Chapter 152: Life 66, Age 47, Martial King Peak

As I was reviewing what I needed to get done before the end of my life, I realized something. Tie Yang must be furious with me. I had ruined the mission he spent so much time and effort on. When I became a Martial Lord, I had been demoted to the outer sect because my skills with formations were lacking. Tie Yang had diligently trained me so that I could rejoin the inner sect, but I got so lost in everything else that I forgot to do so. With my ascension to not only King but Peak King, I wouldn’t be surprised if my lack of relevant skills had resulted in my demotion to servant disciple. No one had come to inform me of such a change, but they didn’t tell me about my demotion to the outer sect until I was about to enter Profound City. If such a demotion wouldn’t occur until I entered Earth City, then it was nothing I needed to worry about, but I felt sorry for ruining Tie Yang’s mission. I might not be able to do very well in a King-level Exam, but taking it was still an opportunity to try to gain more insights into what the sect was looking for. This time, I could try to record information in my journal so that even if I didn’t remember anything, I still had a record of it. However, as I was preparing to head to the Exam site, my plan was shattered by a harsh reality. “System, how much to create a mental reversion point for the moment right before I enter the sect’s Exam Trial?” Cost 10 billion credits. I still didn’t know if such a purchase was necessary, but I didn’t want to take any chances with something that I knew affected my mind, so I had to give up on attempting the Exam again in this life. This didn’t bother me overly much. The value of any information I could gain from the Exam was dubious at best. I already had a general idea of what the sect was looking for, and knowing exactly how they tested for it could only be marginally helpful. Putting this mystery to the side, I turned my attention to other preparations I needed to make. For quite some time, I had been wanting to learn more about spatial bags. It had been one of my primary considerations when choosing to join the Earth Peak, and I needed to take advantage of my situation to finally learn something. Back in the Academy, Instructor Yuan had promised to provide me with a tutor capable of teaching me about them. However, that never materialized. After entering the sect, I had wanted to study this topic, but the timing was never right. It seemed like I always had something else to do. Here at the end, I had a plethora of contribution points and a higher cultivation level than ever before. If I was going to learn about spatial bags, there was no better time to do so. After considering all of my options, I paid a hefty price for a private lesson from an inner sect Formation King. This might have been overkill for what I needed, but I wanted the most reliable source of information I could get. Repeating what I had been told previously, she informed me that spatial bags were relatively straightforward to make. The only real difficulties came in properly designing the formation stones that maintained them. I noted down the information about the formation designs for later study, but they weren’t too important to me, so I shifted the focus of the lesson. “What could cause items to lose their energy when placed inside a spatial bag? For example, a spirit stone losing all its power and crumbling to dust.” She snorted in amusement. “Yeah, that can happen. The problem is with your formation stone. You created a barrier to keep the space stable and make sure everything stays inside, right? Well, you have to make it so qi and other types of energy can pass through. If you don’t, you end up with a massive space devoid of energy. This energy vacuum will rip the power out of anything you put inside to reach an equilibrium.” She handed me a bag and pointed out these features. “See, this creates an opening in the barrier to let the inside of the bag maintain the same qi density as the outside environment. Spirit stones are like rocks of solidified energy, right? Well, you see, their physical shell is able to contain their energy under normal environmental pressure, but if you put it in an energy vacuum, the shell breaks apart and releases the energy. For something with a weaker shell, like a pill, this happens naturally even under normal conditions, which is why they need to be sealed in jade bottles.” This was going to be a problem. I could try to have the System make the storage space energy-permeable, but I wanted to keep its insides hidden from the Earthly Dao. I didn’t know if it was possible to do both. Looking at things another way, if I kept the space as it was and found a way to pump the insides full of energy, I could make an environment that was extremely energy-dense. This ‘feature’ didn’t have to be a negative. I moved on to another question. “What about growing the space? We just need to pump energy into the spatial flame, and it grows, but if I want to make an extremely large space, is there any trick to grow it faster?” She raised an eyebrow at this. “How large a bag do you want to make? As a King positioned inside a Rank 5 Qi Gathering Formation, you should be able to grow one to an immense size with just a day or two’s work. Do you really need a trick for this?” “I...” What should I say? “I’m just interested in what would be possible.