From the plaza in front of the elders’ audience hall, the vast grassland to the west of the mountain was laid out before me. A sliver of this land had been turned into a lake for the creatures of the Abyssal Depths, but the majority remained an untouched wilderness.

After accepting the role of Palace Master, I had visited this plaza more than once, taking in the sights as I did my best to chart a safe course through the remainder of the life in front of me. This day, however, was different. This day, I hadn’t come here to admire the views. Far away—in the north, south, and west—large plumes of dust hovered over the landscape.

“Elder Sarnai, have you been able to get any more details about what we’re up against?”

“No, Palace Master. The Martial Spirits have been forbidden from any further interference, and the nearby Sovereigns are all now busy preparing to defend their own holdings. None have reached out to us with any further updates.”

“How much longer do we have?”

“The first wave will arrive in less than two hours, with the brunt of the tide arriving in another three. According to the initial reports, the Rank 7 beasts are all near the rear, urging the weaker beasts onward, but it’s impossible to know if they’re still there.”

I nodded with a grim smile. “Very well. Just make sure everyone remembers their roles. This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for. We can’t let it go to waste. Understood?”

Elder Sarnai cupped her fists and bowed. “Yes, Palace Master.”

The Saint of Tooth and Claw might not have liked that an alchemist in the Heroes Domain was developing a bunch of new pill recipes, but until recently, none of my activities had directly touched upon his interests. The Flower Strengthening Pills were only valuable to qi-based urgamal, and they only used ‘ingredients’ from wu-based urgamal—not demon beasts.

My shift to developing recipes for humans and spirit fish, however, changed this. Now, not only was I working to strengthen his enemies, but my actions had also caused the value of beast carcasses to surge, making people far more eager to hunt them down. So, with the Saint’s ascension having significantly weakened the Temple, the demon beasts were now frothing at the mouth as they plotted my death.

Even without the protection of the Temple, though, I wasn’t entirely undefended. Several other Saints still had a vested interest in keeping me alive. They just couldn’t act with as much impunity as the Temple. There were agreements and accords that they needed to follow.

In short, the rules were thus:

The Palace of the Herb Sovereign was a Rank 7 force. Therefore, no one at Rank 8 or above was allowed to attack it, and as long as I stayed in the Palace, no Spirits or Ancestors were allowed to portal in and assassinate me. At the same time, however, Spirits and Ancestors were also barred from protecting me in any way. If the Saint of Tooth and Claw sent a force against me, I could only rely on myself and the support of other Sovereigns.

While having such strict rules for warfare was a little strange, it was the only way to prevent Ancestors from teleporting to random low-level sects and annihilating everyone in sight. Permitting such acts would have only led to the extinction of all life on the continent.

So, if the Saint of Tooth and Claw couldn’t send a high-level demon beast to assassinate me, how would he go about ensuring I met my untimely end? For other Saints, the answer would have been different, but for the Saint of Tooth and Claw, the answer was simple: a beast tide.

As Palace Master, it was my duty to ensure that my Palace suffered as few losses as possible in this attack, so the moment the first wave of low-level demon beasts came into view, I activated our defenses.

The roots of wood qi that wove through the grassland began working in reverse. Instead of sending energy to the Palace, they started pulling energy from the Palace. Then, whenever a demon beast came into range, they erupted from the ground to crush it.

The Palace only had a limited pool of energy to draw from, so normally, using it on these low-level beasts would be considered extremely wasteful. Most Palace Masters would, instead, use their guards to take care of these initial waves. I, however, had a different strategy in mind, and I could not allow what few warriors the Palace had to exhaust themselves so soon.

While the roots of wood qi successfully obliterated hundreds of demon beasts, this did little to stem the tide. These low-level, mindless beasts were being driven onward by an instinctive fear of what followed behind. So, as minutes turned into hours, the roots of wood qi could only keep up their tireless work, killing demon beasts and absorbing their carcasses into the ground, providing energy that would allow the grasslands to flourish in the years ahead.

By the time the bulk of the beast tide had arrived, our qi reserves were running rather low. I could have used my hoard of spirit stones to augment them, but instead, I deactivated the roots and focused everything into the Palace’s defensive barrier.

If an intelligent commander had been attacking me with a well-trained army, my strange behavior might have given them pause. This, however, was a tide of frightened demon beasts. Pausing wasn’t in their nature.

I nodded to Elder Sarnai. “Do it.”

“Yes, Palace Master.”

With a shaky finger, Sarnai tapped on the stone that she had been holding in a white-knuckled grip, injecting it was a thread of qi. This caused a series of tiny formations to activate, crushing the thousands of pills that we had placed throughout the grasslands.

