Going through everything in my storage space was a pain, and I wanted to just dump it all out and start my collection from scratch. However, while most of my hoard had been trashed, there were still important items that needed to be saved.


    I grabbed two storage bags and used them to help sort through what needed to be kept and what needed to be replaced.


    My collection of herb seeds had been trapped below all the other boxes, so they had been spared. I also wouldn’t get rid of my collection of fire seeds, but I did need to purchase new boxes for all of them. For all of them except Emperor Li’s Earth-Rank seed, that was. Even after being bombarded in the chaotic maelstrom, that box had remained intact.


    Aside from the seeds and the… seeds, the only items to come out completely unscathed were my Rank 6 weapon, my Rank 6 armor, and the plate of Rank 8 metal. They weren’t damaged because they were what was causing most of the damage.


    Luckily, while the memory orbs’ boxes had been destroyed, the orbs themselves were undamaged. Seeing this, I quickly ran out and purchased a new jade crate with several partitions. I covered it in a layer of ziethanite and then had Shen inscribe it with the best defensive formation he could muster.


    Shen didn’t even whisper a hint of protest at my request. He wanted to keep the orbs safe even more than I did.


    I somehow forgot to tell him that my storage space lacked the energy density needed to make such a formation functional. Jin’s bar of beryllium oxide had pointed me down a path with solid possibilities for storing energy and fixing that problem. But I still needed more time to research it. However, I wasn’t going to let that stop me from getting free work out of a Formation Emperor.


    While my fire seeds had survived the incident intact, my collection of spirit fires did not. They weren’t as useful as the seeds, but it was nice to be able to access two distinct types of flames at the same time. Unfortunately, when the spirit fires broke free from their containers, they dissipated into the aether of my storage space. While that was a bit of a loss, it was a recoverable one. None of the fires were anything overly special, and I could make new ones using my seeds or just buy them if I wanted a flame that I didn’t already have the seed for.


    The biggest disaster was the destruction of my book collection. Most of the volumes had long since been copied into my mental library, but the Rank 6 books and a couple of Jin’s refining books had not been. I didn’t want to lose that knowledge, so I carefully placed all the damaged and destroyed scraps of paper into a large jade box for safekeeping. I had to hope the System would save me from needing to ask for new copies.


    I just chucked everything else into a storage bag and called it a loss. It would take a little time to remake my pill and formation collection, but I needed to do that anyway. I would be spending a lot of time in the Wastes in the near future, and I needed to plan around what would be most useful there.


    As I was cleaning out the lingering detritus, I noticed Emperor Li’s token mixed among the trash. I quickly snagged it and placed it securely into the jade box with the herbs. I might never want to use it again, but I still wanted to keep it.


    Once everything was cleaned up. I had to move on. I had a lot to do and little time to do it.


    <hr>


    The task I decided to knock out first was refilling my newly emptied storage space.


    With my friends’ help, I purchased a new selection of fire seeds from the sect, but I didn’t spend much time looking at them. I was interested to see what each would create when provided copious amounts of energy, but I would need to set up a controlled testing area first. I wasn’t willing to risk destroying everything in my storage space again.


    After that, I considered what would be most valuable to take back with me to the Wastes. It would be easy to get ingredients for Qi Gathering Pills, but other, more esoteric ingredients were more difficult to come by. Instead of stocking up on completed pills, I purchased a large quantity of every available herb. Some of them might decay before I had a chance to use them, but after being stored in a jade box, their medicinal energy should remain stable for a rather long time.


    As I was doing this, two herbs caught my eye, and I knew they would be invaluable for my future endeavors. They were two of the herbs that Emperor Li had provided me with when he first tested my alchemy skills in Eight Flower’s Blue Wind Pavilion.


    In my mental library, I flipped open Emperor Li’s Rank 3 alchemy book and found the details on how to make a Perfect Rank 3 Shadowed Soul Pill. After a bit of practice, I was able to make it with an efficacy of 134%. After consuming the pill, I would be completely undetectable by anyone up to Peak Grandmaster for nearly an hour and a half.


