Chapter 311 – Life 76, Age 81, Martial King Peak

After using HongYi to develop a solid Low-Profound body cultivation technique, I returned to my secluded research and worked on finding ways to incorporate Earth-Rank Laws into it. When I had a partial technique that seemed like it might work, I sought out TaiZu and performed another round of experiments.

This resulted in him howling in pain a few times, but he never asked me to stop. He just wanted me to finish my work as quickly as possible.

I tried to comply with this request, but perfecting my new technique was challenging. Each day, I would find him, fiddle around with his energy flows, and then leave him to recover. It wasn’t until after nearly an entire year of this that I finally accomplished my goal.

Regimen of Quicksilver, Low-Earth Rank 1 Body Cultivation Technique (Broken), Metal Wu, Effects: Increases one’s integrity. Allows one to think more clearly. Makes one more obsessed with growing stronger.

Nothing I tried had ever been able to change the ‘broken’ classification, so I was convinced that it was due to a lack of wu filters. While not ideal, this was something I could work with. So, after receiving my requisite enlightenment and discount, 50% off my next purchase under 50,000 credits, I returned to my seclusion and began cultivating my body for the first time.

With qi cultivation, I had never really felt anything. From pulling in energy to piercing my acupoints to building meridians, there had never really been any physical sensations.

Body cultivation was different. As I pulled in wu and pushed it through my skin, I felt as if small worms were wriggling their way through my body. This wasn’t painful, not exactly, but it was… disturbing.

After establishing an initial set of pathways, circulating wu though my body caused my skin to seize up and contract.

Then, as my skin tightened around my muscles, a black, foul-smelling oil was forced out of my pores. At first, there were only a few drops, but after only a few minutes, these few drops turned into a thick layer of the stuff.

Finally, just as my skin was reaching the point where I thought it might tear itself apart, it relaxed.

I had broken through to level 1 of Rank 1 of body cultivation.

After stabilizing my new realm, I exited my room and headed directly to the bath.

It took me several rounds of vigorous scrubbing to remove the oily impurities that I had expelled, but, thankfully, no matter how hard I scrubbed, the brush didn’t cause any damage to my skin.

Once this oily residue was completely removed, I was able to see that my breakthrough had caused my skin to turn several shades lighter. And, under the right kind of lighting, it produced an almost metallic shimmer.

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Researching Rank 1 of body cultivation had taken me a bit longer than I had expected, and during this time, while I had continued my monthly routine of pulling people into and out of my inner world, I hadn’t paid much attention to the goings-on in the world. So, when I exited my cultivation chamber, the first thing I did was catch up on everything that I had missed. Thankfully, it seemed like my clan had been thriving in my absence.

Dragon Gate Kingdom and the surrounding eight sects had all become large enough that they were producing a steady flow of King-level karmic energy. In fact, the sects were even starting to see problems with overpopulation.

Each year, thousands of hopefuls from around the continent would travel to the Wastes to join our sects. Then, after joining, almost no one would leave.

At first, while we were trying to grow our population, this was a good thing. However, after several decades of this, the sects were starting to have an overabundance of Grandmasters. They all stayed on in the hope that they might one day be given access to karmic energy, but with only 10 cities per sect, and most of the karmic energy reserved for members of the Su Clan, most of those hopes were in vain.

Eventually, ShouLi was forced to implement a new rule. After the age of 50, Grandmasters who were not being considered for leadership positions had to leave. They could return home, or they could head to the Nine Rivers Sect, but they couldn’t stay in the Wastes.

Implementing this policy meant that, each year, thousands of Grandmasters were sent back to wherever they had come from. At first, this worked. With so many Grandmasters leaving the sects, their populations stabilized and even started to decline. However, after only a few years of this, a new problem emerged. The sects were being flooded with new recruits.

Originally, the Rulers of the places we recruited from had been concerned about us stealing away their citizens. They needed a strong population base as much as we did, so seeing their people run away to some sect had made them worried.

However, upon seeing that we were willing to raise these children up to Peak Grandmaster, teach them a profession, and then just… send them away, these Rulers immediately wanted to use us for their own benefit. Knowing that we never turned anyone away, they began shipping every child they could to our sects. In response, ShouLi and the Sect Masters had to implement another round of new policies to weed out poor performers and stabilize our population base.

One interesting knock-on effect of all of this was a shift in the way people viewed refiners.

In the past, refiners had been suppressed. While every Emperor wanted an armory filled with refined items, they had no desire to see such an armory in the hands of their rivals. So, they assassinated each other’s refiners, and when they found a refiner in their own lands, they kidnapped them and forced them to make items in secret.

With the establishment of the Rosehill Sect, though, things changed.

After only a couple of years, the sect was pumping out Rank 1 items at a prodigious pace. And, as we had no need for so many low-quality weapons, most of them were sold off to travelling merchants.

After less than a decade, the sect began selling off Rank 2 items in similar quantities.

After less than three decades, the same was true of Rank 3 items.

