A day after we arrived, Ning ChenKun’s deathsworn and two of the students who had been traveling with him joined us in Earth City. The other two who had left Profound City with us had fallen on the Path of Soul. After adding in the one we lost on the Path of Mind, half of our students had failed in their attempt to ascend the mountain.
According to the survivors, this Path of Soul was far deadlier than the two I had walked previously. The way they told it, this path hadn’t been simply a matter of withstanding an ever-increasing amount of soul pressure. They had been assaulted by an endless series of soul attacks, and only the iron-hard will of the deathsworn was able to protect them. Without proper defensive soul techniques, the students had been helpless as they walked the path.
With the protections offered by my soul cultivation technique, I had lowered the priority of learning proper defensive techniques. After listening to their story, I bumped it back up to near the top of my to-do list.
LiTing and I set the three surviving students up with apartments in a small building near ChenKun’s headquarters, but I didn’t have any more time to spend nurturing them. Having arrived in Earth City, I could purchase additional King-level karmic energy, and that meant I needed to return my focus to advancing my cultivation base.
My time as the ‘Great Teacher’ had come to an end for this life. There was too much else I needed to do and too little time to do it.
I resumed the same six-month cycle I had used as a Martial Lord. Every six months, I ascended once, entered the Earth Peak Trial once, and spent the rest of my time earning points to pay for everything. As I was mainly focused on making a profit, my formation and alchemy skills didn’t improve overly much during this time, but my cultivation quickly advanced, and I reached the peak of the King realm. Through my efforts in the Trial, my earth affinity also broke through to peak four-star during this time.
All I needed was a Rank 6 cultivation technique and the karmic energy to use it. After that, I would be able to break through to Martial Emperor.
With Ning ChenKun’s backing, obtaining the necessary karmic energy was time-consuming, but it wasn’t difficult. I just had to earn a sufficient number of contribution points. Since ‘a sufficient number’ was nearly a thousand times as many points as I had needed for King-level energy, it would take time, but Yan and the others wouldn’t arrive in Earth City for several more years, so that was no real rush.
By selling sufficiently high-quality Rank 5 pills and formations, earning contribution points wasn’t a problem. However, during this time, my profession skills had stagnated. Because I was focused only on cultivation and combat skills, I resorted to making only the most consistently profitable items I could, so I hadn’t yet learned to craft the more difficult, higher-level Rank 5 items yet, and without them, I couldn’t make as many points as a Peak King should have been able to.
Now that I no longer had to work on my cultivation, I could begin addressing this deficiency.
That said, even with ChenKun’s backing, I wouldn’t be allowed to purchase the karmic energy I needed without first obtaining a Rank 6 cultivation technique. While ChenKun had his clan’s technique, he wasn’t allowed to share it with outsiders, and no such techniques were available in the sect library. If I wanted one, I could only get it from the Master of the Earth Peak, Emperor Shen.
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Getting a face-to-face meeting with my nominal ‘master’ was easier than I expected. After entering the peak’s administration office, the Grandmaster on duty called for an elder who quickly arranged everything.
I thought that this might have been Emperor Shen taking a more direct interest in my activities, but no. As the elder explained, he was required to meet with any new Peak Kings who wished to ascend to Emperor. However, I would have to go to him. He wouldn’t come to me.
At first, I didn’t understand what this entailed, but I soon learned that Emperor Shen isolated himself within the highest cave on the Earth Peak, and walking up there was no short trek. The path up the mountain was full of switchbacks and detours. There were no steps carved into steeper areas, and no channels had been dug through natural outcroppings to allow the path to pass through. Instead, the path would circle halfway around the mountain to avoid an obstacle as simple as a small boulder.
The only reason I could come up with for this circuitous route was that Emperor Shen and the other elders who cultivated higher up the mountain really did not want visitors.
Even still, climbing a mountain wouldn’t have been overly difficult save for the rules that had been imposed on me. As a Peak King supplicant wishing to ascend to Emperor, I wasn’t allowed to use any qi during the climb, and I wasn’t allowed to leave the path for any reason.
After two hours of walking in circles, I was beginning to bristle at these restrictions. In several places, the path circled around the mountain, increased in elevation only slightly, and then circled back. In these places, a single large step would have allowed me to skip more than half an hour of hiking.
To make things worse, while the person who created this path had been loath to be so crass as to carve their way through a boulder to shorten the way forward, they had no compunction about carving an entire cave system that exited lower down the mountain or erecting stone arches to walk over earlier sections of the path.
