Chapter 321 – Life 76, Age 157, Martial Sovereign 1

Organizing a large-scale exodus of our clan was neither quick nor quiet. However, thankfully, the council had experienced the attack on Mount Jiang in a previous loop, so they had already considered the possibility of such an event happening again. While they didn’t have anything as concrete as ‘plans,’ they did have an idea for how to select the people who would be traveling back in time with us.

At the top of the list was any member of the Su Clan who was born after the start of the loop. After more than a century of growth, the Su Clan had expanded to include well over 200,000 members, and we wanted to save every one of them that we could.

Next on the list was a group of 50,000 members of the Ning Clan. While Ning ZeKun should see plenty of value from just being given memories of a past life, I wanted to give him these slots as a more direct, tangible benefit from working with me. For now, this would be a one-time favor. But if things worked out, I was open to granting the Ning Clan a bit of space within my inner world on a more permanent basis.

After this, whatever space was remaining was filled with talented or high-level members of the various sects and guilds. There wasn’t always a good reason to choose one person over another, so this group was a bit difficult to sort through. However, knowing that we could run out of time at any moment, ShouLi and her people made snap decisions to just get the job done.

The initial process of selecting who would go back with us took three days.

During that time, I was secluded in the Su Clan’s Hall of Ancestral Worship while I rushed to rebuild my meridians and dantian as fast as possible. When I was done, I was far from proud of the cultivation base that I had created, but it would at least give me access to a modicum of qi in the event of an emergency.

Once that was complete, I spent the rest of what little time I had studying my new abilities as a Sovereign.

When the day of our migration finally arrived, I flicked the air in front of me to create a portal and stepped through to the border between Dragon Gate and the Twin Mountains.

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I appeared on a stage next to ShouLi, in front of a sea of people. After only a brief greeting, I turned my attention to the area behind me where eight sets of posts had been placed in the ground.

Walking up to each one, I held out a hand and created a portal to connect the space between each set of posts to a designated section of my inner world. There was one for each of the five skyscrapers and one for each of the three underground fields.

While I was originally worried about this plan, during my testing, I found that creating and maintaining portals connected to a place within my inner world was surprisingly easy. The world was in my soul, and I had an innate connection to it. So, breaking the world enough to create a portal was a rather straightforward process, and such portals required minimal mental energy to maintain.

That said, since my inner world was only Rank 1, the mere existence of these portals was nearly enough to rip my entire world apart. Through focused intent and a judicious use of my space affinity, I was able to keep that from happening, but it was a constant struggle. So, even though the portals themselves didn’t consume much of my mental energy, keeping them active was still exceptionally draining.

Even then, maintaining these portals was still a bit easier than personally moving hundreds of thousands of people would have been.

In total, our exodus took nearly two full weeks to complete, and this was mainly because I was taking constant breaks to rest and recover my mental energy.

To me, these two weeks felt like an eternity, but even an eternity wasn’t long enough to gather up everyone we had originally intended to bring along. Several groups resisted this migration and refused to travel to the Twin Mountains Sect’s territory to join us.

While I didn’t like the idea of leaving these people behind to be slaughtered by the Saint or his Sovereigns, I wasn’t willing to spend the time it would take to change their minds. I had given them an opportunity to survive. The rest was on them.

The last people to pass through the portals were the members of my inner council and their attendants.

This group was nearly as exhausted as I was. While I had been fighting to maintain the integrity of my inner world, they had been running around organizing which groups were sent to which areas and doing their best to round up any stragglers who were trying to get to the Twin Mountains but hadn’t been able to get there fast enough.

Before entering, ShouLi handed me a crate containing dozens of memory orbs that she had collected from everyone who had been deemed worthy of being pulled into the next loop. While few of these people would become ‘permanent’ members of our community, they would all be able to help us during our time on the Nine Rivers Continent. Those who proved themselves would be given an opportunity to move forward with us in the future.

With the last member of my leadership council stashed away, I found myself alone on a muddy field that had been trampled by countless feet.

We were safe. Everything had gone smoothly.

Whether because of Zhuge Yan’s manipulations behind the scenes or because of some other factor that I wasn’t aware of, neither the Saint nor the Sovereigns had done anything to halt our migration.

We had been successful. I could die and start the next loop immediately if I wanted.

I didn’t, though.

Our migration was complete, but there were still a few more tasks that I wanted to accomplish.

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During the Sovereigns’ invasion, nearly everyone had found an excuse to return to the Wastes. Whether they were a Revered Elder or a member of the Su Clan, no one who understood what was happening wanted to be trapped outside during the aftermath of the attack.

