After completing the initial phase of my deal with the Ning Clan, I no longer had to worry about meeting any hard deadlines. I only had two more years before my self-imposed ten-year limit, but I wouldn’t let an arbitrary goal dictate my actions overly much. I would reap the harvest I had sown.
But before pushing myself further, I needed a short break. I had spent four years deep in cultivation and the last month scrambling to complete a near-impossible mission. I was running on fumes at this point and needed a short downtime, so I decided to go shopping.
While South Gate City was a major city connected to the Nine Rivers Sect, it wasn’t a major economic center. South Gate was an important destination for wealthier scions from all over the continent since it was the primary training center for youths wishing to enter the sect, but it was also located only a few days' ride from Blue Wind City, where the Pavilion’s headquarters were located. This drew most of the potential business opportunities away from South Gate.
I considered visiting Blue Wind City myself but decided I should put it off until a future life. I had already gotten into a mess because I had leaned on Emperor Li’s token, and going to Blue Wind City right now wouldn’t help matters.
In any case, while South Gate might not have the variety of goods Blue Wind would, it did have things that appealed to me. Since the city was focused around training students, several stores specialized in selling things that students aiming to enter the Nine Rivers Sect would need.
This brought to mind an important question: Where were they getting their spirit fires? These were students who were being trained in at least Master-level professions. Rank 2 professions, Rank 2 alchemy at least, required the use of a spirit fire.
Where did the students get their spirit fires? Sure, they could’ve all been given to them by their families before they came here, but this city was focused on selling goods to students. Was there a place students could go to purchase them?
I found it in an upscale part of the city, a store called ‘The Crimson Flame.’
When I first saw the place, I thought it was more of a temple than a storefront. The ground floor was large and rectangular, with the walls made of bright marble. Atop this base, was a massive dome made from a silvery metal that shone in the afternoon sun. To either side of the entrance were two-meter-tall phoenix statues made of pure bronze.
When I walked inside, I was greeted by an elegant woman who looked to be in her late twenties. She wore a bright red qipao dress with gold embroidery. Her fingernails were long and lacquered, and at least a couple of pounds of gold jewelry weighed her down.
The store sold a wide variety of spirit flames for all nine elements as well as space. The cheapest fires were those composed of multiple elements, with the least expensive of them being a five-element spirit flame. While a multi-element flame had benefits for people with the right affinities, the number of potential users was significantly smaller since one needed affinities for every element in the flame to control it properly, so they were in less demand.
Yellow-Rank spirit fires ranged from 1,000 to 100,000 gold, depending on the specifics of the flame. Profound-Rank fires ranged from 10 to 10,000 spirit stones, with the most expensive being the four pure fires connected to the secondary elements.
While most of the Yellow-Rank flames were freely available to be purchased, the Profound-Rank flames were not kept in stock. After a purchase was made, the store would contact the seller, likely the holder of a fire seed, and arrange delivery. If a particular spirit fire was too popular, there might be a waitlist, but the store seemed to be doing its best to manage this through price controls.
The attendant only laughed when I asked about the possibility of purchasing a fire seed. Even if a clan were in dire straits, they would rarely consider selling one and never on the open market. Selling a seed’s fires was an economic lifeline that kept several clans afloat, and they wouldn’t want to lose that for a one-time benefit.
I wanted to buy every spirit fire in the shop, but I didn’t have enough room in my storage space to hold everything, and even if I did, I didn’t have the cash reserves to do so. I wasn’t in a place to make any big purchases just yet, but I noted the store down as a place to visit once more before I died.
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Putting my brief downtime behind me, I rented a new formation-enchanted cultivation chamber and restarted my ascent.
Since I was no longer in a rush to make pills, I no longer needed to use Qi Replenishing Pills in my alchemy, but with nearly my entire dantian occupied by karmic energy, I found that they had a surprisingly good effect on cultivation.
To advance as a Lord, a cultivator needed to inject qi into their core, slowly building up the accumulated energy within. This was much easier with a full dantian because there would be more pressure to assist with the process.
In my condition, over 90% of my dantian was filled with karmic energy, so when it was full, I only had about 7 or 8% of my maximum potential qi reserves. This meant that I benefited both from the effects of a full dantian and the increased duration and efficacy Emperor Li’s variant Qi Replenishing Pills had on depleted dantians.
With the multi-element technique I had practiced in the past, this wouldn’t have been the case. That technique used a set of three dantians with one dedicated solely to karmic energy. But with this single-element technique, I only had one. Karmic energy and qi were stored side by side with the core in the center.
