While Naath was busy starting to build himself a basic home with only the timber and rocks available to him, there was a meeting going on with the sect elders. There were 51 neatly arranged seats inside of a massive hall supported with large pillars. The pillars each had a long, coiling dragon going around them, making it seem like the dragons were looking down on the people below. This combined with the high ceiling and dark colored stone floor gave anyone who entered the hall a sense of awe. It also gave a sense of pressure and intimidation, there were 51 seats in total and depending on a persons authority they got to sit in a different one. The seats were each positioned in front of a pillar and slightly raised, this accomplished three things.

Firstly, the people in the seats would feel the room looked grand and welcoming rather than foreboding and oppressive. Second, the higher ones authority and the greater the placement of their seat the more they would feel like an emperor overlooking the hall. Lastly the people sitting in seats with lower authority would still feel the sense of foreboding if they looked toward a seat with a person that had a higher standing than themselves. Whoever had designed this large meeting hall had clearly put a great amount of time, effort, and thought into it. Sitting in 49 of the seats were sect elders. Only the two seats with the highest authority were empty.

The seat at the end of the hall in the middle, the seat for the sect master and the seat directly to the right of it. In the seat to the left of the sect masters chair the law enforcement elder had sat down. This caused all of the other 48 elders to start asking tons of question and made a commotion. It had to be known that the law enforcement elder was in charge of maintaining the rules for the entire sect. They were responsible for upholding justice and punishing the unrighteous. This elder sitting in the third seat meant that there had been some major changes made to the sect recently. Nobody understood why and so after a few minutes of chatter all of the elders quieted down, waiting for the sect master.

Normally the law enforcement elder would have told them to stop bickering like children and quietly wait. However, even she was still reeling from the information she had received from the sect master. What she learned would very well shake up the entire sect and may very well even shift the balance of power for the nearby sects. The authority of various positions had been shuffled around, and chaos she knew, was about to descend. Finally after waiting for nearly twenty minutes, the sect master as well as a familiar face showed up walking next to him. When everyone saw who it was most were stunned but a few who had misbehaved the other day stiffened slightly in their seats. After a moment the sect master and the testing elder sat down in their seats and the meeting began.

Naath was at the edge of the plateau and working out the design for his house in his head. As far as he knew this would be his residence for a little bit, and might even be the headquarters of the True Void faction later. Eventually, he decided to start off with a basic room for right now and that he would expand on it later. He quickly drew out a plan on the ground and finalized it. Once he knew what he wanted to do he started to walk towards the nearby woods to chop some trees and get some lumber. Not even mentioning his experience growing up in a red-neck country area in his last life.

Just in this life he had already built his own house a few times before it was stable and weather proofed. Now he had a general idea of the limits of the lumber In this world and what he could and couldn't do with it. It also took a lot of experimentation in order to figure out how to notch the wood so as to not need nails. In the situation that he was in right now that would prove to be invaluable knowledge. Naath started with taking six trees down, trimming off the branched and using just his machete slowly carving them down to an even thickness. By the time he was done it was deep into the night and time to sleep.

The next morning he woke up to Brutus prodding him for food. Naath rolled over and made himself get up and pull some food out of his storage ring. During the short, quiet breakfast Naath looked over to Baal’s house to see how he was doing. Naath immediately started laughing and choking on this world equivalent of bacon. Baal had pretty much made a tepee all that was left was to wrap it with an animal skin. Naath stopped choking after a minute and was still laughing. Then he shook his head and decided that unless he was asked he wouldn’t interfere in how Baal wanted to live.

After this Naath went back to his work and put six posts down into the ground. Four of them were neatly arranged into a rectangle. The other two were at the front to the left making a smaller square coming off of the rectangle. With the major pillars in place, he began to place some smaller ones every so often as a basic framework. After everything was in place he quickly put the walls together carving the wood with only his machete. It took three days, but soon enough Naath was finished. He now had a small bedroom/kitchen area and a bathroom off to the side, he even went the extra mile and dig a massive pit that was connected to the bathroom. The toilet had no flusher but a board separating a diagonal angled tunnel to send everything into the pit.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

He attached a basic pulley to this board so he could separate the septic tank and the toilet and never have to deal with the smell. His bed was basic with just some sewn leather stuffed with leaves and vines. It wasn’t the most comfortable but it was enough to sleep on, for a kitchen he had stacked some large stones to make a heated surface above a space where he could light a fire. Above the stove area he had a cleverly shaped chimney that would let the smoke out but never let any rain or the like in. He had a basic food preparation area to the side for cutting foods and prepping ingredients. Looking at all of his work Naath felt like it was finally time to try and make the cultivation area.

