After I met up with Yan and the others, we spent some time looking for apartments in Mortal City. We wanted a good setup near the Gateway Plaza where everyone could live close to each other and provide support if there was ever any trouble. Because of the sect rules, there wasn’t much to worry about while living in Mortal City, but we still needed to be careful.


    After renting out a large, well-furnished suite, we settled in and began planning our next moves.


    I looked around at my classmates. “How did everyone do on the Entrance Exam?”


    Yan was the first to respond. “Grade 1 inner for the Dark Peak.”


    JiaQi was next, followed by LiTing.


    “Ungraded inner for the Water Peak.”


    “Same, but for the Metal Peak.”


    YuLong looked a bit embarrassed. “Grade 2 outer on the Lightning Peak. It’s going to be hard to do much better with my talisman abilities.”


    “I’m Grade 3 inner on the Earth Peak.” I looked at YuLong meaningfully. “You need to improve. Before we worry about ascending the mountain and advancing to Lord, you need to improve.”


    He nodded half-heartedly. “I know. It’s just… difficult. When I try to read the Rank 3 books, the information is… fuzzy. My teacher at the Academy said this was because I needed a better foundation with low-level talismans, but that hasn’t seemed to help."


    I didn’t know what awaited us further up Dragon Peak, but I wanted YuLong up there with us. I doubted he would be able to complete the Test of Mind as a Lord, and doing so as a King would be nearly impossible for him, so if he was going to go with us all the way to Earth City, he had to be able to complete it as a Grandmaster.


    To do so, he only needed to reach the peak of Rank 3 in talismans… I could help with that… If I did, would he retain it for future loops?


    “System, I want to permanently boost Shi YuLong’s talisman comprehension by 10 credits.”


    Processing… Unable to purchase such permanent enhancements with credits.


    I stared at the message and wanted to curse, but it wouldn’t do any good. Maybe it was for the best. In future lives, an unknown talent for talismans wouldn’t have been that shocking, but it was hard to say what might catch someone’s eye.


    I considered my credit reserves and my goals. I wanted to reach Peak Emperor this life, and having someone with strong fighting abilities to back me up would be essential. And also… he had become a friend. I couldn’t just leave him behind.


    He only needed to reach the peak of Rank 3, right? It wouldn’t take many credits to make things much easier for him.


    I subvocalized to hide what I was going to do.


    “System, boost YuLong’s talisman comprehension by 1 million credits.”


    Purchase confirmed. Cost 1 million credits. 7,731,086,524 credits remaining.


    For a fraction of a percent of my current point total, YuLong would now be able to rush to the peak of Rank 3 talisman artistry. Thinking about it in those terms, I scanned the others…


    How much could I reduce the time we needed to idle in this city?


    “System, boost JiaQi’s taming comprehension, Yan’s illusion comprehension, Yan’s and LiTing’s combat comprehension, and everyone''s cultivation comprehension by 1 million points each.”


    Purchase confirmed. Cost 8 million credits. 7,723,086,524 credits remaining.


    For an insignificant cost, I had hopefully purchased a much swifter path to the peak of the mountain.


    I reached into my storage space and pulled out four large piles of spirit stones.


    “Take these and spend them as you need to. It would probably be best to exchange them for contribution points so that you don’t draw too much attention, but I’ll leave that to your judgment.”


    I looked at Yan. “Try to get in contact with Ning ChenKun. I would like to be able to start selling things through his faction so I don’t have to worry about being targeted by others. After that, getting a map of the empires would be helpful. If you have any ideas for what I need to do, please let me know.”


    I looked at JiaQi and YuLong. “We need your fighting skills, but we can’t ascend until you are both Peak Grandmasters and have the profession skills to match. Spend the stones to get the training you need.”


    I turned to LiTing. “Don’t worry too much about learning to fight for now. We can work on that later. Try to quietly increase your refining skills. You shouldn’t be as large a target here since refined weapons can be purchased from the sect, but there’s no reason to be reckless.”


    Looking from face to face, I continued. “I’m going to be improving my formation skills and then take on some formation-related missions. I want to use them as an excuse to gather information about the cities we may need to go to for combat missions. I’ll also look into what it would take to hire someone for individual and group combat training. If you have any suggestions or other ideas, please, let me know.”


    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    When my orders came to an end, I realized what I had been doing. I had never taken the lead with this group so directly. Usually, we let Yan plan things out since he was the most skilled at devising strategies.


    After entering the sect, I had felt more comfortable taking charge. I had decades of experience here, and it was an entirely new experience for my classmates. Still, Yan had been our de facto ‘leader’ for years…


    I turned to him. “What do you think?”


    He nodded. “I’m probably going to be the weakest link. I don’t have a solid blessing to help me learn any of the core topics, so I’m going to have to spend more time in training. If you need my help, just send me a message. I’ll do my best to advise everyone.”


    We talked a bit more but soon broke apart to pursue our individual objectives.


    <hr>


    If you can’t measure something, you can’t improve it. This was a simple reality that had been slapping me in the face while I had been trying to improve my formations.