I had to sell a few pills to pay for cultivation resources, but working through the Pavilion, I contracted an herbalist to provide me with a steady stream of ingredients to make pills both for myself and for use as trade goods.
Under the constant effects of both the formation and the pills, I was able to break through to Lord 2 in only a month and a half. My breakthrough felt very different from those of the past. After the energy in my core shattered the world and opened a hole to what lay beyond, I threw only qi and spirit stone energy at the chains binding me.
The energy was able to slice through them, freeing me, but the chain didn’t shatter. It almost felt as if the weight of the severed chains settled onto my energy body, encumbering it. The difference wasn’t very noticeable, but my qi became slightly more sluggish.
I had already known I would have to pay a penalty for breaking through without using karmic energy, though, so I didn’t let myself focus on the negatives.
After that, each subsequent breakthrough took longer, and the weight my energy body was forced to bear only increased. I was advancing and getting stronger, but because of this metaphysical weight, the speed at which I could concoct pills was slowing down.
My will-lock was stronger, so I could do things that had previously been impossible, but my slowed qi made it more difficult to do the work quickly and efficiently. It was a tradeoff that I would have to consider carefully in the future, but while the sluggish qi was annoying, it didn’t prevent me from working and advancing. It only slowed me.
Five years later, I finally reached Peak Lord once more. That was longer than I had hoped, but it was acceptable.
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According to the manual provided by the Ning Clan, a normal advancement to Martial King involved infusing the core with King-level karmic energy, slowly reinforcing the existing Lord-level energy.
A piece of paper that had been stuffed into the book noted that such a process would not be necessary for me. I just needed to build out my existing core.
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With nothing more reliable to work from, I followed the instructions and got to cultivating. Strengthening my core went relatively quickly since I already had the necessary karmic energy, and I was done in only a few days.
Then, I had to fill the core with qi.
This took much longer than I had hoped. Enhancing my core had been a process of compressing and molding the karmic energy I had been storing. While my core had increased to several times its original size, it was still relatively small compared to my dantian. This freed up a significant amount of extra room to store more qi. That might be considered a good thing, but it meant I no longer received the same benefits from the Qi Replenishing Pills. Instead, I had to switch back to regular Gathering Pills.
It took six more months of constant cultivation, but the world finally cracked once more.
I braided my qi, karmic energy, and spirit stone energy together and threw the combination at the chain holding me back from becoming a King.
Where this spear of energy should have stuck out with great force and power, it only slowly slid forward. The remnants of my Lord-level chains weighed it down.
If this had been a normal breakthrough, I was certain that the sluggishness of the spear would have led to my failure and I would have only ascended to False King, but this breakthrough wasn’t exactly normal.
The karmic energy that I had been given wasn’t from a kingdom. It slammed into the chain and instantly made it crack. As I poured in more and more energy, the cracks expanded rapidly.
When I was nearly spent, the chain finally shattered.
I felt a strange shift in the world as its laws fell away.
For the first time, I was a true Martial King.
Relaxing slightly after my breakthrough, I realized that I wasn’t too interested in exploring my new capabilities. I was ready to get back to school and put this period of ceaseless cultivation behind me.
Still, even though I felt that way, I didn’t rush to bring this life to a close just yet. I needed to push as far as I could.
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Breaking through further as a Martial King was a painfully slow pursuit. There were no Rank 5 formations available in the city, and I had no information at all about Rank 5 alchemy, so I could only use Rank 4 pills and formations. Reaching the Limit of King 1 took me four more years, and when I did break through, I barely managed it. The chain seemed to have been made from solid steel, and I only barely managed to pry it apart.
Going any further was impossible. I had to accept that my path of cultivation had come to an end.
After that, with my cultivation level higher than it had ever been before, I spent another month dedicated to expanding my storage space as much as possible. I was assisted by Rank 4 formations and pills as well as my new spatial affinity, but the weight of all the broken chains slowed me tremendously.
After a month, the space grew to a sphere with a radius close to 85 centimeters with a volume of over two and a half cubic meters. I filled it with copious amounts of gold and spirit stones as well as a wide variety of Rank 1 to 4 pills.
I had returned to the spirit fire store a few years earlier to place orders for the highest quality Profound-Rank flames available in each of the nine elements. It took a significant amount of extra effort to make all the necessary pills to afford them, but I considered it time well spent.
I still had a bit of extra room, and I would have liked to have stored a few Rank 5 manuals in that space, but the only one I had was from the Ning Clan and I didn’t know how to get more. Instead, since I was playing the role of a formation specialist at school, I filled it up with a variety of simple items needed for Rank 1 and 2 formations so that I would always have them on hand.
