Zhao Kuang opened his eyes to see a overly familiar room, his personal cultivation cave near the summit of Zenlong mountain. He was a core elder of the True Martial hall who oversaw the sect's operations when it came to combat. Normally, he would be meditating to perfect his nascent soul so he could one day challenge a breakthrough to the divine transformation realm, but unfortunately he was responsible for overseeing the entrance trials this year.
Zhao Kuang took a moment to steady his breathing. Watching cultivators at such as low realm compete was a boring and tiresome affair compared to exploring the mysteries of a higher realm, but he wasn't bold enough to ditch his responsibilities. He went through his normal routine after exiting mediation and on completion, he left the cave. Effortlessly, he rose in the sky before turning towards the direction of the mission hall and flying towards it.
Upon landing on the plaza in front mission hall, all eyes fell on Zhao Kuang and everyone bowed in reverence.
"Greetings, honored elder", was heard across the plaza.
"Rise", he reduced the pressure his cultivation applied around him, "I'm simply here for business, and do not wish to interfere with everyone else's."
With a kindly smile on his face, Zhao Kuang entered the mission hall and with his divine sense could see that the tension from his arrival outside had calmed down. An old man who was tall and lean immediately appeared in front of him with his entry.
"Senior Brother Zhao", the man extended a welcoming hand, "Please join me on the fifth floor, I recently received some excellent tea leaves."
"Hall master Shen", Zhao Kuang waved him off, "Normally I'd join you, but the trials are today. I trust there weren't any unexpected surprises today?"
"Of course not", Shen Yucheng replied, "Everyone and everything is in place, ready to receive you."
"I will take my leave then", Zhao Kuang nodded, "After the trials are complete, I will report to the sect master and then come back here to try the tea you mentioned."
"Excellent", Shen Yucheng chuckled as he stroked his beard, "It will be my pleasure to demonstrate my mediocre skills for you."
Zhao Kuang simply nodded before taking to the air again, this time heading to a different location. His destination was where the sect held its entrance trials, a series of buildings that tested the candidates potential, intelligence, and strength using certain artifacts and arenas to gather the best hopefuls. When he arrived, he went to a secret door that allowed him to enter building undetected. He passed through a short hallway that led to a much larger room with table and chair on one end, and a row of short tables and cushions to the left and right side.
Zhao Kuang took his seat before using a communication talisman shaped like a crane. It went to the opposite side of the room where two grand doors stood closed, but it adjusted its course to pass through a small space specifically designed for it. A few moments later, the doors opened and disciples of the sect started guiding the elders of the second order sects through one by one. First, they would make an announcement of the elder's name and the sect they came from, and then walk them to their seat. While everyone was being seated, a band and some dancers were guided to their place in the corner where wooden dividers had been placed previously. The quickly took out their instruments, and started playing the proper tune as waiters began serving tea and wine to the already seated guests.
Once the final guest was seated, the band wrapped up the song they were playing and the room went silent. Zhao Kuang was satisfied that everything was proceeding smoothly, so he rose from his seat with the wine glass in his hand.
"Welcome to True Martial Hall as we open our doors for another entrance trial", he welcomed everyone warmly, "I'm pleased to see everyone safely arrived from afar, and at this time I raise a toast to you."
As Zhao Kuang raised his wine glass, all the guests dose from their seats and raised theirs as well. He smoothly drank all the wine in his cup in one motion with everyone mirroring him after.
"Please enjoy the meal", he said and sat down after.
Everything after was as normal, all the guests took turns speaking with him or making toast. Those he was familiar with he spoke with for longer, and the banquet was a success. The only oddity he detected came from a few elders from the north and south regions, but he ignored it. He could tell they weren't completely satisfied with the food from their quiet whispers, but he figured that they weren't used to high quality food at their sects.