In an instant, what had once been a sea of demon beasts was transformed into a whirling maelstrom of weapon energy that cut down everything in sight. As blood flowed like rivers, staining the lake of the creatures from the Abyss a dark red, several powerful howls echoed across the battlefield.

My eyes locked onto the nearest source of these howls, a golden lion that stood unharmed amidst a field of broken and dismembered bodies. Without pausing for even a second, I used all my will and intent to quickly create the tiniest of portals. Then, I dumped a dozen nine-patterned Rank 6 attack pills right on top of the beast’s head.

After I repeated this process to take down two more Beast Sovereigns, any that remained chose to flee.

Ignoring those that had escaped, I opened three much larger portals to retrieve my downed targets before they could do likewise. These beasts were heavily injured, but being powerful Rank 7 demon beasts, they were far from dead, and given enough time, they would be able to recover. Therefore, after breaking a few more of their bones and ensuring they were well and truly unconscious, I used a portal to send them to a cave deep beneath the mountain, where they would be able to assist me with my experiments.

Looking out across the bloody grasslands, I couldn’t help but smile. This was the third time that I had stood atop a mountain as it was swarmed by invaders, but this was the first time that my side was the one to emerge victorious.

The beast tide wasn’t over, but capturing the three Sovereigns had broken its spine. With the help of a few more attack pills, the Palace’s guards would be able to clean up anything that remained. However, their task wasn’t to kill these beasts. This beast tide was an important source of ingredients, and we couldn’t allow any of these valuable resources to go to waste.

Without a high-level wu-based healing pill, we couldn’t regrow the limbs or organs of the Rank 7 beasts, but we could use them as a source of high-Rank blood. With any luck, this would be all we needed to develop a couple of novel Rank 7 pills.

To prevent them from using portals to escape, these beasts were placed in cages within my conference room. If the Saint of Tooth and Claw or any of his Ancestors decided to rescue these beasts personally, the formations on this room wouldn’t be able to stop them. However, the agreements between the Saints would, hopefully, deter such an action.

The only thing was… these Beast Sovereigns were ‘people.’ Having ascended with karma, they were as smart as any human, and unlike LuLu, they had even learned to speak. After learning this, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of keeping them chained up in a dark room and routinely draining them of their blood.

This was the only way to develop Rank 7 beast alchemy, though, I shoved these thoughts aside and did what I needed to do.

That said, before trying to develop novel Rank 7 pills, I first needed to learn to make a few of the more common ones. This alone took several more years of effort, but thanks to the help of the Pill Sovereign from the Abyssal Depths, I was able to master the basics of manipulating the multidimensional structure of Rank 7 medicinal energies. I would still need a significant amount of time and resources to make anything decent, but after several millennia of stagnation, I had finally taken another step forward.

Along with the advancement in my alchemy skills came an improvement to my alchemy affinity. Sensing slight changes to lower-level affinities was somewhat difficult, but after making more than a dozen low-quality Rank 7 pills, I felt the world shift as I gained a low three-star alchemy affinity. After that, concocting Rank 7 pills became significantly easier.

While further improvements to my alchemy skills were important, I didn’t want to squander what time I had remaining within the Palace. So, instead of spending all my time in my workshop, I used my authority as Palace Master to requisition a few herb fields and began an in-depth study of Central Continent herbalism.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

With no actual Herb Sovereigns in the Palace, learning what I needed to advance my skills to Rank 7 and beyond was out of the question. However, Elder Sarnai was more than happy to share everything she knew about Rank 6 herbalism.

Additionally, while there weren’t any other affinities that the Palace could help me raise, after a short conversation with my contacts in the Abyssal Depths, several new lakes were dug in front of the Palace, each of which was filled with some special type of water. By rotating between these pools once every day, I was supposed to be able to gain a two-star water affinity. For that to happen, though, I first needed to make a purchase.

“System, raise my latent talent for water by 100 credits.”

Purchase confirmed. Discounted cost 50 credits. 40 credits remaining.

That would probably be enough, but not knowing exactly how latent talent translated to affinities, I decided to go one step further.

“Add on another 39 credits.”

Purchase confirmed. 1 credit remaining.

From here, I began spending several hours each day meditating in these pools of water. While I couldn’t do much alchemy in these pools, I could spend this time getting up-to-date with the goings on of my inner world and channeling an endless stream of spirit stone energy into the Expanding Realms Fire.

When my existing planes reached their limit, I added four new ones, clockwise from the ‘dark’ planes. These would eventually become the Plane of Light, the Plane of Darklight, the Plane of Woodlight, and the Plane of Dark Woody Light. However, as I didn’t have any plans to initiate a Tribulation in this life, I left these planes completely barren.

