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I didn’t consider myself some great sage who could pontificate on weighty matters with nothing but my own reasoning. If I wanted to join LiTing at that school and maintain my image as the ‘Great Teacher,’ I needed to rely on knowledge from greater minds than my own.

To do that, I needed to spend credits, but how many credits would I be willing to spend on such an endeavor? The importance of faction building in the sect was crystal clear, and this school was the closest thing I had to a faction. How many credits would maintaining it be worth?

I had already sunk 2 billion credits into soul cultivation in this life, and doing much more than that was questionable. There was still a lot that I needed to buy if I wanted any chance of pushing the limits of Martial Emperor.

So, before doing anything else, I needed to buy everything I considered non-negotiable. I needed to make all the purchases that I had been holding off on because they weren’t yet entirely necessary. Then, once the essentials were taken care of, I would be in a better place to decide how much I could spend on helping me with the school.

“System, increase my alchemy and formation comprehensions to a total of one billion credits each.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 1,499,479,989 credits. 4,983,184,599 credits remaining.

“Permanently increase my Water and Metal affinities to mid five-star.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 700 million credits. 4,283,184,599 credits remaining.

I wanted to increase all my basic affinities to peak five-star, but that would have been another 5 billion, so I settled on evening them all out at mid five. On its own, that wouldn’t be enough to let me concoct Perfect Rank 5 pills, but I already had a potential solution to that problem.

“System, permanently increase my space affinity to peak eight-star.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 1.25 billion credits. 3,033,184,599 credits remaining.

“Permanently increase my karmic energy affinity to peak seven-star.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 160 million. 2,873,184,599 credits remaining.

I considered boosting my karmic affinity one step higher, but at a cost of a billion credits, I didn’t know if it was worth it. I hadn’t seen too much value in karmic energy affinity aside from it letting me work with more powerful forms of karma at lower cultivation levels, so I held off.

Deciding how to best spend my remaining credits was difficult. Where would they have the most effect, and should I save them for later in case I needed them as an Emperor?

I considered the various options and finally came to a decision. My focus was on making the most I could out of this life, and one option held possibilities the others didn’t.

“System, increase my comprehension of cultivation techniques to a total of one billion.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 999,480,000 credits. 1,873,704,599 credits remaining.

I wasn’t willing to improve the rate of my soul growth since it was better to have it grow slower, but two more purchases held potential. I just wasn’t sure how much.

“Broaden my comprehension for ‘nurturing talents’ to a more general teaching comprehension. Then, boost my qi control and this teaching comprehension to a total of 100 million credits each.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 199,480,000 credits. 1,674,224,599 credits remaining.

Since I would be focusing on teaching the disciples of the school, I considered pushing that one even further, but I didn’t think it would do any good. One of the problems I had found with these comprehension boosts was that they were limited by the information available to me. Without more or better knowledge of teaching methodologies, boosting my comprehension any further would have a limited effect. I could try to research such things myself, but that would take time and effort I wasn’t willing to spend at the moment.

After thinking through my previously purchased abilities, I felt satisfied with where they now stood. Improving my library would be nice, but it was in no way essential. I could either store high-Rank books in my storage space or just pick them up again in my next life, so immediate upgrades there weren’t overly important.

Still, it wouldn’t do to spend everything now only to find out I forgot about something essential, so I needed to retain some credits as a contingency.

“System, save one billion credits. Spend the rest on books for my mental library related to the four paths of soul cultivation. They don’t need to be foundational texts. I want a wide variety of knowledge from many diverse sources. None of the books should be ones found in this world. Focus on quantity before quality. I want at least 20 books, but more is better. None should be worth less than 10 million credits.”

Processing… Purchase confirmed. Cost 674,224,599 credits. 1,000,000,000 credits remaining.

43 books appeared in my mental library.

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I didn’t need to rush to the school and talk with my former students right away. LiTing was handling things, and she would let me know if she needed my assistance. Instead, I took my time slowly studying my new texts and considering how to improve the situation at the school.

None of the books I received were from this world, and nothing drove that point home more than the fact that none of them mentioned the need for Rulers to generate karmic energy. Assisting Rulers with gathering energy was a core rationale of pretty much every single philosophical text from this world, even those on Universalism.

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Most of these new books did have references to cultivation, and many of them hinted at Rulers drawing power from their subjects, but none of them ever used the term ‘karmic energy.’ While I wanted to explore this mystery more deeply, the only reason I had been able to purchase these texts was because there was no actionable information regarding different cultivation systems in them. If there were, then the price would have been far beyond what I could afford.

Setting the topic of cultivation to the side while making a note to look into it more in the future, I focused on studying how I might be able to help the school. LiTing had given me a basic overview of how everything worked, and I wanted to figure out a way to improve it using the new information I had gained.

As I studied these new philosophical texts, I also continued my study of Rank 5 formations.

During this practice, I took out the alchemy cauldron I had been given during the Fire Peak Trial and looked at it with new eyes. With help from LiTing, I had figured out that the main benefit of it being a refined item was simply an increase in the number of formations it could hold. The base metal of the cauldron was good, but it wasn’t good enough to handle such small-scale formations. The thinner the walls between inscribed lines, the stronger the metal had to be, so a refiner had enhanced this aspect of the cauldron.

As for the formations, most of them weren’t anything special. The formations to increase qi power and control were nice, but I didn’t find them overly meaningful. There were only two formations that I found truly noteworthy.

The first was one I had used previously. It could boost a pill’s efficacy by a small amount as it was being condensed. I found notes about this formation in Emperor Shen’s books, but I still didn’t fully grasp the mechanisms involved. I could recreate it by rote, but I didn’t yet have the theoretical framework needed to fully understand it.