    I stocked my storage space with several dozen of these pills.


    After that, I added in supplies for Rank 1 to 6 formations and talismans. I didn’t know what I might need, so like with the herbs, I felt it was best to only stockpile the raw ingredients. I couldn’t even use the Rank 5 and 6 talisman supplies, but better to have them and not need them.


    Finally, after talking with Jin and LiTing, I added in an ample supply of various materials needed for creating Rank 1 to 6 refined weapons and armor. I didn’t have any immediate plans to learn refining, but it might be a long time before I returned to the sect, and stocking up now would mean that I could learn refining in complete secrecy.


    Just as I was finishing up, I remembered the important lesson I had learned when I first entered South Gate City and popped a few extra crates filled with copper, silver, gold, and spirit stones into my storage space. While I could generate endless wealth through alchemy, I needed to maintain a supply of walking around money at all times. Even if I never used it, I still needed to be prepared.


    Once I was satisfied with my new hoard, I turned my attention to books. There were a lot of books that I wanted to get my hands on.


    <hr>


    “System, upgrade my mental library, my perfect reading, my touch reading, and my mental journal to Rank 6.”


    Purchase confirmed. Cost 10,899,990,000 credits. 52,313,110,550 credits remaining.


    With that purchase in place, I was ready to head to the sect’s libraries.


    As Shen had told me previously, gaining direct access to Dragon Peak’s libraries proved impossible unless I was willing to give up on ascending to the Summit and transition into the role of an elder. Still, he was able to get me into the Earth Peak library and Jin got me into the Metal Peak library.


    The books I was able to copy there were mainly focused on refining and formations, but that didn’t bother me. I grabbed everything and stuffed my mental library full of information.


    Surprisingly, they had also somehow managed to convince Huo NuAn to let me into the Fire Peak Library. I was grateful to the older woman, but I knew this also meant I would have to repay her in the future.


    Using all the contribution points I could scrape together, I then purchased copies of all the Rank 1 to 5 techniques available in Heaven City and on the Lightning Peak. The Rank 6 knowledge was a bit beyond my price range, but I bought all the books related to talismans I could afford. While general cultivation knowledge was available to everyone, information on talismans was limited to members of the Lightning Peak, so I wanted to grab what I could while I was still a member.


    After that, I sat down in my apartment and took out the jade box containing the remnants of all the books that had been destroyed by the maelstrom in my storage space. They were in terrible condition, but that didn’t matter. They had only been cut up and shredded to pieces. With the near omnipotence I had over my storage space, I had been able to collect even the tiniest scrap of paper.


    Piece by piece, I carefully made my way through the pile, ensuring that I touched every single speck of paper. This meticulous process took several days, but when I was done, I looked in my library and found pristine copies of each book.


    Sighing in relief, I stored the ruined books back in their jade coffin and placed the coffin in a secure spot within my storage space as a reminder of what could happen when playing with forces I didn’t understand.


    <hr>


    One of the smaller tasks I took care of to prepare for my time in the Wastes was learning to manipulate an affinity testing orb.


    I had watched when the examiner at the Yellow Orchid Academy resolved the chaotic lines within the orb into clear images of each of my affinities, and I wanted to learn to do that myself. I also wanted to see if I could find a way to have the orb display false affinity levels.


    Jin ZiHan volunteered to help me experiment with this. While her wood affinity was peak five-star, she also had several lower-level ones.


    It took a bit of trial and error, but I was able to figure out how to use the examiner’s qi pattern to resolve ZiHan’s affinities without too much effort. Far more difficult was getting the orb to show my own affinities properly.


    The chaotic lines were caused by an interference pattern created by her different affinities. By injecting a small portion of my qi, I was able to suppress the interference between ZiHan’s affinities and allow the truth of them to shine through. Suppressing the interference of my own affinities using my own qi didn’t work quite so well.