Once these new planes reached their limit as well, placing my world at the very peak of Rank 4, I replaced the Expanding Realms Fire with the seed of the Immutable Mountain Fire, allowing it to generate a bit of extra qi for the world’s residents.

Shortly after I turned 297 years old, I received a message from the Temple requesting my attendance at Elder Yargui’s ascension. Initially, I didn’t think too much about this. The next day, however, another letter appeared on my workbench, accompanied by a large jade box.

————

Fang,

Don’t attend Yargui’s ascension ceremony. It’s a trap. Factions from both the Temple and the Willow Domain have allied with the Saint of Tooth and Claw to stop you from developing pills for non-urgamal. If you leave the Heroes Domain, you will never be able to return.

Also, start looking for refuge outside of the Palace. Once all the old Ancestors are gone, I won’t be able to do much to protect you.

Mandakh

P.S. This Gift was supposed to be passed on to the Bloodline I joined when entering the Temple. However, something tells me that it would do more good in your hands.

————

When I cracked open the jade box, the soft green glow of a Heaven-Rank fire seed poured out from it. Upon seeing this, I immediately slammed the box shut and shoved it into my inner world. If word of this seed got out, no ‘agreement’ would be enough to save me.

Taking Mandakh’s words to heart, I immediately began preparations to evacuate. However, while Mandakh had only suggested seeking refuge elsewhere, I decided to seek it elsewhen.

First, I went to the Palace’s storerooms and grabbed every herb, seed, and spirit stone in sight. This included the Rank 5 and 6 demon beasts that we had taken captive and were routinely draining of their blood. In other circumstances, I might have had some hangups about robbing the place blind. However, if the Temple was planning to betray me, I didn’t see any reason to be courteous.

Next, I visited Emperor Chan and, without explanation, handed him a memory orb. While he was more than a little worried about giving me access to all his memories, he had known me for long enough to have an idea of why this was important.

Considering the Gift Mandakh had given me, I would have liked to have given him a memory orb as well, but sadly, circumstances didn’t permit such a thing.

Finally, I visited the conference room that was buried deep beneath the mountain, slaughtered each of the three Rank 7 beasts we had captured, and pulled their carcasses into my inner world. Then, with the room’s formations hiding me from view, I began pouring Sovereign-level karmic energy into my core.

When rebuilding my energy body after my ascension to Martial Sovereign, I had used pure Su Clan karmic energy in my core’s construction. So, as I poured more and more energy into it, my core stretched and distorted, doing everything it could to stay intact. Under the strain of all the karmic energy that was stored within the Plane of Woody Earth, though, it was forced to give.

First, one strand of lace snapped. Then, another. Seconds later, my core was ripped apart by a powerful explosion, annihilating my energy body in the process. However, over the next several hours, the karmic energy that had comprised my body and core began to pull everything back together.

Not knowing how long it might be before a powerful entity decided to check in on me, I didn’t wait for this process to finish. As soon as it looked safe, I started pulling out every remaining strand of Sovereign-level karmic energy I had and fed it all into my energy body.

Several surges of power told me that this process was having an effect, but focused entirely on completing my task, I didn’t stop to figure out how great this effect might be.

Once the Plane of Woody Earth was finally emptied of all the stored Sovereign-level energy, I made one final purchase. “System, remove any remaining temporary reset points.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 1 credit. 0 credits remaining.

It was time. Time to return to the beginning. Time for the Su Clan to begin its invasion of the Central Continent.

Smirking as I thought about how the Saint of Tooth and Claw might interpret my actions, I pulled out a poison pill and popped it into my mouth.

You have died. Calculating…

You died as a Martial Spirit 6 – 60,000 credits awarded.

Total Credits: 60,000

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Complete Status Page

Rank 4 Small World – 10,000/10,000 km3 (Earth, Wood, Fire, Dark)

Resistances

Mental Effects (Cultivation Techniques) – 200 credits

Mental Library

Capacity – Rank 8

Journal (with Mental Input) – Rank 8

Perfect Transcription – Rank 8

Touch Reading – Rank 8

Scribe – Rank 8

Skills

Infuse Intent (Written) – Rank 4

Mastery of Cold Mountain Fire, Expanding Realms Fire (seed)

Mastery of Immutable Mountain Fire, Eternal Grove Fire (spirit fire)

Memory Implantation — Rank 1

Soul Formation Concealment – Rank 7

Synthetic Herbal Bonds – Rank 9

Fire Seed Appraisal – Profound

Pill, Formation, Herb, Talisman, Demon Beast, Refined Item, Illusion, and Gu Appraisal – Rank 5 (Comprehensive, Detailed)

Medicinal Tea Appraisal – Mortal

Technique Appraisal – Rank 6 (Earth)

Languages: Western Han, Southern Yue, Northern Qing, Urgamalic

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End of Volume 6.