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I had hoped that the profit from a few Rank 5 pills would have covered everything, but the ziethanite was more expensive than I had planned on, and as a Lord 1, I could only make Rank 5 pills if I had the matching peak four-star affinities, so the ones I could make were limited to those that only required pure earth-based herbs, and the demand for such pills was lacking.

Therefore, I had to spend countless hours locked away in an alchemy workshop in a mad rush to pay for everything that needed to get done. Thankfully, I had Yan to keep everything running smoothly. He had a solid sense of when I would want to be involved in a decision and when he could make a decision in my stead.

During what little free time I had, I wanted to research the formation designs that Jin had hinted at, but I always found myself pulled in several different directions. I needed to help design the city’s wall and defensive formations, I needed to create formations for Jin ZiHan’s herb farm, and I needed to inscribe basic pest control formations to protect the city’s food supply. A lot of these were tasks that should have been delegated to contracted specialists, but Meng LuYao was too busy working to restore basic city services to deal with them. So, while I wanted to improve the citizens’ affinities, that project fell off my radar until I had more time to dedicate to it.

After two months of frantic work, it was time for the sect’s Exam, and I hadn’t even hinted at trying to learn Rank 4 talismans. I could only hope that the elders from the Lightning Peak were paying attention to that.

Right before I headed to the Exam site, I made my purchases.

“System, I want all the knowledge of Rank 4 talismans that could be expected from an expert on this continent.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 100 billion credits. 539,543,100,650 credits remaining.

That was a bit of a blow to my credit reserves, but it was money that needed to be spent.

“System, give me the standard mental reversion point for when I exit the Exam. After I leave the Exam’s Trial, return me to the way I was right before I entered.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 100 million credits. 539,443,100,650 credits remaining.

I had spent a sizable number of credits, and I didn’t have much to show for it. Since I was going to be working on those formations soon, I might as well add in a purchase that would actually help me with my real goals.

“System, bump my formation comprehension up to 100 billion credits.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 99 billion credits. 440,443,100,650 credits remaining.

Satisfied, I left NanLu City and headed for the Exam.

When I stepped out of the Exam, the head scribe stared at me with wide eyes.

“You… you’ve been promoted to a grade 3 core disciple. Congratulations, Lord Su.”

I lowered my head slightly, took my new identity jade, and left. On the way back to NanLu City, I checked my journal.

No torture.

That seemed to confirm one of my suspicions. The sect was interested in body modifications. They had been ‘torturing’ me to study the truth behind my transformation into the guise of Chen WuJing.

This made me worried for Jin ZiHan and Cai XiaoYu, but as long as whoever was running this place only thought they had a worthless ‘beauty’ blessing, they might not look into things too deeply. If they were paying attention, though, they might have noticed how the girls’ skin was improving with each advancement. Something far more than a simple beauty enhancement was at play.

As for myself, I was keeping detailed records of the flows of energy within their skin. I had only attempted to mimic them once, and that had been a painful experience. So, for the moment, I was content to watch and keep a record of my observations.

At any rate, while this was all interesting, I had too much else to concern myself with at the moment. Even if studying these blessings unlocked the trick to becoming one of the sect’s chosen, I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted out of this life. I already had more than enough to keep me busy without adding on several more layers of complications.

Instead of poking at this problem further to see what came out of it or purchasing ridiculously priced information from the System to assist me in solving the mystery, I just noted the information down in my journal and returned to the work I cared about.

With my return to core disciple status, the next task was to make all of NanLu’s citizens cultivators.

To make my people cultivators, there were four things I needed: a way to gather essence, a way to store essence, a place to gather essence from, and a way to transfer it to my people.

Jin had given a huge lead on number three, and her hints suggested I needed to talk to LiTing about a solution to number two. However, since LiTing was busy with other tasks, I focused on problem number one.

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I needed a way to collect free essence in the environment and purify it into a state that would allow it to be absorbed into a person’s body. This seemed difficult at first glance, but after only a few seconds, I realized how blindingly simple it was. I would have easily been able to come up with the solution even without my recent comprehension boost.

One of the first formations I had learned was a filtered Rank 1 Qi Gathering Formation. It gathered energy from the environment, passed it through a filter inscription, and trapped the condensed and purified qi within a shielded area.

An ‘Essence’ Gathering Formation would be the exact same thing. I just needed a different filtering inscription.

Designing a brand-new filter for an entirely new energy type was far beyond my capabilities. Even though my comprehension of both cultivation techniques and formations was at an insane level, I didn’t have the theoretical knowledge of energy structures to even begin understanding how to possibly design a filter from scratch.

I didn’t need to.

Jin had said it. I needed to transform my technique manual into a formation. I had essence cultivation filters for earth, metal, and lightning. Even if I couldn’t figure out the other six on my own, I could still use the filters in these techniques as a base for creating Essence Gathering Formations for their respective elements.

Redesigning a filter from a cultivation technique to work properly inside a Qi Gathering Array was a bit tricky, but the enlightenment I received when making my cultivation technique significantly improved my understanding of metal and lightning essence filters. Since Jin had been the one to point me in this direction, I decided to start with designing a metal essence formation.

