The Undying Immortal System-Chapter 337: Life 77, Age 74, Martial Sovereign 1
Back in my new cultivation chamber atop the Summit of the Nine Rivers Sect, I extracted a strand of spirit fire from the Eternal Grove Fire and constructed a stone lamp for it to sit within. Then, I inscribed the bottom of this lamp with a Qi Gathering Formation to feed it energy.
Once everything was up to my standards, I pulled this lamp into my inner world and placed it beside the bed where Liang was resting as his body worked to regrow his limbs. Grand Elder Zheng had said that this fire wouldn’t be able to help humans in any way, but maybe without the interference of Heavenly and Earthly Daos, that would change.
Even if it didn’t, I still had to try.
After silently wishing Liang a speedy recovery, I leaned back against the wall of my cultivation chamber and thought through what I needed to do next.
There were dozens of different goals that I could pursue, from designing my own version of the karmic energy storage formation to attempting my hand at Rank 7 refining to finally learning a bit about gu keeping. There was a lot that I could do, but what did I want to do?
Before I could ascend to Martial Spirit, I would first need to travel to the Central Continent. Making that trip without first swearing an Oath to the Nine Rivers Saint would be tricky, but after this life, I would likely have a hundred trillion credits to work with. With any luck, this would be enough that I could just have the System teleport me there.
Was that what I wanted?
In the past, so many of my actions had revolved around advancing my cultivation base and growing stronger. The main reason that I had started my clan when I did was because it had been a necessary step in my path to Martial Sovereign.
Now, though, for some reason, focusing on cultivation no longer seemed as important as it once had. I still wanted to advance, and I still understand the value of cultivation. It just… didn’t seem as urgent as it had before. I no longer felt the need to bend all of my activities toward advancement. I could… do more. Was this the result of cleansing my soul with fire?
So, then, what did I want?
To learn. To understand. I wanted to take my time and gain a deeper understanding of where I was and where I was going. Ascending to Martial Spirit would be nice, and it would certainly generate a good number of credits, but it wasn’t necessary. There was still a lot more I needed to learn about Ranks 1 through 7. I needed to take a step back and learn it.
So, what was my goal?
I wanted to live a series of long lives where I ascended to Peak Sovereign and learned everything I could along the way.
This would also give me the time I needed to continue growing my inner world. Once it became a Rank 5 Small World, I would be able to carry an entire team of Sovereigns with me as I traveled, whether back through time or to the Central Continent. At that point, my clan and I would be fully prepared to leave our mark on this world.
So, what did I need to do now? What would allow me to reach Peak Sovereign in a repeatable, safe manner?
More than anything else, we needed to be able to take the Sovereigns down swiftly and painlessly. If we hadn’t given Zhuge YeDu and Li NeiTang an opportunity to escape, so much of what had happened afterward could have been avoided.
This gave me my mission.
There were two formations that I needed to master: an Anti-Portal Formation and an Anti-Soul Lamp Formation that could simultaneously trap multiple souls.
Previously, when I had talked with Shen about redesigning the Anti-Soul Lamp Formation, he had said that it would be the work of centuries. Well, now, we had the centuries we needed to get it done. With my Martial Sovereign cultivation base, my Earth-Rank earth-element fire seed, and the several tons of raw Rank 7 stones that we had looted from the Sovereigns’ treasuries, redesigning a mere Rank 7 formation should be child’s play.
Still, redesigning these formations wasn’t something that I could do on my own. I needed help.
Shen had a wealth of knowledge and experience, and he had a strong blessing supporting him, but as a Martial Emperor, he couldn’t interact with 4-dimensional space. If I wanted his help in understanding and reconstructing Rank 7 formations, I needed to find a way to fix this.
Grand Elder Zheng BoQin had requested that I rebuild the Sovereign Clans and raise new Sovereigns to oversee them. So, I considered making Shen the new Sovereign of the Jiu Clan. However, rebuilding the Jiu Clan would take far too long. I wanted Shen to ascend now. So, I went to see Ning ZeKun.
The Ning Clan didn’t have a presence on the Central Continent, so, unlike the other Sovereign Clans, the Saint allowed the Nings to keep multiple Sovereigns stationed on the Nine Rivers Continent. Ning ZeKun had just never found anyone worthy of his limited supply of Sovereign-level energy.
