I was about to lose my largest backing in this world, and if Ning ChenKun had any ulterior motives, this would be the perfect time to put them into action. He had said he wanted me to join the Ning Clan, but how sincere had he been?


    More importantly, by the way I was acting, he would be able to guess a few important pieces of information. He might not know about the Earth-Rank fire seed, but once he learned such a valuable item went missing, he wouldn’t have too much difficulty connecting its absence with my request to have everyone hide away in the sect.


    I was in a potentially risky situation, but that was nothing unfamiliar to me. As usual, I would simply use it as an opportunity to test my benefactor’s trustworthiness. I could have acted less dramatically and tried to prevent him from knowing for certain that Emperor Li had given me something of such immense value, but that would have risked my friends’ lives at the very moment I had taken a solid step toward preserving their memories.


    As Ning ChenKun looked at me, I knew what I needed to do. I could give him some simple information that should satisfy his curiosity for the moment, and I could figure out an actual plan when I had more time to consider my options.


    I took out a piece of paper and wrote a quick note.


    Yan. I have what we need. Stop looking. You’re being watched by people who know too much.


    I folded the paper and handed it over without sealing it.


    “Please deliver that to Yan. It’s important.”


    He took the letter in one hand and tapped it against his other palm a few times, but he didn’t look at it. We both knew he would look at it later, but not looking at it in front of me showed he was willing to give me a modicum of courtesy.


    “We are now beyond protecting you from a minor Lord of an unimportant clan.”


    I nodded gravely. “Don’t worry. I will repay my debt to you.”


    He stared at me for a long moment before waving a hand in dismissal.


    I didn’t feel the same connection to Ning ChenKun that I did with my friends, but for several lives now, he had been someone I had been able to rely on. Not turning on me when he had to know that Emperor Li had given me some kind of treasure raised my estimation of him yet again. I didn’t necessarily trust him enough to take him back with me, but time and again he solidified himself as someone I could work with.


    ---------------------------------------------------


    Being unable to leave the sect didn’t change my life much, but for YuLong and JiaQi, things weren’t so simple. They had been spending most of their time completing combat missions, and that would no longer be possible if they couldn’t visit the empires. All I could do was send them supplies to support their training as best as I could. Since I could only visit Profound City or the Earth Peak, I no longer had any way of meeting with them, so I relied on the Ning faction to ferry packages down to them.


    Yan had taken my warning seriously, but he remained in the Academy to complete his Grandmaster-level coursework. There was a risk involved in doing so, but as long as the head of the Academy didn’t turn against him, he would be as safe there as he would be in the sect.


    LiTing and I had everything we needed to continue progressing, so we simply bulled forward. I wasn’t willing to explain everything to her, but I did my best to make clear how important it was for us to become Formation and Artifact Emperors as soon as possible.


    I wanted to rush things, but I knew that would only lead to a weak foundation. With the experience of past lifetimes and the knowledge contained in Emperor Shen’s books, I felt I had good odds of being able to do my part in making memories orbs even if I rushed, but LiTing was a different story. She was learning high-level refining from scratch, and that took time.


    I maintained my six-month routine and reached Peak Lord after three more years. As I did so, I spent a significant amount of my time reviewing Emperor Shen’s books on formations and pushed my knowledge of Rank 4 formations much further than I had thought possible.


    The notes he had left me showed that Emperor Shen was a true master of formations. Whether from a blessing or natural talent, he not only knew what to do but also knew how to explain it.


    I couldn’t help but wonder why such texts weren’t available to everyone in the sect. With these books, the level of formation knowledge here would soar. There were a few possible explanations for this, but none of them were good. They wanted us to master these skills, but they didn’t want to give us the tools to do it. Why?


    Even though I didn’t know why this knowledge wasn’t available to everyone, I still had to thank Emperor Shen for giving these books to me. The sect might not have allowed them to be freely available to everyone, but now that I had them, what I chose to do with them in the future was my decision to make. If I started a true faction of my own one day, they could be invaluable for training my subordinates.


    In any case, at this point, I believed that my formation and alchemy skills were near the limit of what a Lord was capable of. There was still the pesky issue of the missing alchemy knowledge the System had hinted at, but I had to leave that for the future. A brief perusal of Emperor Li’s books for the lower Ranks only provided more questions, not answers, and I didn’t need to get side-tracked at the moment. I wanted to focus on pushing further in the sect, reaching Formation and Alchemy Emperor, and making those memory orbs.


    I had improved my Lord-level combat skills enough that I was able to reach deep into the Earth Peak Trial, and my soul was more than powerful enough for my current stage of advancement. The only thing I was missing to make me feel like I had ‘completed’ the Lord realm was a maxed-out affinity.


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    A year earlier, my earth affinity had finally broken through to low four-star, and my control of earth qi increased by an order of magnitude. This didn’t matter too much since a peak five-star affinity was more than enough for anything I needed to do as a Lord, but it did provide a few minor benefits.


    When fighting golems in the Trial, my improved affinity gave me a much better sense of how my enemy would react. The golems were powered by formations, and everything they did was controlled through the manipulation of earth qi. My higher affinity helped me better sense the flow of qi in the environment which allowed me to partially predict a golem’s actions based on changes in the flow of energy.


    It wasn’t a huge advantage, but it was something.


    I had wanted to wait to advance to King until after raising my earth affinity to mid four-star, but Emperor Shen wasn’t responding to my requests for essence this time, and with boosting my affinity being the only important task I had left to complete as a Lord, I decided not to delay any longer. I could work on increasing it further after I advanced.


