Chapter 175: Life 68, Age 43, Martial King 1

Words : 1568 Updated : Oct 13th, 2025

Out in the wilderness with students who knew nothing about soul cultivation, maintaining the appearance of the ‘Great Teacher’ hadn’t been too difficult. I had several libraries worth of books at my fingertips, and I could use them to address any questions or concerns my students raised. This allowed me to maintain a pretense of knowledge and understanding that I didn’t truly possess. With everyone having come to Profound City, they now had access to nearly all the same books I did. They might not be as quick at searching through them to find relevant passages as I was, and they might not have read as many of them as I had, but little of my knowledge was unique. I didn’t consider myself some great sage who could pontificate on weighty matters with nothing but my own reasoning. If I wanted to join LiTing at that school and maintain my image as the ‘Great Teacher,’ I needed to rely on knowledge from greater minds than my own. To do that, I needed to spend credits, but how many credits would I be willing to spend on such an endeavor? The importance of faction building in the sect was crystal clear, and this school was the closest thing I had to a faction. How many credits would maintaining it be worth? I had already sunk 2 billion credits into soul cultivation in this life, and doing much more than that was questionable. There was still a lot that I needed to buy if I wanted any chance of pushing the limits of Martial Emperor. So, before doing anything else, I needed to buy everything I considered non-negotiable. I needed to make all the purchases that I had been holding off on because they weren’t yet entirely necessary. Then, once the essentials were taken care of, I would be in a better place to decide how much I could spend on helping me with the school. “System, increase my alchemy and formation comprehensions to a total of one billion credits each.” Purchase confirmed. Cost 1,499,479,989 credits. 4,983,184,599 credits remaining. “Permanently increase my Water and Metal affinities to mid five-star.” Purchase confirmed. Cost 700 million credits. 4,283,184,599 credits remaining. I wanted to increase all my basic affinities to peak five-star, but that would have been another 5 billion, so I settled on evening them all out at mid five. On its own, that wouldn’t be enough to let me concoct Perfect Rank 5 pills, but I already had a potential solution to that problem. “System, permanently increase my space affinity to peak eight-star.” Purchase confirmed. Cost 1.25 billion credits. 3,033,184,599 credits remaining. “Permanently increase my karmic energy affinity to peak seven-star.” Purchase confirmed. Cost 160 million. 2,873,184,599 credits remaining. I considered boosting my karmic affinity one step higher, but at a cost of a billion credits, I didn’t know if it was worth it. I hadn’t seen too much value in karmic energy affinity aside from it letting me work with more powerful forms of karma at lower cultivation levels, so I held off. Deciding how to best spend my remaining credits was difficult. Where would they have the most effect, and should I save them for later in case I needed them as an Emperor? I considered the various options and finally came to a decision. My focus was on making the most I could out of this life, and one option held possibilities the others didn’t. “System, increase my comprehension of cultivation techniques to a total of one billion.” Purchase confirmed. Cost 999,480,000 credits. 1,873,704,599 credits remaining. I wasn’t willing to improve the rate of my soul growth since it was better to have it grow slower, but two more purchases held potential. I just wasn’t sure how much. “Broaden my comprehension for ‘nurturing talents’ to a more general teaching comprehension. Then, boost my qi control and this teaching comprehension to a total of 100 million credits each.” Purchase confirmed. Cost 199,480,000 credits. 1,674,224,599 credits remaining. Since I would be focusing on teaching the disciples of the school, I considered pushing that one even further, but I didn’t think it would do any good. One of the problems I had found with these comprehension boosts was that they were limited by the information available to me. Without more or better knowledge of teaching methodologies, boosting my comprehension any further would have a limited effect. I could try to research such things myself, but that would take time and effort I wasn’t willing to spend at the moment. After thinking through my previously purchased abilities, I felt satisfied with where they now stood. Improving my library would be nice, but it was in no way essential. I could either store high-Rank books in my storage space or just pick them up again in my next life, so immediate upgrades there weren’t overly important. Still, it wouldn’t do to spend everything now only to find out I forgot about something essential, so I needed to retain some credits as a contingency. Using this new weapon, I quickly advanced far enough to raise my earth affinity to mid four-star, and I was making solid progress toward increasing it even further. I didn’t know if Emperor Shen’s mind was as sharp as Yan’s, but by this point, he had to have a solid guess at why I was insistent on cultivating the earth essence instead of just absorbing it like normal. I had hoped this might lead to him being more generous with the stuff, but after taking him as my ‘master,’ he never spoke to me again. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. It seemed we both got what we wanted out of the deal, and he might have decided to leave well enough alone. --------------------------------------------------- Not too long after I finished studying my new books and had gotten a solid sense of how I could improve the school, LiTing came to see me. “Teacher, I need your help. There’s been some trouble at the school, and I can’t handle it on my own any longer.” “Tell me what happened.” “It’s... Hao MuChen.” I stared blankly. “Who?” When I showed no reaction, she clarified. “Hao MuChen... Lord Hao?” That was a name I hadn’t heard in years. “He’s causing trouble again?” “He’s been able to pull off a splinter group from our school and is using them to compete with us. He’s looking to destroy our reputation as the premier soul cultivation school in the city.” “But... Why? Why would he care? Didn’t Ning ChenKun handle things? Why would he return to bothering us after all this time?” I had known the school was having difficulties, but I hadn’t known they were coming from Lord Hao. I had made it clear to LiTing that I was available to help, but she had wanted to try and take charge of things personally, so I didn’t involve myself in petty politics. I had only looked at the school from a holistic perspective. This forced LiTing to need to explain what was happening in more detail. “Since both of us are working for Ning ChenKun, the School of the Great Teacher has been absorbed into his faction. He’s sent people to protect it and has treated it as part of his territory. At first, that helped us, but now Lord Hao is looking to use the school as a front in his war against the Ning faction.” “War? Why are they at war?” “Lord Hao and Ning ChenKun have both advanced to King and are preparing to ascend to Earth City. They’re using this war as a competition to score points against each other before that so they can improve their standing in the sect. Our school is just a small part in this much wider conflict.” I nodded in understanding. “What do you need me to do? Is there going to be a battle?” She shook her head. “The factions are proving their skills in martial combat elsewhere. We just need to prove ourselves in soul cultivation. The School of the Great Teacher has become a popular destination for anyone who needs to travel the Path of Soul to reach Earth City. Anyone trained by us will feel beholden to us and will defend us if we are ever in danger. This silently increases the strength of the school and the strength of ChenKun’s faction. We need to prove the School of the Great Teacher is superior to whatever training Lord Hao is providing.” I considered the situation and nodded. Ning ChenKun had been dismissive of Lord Hao’s clan. That should mean they didn’t have access to much information beyond what was available in the Academy and the sect, giving us a massive advantage. I gave LiTing the most confident look I could muster. “That... shouldn’t be a problem. I think I can deal with this problem.” Then, I changed into solid white robes with black trim and allowed my face to take on a poor mimicry of Emperor Li’s granite expression. I became the ‘Great Teacher.’ “Let’s go.”

Chapter 175: Life 68, Age 43, Martial King 1

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