Chapter 253 – Life 73, Age 48, Martial Grandmaster Peak

As soon as I returned to Mount Jiang, before waking YuanFei and his entourage up and getting them settled, I called an emergency meeting of my leadership council. After adding 76 new Disciples from this year’s training camp, adding over a hundred more was bound to cause headaches, but I was confident that my team would be able to handle it.

Once everyone was assembled, I addressed the room.

“I told you previously that another batch of recruits would likely be joining us soon. Well, they’re here, and we need to deal with them.”

Most of the people around the table showed little reaction to this news, but GuiMing slumped in his seat.

ShouLi took a calming breath and then faced me.

“How many?”

“A bit over a hundred in total… And twelve of them are Grandmasters. They are led by YuanFei, eldest son of the former Patriarch of the Su Clan.”

ShouLi was stunned speechless, but opposite her, on my left, Liang was a bit more animated.

“Patriarch, you can’t keep doing this! The group you brought in last time was trouble enough. Their Disciples didn’t want to accept the enforcers’ judgments since they were ‘under Elder TaiZu’s protection.’ We finally got them in line, but that was just a small group, and we were only able to do so because we had the elder supporting us. If one of these new Grandmasters refuses to listen to an enforcer, we won’t be able to control them.”

I gave Liang a stern look. “You are not supposed to control them. You are supposed to treat them as you would anyone else. The six of you created the rules. Follow them. If these new Grandmasters want to become enforcers, let them. If they break the rules, punish them, but I don’t want to hear any stories about your enforcers abusing their power. As long as you follow the rules, I will be there to support you.”

Liang looked like he wanted to respond, but before he could, I turned and looked at the dispirited GuiMing.

“GuiMing, I know your people are being pushed to do too much too quickly. I’m sorry about that, but we can’t change the situation. However, most of the new Grandmasters are earth cultivators. Try recruiting them to help you. They might not understand your construction methods, but they should have the strength needed to easily shape the mountain’s stone however you desire. Use them as laborers and put someone you trust in charge to make sure they do the job right. You have my permission to hand out as many contribution points as needed to get the situation sorted as soon as possible.”

He puffed out a short breath of air and looked resigned, but it was mostly an act. The mention of unlimited funding had been enough to satisfy him.

I placed both palms on the table and looked around at the group.

“The only reason any of this is a problem is simply because you are all too weak. You don’t have the strength to stand up to Grandmasters.”

NiangBa narrowed his eyes, but I pushed forward.

“As such, in the coming months, I will be adding a third floor to the Technique Hall. Anyone who wishes to ascend to Grandmaster and has a pristine Peak Master foundation may go there. I know many of you still wish to improve your Rank 2 technique, and you may do so if you wish, but I would recommend advancing to Grandmaster instead. You can use the excess qi it gives you to enhance your practice and then go back and improve your previous cultivation technique later.”

I tossed a scroll to each of them.

“This is a Low-Yellow Rank 3 cultivation technique. None of you are quite ready to ascend, but you should start studying it. If you can ascend to Grandmaster without using a memory orb, I will give you a special reward.”

I turned to Liang and pulled a stack of papers out of my storage space.

“These are Rank 4 Restriction Talismans. Place one on anyone up to Peak Grandmaster and they will lose control of their qi. They will be no stronger than a mortal. These talismans aren’t perfect, but they should help you restrain anyone who tries to cause trouble.”

Through testing, I had found that these talismans could easily be defeated with sufficiently powerful soul attacks. Also, if someone tried to place one on me, I could simply send the talisman into my storage space, negating its effects. However, since I was likely the only person in the Wastes capable of such feats, I felt no need to share the specifics. After all, giving people a weapon that appeared capable of neutralizing me seemed like a decent way to root out traitors.

Liang nodded stoically and accepted the talismans.

I looked around at the group one last time.

“I will say this again. I am here to support you. If you need my help, let me know.”

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After leaving the meeting with the leadership council, I went to the residences on the eastern edge of the plateau and arranged temporary housing for YuanFei and his group. Then, I disappeared and allowed the council to take care of things. As I told them, I would help if asked, but they needed to prove that they were worthy of being leaders, both to the clan and to themselves.

Still, while this situation was a test for both the council and the clan as a whole, I wanted it to be a fair one, so I kept an eye on YuanFei’s activities. When I saw him use an earth technique to stealthily descend to the fourth ring and enter TaiZu’s chambers, I paid close attention to ensure that nothing exceeded my expectations.

Just as YuanFei was about to breach the ceiling of TaiZu’s sitting room, the elder shot to his feet and took a defensive stance while circulating his qi.

YuanFei dropped to the floor, and upon recognizing the invader, the elder returned to a more neutral stance. He didn’t drop his guard entirely, though.

“Fei, what are you doing here?”

YuanFei gave the elder a half-bow. “Uncle, Feng has allied with Prince Yangci of the Red Sun Kingdom and Third Prince Yang of the Rising Sun Empire. They assassinated father and have spent the past week trying to track me down. I can’t fight back on my own. I need your help.”

A sneer appeared on TaiZu’s face. “TaiZong was a fool. He underestimated Prince Fang. He underestimated Prince Yangci. He underestimated his own son. His death was inevitable. If you think I can help you fight back against an empire, then you’re a bigger fool than he was.”

A look of pleading appeared on YuanFei’s face. “Uncle, I know the difficulties, but if we can wrest control of Prince Fang’s resources, we can build a power capable of rivaling Feng’s. He has the support of the Third Prince, but not the empire as a whole. If I can prove I’m stronger than him, then I can gain the Emperor’s approval.”

