Chapter 342 – Lives 80 & 81

Upon waking up in the Su Clan’s compound, I made a snap purchase. The clan believed that it would take time for my blessing to return us to the start of the loop, but that only bought me two years, and I had a lot of work ahead of me.

“System, teleport me to a secluded spot in one of the independent cities to the west of the Wastes.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 3,252 credits. 107,618,792,637,730 credits remaining.

The city I appeared in had seen better days, and many of its buildings had been reduced to rubble, but I paid little attention to this. I wouldn’t be staying here long.

I booked a room at a modest inn and entered seclusion. Then, I reached into my inner world and pulled out Sutong ZiChen—TongBin’s replacement and the man currently in charge of the clan’s karmic energy supply.

When he saw me, ZiChen’s face contorted in confusion. “Ancestor, what—”

I held up a hand to stop him. “As far as anyone else is concerned, we are currently in the middle of ‘reverting the timeline.’ I will need your discretion on this matter, understood?”

Understanding washed over the man, and he bowed. “Yes, Ancestor.”

“Good. Now, I need karmic energy, and I can’t pull it from you. Your affinity is too high. So, I need you to find me someone else who also knows how to be discreet and fill their dantian with Lord-level energy.”

ZiChen froze for a moment, then a happy grin appeared on his face. “Yes, Ancestor. I know just the young man for the job.”

After I sent ZiChen back into my inner world, he immediately called a young man to his office for a meeting. Then, once they were alone, I pulled them both back out.

“Ancestor, this is my grandson, Sutong KuiLang. I am certain that he will serve you well.”

As the young man saluted and bowed to me, I studied him. It was obvious what ZiChen was doing. He was propping this boy up to be his replacement. This didn’t bother me, though. As long as he did the job I needed him to do, everything would work out just fine.

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For the next two years, I researched and studied the idea of Warrior Tier karmic energy cultivation techniques.

It didn’t take me long to verify that creating a ‘pure’ karmic energy technique wasn’t going to happen. Martial Disciples cultivated qi and stored it in their muscles. Since karmic energy couldn’t be stored in muscles, what would an equivalent technique even look like? If such a technique were possible, it would belong to an entirely different cultivation system.

While designing a new cultivation system from scratch was an intriguing idea, at the moment, I didn’t have anywhere near the time or knowledge to make that happen. So, instead, I looked for ways to simply ‘inject’ karmic energy into normal techniques, using it in lieu of qi.

After several failed attempts at incorporating it into Disciple-level techniques via qi filters or vortices, I eventually gave up and moved on to Master-level techniques. At first, the idea of creating meridians out of karmic energy seemed promising, but again, I was met with repeated failures. Karma-based filters couldn’t filter qi properly, and qi couldn’t properly enter or exit karma-based meridians.

It wasn’t until I tried to make a dantian out of karmic energy that I finally found true success. After all, what was a dantian other than a weaker, oversized core.

This solid karmic dantian was far stronger than a qi-based dantian, and I was able to form it in only a fraction of the time that weaving a normal dantian would have taken. Creating solid connections between it and woven qi-based meridians proved a bit tricky, but I was able to make it work by using woven karma-based tubes as a transition.

Once everything was complete, I ascended to Grandmaster 1. Then, Grandmaster 2. However, no enlightenment was triggered, signifying that someone had already created a similar technique. Considering that this was a rather obvious way to use karmic energy, though, that wasn’t a surprise. So, instead of focusing on my lack of enlightenment, I jotted down the technique and analyzed it.

Pang YaoLin’s True Core of Supreme Karmic Energy, Peak-Profound Rank 3 Cultivation Technique, Qi / Karmic Energy, Effects: Increases the strength of existing mental effects. Spreads those effects to everyone connected to this technique.

Even without the questionable name attached, the effects of this technique made me wary of spreading it around. Having every Grandmaster casually pass on their mental urges to everyone who was generating karmic energy would only cause chaos.

Therefore, I could only shelve the technique for now and move on. These two years hadn’t given me much in the way of immediate benefits, but they at least gave me a small insight into people elsewhere in this world.

With this, I was ready to go back and kick off my next life, but before I did, I needed to make a quick purchase.

“System, as soon as the next loop begins, I want you to increase Bao’s and SuYin’s comprehension of herbalism by 500 billion credits each. Then, I want you to immediately shift my permanent reset point forward so that it includes this change.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 20 trillion credits. 87,618,792,637,730 credits remaining.

