CHAPTER 15 - Inconvenience

At every circle of Keyishin, there were dedicated areas for teleportation platforms. These were usually where the overwhelming majority of people arrived when they teleported to the capital.

However, for the peak sects, these portal zones were nothing but the commoner alternative.

Every major sect within the center of the capital had its dedicated teleportation platforms. A lot of sects had them outside of the capital as well, but that was a different story.

Teleportation platforms weren’t allowed to be placed too close to one another. If too many were too close, the spacial constructs could be disrupted and teleportation could fail.

Building private platforms that wouldn’t cause issues required immensely expensive materials. Even that was chump change to those who lived at the true peak of society within the Yixine empire.

On one such platform, in the courtyard of the Kurlore sect, a cloaked man appeared. He was welcomed by a heavily armored elder of the Kurlore sect.

The elder took his helmet off, revealing a rather young face beneath, and nodded to the cloaked figure.

They set off toward the main building of the Kurlore sect. It was unbelievably overdecorated. Motifs of shields and armored statues littered every inch of the shiny white building.

Peak sects within the capital had a reputation to maintain, and this went doubly so for the great four sects.

The Kurlore sect prided themselves on their exceptional defensive arts. Although they did serve as defenders of the people, they weren’t a strictly righteous sect.

Publicly, the Kurlore sect was utilitarian.

The two men walked over to a secret underground chamber. The elder opened the door only to reveal a portal. This was the entrance to a secret mystical realm.

The two men walked inside the mystical realm. The environment inside was dark, dry, and desolate.

Not too far from the entrance, demons sat and stared at the two men.

Kurlore was publicly a utilitarian sect. Privately, however, was an entirely different story.

The cloaked man took his hood off, revealing his pristine golden hair and sharp green eyes.

“Greetings, servants of the silent one. I am Ilkivir and I come bearing news from your master.”

The demons perked up.

“We have a mission of the highest priority.”

***

“Falken?” Harel asked Marven.

“I used whatever when I was put on the spot, but I quite like it. That was my family name from back when I was a mortal.

Harel was surprised to hear that.

“You mean Zearthorn wasn’t your actual family name?”

“You know, I even contemplated changing my first name as well.”

Marven, Harel, and Gabrias were busy with the construction of their new sect premises. At first, Marven worked in awkward silence as Gabrias gave vague pointers and Harel stood at the side, uncertain as to how to help.

But as time went on, the tension slowly eased. Engaging in cooperative manual labor was a great way to build a team. Harel was delegated to rather simple errands, Gabrias was actively designing and planning the building as they worked and Marven did most of the heavy lifting.

Marven wasn’t surprised to discover just how competent Gabrias was. It wasn’t that shocking given that he worked in a high-end construction company, but in Marven’s opinion, Gabrias was easily at the level of competence where could do serious work even in the capital.

According to Gabrias, the reason why was that the Bentheta sect had invested a large amount of money and resources into building their company for the sake of having a high-value spy group.

This resulted in a lot of resources and tutelage being provided to Gabrias.

Marven was well aware that this was far from enough to result in such tremendous competence. Gabrias seemed to have a real knack for this sort of work.

At first, they had disassembled their old building. Then they prepared the foundation for their new one. It was going to be designed in a way that accounted for potential expansion in the future.

The foundation itself had been done in a way that allowed relatively easy expansion both underground, above, and to the sides. So far it was looking like a rather standard stone building. Decorations could always come afterward, so for now they would just focus on the basic shape and design.

Throughout this work, Gabrias grew more and more relaxed until eventually, he found himself chatting with Marven and Harel. It was probably just a force of habit, given that he always chatted with his coworkers.

Regardless of how this had happened, it was obvious that a rather thick sheet of ice had been broken.

They talked about how ridiculous this entire thing was, about Neave and the capital. Harel and Marven were surprised to learn that Gabrias didn’t think too negatively of Neave. This was quite shocking at first, but his explanation made a lot of sense.

Neave could have killed him. In fact, it would have made sense for Neave to take Gabrias’ life back when had discovered him. But he was spared. Not only was he spared, but he was also granted the position of a sect master, although a rather dubious one.

Gabrias was strangely hopeful that things would be alright. Maybe this was yet again just the force of habit speaking through him. But as he conversed with them he found himself more and more interested in the idea of playing up this persona of a mysterious sect master.

By all means, Gabrias was a massive fan of practical jokes. And at least in concept, the idea of a bronze path cultivator pretending to be some lofty master was quite funny.

The mismatched trio had learned a lot about one another during their work together. Harel and Gabrias were shocked to learn that Marven had only become a cultivator at around the age of sixty. It was truly an unbelievable achievement that he could reach such heights given how late he had started.

They asked him about how he had managed to achieve this.

“I want to say it was through my genius or perseverance, but in reality, luck played a rather major role in it. It all started when I domed a stray abominid with a hoe. It had a nearly round core that held an endurance spirit power. I was offered a lot of money for it. The man that acted as the receptionist advised me not to sell the core, but rather use it for myself. He even taught me how to cultivate. Once I broke into the foundation realm, I became the greatest farmhand that anyone in my small village had ever seen in history. Endurance wasn’t the greatest or most desirable spirit power. It was much better to take a spirit power that could quickly and reliably dispatch an opponent. But for an old man at the end of his natural life span, it was exactly what was required to even stand a chance of walking down the path. Had it not been for the shape of the core, the specific power, or the incredibly kind man that helped me out, I never would have become a cultivator. And this was just how lucky I got at the very beginning.”