TaiZu snarled at the younger man. “You will not make a move against Prince Fang. If you try to do anything against him, I will do everything in my power to stop you and ensure that you are punished as severely as possible. I have spent an entire year working to gain a modicum of power here, and I will not allow you to jeopardize it.”

“Uncle—”

“Enough! Forget about Feng. He isn’t important any longer. Take a look around this mountain. This is the real Su Clan. Except for its lack of Grandmasters, it is already more powerful than the branch in Dragon Gate City. Allowing someone with the surname Fang to continue ruling over it as Patriarch is a farce that cannot be allowed to continue, but he is far more dangerous than you know. Without absolute certainty, we cannot make a move against him.”

YuanFei gave a bow. “I understand, Uncle.”

TaiZu snorted. “No, you don’t, but you will. After a week here, you will see how ridiculous our vaunted Su Clan was. I will never allow an outsider to claim the position of Patriarch of the Su Clan, but if Prince Fang can bring us out of the Wastes and help us rise to greatness, then we will bow down to him as King.”

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Elder TaiZu’s conversation with YuanFei gave me a lot to think about. If those were the arguments he used to turn my clan against me, I would want to be more careful when grading everyone’s actions during this test I had set for them. If someone turned against me because they felt that was what was best for the clan, then I might be able to forgive them.

However, while the elder’s words had indicated that he only cared about what was best for the Su Clan, they didn’t make me forget the lust for power I had seen from him in the past. Elder TaiZu was ambitious, and I could never allow myself to forget that, but ambitions weren’t necessarily bad. They were just something that I would need to channel properly.

With this in mind, I went to visit ShouLi and asked her to give Elder TaiZu a proper introduction to cultivating one’s soul as a Legalist.

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Events with TaiZu, YuanFei, YuanFeng, and the Rising Sun Empire were quickly coming to a head. A missing heir and a traitorous Grand Elder were threats to YuanFeng’s reign, and he would eventually be forced to make a move. I had to be ready before that happened.

As such, I handed off most of my side projects to others who had the time needed to pursue them properly. I gave ShouLi all the notes I had made regarding Jin ZiHan’s and Cai XiaoYu’s ‘beauty’ blessings, and I gave Bao all the seeds I had gathered over the years for him to do with as he pleased. As for beast alchemy, I gave my notes to Mo and let him delegate tasks as he saw fit. I wasn’t sure how much progress would come from this, but it would be good to get others’ perspectives on matters.

In the meantime, I turned my full attention to making my storage space habitable as soon as possible. 

Size and land were taken care of. The place could be bigger, and the soil could be more fertile, but it was more than good enough to house my current clan.

Food was a bit of an issue, though. It would be hard for my clan to do enough farming to feed itself while still having enough land to grow medicinal herbs. However, for the moment, I could live with that. I could make regular food purchases in the outside world and ship them inside. This wasn’t ideal, but it was workable.

As for air quality, the constant consumption of outside food would eventually cause problems with CO2 buildup, but the photosynthesis formation I had developed previously would help with that. However, I still needed to develop a solid formation for tracking the precise levels of atmospheric gases so that I could ensure that everything stayed stable and that I had advanced warning of any problems that might come up.

That said, from what I could tell, I only had three problems that needed to be addressed before people would be able to live in the space long-term. I needed to finalize a formation that could act as a proper sky, I needed a source of fresh water, and I needed a way to deal with all the heat that would build up over time.

The heat buildup was the easiest problem to solve. A simple heat pump formation was enough to transfer the heat energy out of the air and into a spirit fire where it could be turned into qi or raw materials. Such a formation needed fire qi to work, but I solved this by embedding a spirit stone into a flame of the Blazing Inferno Fire. The spirit fire was able to convert the raw energy of the spirit stone into pure fire qi and feed it into the formation.

Using spirit stones and spirit fires to power such a basic formation could be seen as extravagant, but nothing was really lost. The energy from the spirit stones would simply become ambient qi in my storage space. In a way, this was more useful than it being locked up in spirit stones that were providing me with no real benefits.

The solution I came up with for providing people with fresh drinking water was a bit more elegant.

When we first arrived on Mount Jiang, we had encountered a problem. What were we supposed to do with our waste? Bodily waste, food waste, material waste, it all had to go somewhere, and simply dumping it into the lake around the mountain would have been an awful idea.

I had solved this problem by dumping it all into a spirit fire. The fire converted our waste into demonic energy which then dissipated into the surrounding environment. In my soul space, we would need to rely on a similar system, but why just let all that energy dissipate? If I could channel it into the right spirit fire, then our waste could be transformed into pure, clean water. A spirit stone or two might occasionally be needed to supplement this energy, but this setup would essentially take care of two problems at once.

While I didn’t actually have a flame capable of creating water, I was pretty confident I knew where to find one. Once the situation with YuanFeng was settled, I would have to find an opportunity to go retrieve it. It was located within lands I had already purchased, after all.

This just left dealing with the space’s sun and sky.

The illusionists and formation specialists in my clan had done a lot of work designing the best illusory sky they could, but it still looked artificial. Unfortunately, to design a better formation, they would need better affinities, and possibly a better training environment. I had a plan to make that happen, but it would have to wait until after the test was complete. For now, I would work with what I had.

So, using the small-scale designs created by my clan, I began working on creating a grand formation powerful enough to cover the entire sky of my storage space while also being modular enough that I could expand it as the space grew.