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “Are you thinking about creating a new Trial? I don’t know everything involved, but I do know that a King can’t make such a thing. To answer the question, you just have to set up a modified Qi Gathering Formation that sends its energy directly into the spirit fire. It’s tricky to get everything working right, but that’s what you got to do. However, you should know that this isn’t the difficulty when creating a Trial. The formation stones involved are insane, and I have no idea how to even begin creating those gateway arches.” That... that gave me a terrible idea for the future. I wouldn’t and couldn’t do anything about it for the time being... but in the future... She touched on a few more subtleties about actual spatial bags. I noted it all down but didn’t pay too much attention. I had the information I needed. After my lesson, I performed what was starting to become an end-of-life ritual. I secluded myself for a month and pumped all the energy I gathered into my spatial fire seed to expand my storage space. Using the Rank 5 pills and a suitable formation, the space grew at an incredible rate, and when I was done, it had a radius of nearly two meters and a volume of slightly over 30 cubic meters. I tried to figure out an easy way to increase the energy density inside the space, but I didn’t have much luck. One idea I had was to place a jade box inside a Qi Gathering Formation where there would be dense environmental energy. Then, I could seal it, transfer the box into my storage space, and open it, letting out the trapped energy. This seemed like it should have worked, but the results were underwhelming. The amount of energy that was successfully transferred in each move was minuscule. I had a few ideas for why that might be, but I didn’t want to spend time on the problem at the moment. I had other things to do, and this was a low priority. However, there was another idea I could try that was rather low effort. It may just be a way to set fire to my contribution points, but it also might lead to interesting results. I converted a large fraction of my accumulated wealth into spirit stones and proceeded to crush them inside my storage space. This released all of the energy they contained into the surrounding environment. The process made me feel like I was using a platinum-plated teaspoon to fill a bucket with liquid gold, but I could sense the ambient energy density increase by a significant amount. I would have to experiment more to see if this change had any meaningful impact on my ability to store things in the space openly, but that could be done later. For the moment, I would just keep storing everything in jade boxes. That being the case, I stopped worrying about filling the space with energy and turned to filling it with materials. With a significant amount of extra room for storage, I completely restocked my gold, spirit stones, and Rank 1 to 4 pills. While my space wasn’t infinite, I had more than enough room to store enough wealth to fund a kingdom, and I had every type of pill I could foresee needing, from cultivation pills to poison pills. I kept a few Rank 5 pills for possible personal use, but since they were low-quality, I didn’t care too much about them. I could potentially sell them for a bit of profit, but doing so would be problematic until I was a Martial King. If I sold them any earlier than that, it would signal that they had been given to me by my benefactor, and that would cause uncomfortable questions about why he would give me junk pills. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. After that, I stowed away several odds and ends, especially those useful in formations. I considered contracting someone to make me a Rank 5 Qi Gathering Formation plate, but I learned such things weren’t practical. Rank 5 formations were only usable in areas of high qi concentration such as the Earth Peak. In other places, they wouldn’t be any better than a Rank 4 one. In the near term, it wouldn’t be of any use, and in the long term, I would be able to make my own. My next stop was the sect’s Scripture Pavilion. I used nearly every contribution point I had left to purchase a variety of Rank 4 and 5 cultivation techniques. I also threw in a few formation, alchemy, and martial techniques that seemed valuable. The final cost of everything was, quite frankly, absurd, and the deacon in charge of the pavilion gave me the stink eye as he processed my purchases. “You know these will vanish in a month and you aren’t allowed to give them to anyone else, right?” I nodded and motioned for him to continue. The sect had the same rules as the Academy when it came to sharing knowledge. Unfortunately for them, these rules weren’t designed with someone like me in mind. With dozens of manuals to read through, I needed a little help to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes transcribing it. “System, improve my mental library and perfect reading abilities to Rank 5.” Purchase confirmed. Cost 99 million credits. 560,699,004 credits remaining. Affinities Mid Five-Star – Earth, Wood, Fire Peak Six-Star – Water, Metal Peak Seven-Star – Wind, Lightning, Light, Dark Peak Eight-Star – Karmic Energy Mid Eight-Star – Space Mental Library (Updated) Capacity – Rank 5 Perfect Transcription – Rank 5 Touch Reading – Rank 4 Comprehension Boosts (Updated) Professions: Formations – 500,000,000 credits Skills (Updated) Pill Appraisal – Rank 3 (Comprehensive) Affinities Mid Five-Star – Earth, Wood, Fire Peak Six-Star – Water, Metal Peak Seven-Star – Wind, Lightning, Light, Dark Peak Eight-Star – Karmic Energy Mid Eight-Star – Space Resistances Mental Effects (Cultivation Techniques) – 25,000,000 credits Mental Library Capacity – Rank 5 Journal – Rank 3 Perfect Transcription – Rank 5 Touch Reading – Rank 4 Comprehension Boosts Cultivation: Cultivation Techniques – 520,000 credits Qi Control – 20,000 credits Nurturing Disciples – 500,000 credits Professions: Alchemy – 520,011 credits Formations – 500,000,000 credits Herbalism – 20,000 credits Martial – 10,000,000 credits Social: Reading Emotions (True) – 25,000,000 credits Skills Enhanced Soul Growth – 20,000 credits Pill Appraisal – Rank 3 (Comprehensive) Technique Appraisal – Rank 3 (Earth) Language (Western Han)