He told them more about his journey, how he had stumbled upon a rich mystic realm, discovered another expensive core, stumbled upon many treasures, and barely got away with his life intact, time and time again. He told them how he found the corpse of what he assumed to be a long-dead diamond ranker, which was actually how he found the cursed book as well.

Countless coincidences and strange occurrences happened by mere chance to take a decrepit old man from a farm hand to a legendary cultivator.

But the most incredible thing that had happened to him was his meeting with the emperor.

According to Marven, he had by sheer coincidence met the emperor while participating in a large-scale monster hunt. They had a conversation, and according to Marven, this was the point where he had stopped just barely getting by with luck and started truly growing as a cultivator.

He refused to disclose the contents of their conversation, however, much to the annoyance of Gabrias and Harel.

As the crew cheerfully went about building their new sect, Neave once again made his way to his underground laboratory.

***

Neave was rather satisfied with his first library visit. He had made a connection to someone in his young master form and utterly devoured a ton of books.

He may have overdone it a bit with the books if he was being entirely honest. Although it was all in his head, the knowledge felt too dry and raw. It felt as if he had taken the books and shoved them in his head, but very little of the actual knowledge had properly integrated.

As he got started on doing the actual alchemy, he was infinitely frustrated by just how long it took him to remember basic things. There was simply so much information to sift through, that not even with his enhanced cognitive abilities was he capable of doing it on demand.

Neave wasn’t yet doing anything too crazy, because he wanted to familiarize himself with basic alchemy first.

Among the most important things he learned were the qi techniques that he had to use during the process of alchemy. Alchemical qi techniques weren’t like the other types of qi techniques.

But what they were was utterly crucial to the process of alchemy.

His first project was simply making a basic qi restoration potion.

Neave failed the first time he tried it. And the second. And the third as well.

It was only around the tenth attempt that he finally managed to succeed. He cried in joy and danced around, screaming like a lunatic.

His reaction was absurdly exaggerated, given that he hadn’t even spent twenty minutes on alchemy yet.

As he slowly picked apart the knowledge he had gained and properly integrated the rules, procedures, optimal methods, tricks, and tips into his alchemy, he rapidly grew in competence.

He was frustrated at how ‘slowly’ he was learning alchemy. It wasn’t slow by any conceivable measure except his subjective opinion.

Neave was severely addicted to gaining more power, this much was evident. He personally thought that was entirely fine since it served his purposes.

As he sifted through his knowledge, he was yet again faced with the frustrating world of contradictory knowledge.

Not even the most absurdly overpriced library in the entire realm was immune to scholarly disagreements. Neave rather quickly sifted through the useless knowledge and picked the more optimal choices.

Not even within two hours of starting, he had created a rather respectable qi restoration potion.

Out of all the spirit powers he had, it was his perception that played the greatest role in his rapid improvement. There were countless different elements in interplay when putting the ingredients together.

The different types of qi and remnant spirit contained within the different ingredients clashed with one another aggressively and chaotically. As far as Neave could tell, the recipe for the basic potion was little more than just a relatively reliable sequence of steps that were likely to produce a consistent result.

That just simply wasn’t good enough for him.

Now that he was capable of creating this potion through normal means, it was time to find a way to improve it.

Neave threw right about everything he could think of at the process and hoped something would stick. He tried putting liquid spirit into the mixture and all that seemed to do was dilute the remnant spirit within the ingredients.

Adding life force, qi, liquid spirit, and flooding it with ethereal spirit all seemed to have very little success, for varying degrees of reasons.

The biggest one seemed to be quite simple. Any of these additions resulted in a fundamental shift to the process. This meant that the qi techniques he usually had to use at the different steps were no longer worth jack shit.

There was something of a makeshift ‘solution’ that Neave could employ here. Simply put, if he learned every single alchemy qi technique, he could theoretically mix and match different techniques to compensate for the changes to the process.

Fuck that shit.

Even if that was theoretically possible, it was such a daunting task that Neave had no confidence he could achieve that within a year of work.

Neave thought of something.

It was certainly true that it could take him as long as a year of work to do that.

Now, if only he had some convenient way to get as much time as he could need.

Neave grinned.

***

Hunter was starting to get desperate. No, he was already desperate, now he was slowly entering the insane idea territory.

If I impregnated the daughter of someone important, would I be forced to take responsibility?

A truly idiotic idea indeed. Even he knew that there was no way in hell that was a viable plan on any of the theoretical steps he would need to take. But at this rate, he couldn’t truly think of anything besides just leaving the capital and looking for a sect outside.

He would have to either cough up a lot of money for that or set off on his own onto the bandit and monster-infested roads.

Hunter wasn’t hungry yet, given that he had some money on him, but that wasn’t going to last him forever.

He needed to find a solution fast or he would be forced into taking desperate measures.

As he strolled around the outer edges of the capital, an unusual sight caught his eye. There was a bald construction worker that was constructing a building single-handedly at jaw-dropping speed.

Hunter couldn’t help but wonder who this man was. As he looked around the premises of this building in construction, his mind froze.

Right next to this building, there was a young girl carrying construction materials from a large pile.

A young girl he immediately recognized.