The Undying Immortal System-Chapter 323: Life 77, Age 16, Martial Disciple 1

After arriving in South Gate, I booked a room at an inn and entered seclusion.

The alteration I purchased for my identity jade would allow me to enter the sect whenever I wished, but I wanted to wait until I broke through to Grandmaster. While I might be able to blend in with the mortal descendants of current and former sect members, I saw little benefit to sneaking in early.

So, I instead locked myself away and focused on advancing as rapidly as reasonably possible.

Of course, before I could advance, I first needed to draft a new set of cultivation techniques.

The core components of my plan to reach Peak Sovereign in this life all revolved around developing and deploying new types of high-level formations. Not only did I need to craft an updated version of Emperor Shen’s Soul-Lamp-blocking formation, but I also wanted to turn the anti-portal formation of Ning ZeKun’s conference room into something that could be deployed over a larger area.

This meant that I needed to cultivate earth qi.

I considered using the Writ of Metal from Charred Earth for this, since it would also give me access to fire and metal qi, but I eventually decided better of it. Until I knew more about what cultivating as a Sovereign would entail, I wanted to stick to the safer path of single-element cultivation.

Another possibility I considered was forming my meridians and dantian out of karmic energy instead of qi. That should give me a deeper connection to the Laws of Karma, and it might assist in the eventual destruction and recombination of my energy body. However, the actual efficacy of doing this was a bit too unpredictable for my liking.

The reason for this was that I had to cultivate qi. There was no getting around that fact. A cultivation base focused entirely on karmic energy was far too impractical. For example, how would I concoct pills or create formations? If I only had access to karmic energy, creating even a simple Rank 4 formation could end up wasting enough energy to raise a member of my clan from Grandmaster to Lord. This would just be spending money like it was flowing water.

So, I needed to cultivate qi.

I could try cultivating qi while using karmic energy to form my dantian and meridians, but this carried the risk of infusing my body with a tangled mess of Laws that would interact in unforeseeable ways. I did want to experiment with this in the future, but for this life, my goal was to reach Peak Sovereign, and I didn’t want to perform any wild experiments that might prevent that from happening.

So, with all of this in mind, I opened my mental library and flipped through my accumulated earth qi techniques.

After a bit of back and forth, I decided to create a new set of Earth-Rank techniques based on the Laws relating to knowledge, power, and balance.

With my years of experience, this only took a few months to accomplish. Once it was complete, I began swiftly cultivating it. With the help of a few pills and formations, I was able to reach Martial Grandmaster in short order.

At this point, I could use my altered identity jade to enter the sect whenever I wished, but I held off on doing so. When I had purchased that alteration, I hadn’t connected my jade to any particular Peak. Before I could use my jade to accept missions or purchase items, I needed to get that sorted out, and the best time to do that would be during the sect’s annual Entrance Exam.

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On the first day of the Entrance Exam, Grandmasters lined the streets of South Gate City as they waited for their chance to be tested for entry into the Nine Rivers Sect. In the past, I had joined them in this pursuit. This time, however, I instead made my way to the gates of Mortal City via horse.

After attaching my identity jade to my waist, I was able to pass through the city’s gates like any other disciple, and from there, I made my way to the square that held portals to each of the different peaks.

Since my identity jade had yet to be registered with a specific peak, I was free to travel to any of them. However, after visiting one, traveling to the others would become a bit more complicated. So, before going any further, I needed to decide which peak I wanted to join.

I didn’t even hesitate.

I was an earth cultivator in this life, and I planned to focus my efforts on the study of formations. If there was anyone in the sect who could help me with this, it was Emperor Shen, the Master of the Earth Peak. So, that was where I needed to go.

After passing through the portal, I made my way to the Administration Hall in the small village at the base of the Earth Peak—the place where guides brought new disciples for registration.

When I entered, the only person inside was a slovenly man who was leaning back in his chair and reading a book. His feet were propped up on the counter, and he didn’t even look at me as I approached.

I walked up to the desk and stood in front of him, but he didn’t even look at me. The more valued recruits would be led to the peaks by one of the scribes who oversaw the Exam. Since I had come in alone, this fellow must have thought that I wasn’t anyone important.

I tapped on the desk to get his attention. “Hello.”

He let out a long, exasperated sigh and rolled his eyes at me. “What? I’m busy.”

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“I’m a new disciple. I need to register.”

He made an impatient grasping motion with his right hand. “Badge.”

I passed him my identity jade, and he tossed it roughly onto a small formation plate to the side of the counter.

Once the formation was done processing my token, the attendant just tossed it back to me without even looking at the results.

Not wanting to press my luck, I silently attached the token to my waist and directly left the building.

Then, as the newest official member of the Earth Peak, I headed to the Mission Hall to start earning contribution points.

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Considering the events leading up to my most recent death, I could appreciate why it would be best to cultivate using only karmic energy connected to both my body and soul.

Unfortunately, while my clan had enough people to start producing Lord-level energy, it would be decades before they would be able to start producing King- or Emperor-level energy. If this were any other life, I might have considered waiting for this to happen. But in this life, I was eager to begin experimenting with high-level formations. I didn’t want to spend decades wasting away in the lower Ranks with nothing to do.

