Calculating Cultivation

We entered through three sets of massive wood gates built into a thick concrete wall that was the Flame Sect. There was also a wood covered pit between two of the gates. This had to be the biggest wall I had seen so far. It was as thick as two houses and at least ten stories tall. It was also built on top of a mountain.

The number of people that would be needed to siege such a location would be insane. This world did have trebuchets, since they were based off of wood and counterweights. But on top of the wall I noted trebuchets as well. With the height advantage, it would be insane to assail such a location with conventional armies.

“Does anyone actually attack or are the walls just for show?” I asked Vice Leader Tan.

“Cultivators are superior physically to normal people. If a group of cultivators looks to attack, they would rush the walls with scaling equipment or attempt to punch through them. That is why any self-respecting sect would build like we do. What does your sect do?”

“Arrays and formations. Even then it would be up to the elders to fight if there was a serious attack. Walls like these, while impressive mean nothing if you can fly to bypass them,” I replied.

“Flight, you know the secrets of flight? It is a legend,” the Vice Leader said.

“Perhaps that is one thing we can trade when I discuss things with your Sect Leader,” I replied, and the Vice Leader nodded. “I will say that you won’t be able to make the necessary arrays or formations, and technological flight will be tricky without metals or combustion engines. The lack of energy and metal prohibit such things.”

“Ah, that is true. But perhaps as a curiosity or something to be worked on in some of the Elder’s spare time.” We cleared the wall and entered the Sect itself. The mountaintop was quite large with the ground inside being at a higher elevation. I had noted that the tunnel through the wall was at an incline. The interior only had four stories from the ground to the top of the wall.

There were a cluster of buildings nearby right after we entered, but in the distance, I could see large fields growing a range of plants. I had also noted that the outside of the Sect was being farmed as well. “While it will probably never happen, we can last two years in the event of siege. But the primary concern is enemy cultivators, since we are in a good relationship with the Flame Emperor. His family is one of the founding families of the Flame Sect,” Vice Leader Tan explained. Ah nepotism at its finest with cultivators putting their relatives into key positions, like Emperor.

For another Empire to send an army all the way here would be massive. Wars between Empires was very rare. Normally it was Kingdoms jostling for power with their boarders and then making a claim for the ruling Kingdom and to be the new Imperial Capital. For two Empires to go to war was just too hard due to the distances. There were naval battles, but an actual land campaign was more about collecting up a lot of soldiers and then sending them all into the neighboring Empire and wishing them luck.

It did happen of course. With how big the Great World was, there was one battle going on somewhere every single day. Having a day of peace would be much rarer. Also, this was the calm part of the Great World, due to how difficult it was to grow things and the fact it had only been settled for thousands of years, not eons.

“Very well organized and the attention to detail is impressive,” I said as the carriage came to a stop in front of building with intricate painted columns out front, depicting towering flames, giving the appearance the columns were burning. Everything screamed wealth and power. Unlike the cities and government buildings, this building was designed to impress and humble whomever came here.

I followed Vice Leader Tan into the building while keeping a look out for anything with energy. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I noted the floors, walls, and ceiling were all intricately decorated with mosaics depicting cultivators of the Flame Sect battling monsters, other cultivators, and leviathans. We entered a large conference room and I counted sixteen people seated around a large rectangular table.

Seven on each side, with the person who could only be the Sect Leader opposite the entry way. Another Vice Leader was to his side and there were several braziers about the room, making it sweltering hot. It didn’t bother me at all, but it was interesting that they were doing a small power play like this.

“Leader and Elders, I introduce Senior Cultivator Yuan Zhou of the Heavenly Alliance and his disciple Fu Shirong,” Vice Leader Tan said and stepped to the side as I stepped forward. I removed my hat and set it on the table. These old men and a couple of women were too experience to gawk or express surprise at my different appearance.

