The Undying Immortal System

A year after starting everyone down the path of Soul cultivation, I received an important letter from SuYin. She had passed her training and had earned the right to become the lord of one of the Verdant Forest Sect’s outlying cities. As she only had a few months left before she would be raised to Martial Lord, she planned to return to the Wastes for one last visit.

When the time came, Bao and I went down the mountain to meet her in the small, nondescript village where she grew up. Once she ascended to Martial Lord, it might be an entire lifetime before could see her family again, so she wanted to take this opportunity to say goodbye.

After explaining her situation to her parents, we all worked together to move SuYin’s entire extended family to a small city north of Mount Jiang. I wasn’t yet comfortable moving a large number of mortals to the mountain all at once, but I also wasn’t comfortable with her family being so far away that I couldn’t help them if they ran into trouble. Moving them to a nearby city and giving them a basic communication formation so that they could call for help if needed was the best solution I had.

I only had a few of these communication formations left from my time in the Nine Rivers Sect, and I had found that they were nearly impossible to make without a Martial King’s will-lock, so I had been hesitant to hand them out to my clan members or their families. I only did so now because I felt that it was the only way to give SuYin true peace of mind. Once she rose to Martial Lord, she would be locked out of the Wastes and unable to help her family in any way. If she wasn’t confident that they were safe, she might face difficulties maintaining the mindset needed for proper cultivation.

After moving her family, SuYin stayed in the Wastes for nearly two full months, but eventually, she had to leave. Before she did, she pulled me into a side room from a private discussion.

“Master, do you remember Young Master Wang?”

I had to think for a moment. “The guy who recruited you from the Verdant Fields Sect?”

SuYin nodded. “Yes, he… I… Once my training to be a city lord was complete, he came to talk to me. He… He told me why he was so insistent on recruiting me.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Aside from you being a skilled herbalist?”

“That… It’s more… He told me why he wanted to recruit a skilled herbalist.” SuYin paused briefly before continuing. “Master, have you heard of the Nine Rivers Sect?”

I nodded slowly. “Yes, but they only accept Martial Grandmasters.”

“That’s… not entirely true. The Verdant Forest Sect, all emperor-level sects, can send Martial Lords to join the Nine Rivers Sect as long as they are younger than 60 years old. If a person they send does well, then the sect is rewarded. If they fail, then the sect is punished. So, it’s not something that happens unless the elders are confident in a person’s success.”

“So, Young Master Wang recruited you because he thought you would be a good fit for the Nine Rivers Sect?”

SuYin shook her head slowly. “Not exactly… He’s the one that’s been chosen to join them. The elders have been grooming him for that role ever since he was first blessed. I… He wants me to be part of his retinue. To join the sect under him and help him succeed.”

I nodded in understanding. It was the same system that the Yellow Orchid Academy employed. The only difference was that instead of focusing on Grandmasters, the Verdant Forest Sect was focused on Lords.

“Master… He wants you and Bao to join him as well. Since you disappeared, he hasn’t been able to contact you, so he asked me to make the offer in his place. What should we do? Should we join him?”

I looked at her and gave her a soft, comforting smile.

“I need to stay here. I can’t go with you, but you don’t need to worry too much. The Nine Rivers Sect has its dangers, but you are well equipped to handle them. You just need to make sure to come back and visit me in a couple hundred years. As for whether you should join Young Master Wang or not, I can’t tell you. You know him better than I do, so you will have to rely on your own judgment.”

SuYin dropped her head, and it looked like she was on the verge of crying. The reality of her situation, of being entirely cut off from everyone she knew for hundreds of years was starting to sink in.

“What about Brother Bao? Can he come with me?”

“I… don’t know. We can talk with him and explain the situation. The past few years of soul cultivation have helped stabilize him, but I don’t know if he’s ready for the challenges he would face in the sect. Also, I haven’t told him about the situation with the time loops and memory orbs, so he probably won’t want to leave. Bao is still a bit too open at times, and I’m worried he would let too much slip.”

“I understand, Master.”

As a tear rolled down SuYin’s cheek, I stepped forward and gave her a hug.

“Remember, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. If you want to stay here, spend time with your family, and help me with my projects, you can. There’s a lot you can learn from the Nine Rivers Sect, but there’s no rush. You’ll have all the time you need.”

This seemed to calm her down, so I opened the door and pulled her outside.

“Come on, let’s go talk to Bao.”

In the end, as I had guessed, Bao chose to stay in the Wastes. He was broken up at the sight of SuYin leaving, but at the same time, he wasn’t willing to trail behind her.

Before she left, SuYin handed me a banner of white silk.

“If you need to meet with me after I become a city lord, show this to my guards. I’ll make sure they know to bring you to me right away.”

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A year after my meeting with SuYin, NiangBa came to me and requested permission to head out on another expedition. He had spent the time since the last one in deep cultivation and had been able to reach Peak Master with a Peak-Yellow technique. With this extra strength, and with the knowledge he had gained from his previous outing, he was far more prepared this time.

Six months later, his group returned to the clan in good health and carrying the carcasses of several Peak-Rank 2 demon beasts.

This made me slightly confused. It was strange to encounter so many high-level beasts in the Wastes. When I asked them about it, they admitted that they had ventured into the Rising Sun Empire. This worried me, but the territory at the edge of the Wastes wasn’t too dangerous. Small villages were still able to survive out there, after all. Still, I gave the warning to be careful in the future.

The next year, Liang brought a group of his enforcers to meet with me. The sight of NiangBa’s triumphant return had filled them with jealousy, and they wanted a chance to go out and prove themselves.

Three months later, Liang stumbled his way back to the mountain. Only two of his companions had been able to return with him, the other two had been killed by an enemy Grandmaster.