I was building up a lot of credits, and I wanted to use some of them to help the Revered Elders who had stuck with me loop after loop. Shen’s and Du XiongMing’s comprehension of formations was already high enough that they didn’t need this kind of boost, and I had already given them a path to Sovereign. I didn’t feel that anything more was necessary. In my next life, though, I was planning to work on herbalism, so boosting Bao and SuYin’s abilities beforehand seemed like a good idea.

My final task complete, I leaned against a wall and popped a pill into my mouth.

You have died. Calculating…

You died as a Martial Grandmaster 2 – 200,000 credits awarded.

Total Credits: 87,618,792,837,730

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After returning to the start, I sent out the clans, and within two decades, we regained our control over the continent. Once this was settled, I entered secluded cultivation and made another round of purchases.

Enhanced comprehension of herbalism: 15 trillion credits.

A permanent mid three-star wood affinity: 35.16 trillion credits.

Mastery of the Eternal Grove spirit fire: 10 trillion credits.

Low Five-star affinity for karmic energy for Sutong KuiLang: 116 billion credits.

Cost 60.16 trillion credits. 27,342,792,837,730 credits remaining.

Then, I gathered Shen, Du XiongMing, Bao, and SuYin to try to figure out how to make a Rank 7 formation using tree roots.

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When I reached 42 years old, the 4 existing cylinders of my inner world reached 14 cubic kilometers, making it ready for the next step.

At this point, Chang’an was the center of the world. To the northwest, and 1,000 kilometers down, was the Plane of Wood. The Plane of Earth was to the northeast, and the Plane of Woody Earth was to the South.

The first thing I did was create tubes that extended from the bottom of the Planes of Wood and Woody Earth that met at a point another 1,000 kilometers further down and 10,000 kilometers to the southwest. Then, I created another set of tubes out of Earth and Woody Earth that met in the southeast. And finally, a third set of tubes from Wood and Earth that met in the north.

Once all three sets of tubes were in place, I then set the Expanding Realms Fire to create three new 1-kilometer-tall cylinders at each of these locations.

This gave me a total of seven planes. Three on the first tier in a large triangle. Three on the second tier in a smaller, inverted triangle, with second-tier planes each connected to two first-tier planes. And Chang’an on top, connecting to each of the three second-tier planes.

Over the next few decades, while we worked on unlocking the secrets of karmic storage, these planes expanded.

When I reached 96 years old, there was a shudder in my soul, and the expansion came to an abrupt halt. My world was ready for the next Rank.

First, I pulled out all of the fire seeds from the existing Planes of Wood and Earth. Then, I replaced them with dual-element seeds. The old Plane of Earth was transformed into the Plane of Earthfire, and the old Plane of Wood was transformed into the Plane of Woodfire. It would take time for fire to establish itself on these planes, but with a bounty of raw material to work with, it shouldn’t take long.

Next, I established a new Plane of Wood in the southwest, a new Plane of Earth in the southeast, and a Plane of Fire in the north. All of the first-tier planes were single-element, the second-tier planes were dual-element, and Chang’an would be the triple-element plane for earth, wood, and fire.

With the Expanding Realms Fire no longer effective, I replaced it with the Three Thousand Flames Fire and directed everything it created into my new Plane of Fire.

Less than five years later, I began to feel anxious, so I sent out an immediate summons. Anyone who was willing to return to Chang’an to face the Tribulation of Fire and improve their fire affinity needed to do so immediately.

Three days later, the tribulation began, and all portals to the outside world were cut off.

This time, the tribulation lasted for a total of 20 days. When it was over, Chang’an stood strong. The tribulation had barely affected it.

The Planes of Wood and Wood Earth had been completely incinerated, but they would regrow quickly enough. More interesting were three fire-based planes. Serpentine, high Master-Rank fire elementals swam through the skies of these planes and gobbled up everything they came in contact with, including each other.

I really wanted to keep these guys, but since they were tribulation creatures, they affected my control over the world, so they had to go.

Once this was handled, the tribulation was complete. So, I reabsorbed the Expanding Realms Fire and set it to grow all seven existing planes simultaneously.

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About 60 years later, we completed our design for a Karmic Energy Storage Formation.

With Chang’an’s continuous expansion, the city would soon be able to produce all the food that it needed using only the bunker’s gardens. Thus, the five subterranean farms beneath the original walled city were no longer necessary, so we decided to repurpose them.