“I am Leader Flame of the Flame Sect. I welcome you Senior Cultivator Yuan Zhou to our home, please be seated.” I took a seat and Fu Shirong stood behind me. Vice Leader Tan had explained how things would go up to this point. Fu Shirong was only present due my presence, otherwise he was nothing in front of this gathering. I insisted he be allowed to follow me, since I didn’t want to have to reexplain things to him afterwards. The Vice Leader made his way around to take his seat next to Leader Flame.

Which was clearly not his name, but he probably discarded his mortal name once he became leader of the Flame Sect. Probably a tradition of some kind.

“Thank you for the kind invitation, Leader Flame. I have come here to learn about your cultivation system and methods and to also look at this nexus,” I said. This time there was a reaction. There were several gasps and glares from about the room.

“Senior Yuan Zhou is far beyond the Soul Enlightenment realm and has entered the realm after that. I testify to his level of cultivation myself,” Vice Leader Tan said. Everyone turned to look at him in shock.

“Truly, you are so far above us, then why have you come to our humble Flame Sect?” Leader Flame asked.

“I use a different cultivation system than all of you and come from outside the Great World. I have traveled from the Edge and plan to continue to the Great Desert. But since I discovered human beings, however different we appear to each other and cultivators, I have decided to investigate how our cultivation systems and methodologies differ,” I answered.

“What lies outside the Great World?” I could hear the nervous quiver in Leader Flame’s voice.

“Reality is like a cake that is divided into layers. With abundant energy at the bottom and matter coming from the top. There are five layers in descending order Material, Mechanical Layer, Firmament, Astral Plane, and Chaos. There are bubbles of separate reality in these layers. Your bubble, the Great World, exists in the Mechanical Layer of reality. As for the names, that is what they are called by my seniors, their origins lost to history,” I answered.

There was utter silence at this as they realized that they were frogs living in a well. Finally after an entire minute Leader Flame spoke up once more. “And you arrived here? How? Will there be others?”

“I crashed here, with my transport. This place suppresses and drains energy to a massive degree. Even the energy inside a cultivator and from the surroundings. The ambient energy is about a twentieth of the energy that would normally be present in the Mechanical Layer in the background. This is low enough to be non-existent. There will be no follow up,” I said, confident in my ability to crush any betrayal. I spoke up again before they could ask me anything else.

“Now I have answered some of your questions, I am willing to trade knowledge for access. Some of my answers, like advice on crossing your bottleneck will be easier, if I understand your cultivation system.” That last comment increased interest by quite a bit and seemed to make the atmosphere much more pleasant.

“Very well. You will have full access to our library and the classes we give. I will also escort you to the nexus,” the Sect Leader said.

“Sect Leader, while Vice Leader Tan is trustworthy, I cannot agree to this. For someone to claim to be so far above us and open our doors, we must make sure no mistake has been made,” one of the Elders said.

“And what exactly are you proposing? You wish to fight him? To exchange pointers?” the Sect Leader asked. Everyone turned to look at the elder who spoke even me. I was curious what his demand would be.

“Yes. I wish to see how strong someone of his cultivation level is,” the Elder replied. I got up and moved. My sword was resting on his shoulder just as he was getting up.

“I think you need to sit back down for a while. Unless you wish me to demonstrate my martial prowess right now?” I asked. I could see the Elder visibly gulp even though his back was too me. It was an exhilarating feeling to be the senior and smack down uppity junior cultivators. If I was any more bloodthirsty, I should have removed his head for his insolence. He was lucky I was trying to be nice, like the kind of senior I appreciated interacting with.

“Ah, no. I withdraw my objection,” the Elder said, and I removed my sword from his shoulder and neck. He sat back down, and the Sect Leader stood up.

“An excellent demonstration. Come, I will escort you personally to see our library, training hall, guest quarters, and the nexus. Come, both of you,” Sect Leader Flame said. I put my sword away and followed him out of the meeting chamber along with Fu Shirong who was being quiet.