I was upset at the loss, and I wanted to chastise the group for provoking a powerful foe, but I held back. The loss of their companions had already left them feeling bitter, and anything I said would only make the situation worse.

I could punish them for their mistakes, but that would only stop others from following their example in the future. After the loss of their friends, any punishment I gave them would at best be meaningless and at worst be counterproductive.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

The fact was simply that nothing I could do, aside from a System-based intervention, could fix the root of the problem: NiangBa was a better cultivator than Liang. He was able to build a more powerful cultivation base, and he was more skilled with fighting techniques. Liang would just need to learn to accept that there would always be someone better than him.

I could tell him all of this, but I knew that it wouldn’t help. I would just have to do my best to mitigate the damage until he accepted it naturally.

The next year, thanks to the rapid expansion brought about by my enhanced space affinity, I was able to fully expand my storage space into a complete cylinder with a height of 500 meters and a radius of 250 meters. With this core complete, I shifted the spatial fire seed to begin expanding its radius while leaving its height locked in place.

Finally, I was ready to start turning my storage space from an enlarged storage bag into a proper world.

Along the bottom of the space, I constructed several large domes made of Rank 4 metal and lined with jade. Once my clan took up residence here, I would no longer be able to leave my personal possessions just lying about. I planned to use these domes as my treasure vaults. Trapped deep underground and sealed in Rank 4 metal, I would be the only one able to access their contents.

Next, I ventured out of the Wastes and visited the territory of the Flowing Mountain Sect.

There, I found a few desolate mountains with no one nearby. Using my wood qi, I sliced these mountains into large chunks and placed them into my storage space to serve as a bedrock. I wanted to fuse these chucks together into a larger whole, but that would have to wait until after I had access to earth qi again.

Unsure of exactly what kind of landscape would be ideal for growing medicinal herbs, I simply copied the topology of the land south of the Wastes and added various layers of gravel, sand, and dirt to cover the bedrock. I would eventually want to take Bao inside and get his opinion on how to improve this, but it was good enough for the moment.

These layers of stone and soil covered most of my storage space, but I chose to leave the center of it empty. The clan was spending a lot of time and effort carving out Mount Jiang, and if possible, I wanted to preserve it for future generations. Pulling an entire mountain into my storage space was a bit beyond my current capabilities, even with my expanded space affinity, but by cutting it up into smaller pieces, it should be manageable.

In total, 150 meters of earth sat between the bottom of the space and the topsoil. This would hopefully be enough for people to use for whatever purposes they might have while also leaving plenty of sky above them.

While taking a last look at the landscape where all this soil had come from, I could only wonder what the Flowing Mountain Sect would think when they found a giant hole in a remote corner of their territory.

With the ground complete, my focus shifted to the sky.

I had previously tasked the formation specialists in my clan to work on ways to simulate a sky, but their results had been somewhat mixed. At first, they had naively thought to just use a formation to make the entire ceiling blue, but this didn’t work out so well. The excessive blue light just made the entire room blue. They tried to fix this by adding a ‘sun’ that shone with a bright white light, but the effect they were able to achieve was dubious at best. Our clan needed better illusionists.

Still, their experiments seemed to confirm my earlier suspicions. I was somehow going to have to find a way to attach a formation to the ceiling of my storage space. I just had no idea how I was going to make that happen.

During these years, while my focus was on improving my storage space, I also spent a lot of time on alchemy experiments.

I had hoped that my breakthrough with the recipe for the Strengthening Pill would allow me to quickly unlock all the secrets of beast alchemy, and it had, to an extent, but there was still so much that I didn’t know. Each new ingredient represented a whole new world of possibilities, and each one took time and effort to understand.

In four years of work, I had only discovered a single new recipe.

Using a flame chicken’s gizzard stones, I was able to concoct what I dubbed the Rank 1 Feasting Pill. This pill allowed a person to extract wu directly from the food they ate. The effects of this pill only lasted for 24 hours, but the total amount of energy one could gain from it was far more than what a Strengthening Pill could provide.

The only drawback was that the total wu a person’s body could contain was extremely limited. The Feasting Pill allowed one to draw more energy into their body than the Strengthening Pill, but their body wouldn’t be able to contain this excess energy, and it would all dissipate into the aether.

For ShouLi, though, the Feasting Pill was revolutionary. It allowed her blessing to draw in energy from food directly, and none of it was lost. This allowed her to ‘advance’ far more rapidly than she had by relying on Strengthening Pills.

However, I still wasn’t sure what this energy was doing. In energy vision, her skin was glowing with power, but it didn’t seem to do much. It might have further affected her appearance, but if it had, the changes were too subtle to notice. As a young Martial Master, she retained the looks of a youthful 16- to 20-year-old, and that wouldn’t change much until she passed the age of stagnation.

It was likely that this additional energy had some kind of defensive effect, but if so, it was limited. Any attack that could break through ShouLi’s Master-level qi defenses wouldn’t be stopped by her blessing-enhanced skin. So, in the end, I could only wait and watch as things continued to develop.

While my progress in some areas was limited, I enjoyed this slow life of watching my clan develop.

With each year that passed, we welcomed dozens of new cultivators into our ranks. This put a bit of pressure on our leadership structure, and after talking things over with the council, we implemented a few changes.

I officially promoted ShouLi, Liang, Mo, NiangBa, and the twins to inner elders. Then, I promoted sixteen others to serve as outer elders. The top five floors of Mount Jiang were renamed the ‘First Ring’ and remained under the control of the inner elders, and the outer elders were divided into two groups with each group gaining control of a set of five floors each, the Second and Third Rings.

This gave us a leadership structure capable of managing nearly a thousand cultivators. Not only would this be sufficient for several more years, but we would also be able to expand and modify it as needed to keep things organized for the foreseeable future.