The final task that I gave myself was to learn a bit about what happened to my classmates over the past several years. My presence would affect their outcomes, but it would be good to know the path they would otherwise have gone down.
I paid an intelligence service to look into them and tell me anything they could. For Zhuge Yan, that was nothing at all. They refused to take the case. For the others, I got at least a few pieces of important information.
Five years after the end of our classes, Shi YuLong and Chai JiaQi had left the academy and returned to their hometowns. It was unclear if they didn’t qualify for further courses, ran out of resources to pay for them, or something else had happened.
I would see if I could help them out next time, but it was Lin LiTing’s fate that bothered me. She died two years after I left. She was participating in a regular spar between classes and her opponent ‘accidentally’ struck her a fatal blow. There could have been several reasons for this, but my bet was that it was related to her profession. The school had punished the offending student, but I found it hard to believe he had acted on his own initiative.
If I wanted to prevent this from happening again, I would need to be on guard at all times. I knew roughly when she died, and I knew the name of the boy who killed her, but I didn’t know when the events that led to her death would have occurred. Preventing that one boy from acting would be meaningless. I needed to try and prevent her from being targeted in the first place.
I returned to my apartment and sat down in the middle of the main room. I breathed in and out, preparing myself to return to the Academy.
That was the moment that my front door burst apart, and a very angry-looking man appeared.
“So, you are this disciple I’ve been told I have. I should thank Elder Ning for letting me know about you.”
I looked at Emperor Li in shock. In my mind, he was a kindly old man, but at this moment, he gave off the impression of a true Emperor. He stood tall and proud with flowing white robes draped over his form. His long white hair fell behind him in a braid, and a small golden diadem adorned his brow.
“You will be coming with me to explain yourself. I am interested to know more about this copy of my token you seem to possess. I am very, very interested to know how you came to learn all my personal recipes.”
How would that conversation go? I had no idea, and at that moment, I didn’t want to find out.
I reached into my storage space and quickly made a poison pill appear in my mouth.
The Emperor’s eyes narrowed immediately, and he flicked a finger.
The pill didn’t dissolve like it should have. It was locked in place by the Emperor’s will.
My eyes widened in panic.
“None of that now. Come along peacefully.”
I pushed on his will-lock, but as a weakened King, I had no chance of overpowering an Emperor.
Then, I reached deeper. My spatial affinity activated. It wasn’t much, but when my weak King-level will combined with my spatial affinity, it gave me just enough strength to create a tiny crack in a small piece of the Emperor's lock. That was enough.
Poison trickled into my body, and the Emperor could only look on in shock.
Because of the slow release of the poison, I didn’t die quickly, but the poison’s strength meant that I was already beyond saving.
As I started to fade, I saw Li’s eyes unfocus. He shook his head sadly, turned around, and looked off into the distance.
“Is this all part of your game? What are you playing at? Why would you put this child in a position where he would kill himself?”
You have died. Calculating…
You died as a Martial King 2 – 2 billion credits awarded.
Total Credits: 2,006,867,645
Affinities
Peak Six-Star – Earth, Wood, Water, Fire, Metal
Peak Seven-Star – Wind, Lightning, Light, Dark
Peak Eight-Star – Karmic Energy
Low Nine-Star – Space
Mental Library (Updates)
Touch Reading – Rank 2
Comprehension Boosts (Updates)
Professions:
Martial – 10,000,000 credits
Affinities
Peak Six-Star – Earth, Wood, Water, Fire, Metal
Peak Seven-Star – Wind, Lightning, Light, Dark
Peak Eight-Star – Karmic Energy
Low Nine-Star – Space
Resistances
Mental Effects (Cultivation Techniques) – 25,000,000 credits
Mental Library
Capacity – Rank 4
Journal – Rank 3
Perfect Transcription – Rank 4
Touch Reading – Rank 2
Comprehension Boosts
Cultivation:
Cultivation Techniques – 520,000 credits
Qi Control – 20,000 credits
Nurturing Disciples – 500,000 credits
Professions:
Alchemy – 520,011 credits
Formations – 500,000 credits
Herbalism – 20,000 credits
Martial – 10,000,000 credits
Social:
Reading Emotions (True) – 25,000,000 credits
Skills
Enhanced Soul Growth – 20,000 credits
Pills Appraisal – Rank 1 (Comprehensive)
Technique Appraisal – Rank 3 (Earth)
Language (Western Han)