I wanted to be annoyed, but I calmed myself. I didn’t need to rush. I could take my time.
I breathed deeply of the cool mountain air and an echo from the mental impulses of the Path of Mind made my thoughts drift to the landscape around me.
There wasn’t much to see on the Earth Peak. The mountain was made from what seemed to be a single stone, and no life grew on its slopes. This was a place of pure elemental earth. Even earth-based herbs needed some amount of wood energy to grow, and halfway up the mountain, any such energy was completely absent. This was the only place outside of the Trial that I had been somewhere with such pure energy.
After realizing this, I looked around more and finally noticed what had been staring me in the face. The path up the mountain was a Qi Gathering Formation on an unimaginable scale. The outcroppings and boulders that blocked the path weren’t natural. They had been placed with exacting precision to help direct the flow of energy. This mountain formation was far more complex than anything I had ever seen before.
Instead of focusing on the landscape any further, I allowed my mind to be drawn into studying the formation as I walked through it. In all too short a time, I arrived at the Peak Master’s abode.
The cave didn’t have a door, but it would be improper to enter directly, so I bowed toward the entrance and spoke loudly enough for anyone inside to hear me.
“Emperor Shen, may I enter?”
I remained bowed as was proper, but no one responded.
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“Emperor Shen, I seek leave to enter.”
Again, there was no response.
Unwilling to leave without an audience, I straightened my back and stepped inside.
The cave’s tunnel was far longer and more twisted than I had expected. It was possible that instead of ignoring me, Emperor Shen hadn’t been able to hear even a whisper of my shouted entreaty.
After walking through over a kilometer in the tunnel, I reached a large cavern situated in the exact center of the mountain’s peak filled with large stone slabs, multiple suits of heavy metal armor, and inanimate stone constructs like those I had fought against in the Trial.
Carefully making my way through this jumbled mess of a workshop, I spotted a middle-aged man with jet-black hair pacing back and forth on top of a giant stone slab that was over seven meters thick. He was built like a construction worker. He had broad shoulders and large hairy arms. He wore a roughspun tunic and trousers, making him look more like a village peasant than a Martial Emperor.
I bowed to him and spoke loudly so that he could hear me.
“Emperor Shen, I seek an audience.”
His pacing atop the slab continued unabated, but he waved an arm to the side.
“The technique is over there. Just take it and leave.”
My eyes followed the direction he was pointing and found a table covered in dozens of scrolls. Quickly looking through them, I discovered that they were all copies of the same Rank 6 cultivation technique. This treatment of high-Rank techniques shocked me, but I wouldn’t allow myself to get lost in the moment. I quickly picked one up and stuffed it into my storage space.
“Interesting. Very interesting.”
My eyes widened in a bit of fear as I turned around to see the middle-aged man sitting on the edge of the stone slab and staring at me with unknown intent.
“I saw you do that a few times in the Trial, but it’s difficult to see things clearly through the formation. Much easier when you’re in front of me like this.”
I bowed to him once more. “Emperor Shen, I...”
He waved me off. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care about whatever lies you want to tell me, and I doubt you would willingly share the truth of things.”
I straightened and gave him an awkward smile, but he didn’t care.
“You’re here because of our deal, right? You’re right, we have to fix that. I’m glad you came to me instead of making me hunt you down for it. Old man Li gave you the orbs? Those memories are a bit old. Won’t do either of us any good to give me such outdated information, would it? Just come back here before you decide to head up to the Summit and get yourself killed so that I can get you a new one, okay?”
I nodded wordlessly.
“Good. Now, for my part of the deal. That old bastard Li had to go and give you a damned Earth-Rank fire seed. I don’t have anything like that, so how the hell am I supposed to keep to my end of the bargain and treat you equal to how he treats you?”
“I…”
Emperor Shen held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t say it, I don’t want to hear it. I doubt he offered you the seed. That’s not like him. He would have had you make a request, so that’s what I’ll do too. You can ask me for one thing, and if it’s within my power, I’ll give it to you.”
Emperor Shen’s erratic behavior had kept me on my back foot during the conversation, but before I spoke again, I breathed deeply and centered myself. This sharpened my mind, and I was able to look at him with new eyes.
The old fox appeared eccentric, but it was more than half an act.
He would do as promised and give me whatever I requested, but it was on me to make the request worthwhile. What did I need?
“A way to cultivate without using karmic energy or a way to store karmic energy for future use.”
Shen’s eyes flickered in interest.
“The first is impossible, and the second might as well be. The sect and the Sovereign clans have formations that can do what you want, but I’ve never seen them. If I had to guess, I would say that they’re at least Rank 9, far beyond either of us.”
