Whenever I died, my memories were compartmentalized and stored away in my soul. Then, as time passed and new memories accumulated, the thoughts and feelings of past lives were slowly covered over, causing me to not think too deeply about them unless I actively tried to do so.

Upon waking up in my tiny house in the Su Clan, I kept my eyes shut and focused on the memories of the life that had just ended, willing them not to fade. I needed to understand what had happened to me. I needed to understand what had gone wrong.

My soul was in tatters.

My mind had broken in two as the desires of my soul clashed directly against the powerful mental effects of my cultivation technique. With my body having been bolstered by the effects of my Lord-level cultivation base, my soul had barely been able to fight back enough to engineer my death.

Why had that happened? I had been subjected to powerful mental effects before, but this time…

As memories danced through my mind, I couldn’t help but think about everything that had happened with M–

My soul began to collapse even further.

I shifted my thoughts to create a barrier in my mind and block out certain memories. I wasn’t ready to confront them. Not yet.

I took a deep breath and did my best to refocus.

If I only counted gains and losses, this last life was a huge success. I hadn’t really lost anything–not permanently. Instead, I had gained hundreds of millions of credits, advanced my skills in two separate professions, and formulated ideas that could change the entire continent. This should have been a moment of celebration.

But… that life had been a complete mess.

This wasn’t just about what had happened with… Her. It was about how I had completely lost control of myself and my actions. By the end, I had been entirely incapable of making any choices that didn’t align with the dictates of my cultivation technique. The more time I had spent in that life, the more I had focused on cultivation, alchemy, and finding a method for acquiring the spatial fire seed.

When had everything started spiraling out of control?

I thought back to when I had created my dantian. I hadn’t been careful, and I had made mistakes, but I had never been able to take a step back and force myself to fix them. I hadn’t noticed anything too terribly wrong back then, but the errors I had made at that stage had laid the groundwork for my mental instability. And, while nothing I had read mentioned such a thing, ascending to Martial Lord had likely done something to amplify this effect.

I could cultivate better–I needed

to cultivate better–but would that be enough? Even when a person cultivated a technique perfectly, it would still affect one’s mind. Even if I cultivated perfectly, would I be able to control myself under the amplifying effects of a Lord, King, or Emperor-level cultivation base?

When I had purchased that cultivation technique from the System, I had requested it to do three things.

The first was to enhance my personability. In retrospect, this had clear limitations. My social skills had always been limited, and the cultivation technique only did its best to force me to act in what I thought would be an appropriate manner. My own shortcomings, however, stopped this from being overly effective.

When addressing my ministers, I did my best to be what I thought was required–to be ‘lordly.’ When I talked with Her, I did my best to appear to be a friend. When I talked with the various clans, I tried to be a good negotiator. These attempts had all been flawed by my inability to handle these situations properly.

This was most evident in how I had dealt with Queen Duge. I had been told not to reject her, but how was I supposed to do that? She was the type of person who wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. How was I supposed to deal with a request that I could neither accept nor refuse? I didn’t know how to manage such a situation, and my inability to do so sent me down a dangerous course.

However, while this part of my cultivation technique had caused problems, they were, ultimately, minor. The real source of my trouble had been the other two aspects of my cultivation technique.

I had designed that technique to be exactly what I had thought I wanted: dedication and focus. I had wanted to be able to dedicate myself to a task and then focus on it while ignoring any distractions. I had never survived more than 80 years after a restart, but cultivators were supposed to be able to live for hundreds. A Lord was supposed to have a 400-year lifespan. If I were going to live for hundreds of years, then dedication and focus were important traits that would help me keep myself on track.

Unfortunately, my cultivation technique had done exactly what I had wanted.

I had set myself the goal of getting the spatial fire seed. At first, I hadn’t had any real understanding of how to do this, so my efforts had been somewhat undirected. But then, I had latched onto the dual approach of becoming a Pill King and presenting the Brilliant Sun Empire with my ideas for a pill factory. After this idea crystallized, it was all that I could focus on.

While I did get myself a bit torn up by the end, I had to acknowledge that I wouldn’t have achieved even half of what I had if it weren’t for the cultivation technique continually forcing me to improve. I had to be grateful that it had helped me in this regard. Even after everything, I couldn’t help but feel that having those impulses pushing me forward had been beneficial.

However, this didn’t excuse the fact that I had completely lost control of myself. The more I dedicated myself to the task of getting the fire seed, the more the dedication from the cultivation technique reinforced itself. The longer it went on, the harder it was to focus on anything that didn’t directly relate to acquiring the fire seed. At the end, I wanted to die–I needed to die–but I wasn’t able to kill myself. Anytime I tried to think about doing so, I was snapped back to thoughts of how to push forward and acquire the seed. Convincing my mind that a fatal course of action was the best way to acquire the seed had been my only recourse.

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I didn’t know what the right balance was, and I didn’t know how to achieve that balance. I wanted to have the ability to put myself into a state of hyperfocus, where I could ignore everything around me, but having it completely out of my control was unacceptable.

No matter what, though, I could not let cultivation techniques control me anymore. I need to find a way to control them, instead.

With the general whys and wherefores firmly planted in my mind, I tried to lower the wall protecting myself from what happened at the end.

My soul shuddered.

I had read Her

letters to SuYin. That meant they were now part of my mental library, and they would stay there for as long as I lived–forever. I would never be able to forget what She wrote in them. I could put them out of my mind, but they would still be there, waiting for me.