The band had started playing music again as they ate, and the dancers had joined in this time providing entertainment. Once he had finished his meal, Zhao Kuang looked around and discovered everyone else had also eaten theirs as well so he decided to move things forward.
"Does anyone object to starting the trials?", he asked.
Even though he was politely asking, it was obvious that he was actually telling them it was time. Everyone shook their heads in agreement to his question, and minutes later they found themselves at the testing location with everyone sitting on a raised pavilion looking down at hundreds of cultivators.
Zhao Kuang listened as one of the younger sect elders stood in front, and spoke to the crowd below. He didn't consider himself a sentimental person, but as he listened to the speaker announce the various tests they would endure, he thought back to when he was just like them. It had been a few hundred years, but the sect still adhered to the same principles now that it did then, strength.
With a name like True Martial hall, it was drilled into all disciples that having strength was of most importance.
There was the spiritual roots test and two combat skills test: one used an artifact so applicants would fight fake spirit beasts, and the other pitted candidates against each other in the arena. Being excellent in any one test could result in a lucky cultivator catching the eye of a sect elder, and immediately being accepted but most were selected from a combination of all three test results.
Although he was only partially paying attention, Zhao Kuang noticed that the junior sect elder had finished his speech and had looked at him for confirmation. He simply nodded and a flurry of activity took place as the sect disciples started directing the aspirants toward the first test.
Although there was always the possibility of a millennium level talent appearing during this stage, the chances were extremely low. So Zhao Kuang decided to spend the time by starting a conversation with the various elders sitting in the pavilion with him. Night approached when the final few hopefuls completed their test of spirit roots, and a sect disciple sent a message talisman to him to inform him.
"Fellow Daoist", he said as the talisman turned to ash, "The first round is complete. There will be a short break before the result are announced, and then the competitors will be guided to the next stage. I'm pleased from what I've heard so far because four out of every ten entrants passed through the first round. Normally, it's three out ten but I've witnessed years where it's was only one out of ten. Since there is some time before the next stage, I'll use it to meditate."
Zhao Kuang was guided to a private room by a sect disciple, and he sat on the high quality mediation cushion. Before the disciple left, he gave Zhao Kuang a detail briefing of the first rounds results. What he heard mildly surprised him, although nothing ground breaking happened, the outcome was different than normal. In between the northern, southern, eastern, and western regions, Zhao Kuang was aware that southern region was normally the weakest of the four. It was unavoidable, the north had to defend against the devils and spirit beasts and the east and west defended the two coasts against the spiritual beasts of the sea. The southern region was much more peaceful in comparison since it served as the gateway to the southern continent. True Martial hall had an agreement with the top sect of that continent, Heavenly Craft sect.
Heavenly Craft sect had a much different philosophy compared to True Martial hall. True Martial hall focused all its efforts into gaining strength while Heavenly craft sect valued Alchemy, Artifact refining, Formations, Talisman, Beast taming, Spirit farming, and other profession. The agreement between the two major sect had one providing protection while the other produced goods. This connection is why the southern region was relatively safer than the other three, but today Zhao Kuang heard that the southern region had produced as many prospects as the north.
Although Zhao Kuang wondered what this meant, he still readjusted his mind set and started his mediation. The second round would start soon and take longer than the first so he shouldn't waste time. Everyone would participate in the second round even if they had failed the first. Since True Martial hall cared about strength most, they would give all the participants every chance to showcase it. As long as they were strong, and didnt use harmful unorthodox methods, they still had a chance to enter the sect even if their roots were inferior.
Time passed, and the break finished followed by all the contenders reassembled at the next location. Zhao Kuang and all the other sect's elders were once again seated as the crowd were being briefed on the next evaluation. This time, lines of young cultivators entered a large building where the special artifacts were kept. Just like the first test, Zhao Kuang discussed the Dao with his guests as the some people below entered the building and others excited. Some had triumphant looks on their faces, others did their best to look solemn, a few looked devastated, and the rest had a mixture of other emotional reactions on their faces.
