The Undying Immortal System

Chapter 199: Life 70, Age 35, Martial Emperor 1

Upon visiting Heaven City’s temple and learning the price of karmic energy, I felt like I was in a bit of a bind. I was only giving myself four years to cultivate before heading to the Summit, but just like in my last life, karmic energy was going to be a major problem.

I hadn’t spent enough time on Rank 6 formation and alchemy skills. I could make some money from selling what few of them I could make, but Emperor-level karmic energy was a precious commodity. After some quick math, I found that if I wanted to use karmic energy during every breakthrough, the highest I would be able to reach before Emperor Li’s death was Martial Emperor 3. If I pushed myself, I might be able to get enough for Emperor 4, but that was my absolute limit.

According to Jin, that would be fine. I could ascend to the Summit at any time. There was no need to reach any specific advancement threshold. However, while Emperor 4 might be good enough for the sect and the clans, it wasn’t good enough for me. If at all possible, I wanted to reach Peak Emperor.

If I reached the Summit as a Peak Emperor, it was likely that additional opportunities would be available to me, and even if not, advancing to Peak Emperor as soon as possible also meant reaching Martial Sovereign as soon as possible. Additionally, something unexpected might happen at the Summit. Reaching Peak Emperor before leaving Heaven City would ensure that I received as many credits as possible no matter what.

However, while reaching Peak Emperor within the next few years would be ideal, I needed far more contribution points than I could possibly accumulate in that time.

If I wanted any hope of advancing to such a level, I needed help. My friends might be able to spare a few points, but they weren’t much better off than I was. None of them had high-level Rank 6 skills. I could ask Jin for help, but I had already relied on her too much.

As I saw it, I only had one option. My putative ‘master.’ Formation Emperor Shen.

I used a token Shen had given me to travel to the Earth Peak and directly enter his cave at the peak of the mountain. Not long after I arrived, he showed up to greet me.

“Here to use my cultivation cave already?”

I noticed a twinkle in his eye as he looked at me. He knew something.

Taking a deep breath, I gave him a steady gaze.

“No. I need help. Can you... loan me contribution points?”

That simple twinkle turned far smugger and more self-satisfied. “How much?”

“Enough... Enough to purchase all the karmic energy I need to reach Peak Emperor.”

Shen bobbed his head up and down sagaciously. “You’re asking for a loan? This means you plan to pay it back. When can I expect repayment?”

“I...”

Shen closed the jaws of his trap. “You can’t, can you. That is a bit of a problem. While I have been an Emperor in the sect for long enough to build up a substantial number of points, as the Master of the Earth Peak, there are rules that bind me. I can’t just give you points. Even if you are my beloved disciple, that just isn’t allowed.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. I had gotten a good enough sense of Shen to know he was going to give me the points. He was just playing around.

“What do you want?”

“Well, you see, I can’t just give them to you, but I can use them to purchase something from you in advance. Let’s call these points a... downpayment. I’ll hand them over to you now, and you just need to bring me my purchase at a later date.”

My mouth dropped open slightly. “You’re not allowed to give me points, but you’re allowed to give me points if I promise to give you a random item at an unknown point in the future? That doesn’t seem like a very secure system.”

Shen lifted two fingers and tapped his right temple. “That’s how Oaths work. It’s all about intent. Well, mostly. Anyway, I have to sincerely believe that if I give you these points, I am, in fact, purchasing an item from you. I have to believe you can obtain it, that if you obtain it, you will give it to me, and that the item is worth what I am paying for it. As long as those conditions hold, my Oath remains unbroken.”

He gave me a wide grin. “So, Fang, are you willing to sell me an earth-based Earth-Rank fire seed?”

I blinked at him.

“Of course, you will need to deliver it and pick it back up whenever you give me my memories. That will be a bit of a burden. So, I’ll give you the points now, and then every cycle, those same points will belong to you. You’ll get them whenever you deliver the seed to me. What do you think?”

I stared at Shen. I couldn’t help but feel as if he had been planning this for years. Did he even have those points at the beginning of the loop, or had he been building them up ever since he got his memories back? Had he been waiting for this exact moment?

It was a horrible deal. An Earth-Rank fire seed was worth far more than the energy needed to reach Peak Emperor. That was true... but was it true for me? If I were able to get such a seed once, I could go back and retrieve it countless times. I could build up a small stockpile of Earth-Rank seeds. They would hold little value.

Also, I already had to deliver and pick up his memory orbs. Adding an extra jade box containing a fire seed wouldn’t be any trouble. In a way, he was offering me free access to Emperor-level karmic energy.

However, that was only true if I could actually acquire such a seed.

“I can’t make any promises. I’ve never even heard of such a fire seed. But if I can get it, I’ll let you have it.”

Shen nodded with a sly smile. “That’s good enough. As long as you make a good-faith effort to obtain it, I’ll be satisfied. However, I will not give you even one more point until I get the seed. Understood?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He turned around and waved me away.

“Go on, I’ve got work to do. I’ll transfer the funds into your account.”

