We entered through three sets of massive wood gates built into a thick concrete wall that was the Flame Sect. There was also a wood covered pit between two of the gates. This had to be the biggest wall I had seen so far. It was as thick as two houses and at least ten stories tall. It was also built on top of a mountain. The number of people that would be needed to siege such a location would be insane. This world did have trebuchets, since they were based off of wood and counterweights. But on top of the wall I noted trebuchets as well. With the height advantage, it would be insane to assail such a location with conventional armies. “Does anyone actually attack or are the walls just for show?” I asked Vice Leader Tan. “Cultivators are superior physically to normal people. If a group of cultivators looks to attack, they would rush the walls with scaling equipment or attempt to punch through them. That is why any self-respecting sect would build like we do. What does your sect do?” “Arrays and formations. Even then it would be up to the elders to fight if there was a serious attack. Walls like these, while impressive mean nothing if you can fly to bypass them,” I replied. “Flight, you know the secrets of flight? It is a legend,” the Vice Leader said. “Perhaps that is one thing we can trade when I discuss things with your Sect Leader,” I replied, and the Vice Leader nodded. “I will say that you won’t be able to make the necessary arrays or formations, and technological flight will be tricky without metals or combustion engines. The lack of energy and metal prohibit such things.” “Ah, that is true. But perhaps as a curiosity or something to be worked on in some of the Elder’s spare time.” We cleared the wall and entered the Sect itself. The mountaintop was quite large with the ground inside being at a higher elevation. I had noted that the tunnel through the wall was at an incline. The interior only had four stories from the ground to the top of the wall. There were a cluster of buildings nearby right after we entered, but in the distance, I could see large fields growing a range of plants. I had also noted that the outside of the Sect was being farmed as well. “While it will probably never happen, we can last two years in the event of siege. But the primary concern is enemy cultivators, since we are in a good relationship with the Flame Emperor. His family is one of the founding families of the Flame Sect,” Vice Leader Tan explained. Ah nepotism at its finest with cultivators putting their relatives into key positions, like Emperor. “It is recorded and passed on from Sect to Sect. If removed, they use their power, and only by remaining in one place for several generations will it build back up. In addition, there is very limited benefit to having multiple nexus crystals in a single point.” “Do you know of a Cultivator Han?” I decided to ask, since that wandering cultivator brought up questions in my mind as to how he cultivated without a place . “A scoundrel of the highest order. He raped one of the Elder’s granddaughters and was expelled from the Flame Sect. He had connections, which was why he wasn’t killed. Where did you meet him?” “The Kingdom of Wu, at the edges of the Flame Empire,” I answered and the Sect Leader relaxed at that. “Then there are no problems.” I was more annoyed with how he hadn’t told me the full truth about this place or his situation. If I ran into him again, he would not be long in the world of the living for deceiving me like he did. Even if it was deception by omission, I spared his life, and he repaid me with lies. That was the true nature of any cultivation society, with every cultivator looking to gain an advantage of some kind. “You aren’t lying about moving the crystal?” I asked. “I can show you the records. Each time a new Sect is formed, the Sect that is branching off passes on key texts to be preserved from our ancestors. While I cannot stop you, without this crystal we would be unable to cultivate,” the Sect Leader said. “The energy in this chamber is half of what the Material Layer naturally has. The real value is in the natural formation. You can’t see or sense energy at your cultivation level, but it should be possible to replicate it and try variations. I am no array master, but I have quite a bit of experience over my life. One learns to pick up a thing or two,” I replied. “If that were possible, it would be a discovery that would alter the entire course of the Great World. More cultivators could be trained,” Sect Leader Flame said. “There is clearly a limit, since you said the crystals don’t stack. It is probably the natural energy of the Mechanical Layer, which by itself is almost nothing. The real trick would be to invert the array, to draw in more energy than the layer naturally has.” Before, I would have no idea where to start. This natural formation solved a lot of the mystery. I also noted there were slight similarities to the symbols and designs methods of the Forever City, but that could just be convergent design principles and underlying symbology that shared a common root. It was impossible to say. I knew enough that I could work out what arrays and formations did, but knowing their history, or even trying to work out from base principles