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I had a choice to make. I had to decide how I should progress.

It was time for the Nine Rivers Sect’s Entrance Exam, and I wanted to participate and learn more about the place, but I felt that it would be a mistake. I wasn’t ready.

Another path I considered was signing up for classes at the Yellow Orchid Academy. Since they were the best school in the city, I should be able to make great progress there. The fact remained, though, that my time at the River’s Tributary had shown me that I didn’t have the necessary low-level experience to develop to my fullest potential as a Grandmaster.

I needed a fresh start. I needed to begin as a Disciple and slowly work my way up.

That’s what I needed to do, but it didn’t mean I needed to restart right away. Studying at the Academy would require significant funds, and I could use the rest of this life accumulating them.

Having strengthened my soul significantly over the past few centuries, I had been able to barely manage to make Perfect Rank 2 Meridian Builder Pills with only mid eight-star affinities, but if I wanted to make Rank 3 pills, I needed more.

“System, permanently upgrade my fire, wood, metal, and water affinities to peak seven-star.”

Confirmed. Cost 690,000 credits. 114,575,625 credits remaining.

I could have gotten away with temporary upgrades, but better to set this as my new ground floor. I considered that idea for a few moments and ultimately decided to pull the trigger on another purchase.

“System, upgrade my light, dark, lightning, and wind affinities to peak seven-star.”

Confirmed. Cost 7.1 million credits. 107,485,625 credits remaining.

This would allow me to work much more freely within the Grandmaster realm and below. Even if it wasn’t necessary at the moment, it was a minimal extra cost and would serve me well in the future.

Satisfied with my choice, I headed to the Blue Wind Pavilion.

Upon entering, I saw the attendant I had become most familiar with in this city.

“How may I help you today, sir?” asked Meng LuYao.

I rubbed my hands together slightly, showing a bit of nervousness. “Miss Meng, I wanted to know what I would need to do to become a member of the Pavilion.”

Members received significantly higher returns when selling pills, and they had opportunities to advance to Martial Lord. Originally, I hadn’t wanted to pursue this path, but since I had decided to delay my entry into the sect until my next life, this was the best method I could think of to reach the Lord realm in a short time span.

I could have tried to use Emperor Li’s token to bully my way through this process, but that would have been extremely risky. If the manager of this location was a Martial King, they likely wouldn’t be as easily intimidated by it as WuJing had been.

“I’m sorry, sir.” Meng LuYao clasped her hands and bowed her head slightly. “We do not accept applications for memberships at this location. If he deems it proper, our manager will reach out to you personally, but otherwise, you may wish to visit our main branch in Blue Wind City. A few paths to membership are available there.”

It was an option, but not one I wanted to pursue in this life.

“Understood. Then I will just purchase this list of ingredients for now.” I handed over a list of several Rank 3 herbs.

I had built up a sizable amount of money for a Martial Master, but it was somewhat pathetic when compared to what was needed to buy Rank 3 herbs. I only had enough for three pills. That was plenty, though.

I entered the grind of pill-making once more. First building up a small cash reserve, then using the excess pills to advance my cultivation.

I should have been careful when advancing through the Grandmaster realm. My body contained countless capillary meridians, and it would be easy for them to become clogged if I advanced too rapidly. I didn’t let that stop me. With only five years until my self-imposed deadline, I didn’t want to wait around.

In a past life, I had been able to advance from Grandmaster 1 to Grandmaster 6 in only a year’s time. That was using a dual-element Profound-Rank technique. With my Earth-Rank technique, I was able to draw in qi much faster, so I expected to advance through Grandmaster faster as well. However, in the first year, I only advanced to Grandmaster 5. In the second year, I advanced through Grandmaster 7 and was nearing 8. At the end of three years, I was a Peak Grandmaster.

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This was slower than I expected, and the reasons were complex. My meridians seemed to clog much faster than they had in the past, it seemed like I needed significantly higher quantities of qi to advance, and the harder I pushed, the more it felt like I was fighting against my own body.

There was no world in which I would consider my current state ‘good,’ but it was good enough for what I needed to do.

I didn’t see a path forward to Martial Lord in this life, and that was a bit of a problem. I needed to start gathering spirit stones, and that required me to be able to make Rank 4 pills. Seeing no other quick option, I decided to advance to False Lord.

I didn’t have a manual to guide me through the process of advancing to False Lord, but I understood the theory, and it was simple enough to execute.

First, I braided my qi into a tight, compact ball at the center of my dantian. I built up layer after layer, forcing it to be as solid and powerful as I could make it.

Once I had a core I was sure could withstand extreme pressures, I started pouring my qi into it. As I pushed more and more energy into the small tightly braided ball, it began to expand slightly, giving me the impression that the qi was somewhat elastic. This made me nervous, but I didn’t stop.