Only one important person was missing: Zhuge Yan. He was still locked away in the Zhuge Clan, so getting a memory orb from him was going to be difficult.

Of course, I didn’t necessarily need to get his orb, but everything he had learned over the past century could prove incredibly useful.

To ensure that nothing went wrong in my retrieval of Yan’s memories, I first swallowed a poison pill and used a will-lock to prevent it from activating. This was a newly updated formula that was based on a collection of potent Rank 6 fire poisons. It was specifically designed to destroy my metal-based body as quickly as possible.

If I were to stop concentrating or lose consciousness for even a moment, I would die.

With this in place, I tapped the air in front of me and teleported to the outskirts of Lang’ya City, the home of the Zhuge Clan.

Upon my arrival, I was greeted by a familiar sight. Thousands of cultivators were arrayed around the city’s gates, blocking anyone from entering.

A moment later, a portal appeared in front of me.

Zhuge YeDu stepped out and gave me a malicious look. Then he turned to the younger men who had followed him.

“Excellent work, Yan. You have truly lived up to my expectations.” He looked back at me. “Su Fang, did you honestly think that we were unaware of your movements? We didn’t stop you from sending away your clan because there was no need. Once you are dealt with, no one will be able to stop us from tracking it down and exterminating it, root and branch.”

I looked at Yan. “This is your work?”

He bowed his head to me and gave a mockery of a martial salute. “Of course, Sovereign Su.”

Yan waved a hand in a wide, sweeping gesture toward the assembled army.

At the end of this motion, his hand was left pointing at a small group of cultivators. “These are the best the Zhuge Clan has to offer. I believe you will find that even a Sovereign is no match for them.”

I nodded my head and spoke in a gruff tone. “Good. Very good.”

Then, I extended my intent to encapsulate Yan and pulled him into my inner world. As a Martial Emperor, he could have easily resisted this, but, of course, he didn’t.

Not expecting this move, Zhuge YeDu tensed in shock. “What–”

Before he could say anything else, I slammed a will-lock on him.

This lock wasn’t powerful enough to hold him for more than a heartbeat, but that was all the time I needed to create a portal behind me and vanish to the group of cultivators that Yan had indicated.

YeDu, caught completely off guard by my actions, couldn’t react in time.

I focused my intent onto this group of two dozen Kings and Emperors and pulled.

Most of the group instantly vanished, but about a quarter of them put up enough of a resistance that my efforts were blocked. This resistance might have been instinctive, but with so many high-level enemy cultivators around, I couldn’t give them a second chance. I had grabbed most of the people Yan wanted me to grab, and that would have to be enough.

Before anyone could come to their senses, I portaled away.

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After jumping first to the Wastes and then to a familiar spot in South Gate City, I concentrated on my memories of the Brilliant Sun Empire and created a portal to its spot in its capital city.

Since I didn’t have a good memory of any secluded areas in these cities, my activities didn’t go unnoticed by the locals, but I vanished quickly enough that it wouldn’t be an issue.

Once hidden away, I pulled out Yan and passed him a memory orb.

“Yan, a few years ago, Du XiongMing, a Formation Emperor in the Brilliant Sun Empire, died. Do you have any idea what happened to his spatial fire seed after he passed away?”

After handing me back the memory orb, Yan pulled a notebook out of his robes and flipped through it.

“It passed through a few hands, but it should currently be in the possession of Hu LongTao, the head of the Nameless Tiger Empire.”

I grimaced. I didn’t even know where that was. How was I supposed to create a portal there?

Seeing my concern, Yan let out a light chuckle, then flipped through his notebook and showed it to me.

“This is where you want to go.” He pointed to Nameless Tiger’s location on a map. Then, he flipped through his notebook and found a drawing of an alleyway. Large sections of this drawing were missing, but certain details, like a worn sign and an odd crack in the ground, were drawn in exacting detail. “This is your destination.”

Seeing Yan’s confidence, I trusted that this would be enough. So, I focused my mind and tapped the air in front of me.

The moment a portal appeared, I pulled Yan back into my inner world and stepped through.

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After arriving in Nameless Tiger, I didn’t spend any time looking around.

I immediately raced to the largest building in the city and forced my way into the throne room.

Several guards ran out to stop me, but I was able to incapacitate half a dozen of them with just a single punch.

This caused the Nameless Tiger Emperor to appear and scream at me in outrage, but with the use of a quick portal and a stab to the back, I swiftly ended his life and stole his fire seed.