“I am surprised you didn’t remove his head for his insolence,” the Sect Leader said as I walked slightly behind him so he could lead the way, but not enough to show that I was being subservient.

“I treated him how I would like my seniors to treat me. Also, if I killed him, then the Elder’s family would get mad, then I would kill them, then you would get mad, then the other Elders would get mad, until I might have just killed everyone to start with and saved myself the hassle,” I replied.

“I will admit, it is a strange feeling being on the bottom of the hierarchy, if even for a moment. It is too easy for the mind to grow stale and withered,” the Sect Leader said. “But insight into the upper levels of cultivation is not easy to come by.”

“If you have any questions, I will do my best to answer them,” I replied, which was what the Sect Leader wanted to here. The old man didn’t care about the Flame Sect, but rather how he could extend his life by improving his cultivation. I was a gift from the heavens with information on how he might just do that.

Weak techniques and methods, he had no use for them. The nexus, probably not that useful for him anymore, if he was this desperate. Cultivators looked out for their bottom interest. No one would become the Sect Leader if they were warm and fuzzy. I learned this from Jiang Fengge, one of my former Masters and Sect Leader of the Cloudy Moon Sect. A Sect Leader was allowed to gamble, but never at the risk of the entire Sect.

Sect Leader Flame was clearly taking a gamble with me, but a safe gamble. He hadn’t intervened when that Elder had spoken up. He wanted proof of my abilities as well. These cultivators were so weak, they weren’t able to sense the difference in power between us. Still, I out classed them by so much it made no difference.

They could rush at me as individuals or togeather and the only one at risk would be Fu Shirong. Mortal weapons would not be able to strike me or harm me. I was too fast and too impervious. With crazy beings who I had no good frame of reference for, Yang Heng who was so far above me, it was nice to finally see improvement in comparison to other cultivators. They were trash tier cultivators, but they were still cultivators.

It finally felt that my hard work was being acknowledged after so long. I didn’t smile on the outside, but was quite happy on the inside as the Sect Leader showed me about. Where I would be staying, the mess hall where Elders would eat, the library, and the other important locations of the Flame Sect. He had even arranged for me to have his token to show if there was ever any trouble. It was made out of metal, and intricately shaped to look like a burning flame.

For all this stuff I wasn’t interested, but I couldn’t rush the Sect Leader without being really rude. He was showing me about like I requested, but I almost suspected he was dragging out the visit to the nexus in order to annoy me.

The nexus chamber was beneath the building we had met in. We descended deep into the ground and then I felt it. Energy, for the first time in a long time, there was energy in the air. I struggled to maintain control over my energy in my body as we descended.

We entered a large chamber with a pillar supporting the ceiling in the middle and pillars around the outside. Just like the building above, everything was intricately carved to show flames and cultivators. The lighting for the room came from small oil lamps that were tastefully inserted into wall slots along the entire chamber.

I looked around and spotted exactly what was causing all of this. A giant red and pink crystal embedded into the central pillar. It wasn’t emitting energy. Sect Leader Flame was quiet as I walked about the central pillar and looked about.

“These are naturally found?” I asked.

“Yes. But they are incredibly rare. You understand how it works? Already?” he asked.

“I do. The crystal isn’t emitting energy in the slightest. It is a very rare case of a natural array or formation, which seems more likely due to the complexity. A formation is combination of arrays, and I can see the intricate layering in the crystal. How intriguing,” I said quietly while I looked at the crystal closely. “How was it formed?”

“We have no idea. They are found by a Sect, which then forms a branch to take over the area. What exactly is it doing?”

“It is interfering with the artificial nature of the Great World by countering the energy draining that is occurring around its location and inverting it. It is hard to make out the exact symbols present, and several that I can see are unfamiliar. But it isn’t that complex and no parts of it are concealed,” I replied.

Unlike arrays and formations designed by cultivators, there were no traps or hidden symbols. I triple checked just to be sure, but there were no weirdly spaced gaps, or any useless sections that just needed one small change to become active. The entire formation was active and working, but in a very passive way.

