Chapter 229 – Life 73, Age 33, Martial Grandmaster Peak

After returning to Mount Jiang, I handed my new recruits off to Mo, ShouLi, Liang, and the siblings. They had done an excellent job of raising NiangBa, and I was hopeful that I wouldn’t need to step in to help them too much with this larger group.

Once I was gone, everyone naturally divided themselves into three distinct camps. Mo teamed up with NiangBa, ShouLi with Liang, and GuiMing with GuiAi. Each pair took five of the new recruits and helped them get settled in.

Their first task was to build new housing for themselves. 

I had already constructed a warehouse on the southern side of the plateau, and it held more than enough basic wood, stone, and metal for everyone to build anything they wanted. They were free to use these materials in any way they chose without cost, but as I had done the previous year, I would reward more thoughtful designs with extra contribution points.

Of course, I did understand that by asking children with no background or training in architecture to design and build houses by themselves, there was a non-zero chance that their results would be disastrous. However, they had the advantage of being able to use qi and specialized techniques to move and shape their construction materials at will. As long as they strengthened everything properly, they didn’t necessarily have to follow the normal rules of structural engineering.

Once they split up, the three groups approached this problem from radically different directions. ShouLi’s group focused on building a single, massive, palatial structure that was capable of housing all seven people in their cohort. The siblings’ group, on the other hand, was constructing a series of buildings encircling a shared courtyard. Finally, Mo’s group had spread out a bit and everyone was building their own individual cottages.

Aside from checking in on them every once in a while to ensure that none of these structures were on the verge of collapse, I mostly left everyone alone to do their own thing and shifted my focus to the northern edge of the plateau.

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At first, I had been somewhat concerned about allowing NiangBa to train in martial arts too early, but his results proved the effectiveness of allowing the members of my clan to pursue whatever fields they were interested in. As such, I decided to immediately expand the skills I had on offer and allow the Disciples to begin branching out into the various professions.

On the Nine Rivers Continent, there were eight recognized cultivator professions, and each of these was typically associated with one of the basic or secondary elements.

Of these eight, I immediately ruled out providing any training for gu keeping, which was connected to wind qi, and illusions, which were connected to both light and dark qi. This was partly because I didn’t have Essence Gathering Formations for their associated elements, but it was also because I knew nothing about what was required to learn these skills properly. I could easily make an alchemy workshop, but what would a gu keeper’s workshop look like?

In truth, this decision might have also been a result of my inherent fear of gu keepers. While I wanted my clan members to grow strong and study whatever interested them, the idea of having dozens of gu keepers capable of infecting everyone in my clan with nasty insects was horrifying. Before opening this profession up to my clan, I needed to study it myself, but that would be difficult without first making myself vulnerable to a master of the art.

After considering the remaining six professions, I also decided to eliminate herbalism and beast taming. For the moment, there simply wasn’t enough room to practice these professions. Once I expanded the sect-protecting formation to cover the entire island surrounding Mount Jiang, this would change, but that would have to wait until I felt our position in the Wastes was more secure.

That left me needing to construct workshops for alchemy, refining, formations, and talisman crafting. For the moment, there were only 21 Disciples in my clan, but with the expectation that this number would expand rapidly in the coming years, I went ahead and built four large, multi-story wooden structures with several dozen workshops each.

I then added a smaller building where the Disciples would be able to requisition crafting supplies and sell their completed products. I would need to charge contribution points for rare or high-Rank items, but I was willing to provide common Rank 1 supplies for free. This would allow Disciples to reach a point where their profession was profitable before needing to worry about paying for it.

While constructing this building was simple enough, getting it fully operational was a bit more complicated. Ideally, I would have a receptionist capable of appraising everything and awarding the appropriate compensation, but finding such a person was no easy feat. For the moment, the clan was small enough that I could take care of everything personally, but in the future, this might be another place where I would have to implement some form of automation.

Once I was satisfied with the state of the workshops, I went to the Technique Hall and pulled out four memory orbs.

“System, I want one of these orbs to be imbued with the complete knowledge of Rank 1 alchemy that would be expected from an expert on this continent. I want the other orbs to contain similar information for formations, refining, and talisman crafting.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 4 million credits. 743,422,360,897 credits remaining.

My current level of alchemy was a bit beyond what would normally be expected from someone of this continent, and I had no doubt that what I had learned of refining and formations from Jin and Shen covered all the information contained in these orbs. However, I still decided to purchase the memories from the System to ensure that the knowledge was of the highest quality possible. I also wanted to avoid the risk of accidentally including any extra information that I preferred to keep secret.

Once these new orbs were ready, I placed them on the bookshelf next to the orb containing basic martial knowledge. Then, I went to inform the Disciples.

Aside from allowing my clan members to grow stronger and more knowledgeable, these orbs and workshops would also allow my recruits to help me make pills to pay off the Su Clan.

While making Perfect Rank 1 pills was a rather simple process, making 150 of them to pay for my 15 new recruits had been rather time-consuming. By training up a few new alchemists, I could pass this task off to others and only worry about crafting the higher-Rank pills. However, I had to make it clear that they would only be rewarded for Perfect pills and that any pills of lesser quality must not be consumed. They had to be destroyed.

With the workshops built, the new orbs in place, and the Disciples informed of their presence, I could allow the children to take care of themselves while I focused my attention elsewhere.