Using Shen’s cultivation cave and the karmic energy I purchased with his points, my cultivation base grew rapidly. To reach Peak Emperor before I needed to go to the Summit and meet with Emperor Li, all I needed to do was ascend two or three times a year.

So, between each advancement, I had a bit of extra time. While I maybe should have spent this time learning Rank 6 alchemy to help earn contribution points in the future, I was far too focused on a different project.

Having mastered the soul visualization technique, I was working on learning how to carve formations into my soul. This was a bit tricky, but once I figured out the basics, it wasn’t too much different from carving a formation into solid rock.

Instead, I took a breath. This was a learning experience. I had learned something.

As I stared at the fire seed, a new thought popped into my head.

I found an unbroken box, stuffed the wind seed into it, and pulled the Cold Mountain Fire into my soul. Then, I unclogged a single vortex of the Qi Gathering Formation.

Energy was pulled through the formation and pushed into the Cold Mountain Fire, but it showed no reaction.

However, in the center of my storage space, a large, spherical granite rock had appeared and was growing at a prodigious speed.

I cut the flow of energy to the formation, took out this new stone, and then rooted around in the piles of trash that was my storage space until I found the mysterious stone from the end of my last life. They were nearly the exact same. The only slight difference was that the new one was covered in small beads of moisture.

Everything began to click. The Expanding Realms Fire burned energy to create space. The Cold Mountain Fire burned energy to create stone. The Slicing Winds Fire burned energy to create... air?

I would need to be careful with that last one. It formed something, but was it normal air? Was it oxygen? Was it carbon monoxide? I would need to do some tests, and it probably wasn’t a good idea to stuff anyone into my storage space until I knew if its new atmosphere was breathable.

Before anything else, I swapped the Cold Mountain Fire for the Expanding Realms Fire. Then, I activated the formation one final time.

Energy poured into the black flames of the spatial fire seed, and I watched as my storage space grew at a visible rate. Every minute, nearly 5 cubic meters of new volume was created. If that kept up, my storage space would grow by over two and a half million cubic meters every year.

Those numbers sounded impressive, but there were a billion cubic meters in a cubic kilometer. At its current rate of expansion, growing a space large enough to store an area the size of NanLu City would be the work of millennia.

However, this was a start. My space was finally growing on its own at an impressive speed, and that speed would only increase in the future.

That was, of course, if I stayed in an area with high qi levels and could keep the formation active at all times. Unfortunately, doing so might be a problem. High-Rank Qi Gathering Formations could drain the environmental qi for miles in every direction. If I kept this formation active in the Wastes, it would easily drain all the energy in Dragon City, and no one would be able to cultivate, not even me.

I returned my focus to the world around me and looked in energy vision to see the effects of my new formation. When I did, I was confused. There were zero signs that it was even active.

I stood up and went to find Shen.

He was working on the same giant stone slab that he had been standing on when we first met.

“Emperor Shen, can you take a look at something?”

He snorted and turned his head to me. “What is it? Another attempt at a formation?”

I furrowed my brow. “I just finished inscribing the formation into my soul. Can you sense anything? Do you see any signs that it’s active?”

He squinted his eyes and looked around the room. “No... Is it working properly? Is pulling in the normal amount of energy?”

I nodded slowly.

“Interesting... I’ve never worked with soul formations myself. This is something worth investigating...”

Since he didn’t have any ideas, I returned to the cultivation cave and sat down. I tried to think of anything that could explain the situation.

Slowly, an important memory crept into my thoughts. A while ago, I had purchased information from that System that seemed a bit... overpriced. I asked if there would be any problem with my soul space when I entered a Trial. The System had told me that there wouldn’t be because the Trial was an expanded physical space. It wouldn’t affect my soul or anything inside of it.

Was that related? Was the formation pulling energy from... elsewhere? From some type of spiritual space?

That... That had the possibility of being problematic. Would running a Qi Gathering Formation be detectable? Would it cause new issues with some type of... spiritual entity?

I couldn’t allow myself to be chained down by unknowable ‘what ifs,’ but I could take reasonable precautions against them.

“System, how much to... to conceal the effects of my Rank 6 formation? It doesn’t have to be perfectly concealed. I just want to make it so that its effects won’t be noticeable unless someone at the level of an Emperor or above is intentionally looking for it.”

Cost 225 billion credits.

That was a tough cost to swallow, but I was trying to hide the effects of a Rank 6 formation, so it made sense. I could probably lower the cost by lowering the power of the formation, but that wasn’t going to happen.

“Purchase.”

Purchase confirmed. 63,213,100,550 credits remaining.

I felt a subtle change in the world that I couldn’t quite describe. Suddenly, things just felt... calmer.

I looked into my soul and storage space. The formation was still churning away, and the space was growing as rapidly as ever.

Then, my eyes landed on the piles of trash that my storage space now contained. The large heaps of broken boxes, spirit stone dust, and random spirit fires were shifting and tumbling as the space around them grew.

It was time for some spring cleaning.