I continued to walk around the crystal pondering how such a thing could form. “Has a Sect ever moved one of these nexus crystals?” I asked.

“It is recorded and passed on from Sect to Sect. If removed, they use their power, and only by remaining in one place for several generations will it build back up. In addition, there is very limited benefit to having multiple nexus crystals in a single point.”

“Do you know of a Cultivator Han?” I decided to ask, since that wandering cultivator brought up questions in my mind as to how he cultivated without a place like this.

“A scoundrel of the highest order. He raped one of the Elder’s granddaughters and was expelled from the Flame Sect. He had connections, which was why he wasn’t killed. Where did you meet him?”

“The Kingdom of Wu, at the edges of the Flame Empire,” I answered and the Sect Leader relaxed at that.

“Then there are no problems.” I was more annoyed with how he hadn’t told me the full truth about this place or his situation. If I ran into him again, he would not be long in the world of the living for deceiving me like he did. Even if it was deception by omission, I spared his life, and he repaid me with lies.

That was the true nature of any cultivation society, with every cultivator looking to gain an advantage of some kind. “You aren’t lying about moving the crystal?” I asked.

“I can show you the records. Each time a new Sect is formed, the Sect that is branching off passes on key texts to be preserved from our ancestors. While I cannot stop you, without this crystal we would be unable to cultivate,” the Sect Leader said.

“The energy in this chamber is half of what the Material Layer naturally has. The real value is in the natural formation. You can’t see or sense energy at your cultivation level, but it should be possible to replicate it and try variations. I am no array master, but I have quite a bit of experience over my life. One learns to pick up a thing or two,” I replied.

“If that were possible, it would be a discovery that would alter the entire course of the Great World. More cultivators could be trained,” Sect Leader Flame said.

“There is clearly a limit, since you said the crystals don’t stack. It is probably the natural energy of the Mechanical Layer, which by itself is almost nothing. The real trick would be to invert the array, to draw in more energy than the layer naturally has.” Before, I would have no idea where to start. This natural formation solved a lot of the mystery.

I also noted there were slight similarities to the symbols and designs methods of the Forever City, but that could just be convergent design principles and underlying symbology that shared a common root. It was impossible to say. I knew enough that I could work out what arrays and formations did, but knowing their history, or even trying to work out from base principles something like this would be impossible.

That was why I had never considered this a feasible possibility. The real trick would be to create a barrier of some kind, to condense the energy. Right now as a natural process, this was like an oasis in the desert. The water was evaporating off with no containment. That was exactly what was happening here.

Containing energy was the basis of arrays and formations. It was what I used to advance my cultivation in the earlier stages, to increase the pressure of energy around my body. While I might not have been able to design everything myself, I had looked over the designs. Then with my time in the Forever City and all its equipment, then the hover craft, I had gained a lot of practical experience over time.

Time continued to pass as I thought over the situation. This was a huge opportunity. “Good news, I won’t need to do anything to the nexus crystal but look at it closely. Some of the interior portions are hard to see and I don’t want to risk sending out my energy to check, since it could damage the crystal.”

“That is good to here. How can we assist you?” the Sect Leader asked.

“I need a place to work in this chamber and set up equipment. I will need to make array plates and carefully observe their effects. The real trick will be to make them active on a passive level and portable. I am guessing that your Sect mediates down here quite a bit?” I asked.

“We do. In order to advance our cultivation, we draw in the ambient energy to improve our bodies,” the Sect Leader answered.

“Which means you can’t leave, since you are tied to this place. Well, people mediating down here won’t bother me. But I will need to set up my equipment and ask that it not be disturbed. It could take a while to work out exactly what the nexus crystal is doing and creating a practical application based off of that,” I explained. If I was a master of arrays, then I could have come up with something instantly. Now I needed to take my time and do some trial and error.