The second formation helped an alchemist with low affinities create Perfect pills. It assisted with the subtle manipulation of medicinal energy and, with enough practice, could be used to control it enough so that even an alchemist with low affinities could attack and destroy all of an herb’s toxins without harming its efficacy.

Neither of these formations had any meaningful benefit to me at this point, but I could see why a normal Grandmaster might want a cauldron like this. If a Lord’s affinities were lacking, they would also benefit from its ability to help with Rank 3 and low-level Rank 4 pills, but the formations weren’t powerful enough to help with anything more potent.

I doubted LiTing’s original assessment that a Pill King would care about such a tool. It was possible, but they would have to be someone with both low affinities and an interest in making Rank 3 pills.

Overall, this particular cauldron wasn’t of much use to me. Its formations provided interesting possibilities for future research, but it was unlikely I would learn anything that could help me personally. The reason for this was simple. If I could create a similar cauldron that was powerful enough to help me with Rank 6 pills, I would likely already have the skills and affinities to do alchemy of that level without a cauldron.

Instead, such an item would see its true value when given to a subordinate. As a city lord, or a faction leader, I could give such cauldrons to low-level alchemists, and they would then be able to create higher-quality pills than normal. After all, as the leader, I couldn’t be responsible for making all the pills my faction might require.

If Pill Kings were interested in this cauldron, that would be why. Not for their own use, but so that they could more easily outsource low-level pills.

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Over the course of a year, I made great strides in both formations and alchemy, and I felt I was reaching a bottleneck where I needed a higher cultivation level to proceed any further.

In the Earth Peak Trial, I also made excellent progress. Using LiTing’s Rank 4 staff and a Profound-Rank wood-based spirit fire, I was able to deal enough damage to the golems that I could clear dozens of stages in each run.

LiTing had undersold her staff’s power by more than a little bit. With enough force behind it, I was able to make deep gouges in the rock monsters and cripple them after only a few blows. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a huge step up from where I had been before.

Even so, after she advanced to Artifact King, I asked for her to make me a staff with a heavy ball end again. The spade was nice, but against hardened rock, I needed something with a punch.

The Rank 5 staff she gave me was not what I expected. The crescent head was just as it had been before, but the spade end had been replaced with a large teardrop-shaped head that looked somewhat similar to a claw hammer. With the rounded side, I could bash, and with the point of the teardrop, I could pierce.

LiTing warned me that she was only trying out this design and wanted my feedback on how well it functioned, but I had high hopes. The balance was a bit tricky to get used to, but anything I hit with it exploded.

Using this new weapon, I quickly advanced far enough to raise my earth affinity to mid four-star, and I was making solid progress toward increasing it even further.

I didn’t know if Emperor Shen’s mind was as sharp as Yan’s, but by this point, he had to have a solid guess at why I was insistent on cultivating the earth essence instead of just absorbing it like normal. I had hoped this might lead to him being more generous with the stuff, but after taking him as my ‘master,’ he never spoke to me again. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. It seemed we both got what we wanted out of the deal, and he might have decided to leave well enough alone.

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Not too long after I finished studying my new books and had gotten a solid sense of how I could improve the school, LiTing came to see me.

“Teacher, I need your help. There’s been some trouble at the school, and I can’t handle it on my own any longer.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“It’s… Hao MuChen.”

I stared blankly. “Who?”

When I showed no reaction, she clarified. “Hao MuChen… Lord Hao?”

That was a name I hadn’t heard in years.

“He’s causing trouble again?”

“He’s been able to pull off a splinter group from our school and is using them to compete with us. He’s looking to destroy our reputation as the premier soul cultivation school in the city.”

“But… Why? Why would he care? Didn’t Ning ChenKun handle things? Why would he return to bothering us after all this time?”

I had known the school was having difficulties, but I hadn’t known they were coming from Lord Hao. I had made it clear to LiTing that I was available to help, but she had wanted to try and take charge of things personally, so I didn’t involve myself in petty politics. I had only looked at the school from a holistic perspective.

This forced LiTing to need to explain what was happening in more detail.

“Since both of us are working for Ning ChenKun, the School of the Great Teacher has been absorbed into his faction. He’s sent people to protect it and has treated it as part of his territory. At first, that helped us, but now Lord Hao is looking to use the school as a front in his war against the Ning faction.”

“War? Why are they at war?”

“Lord Hao and Ning ChenKun have both advanced to King and are preparing to ascend to Earth City. They’re using this war as a competition to score points against each other before that so they can improve their standing in the sect. Our school is just a small part in this much wider conflict.”

I nodded in understanding. “What do you need me to do? Is there going to be a battle?”

She shook her head. “The factions are proving their skills in martial combat elsewhere. We just need to prove ourselves in soul cultivation. The School of the Great Teacher has become a popular destination for anyone who needs to travel the Path of Soul to reach Earth City. Anyone trained by us will feel beholden to us and will defend us if we are ever in danger. This silently increases the strength of the school and the strength of ChenKun’s faction. We need to prove the School of the Great Teacher is superior to whatever training Lord Hao is providing.”

I considered the situation and nodded. Ning ChenKun had been dismissive of Lord Hao’s clan. That should mean they didn’t have access to much information beyond what was available in the Academy and the sect, giving us a massive advantage.

I gave LiTing the most confident look I could muster.

“That… shouldn’t be a problem. I think I can deal with this problem.”

Then, I changed into solid white robes with black trim and allowed my face to take on a poor mimicry of Emperor Li’s granite expression. I became the ‘Great Teacher.’

“Let’s go.”