With the help of the knowledge from the enlightenment, I was able to complete an initial design within a single day. Then, I spent another full week refining and improving it. When I was done, I examined my creation with my formation analysis ability.

Rank 1 Essence Gathering Formation (Metal)

Base Material: Granite

Base Material Quality: 109% of standard reference

Energy Throughput: 107% of standard reference

Energy Efficiency: 74%, 114% of standard reference

…

Satisfied, I went to look for LiTing.

When I asked LiTing to help me design a formation to trap essence in a way that would allow it to be easily transported back to the city, she just stared at me blankly. The entire notion was foreign to her, and she didn’t have any idea how to even begin approaching the topic. However, that all changed the moment I showed her the white bar Jin had given me.

She studied it for several minutes, probing it with her qi. Finally, she handed it back to me.

“Yeah, that should work. Why did you come to me when you already had an answer?”

I blinked. “What?”

She pointed at the white bar. “That’ll work. No clue how much essence it would take to give someone an affinity, but that should be able to hold a good amount of it.”

I couldn’t help but rub my forehead in a bit of frustration. “Please, back up. What do you mean? What is this bar? Jin just gave it to me and told me to talk to you about it.”

“Oh… It’s glucina. It’s… like a metal? It’s like rust. Glucinium rust.”

I nodded. “An oxide.”

Thinking through her words triggered my language ability, and I gained a better understanding of her meaning.

“It’s beryllium oxide. Alright. I can understand that. How does that help?”

She tilted her head slightly, my words somewhat unfamiliar to her, but she didn’t let that stop her.

“Glucina… It doesn’t want to accept metal qi. It is metal, but it… rejects the energy. It takes a lot more work than normal to push the energy inside, and once you do get energy in there, it’s even harder to get it out. At the same time, glucina can store a lot of energy. So… yeah. You don’t have to worry about formations or anything like that. Just find a way to push the essence into that bar and you’ll be good.”

She hesitated and then corrected herself. “It’ll only work with metal essence. Glucina isn’t great with the other elements.”

I looked at the bar and then back up to LiTing with a smile. “Thanks, that\'s a huge help.”

Beryllium oxide might only be able to store metal essence, but finding a stone that could serve a similar role with earth essence shouldn’t be a problem. I had no idea where to even begin looking for something to store lightning essence, so I didn’t bother. My citizens could find homes on the Earth and Metal Peaks, they wouldn’t need to bother with the Lightning Peak.

With all the pieces falling into place, I spent another few weeks designing two new formation plates. The first was basically an Essence Gathering Formation, but instead of transferring the energy into a shielded bubble, it shoved it into a bar of beryllium oxide. A second formation then pulled the essence out of the bar and shoved it into a standard bubble.

During this design process, I also bumped the formations up to Rank 3 to make the process faster, but I wouldn’t know how quickly they would be able to gather essence until I was able to test them somewhere that had free essence in the environment.

According to Jin, the best place to do that would be somewhere near JiaQi’s hometown. I wanted to make the trip myself, but JiaQi and Yan had noticed troubling signs from a couple of the surrounding cities. It was looking like an attack might be on the horizon, so it was an inconvenient time for me to leave the city.

Instead, I relied on Meng LuYao to hire an outer sect disciple to make the journey in my place. Of course, I wasn’t crazy enough to tell him anything about what I was trying to accomplish. I just gave him a formation plate with a bar of beryllium oxide hidden inside and told him how to activate it.

After that, I stopped focusing on the essence situation and gave the city’s defenses my full attention.

Tie Yang had done a wonderful job of getting started with building a wall and installing a defensive formation, but it was an enormous task, and the kyanrolite could only be delivered so quickly.

Leaving Tie Yang to slowly construct the city’s permanent defenses, I focused on establishing a series of smaller temporary formations around the city’s perimeter that could protect us until his job was complete. Instead of crafting high-quality powerful defensive shields, I made hundreds of smaller formations that were quick to assemble and deploy. This gave us layers of protection that would slow the advance of any enemies to a crawl while we either dealt with them or waited for our real defenses to come online.

After that, I threw in some rather nasty offensive formations that would punish anyone who attempted to destroy my brand-new herb farm or the smaller villages within the city’s aegis.

When the first attack arrived, I was surprised to find that it came from the south, toward the center of the kingdom.

A host of a hundred Martial Disciples, a score of Martial Masters, and a dozen Martial Grandmasters all dressed in black robes descended on NanLu. When they arrived, they perched themselves on a small hill to the south of the city.

A Peak Grandmaster walked forward and used a wind qi technique to amplify his voice.

“Citizens of NanLu City. It is time for you to pay tribute to AnFeng City. Do not resist.”

The moment he finished speaking, I triggered a formation that lit up bright lights scattered throughout the city. This was to signal my citizens to remain within the walls until the situation was dealt with.

Once that was done, I sat back to see how my formations fared against a few Grandmasters.