Each farm was 5 meters tall with 3 meters of soil and qi-reinforced stone separating them. We collapsed all of this to create a single, 35-meter-tall cavern. Then, we planted trees, enhanced their rate of growth, and shifted their roots to create a Rank 7 Karmic Energy Storage Formation.

Once completed, this grove could store enough karmic energy to raise hundreds of people to Martial Lord and dozens of people to Martial Emperor. Due to the importance of this grove, I labeled it a forbidden ground, and only a select group of wood cultivators were allowed to enter it.

TongBin’s descendants, the Sutong lineage, would continue to be in charge of dispensing karmic energy and helping people cultivate it. But instead of pulling energy from the grove directly, they had to use an area in Chang’an’s central tower that contained formations to access the grove’s energy reserves remotely.

Elsewhere in the tower, I set up an additional set of formations for people to deposit karmic energy and earn contribution points for doing so. This made it so that no one needed to access the grove itself.

Partially, this was to protect a critical piece of infrastructure. More importantly, though, this allowed me to hide certain backup and contingency plans. While the clan’s members still respected me as their Ancestor, by this point, I didn’t really even know any of its leaders. The amount of trust that I could extend to complete strangers was limited.

Therefore, we arranged things so that not all of the karmic energy sent into the grove actually made it there. 1% of it was redirected into a group of potted plants, and once a year, I shifted these plants to the Plane of Woody Earth and sent that energy into an entirely different, and far more elaborate, karmic energy storage system.

Chang’an’s formation was like the Nine Rivers Sect. All the energy was mixed together. In Woody Earth, though, I separated it back out into different formations for each of our major clans. Normally, I would still rely on the Sutong lineage for all my karmic energy needs. But in the event of an emergency, I could send a plant into this formation to extract a portion of its energy without any outside assistance required.

Keeping this grove a secret was a bit problematic, though. We needed wood cultivators to keep the trees healthy, and we would need formation specialists to occasionally perform maintenance on the grove’s root network. If I gave these jobs to people in my clan, word of a secondary storage formation would quickly spread.

So, instead, I handed the job off to the descendants of Bao and SuYin.

I hadn’t kept much track of my Revered Elders' personal lives, but by this point, Bao and SuYin had a massive extended family. Their grandkids’ grandkids had already had grandkids. Usually, these people just hung out in the Wastes and only returned to Chang’an when it was time to revert the loop. But as Bao and SuYin’s descendants, they had a knack for herbalism. I could make use of that.

At my suggestion, this entire clan, and several small, related clans, pulled up stakes and moved into my Plane of Woody Earth. Their ‘ancestral duty’ would be to maintain the karmic energy formation, but for the most part, they would just be able to live and develop on their own.

This didn’t guarantee that things wouldn’t still go wrong. Bao’s clan could betray me just as easily as my own could. With these two groups being entirely separate, though, it was unlikely that both would choose to rebel at the same time.

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After everything was settled with the formations, I still had a couple of centuries left in this life, and I wanted to put them to good use. So, I spent time with Bao, SuYin, and a group of their descendants to master the art of Rank 6 herbalism.

The most interesting herbs were those that we had found around the formations in the Wastes. By injecting them with both essence and vital energy, we were able to grow strong, powerful plants that almost seemed to contain a hint of sentience. They would twist when someone approached and droop when left alone.

Strangely, though, there didn’t seem to be anything special about their energy patterns. They contained simple medicinal energy, just like any other herb. None of us could find any sign of the essence we imbued them with.

As for ‘normal’ herbs, unfortunately, we had never found any Rank 7 seeds. With Bao’s blessing, we were able to create a wide range of unique variants and cultivars of Rank 6 herbs, and this gave me several new ingredients to play with the next time I spent a life studying alchemy. But without Rank 7 herbs, none of us could become Herb Sovereigns or Pill Sovereigns.

Eventually, time passed, and I turned 437 years old. My inevitable meeting with the Saint’s Envoy was fast approaching. So, I sent a message to the clan’s leadership and started gathering everyone up. A month later, I swallowed a pill.

You have died. Calculating…

You died as a Martial Sovereign Peak – 100 trillion credits awarded.

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

Total Credits: 128,342,792,837,730

Rank 3 Small World – 379/1,000 km3 (Earth, Wood, Fire)