In truth, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this kind of banditry, but I felt compelled to act. If I wanted to be able to take Sovereigns back in time with me, my inner world needed to advance, and that meant I needed to increase the rate at which it was expanding. Gathering more copies of the Expanding Realms Fire was one of the few ideas I had for how to make this happen.

In any case, this Emperor had only gotten his hands on the fire seed by killing its previous owner. It was only natural that someone would do the same to him, and I could rationalize the Emperor’s removal as being of benefit to the world as a whole.

Once the fire was securely tucked away in a jade box deep within my inner world, I created one last portal and disappeared.

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I reappeared in a basement beneath one of Dragon Gate Kingdom’s outlying cities. While this wasn’t exactly the most secluded location possible, it also wasn’t the first place that anyone would choose to look for me.

Once there, I pulled out TongBin and the two assistants who had helped him with transferring karmic energy to the various members of our clan. At this point, TongBin had quite a bit of unused Emperor-level energy tucked away, and I wanted it.

After taking a deep breath, I nodded. “Let’s begin.”

I reached out, placed a hand on the abdomen of one of TongBin’s assistants, and pulled out all the karmic energy that was stored in his dantian.

I didn’t concern myself with whether this energy was connected to the Su Clan or not. I took it all.

Then, I infused it into my body.

Even after expending all of this energy, I still hadn’t broken through, so I reached out and extracted the energy from TongBin’s other assistant. As I did this, TongBin used the energy in his dantian to refill the reserves of the first assistant.

A quarter of the way through infusing my body with the second assistant’s energy, I hit a wall.

Clenching my teeth, I grabbed a wad of karmic energy and shoved.

My energy body shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.

For a moment, it looked like these pieces would just drift away, but they soon recombined.

However, as my energy body reformed, the pieces didn’t fit together quite right. Cracks were left behind, and I could feel a strange energy trickling into me.

Seeing this, I was filled with an irrational sense of anger and annoyance, but I tamped it down as best as I could and continued the process of infusing my body with energy.

After expending all of the energy that I had gotten from TongBin’s second assistant, I then pulled out the energy that he had passed to the first one.

With all three people now drained, I did my best to conceal the emotions that had begun to surge within me and sent the group back into my inner world.

Once they were gone, I resumed the process of infusing energy into my body. When I was down to only a few last strands of karmic energy remaining in my dantian, my energy body shattered once more.

Again, the pieces pulled back together and reformed, but several of them were crooked, and there were large gaps where certain fragments had become twisted and malformed.

A berserk roar erupted out of me, and I punched the air in front of me with all of my strength.

After racing through the portal that I had created, I glared at Ning ZeKun who was sitting calmly on his throne.

“What did you do to me!?”

Without waiting for an answer, I leapt toward him.

Mid-flight, a small fragment of my mind that was still capable of rational thought took enough control of my body to release the will-lock on the poison pill in my stomach.

You have died. Calculating…

You died as a Martial Sovereign 3 – 30 trillion credits awarded.

You died at Peak Rank 6 of Body Cultivation – 1 trillion credits awarded.

Total Credits: 31,000,000,000,000

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Complete Status Page

Affinities

Peak Four-Star – Earth, Metal, Lightning

Peak Five-Star – Wood, Fire, Water, Wind, Light, Dark

Low Five-Star – Karmic Energy

Low Six-Star – Space

Resistances

Mental Effects (Cultivation Techniques) – 25,000,000 credits

Mental Library

Capacity – Rank 6

Journal (with Mental Input) – Rank 6

Perfect Transcription – Rank 6

Touch Reading – Rank 6

Scribe – Rank 3

Comprehension Boosts

Cultivation:

Cultivation Techniques – 100 billion credits

Body Cultivation – 100 billion credits

Soul Techniques – 100 billion credits

Energy Control – 100 billion credits

Teaching – 100 million credits

Professions:

Alchemy – 100 billion credits

Formations – 100 billion credits

Herbalism – 10 billion credits

Refining – 100 billion credits

Martial – 1 billion credits

Social:

Reading Emotions (True) – 25,000,000 credits

Skills

Mastery of Cold Mountain Fire, Expanding Realms Fire

Memory Implantation — Rank 1

Talisman Artistry – Rank 4 (Continent-Wide Expert)

Soul Formation Concealment – Rank 6

Enhanced Soul Growth – 20,000 credits

Pill, Formation, Herb, Talisman, Demon Beast, Refined Item, Illusion, and Gu Appraisal – Rank 3 (Comprehensive, Detailed)

Technique Appraisal – Rank 5 (Earth)

Fire Seed Appraisal – Profound

Language (Western Han)