even pills to permanently enhance attributes. Most of the high-grade alchemical ingredients in the clan treasury were used by her. Few of the pills she had refined that were well known in the cultivation world had been put in the clan treasury and any member could redeem them with contribution points.
As for other rare pills, she kept a few of them and sent the remaining to Radha for the Battle hall members. She had hit the bottleneck but she was not in a hurry because she knew with the inheritance, she would improve with time and this bottleneck was something that stumped many alchemists. The bottleneck was placed by Heavenly dao so it was very hard to breakthrough without some fortuitous encounters and not many were able to go past their natural limit.
Although the limit was set by the Heavenly dao, it would also reward those who can overcome the limit. For Kumari, she had already seen the way to overcome this limit, she just needed practice and a lot of time which in this situation became a luxury.
Keshab had engraved a lot of arrays after getting the inheritance. He had added a lot of formations to the pre-existing formations of the clan. No one knew about this, he had kept all the clan members in the dark. Only Punya knew Keshab was engraving arrays but even he didn’t know what the engraved arrays were. When Punya asked Keshab, he just smiled and said “It’s a surprise.”
Punya didn’t press for an answer because he knew how stubborn his father was. But one thing Punya knew about the arrays was that his father had never let him down when it counted. These past few weeks, Keshab was doodling with everything found on the clan, he was engraving arrays on trees, stone monuments, house pillars, and everything he could set his sights on.
Some of these things were destroyed because they couldn’t withstand the power of the array. No one in the clan said anything about it because they knew the only person in the clan who could stop his madness was Kumari and Kumari was busy refining pills. No one had seen her for a long time. In fact, people only saw Keshab because he was out in the clan doodling arrays on anything he saw.