    I had practiced making formations for years, but all I had were vague understandings of what was ‘good’ and what was ‘bad.’ With my newly purchased analysis ability, I could begin to put numbers to those vague understandings.


    Using a high-quality piece of marble that I had purchased from the sect, I made the best Rank 3 Qi Gathering Formation I could manage. When it was complete, I analyzed it.


    Rank 3 Qi Gathering Formation


    Base Material: Marble


    Base Material Quality: 98% of standard reference


    Energy Throughput: 87% of standard reference


    Energy Efficiency: 45%, 83% of standard reference


    Longevity at normal operating levels: 4 years, 11 months, 99% of standard reference


    Smoothness of energy channels: 92% of standard reference


    Hardness of energy channels: 97% of standard reference


    Energy Turbulence: 73% of standard reference


    …


    The analysis continued, giving me a detailed breakdown of several measurements. Throughput, efficiency, and longevity were the key numbers that I cared about. Everything else was information that I could use to raise those three primary statistics.


    I thought about pulling out a few more marble bricks and trying to improve my statistics, but I stopped myself. The others would need time to train their professions up to an acceptable level. I didn’t need to rush to improve my formations. I could go about things more methodically.


    I reached into my storage space, pulled out a granite block, and carved a Rank 1 Qi Gathering Formation into it. After reviewing the results, I grimaced. I had a lot of work to do. Everything needed to be above 100% of the ‘standard reference.’ Nothing else was acceptable.


    <hr>


    For the following two years, we all stayed in Mortal City and quietly improved our profession abilities as we cultivated our qi and souls. I methodically raised my cultivation level to Grandmaster 7, and the others all raised theirs to Grandmaster 4.


    While working on our souls, we searched for new books to assist us. The sect didn’t advertise them, but I did find a few libraries scattered around Mortal City with philosophical texts related to soul cultivation. If one knew to look for them, they would be able to find these places without much effort, but the ignorant and uninformed wouldn’t be so lucky.


    A few new texts were available here, but most of them had appeared in the Academy’s library. The lack of a significant amount of new information was disappointing, but I greedily copied down everything that was available. I could only hope that the libraries would become bigger and better as we ascended the mountain.


    After reading, pondering, and absorbing these new texts and numerous others that I had copied from the Academy, my soul felt noticeably stronger. An echo from my thoughts on measuring formations made me think about how that same idea applied to my soul. I needed a way to measure my soul to understand its growth, but I had yet to hear about anything related to this. As such, I didn’t know the specifics of what to ask for from the System, and asking for relevant information was priced out of my reach.


    Speaking of formations, with my ability to numerically analyze them, my skills increased at a rapid rate. My comprehension and experience with low-Rank formations had already been more than sufficient. I just hadn’t possessed the necessary information I needed to know how to improve. This new ability fixed that deficiency.


    Within a few months, I was able to make any Rank 1 formation with all of its stats above 110% of the standard reference. This typically involved first fixing the formation stone, but that had also become much easier with a solid, numerical grasp of its quality at any given time.


    After another few more months, I was able to reach a similar level with Rank 2 formations and moved on to Rank 3. While my foundational knowledge and experience with Rank 3 formations was still slightly lacking, the massive number of points I had spent on formation comprehension more than made up for it. The statistics for my Rank 3 formations weren’t quite as good as they were for Rank 1 and 2, but I was still able to get all the numbers above 100% of the standard reference.


    At that point, I started completing formation missions on the Earth Peak.


    There were no ‘graded’ missions available, but I easily acquired certifications for nearly every formation requested and began completing missions at a steady pace. Most of these simply involved creating a formation plate and turning it in at the Mission Hall, but a few of them did require visiting other cities.


    These missions required the formations to take the local terrain into account during their creation. Mostly, this was for a variety of defensive formations, but sometimes it was as simple as a Lord wanting a formation directly inscribed into a building instead of onto a formation plate to make it harder to steal.


    These trips gave me an understanding of several different cities and how their defenses were arranged. While I doubted that I would need to defend or attack these places specifically, the basic arrangements were general enough that the knowledge would be applicable elsewhere.


    This also gave me a better appreciation for grand formations, so in my free time, I spent a lot of the contribution points I had earned to purchase lessons on the topic. As I would no doubt be a city lord many times in the future, these lessons were invaluable for keeping my future citizens safe and healthy.


    During this time, I also looked into entering the Earth Peak Trial to raise my earth affinity. As I found out, an inner sect disciple was allowed to enter up to twice a year, but they had to pay a high price in contribution points for the privilege. Also, these points had to be earned from missions. Selling spirit stones for points to enter the Trial was not allowed.


    With all the formation missions I was completing, I was able to amass enough points to enter the Trial near the end of our second year in the sect. Inside, the first few levels were reminiscent of the first few in the Master-level version of the Trial. However, on the sixth level, the stone golem was out of my league, and I had to quickly retreat before I met an untimely end.


    My formation skills were solid, my soul was expanding, and my cultivation base was steadily increasing. As for my classmates, their cultivation levels were lagging behind slightly, but they had all made solid progress on their souls and professions.


    It was time for us to begin learning the art of Grandmaster-level combat.