    After working on this problem off and on for months, I still wasn’t able to get my affinities to show up correctly, but I was able to limit what I sent the orb. While I had zero understanding of the underlying mechanics of how affinity testing orbs detected affinities, I found a way to crudely block my acupoints in a specific way so that only the ‘signal’ for a single affinity was allowed to pass through.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    This same method could also be used to nearly cut off that single remaining affinity so that it could be displayed as anything from low nine-star to its true level. However, I couldn’t use it to make the orb display a higher level than I possessed.


    This was all well and good, but the Su Clan tested their children when they were Martial Disciple 1, before they had opened any acupoints. I would need to wait until after a reset to figure out how my current technique needed to be modified to work in that situation.


    While this wasn’t everything I had wanted, it was good enough for the moment.


    These minor tasks filled the time between my cultivation sessions, and before I knew it, the date of Li’s death was quickly approaching. While I had been able to reach Peak Emperor with Shen’s assistance, I was running out of time, and there was still something important that I still needed to get done.


    I needed to find YuLong and record his memories.


    <hr>


    Retrieving YuLong’s memories was going to be tricky.


    YuLong was a member of a branch family of the ruling clan of the Empire of Eternal Winter. To gather his memories, we needed to travel north to the empire and find him. If I were alone, I would have been at a complete loss as to how to proceed, but Yan had been tracking his movements and knew exactly where we needed to go.


    I grabbed a blank memory orb from Jin, and then Yan, JiaQi, and I set out from the sect in a carriage pulled by Rank 5 wind horses. Unfortunately, no Rank 6 horses were available, but that wasn’t too much of a problem. These Rank 5 horses were fast enough that they could outrun LuLu even while pulling a carriage.


    The Nine Rivers Continent was large, but by traveling at a speed of hundreds of kilometers an hour, we covered ground quickly. Thankfully, the carriage had been inscribed with formations that let it float slightly above the ground. Otherwise, we would have been in for a much rougher ride.


    When we first entered the Empire of Eternal Winter, everything seemed normal, but the further we traveled, the more I saw worrying signs of neglect. Fields along both sides of the road lay fallow, villages were burned down, and the carcasses of livestock sat rotting under the sun’s harsh light.


    The situation only appeared to worsen as we rode toward the center of the empire. The temperature outside plummeted, and the ground was covered by a thin layer of snow, preventing anything from growing at all. In energy vision, I could tell that this snow was unnatural, but its origins were a bit of a mystery. There was no apparent source for the energy that created it. My best guess was that it was caused by a massive grand formation.


    Yan directed the carriage to Rimegard City, the capital of the empire. He hadn’t told me much about his plan. He just said that there was an additional ‘surprise’ waiting for me. So, I was a bit wary when the carriage pulled up to the imperial palace.


    Yan looked between JiaQi and me. “You two might want to put on your best equipment. This could get messy.”


    Putting words into action, he pulled out his best refined armor and shuffled around in the carriage while sliding into it. After a quick look at each other, JiaQi and I followed suit.


    Once we were all ready, Yan opened the door and guided us outside.


    Burly soldiers guarded the palace, but Yan didn’t even look at them. He just walked directly toward its entrance.


    Two guards walked forward to block our path. Yan waved a hand, and they fell to the ground.


    I couldn’t hold back my questions any longer. “Yan, what’s going on?”


    He glanced at me and kept walking. “YuLong’s sister was forced into an arranged marriage with a scion from their clan’s main branch. She didn’t fancy this arrangement, and YuLong decided he wasn’t a fan of it either. So, he started a small rebellion. Right now, he’s in a cell below the palace, waiting to be executed.”


    I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but I didn’t need to. While I was considering what to say, we entered the throne room.


    Yan threw out a blast of qi and destroyed the throne. Then he did his best to empower his voice with qi, shouting loud enough to make the entire palace vibrate.