He went up to the back wall which had a round opening exposing the plateau face that it was built against. He put his hand up against the stone and planned to run his True Void Arts when he froze and realized something.

“Damn it all! I got too excited! I forgot that I can’t absorb physical matter until at least the third stage! Damn it!!!”

“Ahahaha, young master, this is hilarious! I wondered what your plan was and you just jumped the gun? Bwahahaha.”

King was laughing hysterically inside of Naath’s soul sea. He had been watching Naath these past few days with rapt interest only to watch this blunder. How could he not laugh at the situation? While he was laughing Naath let out an annoyed breath, ignoring King he took out his tree stump and place it in a comfortable corner of the cabin where the air liked to flow towards. Grumbling he considered his house complete and even had a bedding space next to his cultivation area for Brutus.

Having finished he went outside and let Brutus know that it was all move in ready. Brutus curiously went through the door and looked inside. He looked all around the house and seemed quite happy with it. He saw the bed off to the side of the cultivation zone and could tell instantly that this was his designated space to himself. Brutus walked over and around on his bedding, testing it. Seeing that it was soft enough he layed down on it and immediately got comfortable showing no indication of getting up at all. Naath was happy that Brutus liked his space but also shook his head in an amused way watching. He left the house and went over to check on Baal.

Naath had a feeling that they had been sitting around for too long and wanted to look around the sect and stretch his legs. He also needed to go out on the hunt for a whetstone, his machete’s edge was in bad shape from so much use. Hearing this Baal suggested that they just go to the top of the plateau and look around at the shops. Nodding his head Naath agreed but also wanted to fetch their new lackey to guide them. The group of five did not split up but rather all built houses close to each other but far enough away from Naath and Baal as to not disturb them.

Naath nodded his head, at least this group took directions fairly well. Knocking on a random door Naath saw the face of the one who had nearly begged to follow him in the first place. When he saw Naath he jumped and asked.

“Ah, young master Naath what brings you here?”

“We need a guide around the shops at the top of the plateau, or for that matter someone to show is where the damn stairs are. Now before it pops up later and becomes awkward whats you name anyhow? Hey you doesn't work too well in a crowd.”

“Young master, my name is Zeke. Please wait a minute I’ll get my storage ring and I’ll show you guys the way.”

In only moment Zeke had all of his things together and was leading the way to the stairs. Though it wasn’t much of a challenge to find the way there, the group just followed along the wall that was the plateau face until they reached them. It was a massive set of stairs seemingly carved from the same material as the giant plateau itself. Next to it was a ramp that was also made of the same material. The stairs had two rows, an up and a down as did the ramp. The four lanes were packed full of people and there was even a cue at the bottom, the line seemed like it went on for kilometers.

Looking at the massive stairs Naath let out a low whistle saying.

“Damn now thats a big ass staircase! My legs hurt already haha.”

Baal laughed with him and Zeke had a look on his face that said that even for a cultivator the stairs were a painfully long climb. Then, the group went around to the back of the line and Naath spoke up.

“Ah yes, the waiting game. Tis a fine game!”

This drew odd looks from the other people in line towards his direction and a few chuckles here and there as well. As the line slowly moved, very slowly, Naath, Baal, and Zeke shuffled along and made small talk. The biggest conversation pieces ended up being their journeys to the Raging River Sect. Baal had simply taken a small carriage the entire way and only ran into a few interesting events. One time there was an attempted robbery of his traveling group but that quickly ended in four dead road bandits and three running for dear life. Zeke had to walk here much the way Naath did but mostly through open plains, the worst thing he ran into was a thunder storm at one point that he didn’t have any way to avoid. Naath’s story of running through the forest was by far the most enthralling.