Therefore, I chose to go ahead and advance using the karmic energy provided by the Nine Rivers Sect. While the quality of this energy was worse than what I could have gotten from my clan, it was both abundant and easily obtained. And in any case, while this energy might not have been ideal, I had no reason to suspect that using it would cause any significant issues.

Using the karmic energy provided by the sect should be fine—as long as I didn’t use it during my advancement to Sovereign, at least.

With this decision in place, I began my ascent through the ranks of the Nine Rivers Sect.

After a few months in Mortal City, I had accumulated enough contribution points from formation-related missions to purchase my first dose of karmic energy. So, I walked the Path of Body, made my way to Yellow City, and advanced to Lord.

Then, I walked the Path of Soul and headed to Profound City.

I wanted to focus entirely on formations this time, so I had decided not to earn any contribution points from selling pills. Instead, I focused entirely on selling Rank 4 formation plates and completing formation-related missions.

Restricting myself like this slowed my ascent a bit, but I was still able to break through to Martial King after only five years. Then, I made my way to Earth City via the Path of Mind.

Once there, the speed of my ascent ground to a halt.

The amount of contribution points needed to advance to Martial Emperor was staggering, and the number of missions open to Rank 5 formation specialists was extremely limited. Sure, people were willing to pay exorbitant prices for Rank 5 grand formations capable of safeguarding their kingdoms, but how often would people need to purchase such a formation?

This made me truly appreciate just how much of a cheat being able to concoct high-efficacy Perfect pills had been. Plenty of merchant houses had been willing to spend centuries of hoarded wealth to secure a long-term supply of high-quality pills, but few were willing to spend that kind of wealth on high-quality formation plates.

Fortunately, there was one secret to success that was as true for formation specialists as it was for anyone else: Reputation is the cornerstone of wealth.

Even if an elder of the Earth Peak were to announce that my formations were the best that they had ever seen, few people would rush to buy them. After all, not many people had any concept of what made some formations good and others bad. Even if my formations were better than others, how much of a difference could it really make?

A lot.

As cities protected by my formations remained standing while those protected by others fell, people began to take notice. Eventually, the special orders started rolling in, and merchant associations began contacting me for a supply of formation plates. A “high-quality Rank 5 formation” might not mean much, but for those in the know, a “Su Fang formation” became a coveted object.

Once this occurred, the rate of my ascent picked back up, and I was able to reach Peak King during my eighth year in Earth City.

At this point, I had a bit of a problem. I had chosen not to become a steward in this life, so upon arriving in Earth City, I had been demoted to inner sect disciple. This prevented me from purchasing Emperor-level karmic energy, and I was not allowed to assemble an expedition for the ascent to Heaven City.

To continue advancing, I would first need to attach myself to a core disciple. Unfortunately, unlike Yan, I hadn’t kept track of which groups had made the climb successfully in past lives, so if I wanted to ensure that nothing went wrong, I would need a bit of assistance.

In any case, before I would be allowed to purchase Emperor-level karmic energy, I first needed to prove that I possessed a Rank 6 cultivation technique. While I had more than one such technique in my mental library, I didn’t want to show them off if I didn’t have to.

So, instead, I would acquire a cultivation technique the same way that all the other poor commoners did. I would pay a visit to the Master of the Earth Peak.

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Not having cultivated my body, climbing the Earth Peak was a rather arduous exercise. Still, this wasn’t anything new, so I pushed forward and didn’t dwell on my exertions.

Near the top of the mountain, I found a cave entrance, went inside, and followed the tunnel to a large cavern. There, I found Emperor Shen standing atop a massive stone formation plate. I tried to introduce myself, but he didn’t even look at me. He just waved to a pile of technique scrolls.

I didn’t move. I just clasped my hands behind my back and waited for him to pause long enough for us to have a little chat.

Emperor Shen pretended not to notice this and kept working on his formation.

In response, I turned on energy vision so that I could study his formation in greater detail.

It was an exact replica of the formation that was sitting in my inner world. The one where the long-dead body of the Emissary still rested. The formation’s stone block measured at least a dozen meters in every dimension, and energy channels for controlling the flow of qi crisscrossed through nearly every cubic millimeter of it. While a few of these channels were rather large, especially those near where the formation gathered its energy, most of them were no wider than the thickness of a human hair.

Over half an hour later, Emperor Shen finally had enough. “What do you want, kid?”

Broken from my concentration, I looked up at him as he sat on the edge of his giant stone block.

“I’m just here to make a delivery.” Reaching into my storage space, I pulled out Shen’s original memory orb and tossed it to him.

Shen caught the orb in his right hand, but he didn’t activate his qi to absorb its memories. Instead, he rotated the orb around in his hand and examined it carefully.

At the start of this inspection, Shen’s eyes were narrowed in suspicion. As it went on, however, his expression shifted to confusion, anger, and finally, curiosity. “Interesting… Very interesting.”

Having never taken time to study Shen’s memory orb in detail, I wasn’t sure exactly what had caught his attention, but his reaction spoke volumes. There was something wrong with that orb, and he himself had almost certainly been the one who had tampered with it. He could no doubt recognize his own handiwork.

Shen's gaze shifted from the orb, to me, to back to the orb. After repeating this several times, he made his decision and absorbed the memories.

When he was done, his eyes locked onto me, and I could almost see a series of wheels turning within his head. “Is that all?”

I shook my head.

He nodded. “Alright, come with me.”