After discussing the situation and making a long-term deal regarding the treatment of the Ning Clan within my inner world, Ning ZeKun agreed to provide Shen with the karmic energy he needed to advance.
Before agreeing to this deal, I had considered the possibility that it might come back to bite me in the future. Unfortunately, I hadn’t considered the possibility of it biting me immediately after I agreed to it.
Less than a day after we reached our agreement, Ning ZeKun used a portion of blood essence to induct Shen into his clan. Then, he gave Shen a sizable portion of Sovereign-level energy. Once the energy was in his hands, Shen entered seclusion and was able to advance to Martial Sovereign without issue.
The problem was what happened after Shen’s breakthrough.
Shen walked smugly out of his cultivation chamber, used a portal to pop directly in front of me, and stuck out his hand. “Ready to hand over my fire seed?”
I blinked at him.
He gave me a shit-eating grin. “I believe I purchased an Earth-Rank earth-element fire seed from you. That was some time ago, I must admit, but I am now prepared to accept delivery. So, where is it?”
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My jaw dropped open.
Shen didn’t say anything else. He just stood there with one hand extended.
I sighed and reached into my inner world. “Fine.”
Losing the seed was painful, but with the Expanding Realms Fire in my soul, I couldn’t make much use of it at the moment anyway, and everything I needed to do could be done with its spirit fires. Of course, those wouldn’t be able to imbue my world with any Laws, but that was… fine. I could wait. After a few more cycles, I would be drowning in Earth-Rank fire seeds. Having a brand-new, talented, experienced, blessed Formation Sovereign to help me with my experiments was far more important than a measly fire seed.
Over the next several years, I spent nearly all my time studying formations with Shen and Mo. Without any foundational texts on 4-dimensional formations to study and only having a few examples to work from, our progress was rather slow.
During this time, Liang made a full recovery. The vital energy from the Eternal Grove Fire might have helped him heal faster, but mostly, his recovery was due to the tireless efforts of RuLan. By the time she was done with him, Liang was able to exert the full power of a Rank 6 body cultivator.
Unfortunately, though, it was only his physical body that had recovered. His energy body had been destroyed, and not even the spirit fire’s vital energy had been able to bring it back. So, when it came time for the council to begin stepping down and transferring their positions to the younger generation, Liang was the first to volunteer. A few months later, he set up a dojo in Chang’an to help teach the youths of our clan the basics of martial arts.
For my clan and me, these were peaceful days filled with study and relaxation. Elsewhere, however, things weren’t so sanguine. It hadn’t taken long for the continent’s Kings and Emperors to learn that all the Sovereigns had died, and tensions were starting to rise.
When the situation was finally at the tipping point, Zhuge Yan paid me a visit. It was finally time for me to execute my duties as the de facto head of the Imperial Alliance.
While the continent’s southern territories contained a number of different empires, aside from the Brilliant Sun Empire, none of them had left much of an impression on me. One was much the same as any other. I did recognize the name of our destination, however. The Cold Moon Empire. It was the place where I had purchased my very first Profound-Rank spirit fire.
Yan showed me a picture, and I imprinted it onto my mind. Then, I opened a portal to the place that he had shown me, and we stepped through, into the audience hall of the palace of the Cold Moon Emperor.
No one was present when we arrived, and it wasn’t difficult to see why. All the furniture in the hall was broken, and the floor was covered in blood stains.
Yan raised his head and spoke into a formation plate that made his words reverberate throughout the entire palace. “Pan LiHua, you have violated the rules of the Imperial Alliance. Present yourself for judgment.”
Yan’s words echoed through the palace for nearly an entire minute.
When the words faded without triggering any response, I was starting to think that we might have to do things the hard way, but then, an evil cackle arose behind us.
After a few seconds, the source of this cackle teleported somewhere off to our left. Then, it teleported ahead and to our right.
After this, a series of portals opened, and ghostly figures dashed between them.
Finally, an overly large portal appeared in front of the throne, and an old woman stepped out. Her hair was a bird’s nest of steely gray tangles, her fingernails were broken and bloody, and when she gave us an evil smile, I saw what appeared to be a piece of raw meat wedged between her teeth.