At first, bandit groups, likely under the control of the Emperors and Sovereigns, tried to prevent these weapons from leaving the Wastes. As time went on, though, this proved to be a losing strategy. We were simply making too many weapons.

So, once the Rosehill Sect began expelling its older, more experienced Grandmasters, various powers showed up to vie for a chance to recruit them. This was partially to stay ahead of their rivals, but it was also because they realized something important: such a large sect had to possess a number of Lords and Kings. Since we were not selling off any Rank 4 or 5 items, if they wanted to be able to fight against us in the future, they would need Artifact Lords and Kings of their own.

With each year that passed, worry about the ‘refiner situation’ grew.

Then, in the far north of the continent, in an insignificant subsidiary kingdom of the Empire of Eternal Winter, a new organization took root.

According to reports, several decades earlier, a group of bandits had attacked this kingdom. During this attack, one of the kingdom’s princes had been killed, and one of its princesses had been kidnapped. This princess, Shi YuHua, was then sold off to the Rosehill Sect. At that time, she was only 9 years old.

After arriving in the sect, she was treated as a slave and was forced to do all kinds of menial tasks. If she didn’t do a good enough job, she was whipped. If she spent too much time on a task, she was whipped. And sometimes, she was whipped just because her taskmasters felt bored.

However, upon turning 16, YuHua was blessed with the ability to shape metal with only a thought. This allowed her to eventually rise up to a position of importance in the sect, but she never forgot the humiliation she had endured as a child.

In time, she gained the sect’s trust, ascended to Peak Lord, and learned the skills of a top-level Artifact Lord.

Then, she escaped.

After sneaking out of the sect at night, YuHua hid in a merchant caravan and stealthily made her way back to the Empire of Eternal Winter.

Once there, she formed a new guild, the Guild of Refiners. Its sole goal was to destroy the Rosehill Sect at any cost. With this continent’s Rulers now convinced that they needed to start arming themselves with better weaponry, and with this new guild being the only open source of Rank 4 weapons and armor, countless Kings and Lords rushed to support it.

Did all of these Rulers actually believe the story that we had concocted for YuHua? Probably not, but that didn’t change the fact that they needed the guild’s weaponry.

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With everything progressing smoothly, I paid my yearly visit to ShouLi and transferred all of the karmic energy that she had gathered into specified targets. Most of this energy went to whomever had paid for it, but this time, I kept a large portion of the energy that had been generated by members of the Su Clan for myself.

Then, I returned to my cultivation chamber and got to work on designing a new Rank 6 cultivation technique.

In my last life, I had found creating a Rank 6 core to be rather challenging. Unlike with Ranks 4 and 5, I hadn’t felt much of a connection to the karmic energy, and my understanding of how to properly shape it had been limited.

This time, after infusing my entire core with Emperor-level energy, I felt… something. It wasn’t as clear as it had been at the lower Ranks, due to my lack of a Rank 4 karmic affinity, but with my greater understanding of the principles of refining, I was able to sense… something.

Using these impulses as a guide, I constructed the best core possible. It wasn’t perfect, but with the temporary boost of my karmic affinity, I was able to shape the Emperor-level energy nearly as well as I could shape King-level energy.

Once the core was done, I began working on developing a new weave for the qi and karmic energy that would destroy the Emperor-level chains. Unfortunately, without enough credits to further upgrade my technique analysis ability, I couldn’t check to see how good a job I had done. I could only do my best to replicate what I had done for Ranks 4 and 5.

When it was finally as good as it was going to get, I filled my core with qi, opened a hole in the world, and broke through to Martial Emperor.

As soon as this breakthrough was complete, I recorded everything I had done in a memory orb. Then, I wrote it down in a technique manual. Both the orb and the book had their share of flaws, but this was undoubtably the best Rank 6 cultivation technique that I had ever possessed.

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After this breakthrough, I hoarded any karmic energy generated by members of the Su Clan and propelled myself to Peak Emperor at the fastest possible speed. However, as ‘the fastest possible speed’ was counted in decades, I returned to my research while I waited for this energy to accumulate.

Using HongYi and TaiZu as my guinea pigs, I researched first Rank 2 and then Rank 3 body cultivation techniques.

As ShouLi had already discovered, Ranks 2 and 3 were not entirely dissimilar to Rank 1. So, with the enlightenments I had received, it wasn’t too difficult to combine my Rank 1 techniques with what she had already figured out for Ranks 2 and 3.

By creating both a Profound and an Earth technique at both Ranks, I received four more enlightenments and four more discounts. Even the greatest of these discounts was only for 50% off my next purchase under 500 million credits, but I wouldn’t turn my nose up at them.

Having ascended to Peak Emperor and having reached Peak Rank 3 of body cultivation, I was more powerful than I had ever been, but was I powerful enough to face a Sovereign?

No. Not on my own.

Even just opening the Wastes to the continent’s Emperors would be risky. I needed help. I needed a clan.