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Mount Jiang was a large mountain formed from a single blueschist stone that sat in the middle of a peat bog island encircled by a shallow marshy lake. There were several oddities about this location, the most important of which being its elevated levels of water essence. However, that was far from its only notable feature.

For example, one thing I found strange was that Mount Jiang was an entire mountain formed from nothing but blueschist. From everything I understood, that shouldn’t have been possible. At a minimum, other forms of basalt should have been present. Additionally, Mount Jiang was the only mountain in the immediate area. Lonely mountains weren’t unheard of but when combined with Mount Jiang’s unique composition, the lack of other mountains in the surroundings was hard to ignore.

Then there was the peat bog surrounding the mountain. Not only did this bog cover thousands of square kilometers, but it was also able to produce a variety of rare and powerful Rank 3 herbs. As I had learned during my experiments with herbalism, creating an environment suitable for growing herbs was no simple task. The fact that this area was capable of consistently producing high-level herbs showed that there was something special about it.

I was certain that there was a secret hiding underneath Mount Jiang, and now that the land was officially my domain, I wanted to find out what it was.

However, there was one problem. I wasn’t cultivating earth qi, so I couldn’t directly manipulate the stone of the mountain. I could use my wood qi or a spirit fire to destroy it, but I would rather not do that. Recklessly carving through the stone could destabilize the mountain and destroy our settlement atop its peak. So, I would need to wait until later to delve down into the mountain itself.

That being the case, I jumped down from the mountain to the peat bog that surrounded it and used my wood qi to tunnel through that instead.

As I dug, I did my best to stay close to the mountain.

Only 5 meters down, I ran into a problem. Water began seeping in through the walls of my tunnel at an alarming rate.

Focusing my qi, I compressed the decomposing plant matter of the bog into hardened walls capable of keeping the groundwater at bay.

While this didn’t consume too much energy, needing to strengthen my tunnel as I dug slowed my progress significantly.

After reaching a depth of slightly over 100 meters, the bottom of my tunnel burst apart and water rapidly rushed in, filling it up and pushing me back the way I had come.

With a quick motion, I sealed the bottom of the tunnel, just like I had done with the sides, and stabilized my position.

After ensuring there was no further danger of the tunnel collapsing on me, I took out and consumed a Rank 2 Water Breathing Pill that I had made for this eventuality.

Then, I sealed the tunnel above me and opened a hole below.

Moving through the destroyed section of my tunnel and then through the remaining plant matter was a bit of a struggle, but after passing 100 meters once again, the peat surrounding me disappeared and I found myself in an expansive underground ocean.

This made things clear to me. What surrounded Mount Jiang was not a shallow marsh. It was a massive, ancient lake that had been choked out by an overabundance of plant life.

After swimming down deeper and using tendrils of qi to probe the area around me, I estimated that Mount Jiang reached roughly 200 meters beneath the surface of the island that surrounded it. The base of the mountain was firmly embedded into the bedrock of the lakebed, but the lakebed was not made from blueschist. It was just the ordinary limestone that was common in this region.

This confirmed my suspicion that Mount Jiang was anything but a natural mountain. However, I wasn’t able to find what I had really been looking for. There were no clues as to why the area had elevated levels of water essence, and the source of both Mount Jiang and its surrounding plant life remained elusive.

While part of me wanted to blast my way into the mountain to search for my prize, I opted to remain patient. In a decade or so, I would be able to send Mo or one of the others to the Su Clan to recruit Disciples. That would give me the time I needed to safely change cultivation techniques without being targeted during my period of weakness. Then, once I made it back to Grandmaster and had access to earth qi, I could pass through this mountain as easily as I had passed through its surrounding bog.

Giving up on my exploration for the moment, I looked around one last time and then returned to the surface.

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The following two years passed with little fanfare. Everyone worked on slowly improving their skills, and all the Disciples, both new and old, were able to develop in a multitude of different directions.

ShouLi and NiangBa, being the two Disciples with the highest natural talent, were both able to cultivate a pristine foundation with a Peak-Yellow technique after practicing for only a little over a year.

Following the rules I had previously established, I offered them the opportunity to cultivate a Low-Yellow Rank 2 technique, but they instead chose to try and learn a Low-Profound Rank 1 technique. I didn’t have enough memory orbs to easily spend them on Profound- and Earth-Rank techniques that few would ever use, so they had to learn them from ordinary scrolls instead, but with their level of talent this was possible.

A year later, my other four original recruits followed suit. They also chose to try and learn a Profound-Rank technique, but they didn’t have as much luck. Eventually, they settled on spending their time practicing techniques from other elements to earn some extra contribution points and raise their affinities.

During my third visit to the Su Clan’s training, I recruited 14 new Disciples. During my fourth visit, I recruited another 18. After being brought back to Mount Jiang, all these new recruits quickly found themselves slotted into one of the three established groups.

I was happy with the way my clan was growing, but the plateau atop Mount Jiang was quickly filling up, and we would soon run out of room. Within only a year or two, we would need to start carving our way down into the mountain.

However, that problem wasn’t yet imminent. Instead, there was something else I was far more concerned with. I had been gone from the Verdant Fields Sect for slightly over three years at this point, and I wanted to see how SuYin and Bao were doing.