    “Shi YaTing! Come out now or we will destroy your palace.”


    When nothing happened, Yan threw out another bolt of energy, blasting a large hole straight through several walls.


    “How dare you behave atrociously in my empire!”


    The wall in front of us burst apart, and a sturdy well-built man stepped through the opening. He was wearing robes of royal blue embroidered with golden dragons. His hair was done up in a bun and covered by a golden hair clip.


    Yan smirked. “Shi YaTing, we are here for Shi YuLong. Present him to us this instant, and we will leave you with an intact corpse.”


    “You dare!”


    Yan glanced to the side at JiaQi.


    She rolled her eyes but played along.


    She rushed forward and smacked Shi YaTing to the ground. Before he could even move, she gave him a solid kick.


    A quick check showed that the man was a Martial Emperor 7, four levels above JiaQi, but he couldn’t even raise a hand to defend himself from her onslaught.


    Lying on the ground. Shi YaTing looked at us with a gruesome face.


    “How dare you. You dare invade an empire and slay its Ruler? When the Zhuge Clan finds out about this, they will call on the Alliance to crush you! Your whole clan will be eradicated for what you have done here. Root and branch!”


    Yan snorted and tossed out a bolt of qi, ending the man’s life. Then, he walked forward and grabbed the former Emperor’s storage bag.


    After that, without the Emperor’s assistance, it took us quite some time to find YuLong. As Yan had said, he had been imprisoned deep under the palace, and whoever had designed the place liked the idea of catacombs. When we finally found YuLong, he was a bit beat up, but he was alive.


    I handed him a memory orb, but he just stared at it.


    “I’m not sure I want to remember anything that happened this life… but I need to. If I don’t, I can’t fix it.”


    He rolled the orb around in his hand and looked up at me.


    “You said I might be able to take a family member with me, right? My sister. I need to help her, please…” YuLong looked down. “Not this time. I can’t let her remember this. But next time? Can I help her?”


    Something about that request struck a chord deep within me. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Of course. I’ll help you where I can. If… If you don’t want to remember this life, I can do it for you. I can take care of things.”


    He shook his head. “No, I need this. I need to be the one to help her, to help them all.”


    YuLong sent a thread of qi into the orb, imprinting his memories.


    We talked a little more, and during a brief period when Yan left us alone, I asked YuLong an important question and noted his answer in my journal.


    Eventually, Yan pulled me off to the side. He fished around in the storage bag he had taken from Shi YaTing, pulled out three books, and handed them to me.


    “Water essence cultivation techniques. You’re welcome.”


    I stared at them, and Yan explained. “This clan isn’t much different from you. They built a formation to harvest water essence based on these techniques. By the way, I couldn’t find any copies of light or dark outside of the Zhuge Clan, and I couldn’t find even a hint of the wind technique. The fire techniques are down south in the Pang Clan of the Brilliant Sun Empire. The wood techniques are out east in the Red Forest Sect.”


    He glanced at the door to where YuLong was waiting.


    “I’ll stay here for a while and help out YuLong. I can charter my own carriage back to the sect. You and JiaQi should go grab those two sets of techniques. It’s a bit of a journey, but it won’t take much time with Rank 5 beasts.”


    I nodded. “Thanks.”


    <hr>


    Following Yan’s advice, we first took the carriage to the Red Forest Sect.


    I was planning on trading whatever I needed to trade to get my hands on the wood essence cultivation techniques. However, when we arrived, we found out why the forest was ‘red.’ This sect didn’t exactly play nice with the locals. They were closer to bandits than what I would consider a proper sect.


    We didn’t have time to clean up all the evils of the world, but I could put an end to the ones I came across.


    When JiaQi and I left, there was no longer any Red Forest Sect on the Nine Rivers Continent. However, the memory of them would live on as I had transferred all their technique manuals into my mental library.