something would be impossible. That was why I had never considered this a feasible possibility. The real trick would be to create a barrier of some kind, to condense the energy. Right now as a natural process, this was like an oasis in the desert. The water was evaporating off with no containment. That was exactly what was happening here. Containing energy was the basis of arrays and formations. It was what I used to advance my cultivation in the earlier stages, to increase the pressure of energy around my body. While I might not have been able to design everything myself, I had looked over the designs. Then with my time in the Forever City and all its equipment, then the hover craft, I had gained a lot of practical experience over time. Time continued to pass as I thought over the situation. This was a huge opportunity. “Good news, I won’t need to do anything to the nexus crystal but look at it closely. Some of the interior portions are hard to see and I don’t want to risk sending out my energy to check, since it could damage the crystal.” “That is good to here. How can we assist you?” the Sect Leader asked. “I need a place to work in this chamber and set up equipment. I will need to make array plates and carefully observe their effects. The real trick will be to make them active on a passive level and portable. I am guessing that your Sect mediates down here quite a bit?” I asked. “We do. In order to advance our cultivation, we draw in the ambient energy to improve our bodies,” the Sect Leader answered. “Which means you can’t leave, since you are tied to this place. Well, people mediating down here won’t bother me. But I will need to set up my equipment and ask that it not be disturbed. It could take a while to work out exactly what the nexus crystal is doing and creating a practical application based off of that,” I explained. If I was a master of arrays, then I could have come up with something instantly. Now I needed to take my time and do some trial and error. It wouldn’t be pretty or elegant, but if I could create a portable field that allowed me to draw on my full energy, that would be a huge accomplishment. Trying to draw in more energy was not something I was that hopeful about. It was one thing to cancel out the effect, it was another to counter the effect that governed the Great World. Then there was Yang Heng. If I could create something , I could rescue him. I really didn’t look forward to going back to the Edge of the Great World. It was a long trip all the way here and would be a long trip on the way back. But I owed him, his knowledge was immense, and he might have an answer to this place and to leave. Also, the hover craft was there. If I could get it working, then my travel would be sped up immensely. Well the first thing was to figure out a solution, then I could worry about what I would do afterwards. For all I knew there might be an intrinsic property of the crystal itself that allowed it to counter the energy draining of the Great World. It would be the high of hubris to think I understood how it worked after just looking at it. While these cultivators might not have any clue, I knew I was no where close to being an expert or at the top of cultivation knowledge. At least my time reading and learning in the Forever City had not been wasted. I could see Yang Heng’s face now that was trying to conceal its smugness at the very thought. I hated the Forever City, to admit anything good about the place was annoying. “As for the Flame Sect, I need to look at the texts detailing your bottleneck. I think increasing the energy density would be the solution, it usually is, but that is something I would need to check.” “Of course, and how much space will you require?” Sect Leader Flame asked. “That area between these two pillars. I can let my apprentice mediate there and set up my equipment.” “What equipment? Unless there is another carriage that hasn’t arrived?” I just smiled at that question. “I have a spatial item, which I can use to store various items.” I waved my hand and pulled out my gun. The shock on the Sect Leader’s face was priceless. “Normally I don’t use it, because I have to use my own energy. But here in this room, I can get away with accessing my spatial item like I normally do.” I put the gun away. “Your sword, that isn’t ordinary either?” he asked. “It is made from metal imbued with energy. It would be labeled as a rank 5 blade.” I pulled it out and held it up. “It was given to me by my first master.” I then put it away. After that I settled into the Flame Sect. I spent half my time reviewing the records they had in regards to cultivation and the other half working on a formation to copy what the nexus crystal was doing naturally. It seemed completely improbable that such a formation could naturally form. There were clearly some higher-level shenanigans going on. Thankfully paper and ink were cheap, since I used both of them in large quantities to draw out test formations and observe their effects one after another. The biggest issue I soon discovered was that the nexus crystal was built in three dimensions, a three dimensional formation, which increased the complexity. Then there were the symbols in the crystal and the hard to see interior portions