    So, at 42 years old, I broke through to Martial King.


    The process had become familiar to me by this point, so advancing didn’t make me overly excited, but I was still happy to return to this level once more.


    ---------------------------------------------------


    During these three years, Yan, YuLong, and JiaQi moved up to Yellow City via the Path of Mind and were living in a compound controlled by the Ning faction. While Yan still had a few years left in his stint at the Academy and couldn’t advance to Lord until they were over, JiaQi and YuLong had already ascended and were training their skills as Lords. As soon as Yan’s courses ended, they would ascend to Profound City.


    According to my original schedule, LiTing and I would have only stayed in Profound City for at most one more year, but since we could no longer meet with our friends outside the sect, we chose to stay until they arrived. This delay meant not advancing to Emperor as quickly as I had hoped, but a couple of more years here wasn’t much of a problem. It made meeting my deadline more difficult, but we needed to have a face-to-face meeting with the three of them.


    That gave me plenty of time to work on improving my skills, and as a King, I had several options for where to focus my studies. However, it only took me a moment of consideration to realize that I had to focus on studying Rank 5 formations before doing anything else. As a core disciple, I was allowed to enter the Earth Peak Trial up to four times a year, but paying for even a single trip had become a true ordeal.


    Core disciples had ways of earning contribution points that didn’t exist for others, but they all involved traveling outside of the sect and into the ‘Three Empires.’ For example, by serving as the steward of a kingdom, I could earn contribution points based on the amount of karmic energy the domain generated. I was interested in trying this out, but trapped in the sect as I was, it wouldn’t be possible.


    My alchemy skills could already earn me a lot of contribution points, and improving them to make better, more potent Rank 5 pills would exponentially increase that amount. However, Trial runs could only be paid for through points earned directly through sect-related activities. So, while I could earn a lot of points through alchemy, they weren’t useful for my current goals.


    Since I couldn’t leave the sect, I couldn’t do any combat missions or formation missions that would require me to travel elsewhere, so there were only two types of missions I could complete.


    The first were ones for making movable formation plates. With these missions, I just had to craft the formation in private and deliver it to the Mission Hall. However, since common formation plates, even King-level plates, were available in stores on Dragon Peak, the only reason anyone would create a mission for one was because they wanted something special. Either something more powerful than normal or something with unusual effects. Both possibilities required me to be skilled far above most other Formation Kings.


    My other option was to accept teaching missions. As a King-level core disciple, I could charge a high rate for lessons, but my students would be expecting to receive a skilled King-level core disciple if they paid such fees. While I felt confident enough to accept such missions for teaching Lords, I was nowhere near skilled enough with Rank 5 formations to teach other Kings.


    So, both mission options led me to the same place. I needed to improve my formation skills.


    While I studied formations, LiTing advanced her cultivation and improved her refining skills by leaps and bounds. After she advanced to Peak Lord, she gave me a sample of what she could create.


    The Rank 4 crescent moon spade she handed me was a true masterwork. Visually, the only difference was that the heavy ball had reverted back to a more standard spade design, but looking in energy vision, I saw that this staff contained far more lines of power than the previous weapons she had created.


    “It looks impressive. What can it do?”


    She smiled at the compliment. “I’ve gotten a lot better at mixing durability and sharpness. This version won’t have any problems against Rank 4 armor and weapons. It should also be able to tear apart those Rank 4 rock monsters you were fighting, but don’t expect too much damage against the King-level ones. Unarmored human Martial Kings, though? They won’t stand a chance against it. You also shouldn’t have any problems with it breaking unless you’re up against a Rank 5 weapon or something specifically built to destroy artifacts.”


    I grinned. “I can’t wait to try it out. How did your skills advance so quickly?”


    “I’ve taken a master. She’s been teaching me a lot that isn’t in any of the books. According to Master Jin, I’ll be ready for the Path of Mind well before JiaQi and the others get here, so I won’t slow you down.”


    I raised an eyebrow. “Master Jin?”


    LiTing nodded. “Yes, she’s the Master of the Metal Peak.”


    I smirked but controlled myself to not give too much information away. I now had a solid guess as to who the owner of the third memory orb was.


    “Sounds good. When do you plan to advance to King?”


    “Tomorrow.”


    After a little more small talk, I was expecting LiTing to leave, but instead, she fidgeted awkwardly with a pensive expression.


    “Fang… can you turn me back into the First Disciple? I know you said there was a cost to do so… and I want to look like this the next time we meet with JiaQi, but…”


    I waved her concerns to the side. “Don’t worry about it. Once or twice isn’t a big issue. But can you tell me why?”


    She hesitated. “The… The School of the Great Teacher…”


    I blinked. “The what?”


    “The School of the Great Teacher. A few months ago, our students were forced to leave the Path of Soul, so they started a school in the city. I’ve been there a few times, but without us guiding them, the school is starting to fracture into different factions. I want to see if I can help stabilize things. You… you should consider going there too. I’m sure they would want to see you.”


    I started clicking my teeth together like I had done as the ‘Great Teacher’ when I needed to fidget but didn’t want my students to see. I needed to figure out how to handle this.


    “Don’t worry. Go back to your room and I’ll initiate the change.”


    LiTing gave me a deep bow. “Thank you, Teacher.”


    Moments after she left, I made the purchase.


    “System, change LiTing back into the form of Meng LuYao. Make sure her apparent age is consistent with her cultivation level and previous appearance.”


    Purchase confirmed. Cost 150,000 credits. 6,482,664,588 credits remaining.


    That taken care of, I had to decide how to handle this school.