It wouldn’t be pretty or elegant, but if I could create a portable field that allowed me to draw on my full energy, that would be a huge accomplishment. Trying to draw in more energy was not something I was that hopeful about. It was one thing to cancel out the effect, it was another to counter the effect that governed the Great World.

Then there was Yang Heng. If I could create something like this, I could rescue him. I really didn’t look forward to going back to the Edge of the Great World. It was a long trip all the way here and would be a long trip on the way back. But I owed him, his knowledge was immense, and he might have an answer to this place and to leave.

Also, the hover craft was there. If I could get it working, then my travel would be sped up immensely. Well the first thing was to figure out a solution, then I could worry about what I would do afterwards. For all I knew there might be an intrinsic property of the crystal itself that allowed it to counter the energy draining of the Great World.

It would be the high of hubris to think I understood how it worked after just looking at it. While these cultivators might not have any clue, I knew I was no where close to being an expert or at the top of cultivation knowledge. At least my time reading and learning in the Forever City had not been wasted. I could see Yang Heng’s face now that was trying to conceal its smugness at the very thought. I hated the Forever City, to admit anything good about the place was annoying.

“As for the Flame Sect, I need to look at the texts detailing your bottleneck. I think increasing the energy density would be the solution, it usually is, but that is something I would need to check.”

“Of course, and how much space will you require?” Sect Leader Flame asked.

“That area between these two pillars. I can let my apprentice mediate there and set up my equipment.”

“What equipment? Unless there is another carriage that hasn’t arrived?” I just smiled at that question.

“I have a spatial item, which I can use to store various items.” I waved my hand and pulled out my gun. The shock on the Sect Leader’s face was priceless. “Normally I don’t use it, because I have to use my own energy. But here in this room, I can get away with accessing my spatial item like I normally do.” I put the gun away.

“Your sword, that isn’t ordinary either?” he asked.

“It is made from metal imbued with energy. It would be labeled as a rank 5 blade.” I pulled it out and held it up. “It was given to me by my first master.” I then put it away. After that I settled into the Flame Sect.

I spent half my time reviewing the records they had in regards to cultivation and the other half working on a formation to copy what the nexus crystal was doing naturally. It seemed completely improbable that such a formation could naturally form. There were clearly some higher-level shenanigans going on.

Thankfully paper and ink were cheap, since I used both of them in large quantities to draw out test formations and observe their effects one after another. The biggest issue I soon discovered was that the nexus crystal was built in three dimensions, a three dimensional formation, which increased the complexity.

Then there were the symbols in the crystal and the hard to see interior portions which made it even more challenging. Even with a working example in front of me, it wasn’t a matter of copying everything over. I would bring the formations I drew and leave them in the nexus chamber, regularly checking in on them along with my apprentice.

Fu Shirong kept mostly the same schedule as me, just with more sleeping. He would divide his time between the library and the nexus chamber. While I was studying the cultivation of the Great World, I was holding off from drawing any more conclusions until I had studied the available literature. Unfortunately, the later parts tended to devolve from the technical into more flowery descriptions.

After twenty days of work, I wasn’t ready to admit defeat, but this project was a lot more difficult than I had first assumed. The best option to discover what was happening would be to break the crystal open and look in the interior. But that would make an enemy of the Flame Sect if I did that, and without a place with energy in the environment, my work would become that much more difficult.

There were records of attempting to make more crystals, by taking a small portion of the crystal and putting it in water with various minerals to encourage it to grow. Nothing worked apparently. The cultivators of the Great World had no idea how these crystals formed. If a sect did have information, they weren’t sharing.

But I doubted any of these people had cracked the secret. While the Lifewards regions had more people, there wasn’t a huge leap in the number of cultivators. My personal guess was that the crystals might have been something that was present during the initial creation of the Great World.

Perhaps markers to help with the construction. There was no distinct pattern to their location, but they were spread out. Cultivators would often search areas where one could be while out completing tasks for the sect. There was also the rumor that the person who discovered a nexus crystal would be able to break through to the Soul Enlightenment Realm.