She let out a hideous laugh. “Little boy, little boy, you dare to lecture me? I was an Emperor when you were still sucking at your mother’s teat. With your Sovereign gone, you are nothing. It is finally time for the Pan Clan to assume its rightful place amongst this continent’s Sovereigns. Leave now, before I teach you a lesson in respect for your elders.”
I looked at Yan, and he nodded. “There’s no question. She advanced to Sovereign with foreign energy.”
When I turned back to the old woman, an evil aura rippled out from her. “This is the true–”
I tapped the air, created a portal, and shot a tongue of Immutable Mountain spirit fire through it. The woman was dead before the fight had even started. After her body hit the floor, Yan sent out his own spirit fire and erased it from this world.
Task complete, I tapped the air, and we returned to the Summit.
While executing the newly ascended Cold Moon Sovereign had been simple enough, it was only the start of our troubles, not the end. Upon hearing that most of the Sovereigns had been killed, various Emperors had decided that they now had license to ascend. Everyone believed that they would be the exception, but every single one of these breakthroughs had resulted in monsters who slaughtered their entire family.
This made me a bit depressed, and it drove home the point that the Sovereign Clans had been blocking people from ascending for a good reason. Without a way to properly purify one’s karmic energy, breaking through to Sovereign was a terrible idea.
Something else that this trip did, though, was remind me of an important debt that I still needed to repay.
Du XiongMing had not only given me his spatial fire seed, but he had also helped to restore my sanity after my disastrous life in the Eight Flower Kingdom. It was past time for me to repay him.
I tapped the air to create several small portals.
My memory of my time in the Brilliant Sun Empire had faded significantly, and I couldn’t remember the details of the place clearly enough to make a portal directly there. I could have gone to Yan for help, but I instead chose to try using a series of aerial views to find my target.
After locating Brilliant Sun City, I hunted through the palace until I found a cultivation chamber where an old man was carefully carving a simple Rank 1 formation with nothing but a small bead of water. On its own, this formation wasn’t anything impressive. However, the precision with which the old man was inscribing it spoke of years of effort in honing his craft.
Punching the air, I created a large portal and stepped through.
I cupped my fists and bowed my head. “Formation Emperor Du XiongMing, greetings. I am Su Fang.”
He lifted his eyes to look at me. There was a deep weariness in the gesture. Then, he looked back down at his work. “Don’t worry. I know the rules.”
Was I too late? Had Du XiongMing already become disdainful of this life?
“Emperor Du, would you be interested in acquiring the opportunity to ascend to Martial Sovereign?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Like I said, I know the rules. I will not seek to ascend on my own, and I have no desire to chain myself to the whims of others.”
“Emperor Du, my offer is genuine. I am giving you this opportunity as a way of repaying a debt that you do not remember. You will not need to swear any Oaths, and you will not be required to work for me. If you are willing to do so, then I will make it worth your while, but this is an offer with no strings attached.”
The old man turned and gave me a look filled with disdain. “Pies don’t fall from the sky. Even children know that.”
I stared him down and matched his disdain. “There is a truth stone right there on your workbench. You took it out the moment I appeared. What is the point of such an action if you refuse to trust what it tells you?”
A small grin tugged at the corners of Du XiongMing’s mouth, but he did his best to remain stoic. “The truth holds far more danger than lies ever could. When the stone turns black, I’m talking to a swindler. When it stays white, I’m talking to an assassin.”
I reached into my soul and pulled out the seed of the Expanding Realms Fire. “I have no need of your fire. I already have my own. The offer is sincere. I need help. I owe you a debt. Allowing you to help me is my way of repaying this debt.”
I punched the air and created a portal. “No rush. If you decide not to join me now, then I’ll just have to try again in the future.”
After I stepped through and returned to the Summit, I left the portal open in case Du XiongMing wanted to join me. Based on his reaction, I gave both possibilities equal odds.
In the end, he decided to take the risk. After all, what did he have to lose?
After accepting Du XiongMing into the ranks of the Ning Clan and helping him ascend, almost all of the Sovereign-level karmic energy that Ning ZeKun had squirreled away over the years was gone. While this caused ZeKun a bit of heartache, I was more than willing to accept his pain in return for the help of another Formation Sovereign.
Once all the formalities were settled, I introduced Du XiongMing to Mo and Shen, and the four of us got to work.