I didn’t understand my relationship with Her. Even after reading the letters–even after everything–I still felt scared of Her. I could believe that She didn’t want to harm me. I could believe that She–the woman–only wanted a friend and companion. But I was still afraid of Her blessing.

I could appreciate what SuYin had said about how it affected Her–about how it drove Her mad. I could even accept that it might not be as omniscient as I had convinced myself that it was. What I couldn’t do was convince myself that it was benign. No matter what, one truth remained above everything else. I never knew what She was thinking. I only know how She appeared to act.

That thought made me laugh. I only knew how She appeared to act. I didn’t know what She was thinking. Was SuYin any different? Were the people from the Hu Clan? Were my ministers? How well did I really know what anyone was thinking? All I saw were the masks they wore. Everything else was only a guess.

Did people like me? Did people want to help me? Throughout everything, I’ve always assumed the worst about people. I had always assumed they just wanted to take from me. So, I began to focus on what I could take from them.

Elder Mu in the Twin Mountains Sect. After he had renounced his position as my nominal master and transferred me to the Eyes, I had viewed him with suspicion. Even before that, though, I had viewed our relationship as purely mercantile. Was that fair? What if he was only doing what he thought was best for me?

What about Senior Sister Jiao? When we first met in the Twin Mountains Sect’s Pill Hall, we had been friends. After I was drafted into her faction, though, I couldn’t help but feel that our friendship had been nothing but a ruse, and I treated her as nothing more than a random business partner I barely knew.

I treated everyone as if they were only mercenaries looking out for their own interests. In doing so, I became what I thought they were.

I needed to be better.

Taking everything into account, I decided to make two purchases.

First, I needed to purchase something that I had put off for far too long. I had convinced myself that I would be able to control the mental influences of cultivation techniques if I used them properly. I had convinced myself that, if I had the perfect cultivation technique, with the exact mental effects I wanted, then being subjected to those effects wouldn’t be so bad. These were lies that I could no longer keep telling myself. I needed a real solution.

Long ago, I had tried to purchase a cultivation technique that wouldn’t have any mental influences. Then, when the System had told me that this wasn’t possible, I had completely given up on the idea and instead focused on overcoming such effects through personal improvement. I had accepted my susceptibility to cultivation techniques as a personal failing.

This may have been true, and there might have been a ‘proper’ way to overcome a technique’s effects, but I couldn’t continue with the status quo. I needed to change.

“System, I want to purchase a resistance to the mental effects of cultivation techniques that will not lessen their effectiveness. I want to purchase as much resistance as possible for 25 million credits.”

Mental Resistance to Cultivation Techniques. Purchase confirmed. 175 million credits remaining.

I didn’t know how much ‘mental resistance’ 25 million credits would get me. It was possible that such a purchase would barely have any effect at all. I didn’t care. I needed to do something. I at least needed to feel like I was doing something.

The second purchase I made wouldn’t help me cultivate, and it wouldn’t help me become more powerful. It would, however, help me learn to better understand and interact with the people around me.

“System, I want to purchase an aptitude for learning to read other people's thoughts and emotions–a comprehension boost for social skills. I want it to help me learn to understand how people feel. I want it to help me understand the true thoughts of someone, even if their emotions are suppressed or controlled, whether by a blessing or some other factor. I want this to at least help me with anybody who doesn’t have a blessing specifically guarding them from being read in such a way. I want to purchase as much comprehension as possible with 25 million credits.”

Increased social comprehension. Purchase confirmed. 150 million credits remaining.

I had spent a quarter of my credits on two purchases that would not directly help me advance, but they were things that needed to be purchased. I could worry about becoming a better cultivator, becoming a better Lord, becoming a better alchemist… I could worry about these things later. For now, I just needed to be a better me.

I still had more credits to spend, but I was in no hurry. First, I needed to figure out where to go from here.

What should I do? What did I need to do? What did I want to do?

I didn’t want to jump back into the grind of trying to become the best cultivator in the world. Part of me just wanted a simple life. I wanted… I wanted to be able to relax–to take some time for myself. At the same time, though, I wanted that fire seed. I had spent so much time and energy trying to get it. I had already paid such a huge price to acquire it. I couldn’t just let it go.

However, the idea of going to Brilliant Sun and setting up a pill factory made my tattered soul shudder in agony. It was something that I would need to do eventually, but… later.

I thought through the paths in front of me. Most of them caused my soul to painfully convulse, but not all of them. There was no reason to rush toward the fire seed. Instead, I could lie low, relax, and heal while learning more about my target. I could enter the imperial household as just a random, inconspicuous guard.

If the royal family was filled with cultivation-mad cultivators, then such a position would be incredibly dangerous, but only to my body–not to my mind. If everything worked out, though, I would just need to stand around and look imposing as the world passed me by. Either way, I would gain valuable knowledge.

With my course decided, I next needed to figure out how I would get to my destination. There were thousands of kilometers between me and the Brilliant Sun Empire, but the thought of going to the Blue Wind Pavilion… The thought of running into a young girl at its entrance… I couldn’t handle that. I had to do something different.

“System, how much would it cost to teleport directly to a discrete spot in the capital of the Brilliant Sun Empire?”

Cost 26,725 credits.

In the past, that amount would have been an impossible dream. Now, it was a rounding error.

“Confirm.”

Purchase confirmed. 149,973,275 credits remaining.