    After that, the Pang Clan was much nicer to deal with. They were a simple down-on-their-luck clan that needed a bit of help. I handed over a pile of wealth large enough to make the entire empire jealous and was allowed to read their family’s secret techniques.


    That done, JiaQi and I headed back to the sect.


    <hr>


    My final task was the most important. I needed to gather everyone’s memories.


    First, I went to Jin. When I arrived, she presented me with a large number of memory orbs. For this life, I only needed another eight, but she gave me more than eight dozen.


    After handing them over, she winked at me. “You seem to have plans, and I thought you might need these. If not, we can just use them next time.”


    “Thank you.”


    She chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m not like that fool Shen. I won’t make you pay for them, and if you need more in the future, just let me know. But…”


    My smile dropped, and I wanted to wince.


    “Don’t look at me like that. If you find a good metal-based spirit fire, I would be interested in trying it out, but that’s entirely up to you.”


    I closed my eyes and slightly shook my head from side to side. “Of course, Jin. Thank you.”


    I took my leave and headed to the Earth Peak.


    <hr>


    As soon as I arrived, Shen pulled me into the cave where he had been spending all his time working on a huge stone slab.


    “You’re getting ready to leave, right? Well then, time to repay that favor you owe me for using my cultivation cave.”


    He lifted one of his large hands and patted the slab.


    “I’ve been working on this thing for decades, and I was worried I might not get it done before I lost my position as Master of the Earth Peak. You’ve given me a bit of hope there.”


    He gave a big smirk that was full of teeth. He looked like the world’s biggest swindler.


    “Here’s the deal. Take this with you and bring it back to me each life. You do that, and you can keep using my cultivation cave whenever you need it, alright?”


    I sighed and hung my head slightly. Then, I started evaluating the logistics of the situation.


    The slab was over 7 meters thick, 15 meters wide, and 20 meters long. It was big, but could it fit in my storage space?


    The simple answer was yes. It had been nearly a year and a half since I activated the Qi Gathering Formation in my soul. The radius of my storage space had grown to over 125 meters. Shen’s stone would only take up a small fraction of the space I now had available.


    Without responding, I walked forward, placed my hand on his formation stone, and pulled.


    Storing something so large proved slightly difficult, but once I fixed it properly in my mind, it vanished, and a powerful suction force pulled both me and Shen into the vacuum left by the stone’s disappearance.


    Shen laughed happily and tossed me a box containing his memory orb.


    <hr>


    Unlike the two elders, my friends were a little more circumspect. Yan was the only one who even made a request, and that was simply to carry a notebook back for him. He would have his memories, but according to Yan, they lacked the sharpness of written notes. When I talked to LiTing, not only did she not make requests, but she also provided me with new refined weapons and armor for each Rank.


    Unfortunately, the normal memory orbs didn’t work for LuLu. They required the use of qi, and her body didn’t possess any. The thought of her friend losing her memories made JiaQi a bit sad, but she understood the problem and didn’t press the issue. While she didn’t tell me so directly, I was sure LiTing would be working on this problem in the future.


    After each person imprinted their memories into an orb and I stored it away, I asked them an important question.


    “If you could improve one thing about yourself, if you could enhance your abilities in one area, what would it be?”


    Each person had a different answer, and LuYao found it difficult to choose only one, but in each case, I carefully noted their desires down in my mental journal. Later, I would see what was possible.


    Once all the orbs were collected, I met with everyone one last time to say goodbye.


    I was wearing a silver robe with brass accents. This wasn’t my normal formation-imbued robe. That one was safely tucked away in my storage space. This one was far weaker. It would keep me protected, but it was disposable.


    Around me, my friends and allies were all wearing plain work clothes. I looked entirely out of place among them, and I could feel a bit of separation between us, like we no longer belonged to the same world. The reality of what the time loops would mean for them was setting in, and they understood as well as I did that none of these memories would be carried forward.


    After this final, bittersweet farewell, I departed Heaven City.


    What awaited me at the Summit was unknown, but I was as prepared as I could be.