which made it even more challenging. Even with a working example in front of me, it wasn’t a matter of copying everything over. I would bring the formations I drew and leave them in the nexus chamber, regularly checking in on them along with my apprentice. Fu Shirong kept mostly the same schedule as me, just with more sleeping. He would divide his time between the library and the nexus chamber. While I was studying the cultivation of the Great World, I was holding off from drawing any more conclusions until I had studied the available literature. Unfortunately, the later parts tended to devolve from the technical into more flowery descriptions. After twenty days of work, I wasn’t ready to admit defeat, but this project was a lot more difficult than I had first assumed. The best option to discover what was happening would be to break the crystal open and look in the interior. But that would make an enemy of the Flame Sect if I did that, and without a place with energy in the environment, my work would become that much more difficult. There were records of attempting to make more crystals, by taking a small portion of the crystal and putting it in water with various minerals to encourage it to grow. Nothing worked apparently. The cultivators of the Great World had no idea how these crystals formed. If a sect did have information, they weren’t sharing. But I doubted any of these people had cracked the secret. While the Lifewards regions had more people, there wasn’t a huge leap in the number of cultivators. My personal guess was that the crystals might have been something that was present during the initial creation of the Great World. Perhaps markers to help with the construction. There was no distinct pattern to their location, but they were spread out. Cultivators would often search areas where one could be while out completing tasks for the sect. There was also the rumor that the person who discovered a nexus crystal would be able to break through to the Soul Enlightenment Realm. That could very well be true. The problem was actually finding a crystal and how rare it was. The Flame Sect’s crystal was only discovered since this location had been chosen to have a city built. The crystal was discovered during the excavation of the mountain. There was no cave before. The cultivators who came, carved the entire cave out around the crystal and founded their sect here. It wasn’t even directly under the center of the mountain either. While I would like to say it was completely by chance, there was the strong possibility of a higher power intervening in some way, or nudging things in a specific direction. With energy, almost anything was possible. The best and only option to replicate what the crystal was doing would be to make a giant cube of metal in layers, and then carve out the intricate formation into each layer before stacking them up. The good news was that I could make metal with one of the Ek’s machines without having to use my own energy. I just tossed in stone and dirt, and out spat trash metal bars I could use. For these cultivators it was the height of technology and energy. Something that would grant unlimited wealth. For myself it was a useful tool. For Yang Heng, it was a piece of trash. The Sect had metal forgers and they took the metal bars and made me thin metal sheets, as thin as they possibly could, along with the various tools I would need to etch arrays into the metal itself. In exchange I gave them a couple of metal bars for their work. I could only imagine that if I left the machine here and let them use it, they would keep it running non-stop and make everything out of metal to show their wealth and power. They would change their name from the Flame Sect to the Metal Sect. Even the Sect Leader was intrigued by my machine. I didn’t let them run it non-stop, since I didn’t want to risk damaging it. There was no way to replace the machine if it broke or suffered a failure of any kind. While it was incredibly robust, I would rather not take that chance. I would pay for the help from the metal workers of the Flame Sect, but I wasn’t about to hand over the machine. Thankfully they didn’t ask, but I knew that the wealth of the Flame Sect jumped a large margin from my metal making. It was nice to have an actual project to focus my mind on instead of traveling, fighting, or cultivating. Well, I was always cultivating with how I was focused on retaining my energy, but I felt like I had a path forward, no matter how difficult it might be. The Flame Sect while skeptical had gradually warmed up to my presence. It wasn’t like my being here was a big secret, so everyone knew from the Elders to the disciples. When I handed over metal and people saw me making metal from dirt and rocks from my machine, there was a huge leap in acceptance. Instead of vaguely hostile glares, the members of the Sect sometimes smiled. I didn’t much care for their personal opinions. A frog in the bottom of the well would not be able to help me that much except tell me what it was like at the bottom of the well. It was far more important that I focus on developing a working formation that would cancel out the suppressive and draining effects of the Great World and whatever mechanism was behind this place.