That could very well be true. The problem was actually finding a crystal and how rare it was. The Flame Sect’s crystal was only discovered since this location had been chosen to have a city built. The crystal was discovered during the excavation of the mountain.

There was no cave before. The cultivators who came, carved the entire cave out around the crystal and founded their sect here. It wasn’t even directly under the center of the mountain either. While I would like to say it was completely by chance, there was the strong possibility of a higher power intervening in some way, or nudging things in a specific direction. With energy, almost anything was possible.

The best and only option to replicate what the crystal was doing would be to make a giant cube of metal in layers, and then carve out the intricate formation into each layer before stacking them up. The good news was that I could make metal with one of the Ek’s machines without having to use my own energy.

I just tossed in stone and dirt, and out spat trash metal bars I could use. For these cultivators it was the height of technology and energy. Something that would grant unlimited wealth. For myself it was a useful tool. For Yang Heng, it was a piece of trash.

The Sect had metal forgers and they took the metal bars and made me thin metal sheets, as thin as they possibly could, along with the various tools I would need to etch arrays into the metal itself. In exchange I gave them a couple of metal bars for their work.

I could only imagine that if I left the machine here and let them use it, they would keep it running non-stop and make everything out of metal to show their wealth and power. They would change their name from the Flame Sect to the Metal Sect. Even the Sect Leader was intrigued by my machine. I didn’t let them run it non-stop, since I didn’t want to risk damaging it. There was no way to replace the machine if it broke or suffered a failure of any kind.

While it was incredibly robust, I would rather not take that chance. I would pay for the help from the metal workers of the Flame Sect, but I wasn’t about to hand over the machine. Thankfully they didn’t ask, but I knew that the wealth of the Flame Sect jumped a large margin from my metal making.

It was nice to have an actual project to focus my mind on instead of traveling, fighting, or cultivating. Well, I was always cultivating with how I was focused on retaining my energy, but I felt like I had a path forward, no matter how difficult it might be.

The Flame Sect while skeptical had gradually warmed up to my presence. It wasn’t like my being here was a big secret, so everyone knew from the Elders to the disciples. When I handed over metal and people saw me making metal from dirt and rocks from my machine, there was a huge leap in acceptance. Instead of vaguely hostile glares, the members of the Sect sometimes smiled.

I didn’t much care for their personal opinions. A frog in the bottom of the well would not be able to help me that much except tell me what it was like at the bottom of the well. It was far more important that I focus on developing a working formation that would cancel out the suppressive and draining effects of the Great World and whatever mechanism was behind this place.

The metal cube would be above the size of a compact car by the time I was done and weight an incredible amount. This wasn’t something that was going to be easily replicated. The amount of metal going into the project was massive. Enough to equip an army with metal swords. The sheer amount of wealth that was going into the project would have bankrupted an Empire if I didn’t have my metal making machine.

While it might have been possible to use stone, wood, or some other material, they didn’t have the rigidity that I needed. That was why metal plates were often used as the primary medium for formations and arrays. It was just much easier to work with metal than any other material.

Concrete, while sturdy, would flake and chip. It had strength as a whole, but it would struggle to maintain discrete edges while I carved out symbol after symbol, unlike metal. The etching process was incredibly tedious and I could trust no one but myself to do each layer. While I had written out the designs, to keep everything as compact as I was doing, required my level of precision and strength in combination to etch out the metal.

By the time I started working on the inner portions, my tests had paid off. I had confidence that I would be able to produce some kind of result. Once I had a strong result from my massive metal cube, I could iterate on the design a couple of times and look to compact it to something that I could carry on my back.

While I would be able to lift the metal cube, I would be greatly off balance and I would have to adjust how I moved. Carrying around a large block of metal would draw way too much attention to myself. Better to come up with a design that worked and then improve on it.