I had known it was a long shot, but it had been worth the attempt. Other than karmic energy, my biggest concern was growing my storage space further. To accomplish my plans, I needed it to be far, far larger than anything I would be able to achieve through my direct efforts. I needed it to grow large enough to hold a garden, a city, or even an entire continent. That wasn’t something I could achieve by just shoving a bit of energy into it at the end of each life.
In the past, when I had asked a Formation King about how to grow a storage bag to a truly immense size, she told me that Qi Gathering Formations were used to channel energy directly into a spatial spirit fire. That was what I needed to do, but setting up a normal formation wouldn’t work. My storage space was located within my soul, so that was where I would need to create such a formation.
“I want information on how to create a Qi Gathering Formation within my soul.”
Emperor Shen burst out into joyous laughter. “I knew it!”
He cycled his qi and used a technique to disappear from his place atop the stone slab. I looked around, but I couldn’t figure out where he had gone. Several minutes later, he reappeared in the same spot he had vanished from and was waving a small scroll.
“You managed to nick old man Du’s fire seed. That’s how you turned your soul into a storage bag, right? He’s the only other person I know of that’s been able to do something like that.”
He tossed me the scroll he was holding.
“That will teach you to carve formations into your soul, but be careful with it. If you mess it up, you’ll have to shred your soul apart to fix it, and that would take quite a while to heal. Centuries, if it’s bad enough. So, don’t start carving up your soul until you’re confident you can do it right. And before you do, go to the sect’s Scripture Pavilion. Not many good soul techniques till you reach Heaven City, but you should still be able to grab yourself a solid visualization technique. That’ll make things much easier. Oh, and don’t be a fool and carve a Rank 5 formation into your soul. At least wait until Rank 6.”
With his speech over, Emperor Shen turned around and waved a hand.
Before I could respond, I was sent flying through the air.
I sped backward through the caverns, down the long, twisted cave, and out into the air over the Earth Peak. Just as I was preparing myself to land like a meteor in the middle of the peak’s small village, a cushion of air appeared to stop my fall.
The village was mostly empty even at the best of times, but the few passersby who were present stared at me.
Standing straight and trying to regain the dignity of a Martial King, I dusted off my robes and walked stiffly to the stone arch to return to Earth City.
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Once there, I immediately headed to the Scripture Pavilion to look for a soul visualization technique. Only one was available, so I grabbed it and returned to my room.
I still didn’t trust the sect when it came to doing anything with my soul, so I didn’t want to practice this technique, but it would give me a basis of understanding to make purchasing one that I would be happy with cheaper.
For several centuries now, I had been able to peer into my soul and move things around, though the only things inside to move were my fire seeds. I had always visualized it as a large glowing white humanoid figure with my storage space in the middle of its chest.
As the technique explained, this wasn’t the truth of what my soul looked like, it was only a truth. The ways souls appeared could shift based on one’s perception and intent. A visualization technique allowed one to change the way they looked at their soul so that it was easier to interpret and easier to modify.
The sect’s technique would make it so that I saw my soul as a complex tapestry of various assorted colors with each color having a distinct meaning. Then, another technique could be used to slowly pick out and destroy any ‘threads’ that I was unhappy with, allowing me to craft my soul into the exact shape I wanted.
Overall, it seemed to be a fine enough technique, but I had become attached to the analogy Instructor Yuan had used when describing soul cultivation. I also wanted to make sure the technique I used was free of any hidden dangers.
“System, I want to purchase a soul visualization technique. It should allow me to see my soul as a garden with different flowers marking different concepts and attachments. I want it to integrate well with the cultivation technique I purchased previously, and any effects it would have on me should be stated clearly.”
Peak-Yellow Mortal soul visualization technique Garden of a Hundred Flowers. Cost 100 million credits.
“How much for a similar Low-Profound technique?”
Cost 1 billion credits.
“Alright, purchase the Peak-Yellow version.”
I could always upgrade it once I got more credits, but as I had learned, Low-Profound wasn’t necessarily better than Peak-Yellow. It would be better to upgrade directly to Peak-Profound if possible.
Purchase confirmed. 899,550,000 credits remaining.
The technique manual for the Garden of a Hundred Flowers appeared in my mental library. It would take time to master it, but such preparations were a necessity.
Once I carved a Qi Gathering Formation in my soul, my storage space would be able to expand without me needing to spend any time on it. Even when I died and returned to Martial Disciple 1, it would continue expanding endlessly.