When it looked like my shoddy core was about to explode, I felt a pop. My eyes widened in fear, but when my core was sucked through a hole in the world, I grinned. I mustered all of my remaining energy and slammed it into the chains that bound me. Only a hairline crack appeared, but that was enough. I had advanced to False Lord.

I reached into a storage bag, took out a pill bottle, and tossed it into the air. I slammed it with my will-lock. It froze in mid-air, but only briefly. After a slight pause, the bottle resumed its trip to the ground.

It would have to be enough.

I spent a few days cultivating in peace, allowing my energy reserves to recover, and then I went to the Blue Wind Pavilion to purchase a single Kairaway Pod. I could only afford one, and rebuilding cash reserves to purchase more using only Rank 3 pills would be annoying, so I didn’t want to mess it up.

Sitting in my rented workshop, looking at the pod, I knew I needed to do everything I could to make this a successful Perfect pill.

“System, permanently raise my wood affinity to peak six-star.”

Confirmed. Cost 16 million credits. 91,485,625 credits remaining.

I breathed in and got to work.

Holding all the bits of medicinal energy together with only a False Lord’s will was difficult, but I had enough experience to see me through. Using my improved affinities, I was able to slowly cleanse the energy and concoct a Perfect Rank 4 Soil Enrichment Pill.

Because of the weak force my will-lock provided, the variety of Rank 4 pills I would be able to create would be severely limited, but I would still be able to earn spirit stones, and that was all I was aiming for.

I wanted to hoard as much wealth as I could in the limited time I had remaining, but there was something else I needed to do.

If I wanted to bring that wealth back with me, I needed to expand my storage space. I had already expanded it significantly from where it started, but I needed an enormous space if I wanted to bring a large quantity of gold, spirit stones, and pills back with me.

Sitting in my inn room, I focused on the seed in my soul and began pouring all the energy I could into it.

As a Martial Disciple 1, it had only grown at a little over a cubic centimeter a day. With all the strength I could muster as a False Lord, it was growing at nearly 10,000 cubic centimeters a day. Previously, its total size was only 60,000 cubic centimeters. At this rate, it would take less than a hundred days to reach a full cubic meter.

Even though I had learned to walk around somewhat freely as I expanded the space, the idea of spending months, years, or even decades doing so was painful. Taking a Rank 3 Qi Gathering Pill allowed me to triple the speed at which the space grew for a short amount of time, but constantly consuming pills wasn’t a solution. If I wanted to grow the space to truly epic proportions, I would need to find a better method.

Still, in less than a week, I was able to turn my storage space into a sphere with a radius of nearly thirty centimeters. I continued this for nearly a month, expanding the radius to fifty centimeters, but that was where I decided to stop. That was more than sufficient. I could have pushed further, but since it wasn’t necessary, I decided to hold off until I found ways to improve the process.

I filled a tenth of my space with gold bars and spirit stones. 250 bars worth 500 gold each, and 100 spirit stones. To avoid needing to use gold bars all the time, I also packed a few bags of various coins for everyday use. Gold, silver, and even copper, just in case.

I would have liked to take larger quantities of gold since Grandmaster-level items could be worth hundreds of thousands each, but storing thousands, or tens of thousands, of gold bars would have taken up an exorbitant amount of room. Usually, bank notes from places such as the Blue Wind Pavilion were used in transactions of that level, but carrying notes with me instead of hard gold could lead to allegations of fraud that I would rather avoid.

Instead, I focused on storing a wide variety of pills. Several of these were for my own use, but most of them were for use as potential trade goods. While gold and spirit stones took up a significant amount of space, a single jade bottle containing just two or three pills could be worth over a dozen spirit stones. I would have to be careful when selling them, but pills were a far more compact way of storing wealth.

The last item in my space was a large jade box with thick walls.

My seed of the Cold Mountain Fire had continued to deteriorate, but the moment I placed spirit stones in there with it, it consumed them, regaining some of its vitality. In a way, this was good since it was healing the seed, but I needed the stones for myself, and I didn’t have enough to share with the fire seed. My solution was to stuff it into a jade box. This halted its deterioration while also keeping it from consuming other items in the space.

Of course, after I did that, I also quickly learned I had to place the spirit stones in a jade box to protect them from losing energy the way the seed had. I needed to understand what was causing the energy drain. If I had a chance, I would look for a Formation Grandmaster who was knowledgeable about storage bags to see if they could shed any light on this problem.

With preparations for my next life complete, I swallowed a poison pill.

You have died. Calculating…

You died as a False Martial Lord. 2,000,000 credits awarded.

Total Credits: 93,485,625

Affinities

Peak Six-Star — Earth, Wood

Peak Seven-Star — Water, Fire, Metal, Wind, Lightning, Light, Dark

Skills (Updated)

Technique Appraisal – Rank 3 (Earth)