It took a day for everyone to complete this trial, and a few more hours after that to calculate the final result. A disciple entered the pavilion floor where Zhao Kuang was entertaining the guests, and reported to them the conclusion of the second round.
Zhao Kuang was pleased and invited all his guests to join him as the names of the selected finalists. Everyone walked the pavilion's balcony overlooking the thousands of young people who gathered awaiting the announcement of the winners. Everyone was talking to each other when an image was projected a tall white wall. Starting from the upper right corner and expanding left, a list of a hundred and twenty eight names appeared. The majority of entrants groaned when they couldn't find their name while the small minority that made it were mostly cheering. The name shifted to the bottom of the wall while a tournament bracket appeared.
A minor sect elder voice made everyone quiet down, "For the ones that weren't selected, fate wasn't in your favor today. We will now proceed to the final stage, a tournament to decide the resources they'll receive, and we at the True Martial hall invite those who didn't qualify to watch to expand your horizons. We won't force you, and if you reject our invitation, report back to the flying ship that brought your here. Now, congratulations to everyone who has been selected and follow the sect's disciples to the arena."
Zhao Kuang also turned to the others, "We should also make our way to the arena,"
The area became noisy as thousands of people moved, the winners following as instructed, the losers going a difficult route, and the leadership flying through the air. Once they arrived, they occupied a special room that gave the occupants the best seats to view all the battles.
After a short period of time, all the seat of the arena became full. Shortly after, the one hundred and twenty eight contestants were lead out of the waiting area and guided to their combat zone. When the tournament bracket had first been displayed, all the winners had been required to draw lots to determine their opponent. Once everyone was in place, the crowd began to shift so they could support the candidate from their own sect, but this wasn't an issue for Zhao Kuang. With his senses, it wasn't difficult for him to 'see' all sixty four battles simultaneously.
A motion from the head referee caught Zhao Kuang's attention, so he focused on the arena a bit more. To be honest, battles at the Qi Gathering realm were like watching children playing to him as a Nascent soul but his experience over the centuries honed his eye when it came to spotting talented young fighters.
The head referee finished introducing the rules to everyone, and took his seat. The sixty four mini arenas became the focus for the crowd, and with practiced precision the head judge for each one signaled the start at the same time. Zhao Kuang 'watched' as all combatants sprung into action, some immediately went on guard and others aggressively attacked. He observed with mild interest, battles between cultivators at this level wouldn't take long to settle unless both sides were cowardly.
As expected, five minutes later all the matches were over but Zhao Kuang had a strange look on his face. During his observation of everything, he had noticed several oddities. Swords were the most common weapon used by cultivators by a large margin, but he saw that the cultivators from the north and south had a much varied range of weapons than normal. A young man that should be an alchemist had bested someone with a spear. A young lady and her puppet worked in almost perfect harmony against a strapping young man with a sword. Another young man with a giant brushed easily won using said weapon as a whip and a spear. Two men fought with bare fists, but also was the longest fight of the first round. Once the sixty four defeated opponents walked away from the fight, he noticed the a majority of the winners were from the north and south.
With the round finished, thirty two platforms were taken away and the winners went to the new one before sitting down to recover for the next round. The round of thirty two started, and a few minutes everything was settled again. The one carrying the large brush didn't advance this time, but to Zhao Kuang's surprise the alchemist did. What surprised him was how the man had won. The last attack consisted of him jumping into the furnace, and launch himself at his opponent by using his fire to rocket across the arena. Just remembering it made him chuckle.
The platforms were taken again going from thirty two to sixteen. Unfortunately for the alchemist, he had played his trump card too quickly and his next opponent was ready for it. The puppeteer and beast tamer had better luck and advanced to top eight. Another young man that caught the attention of Zhao Kuang wore a set of robes with a mountain displayed at dusk. Quickly reviewing his memory, he remembered this robe design belong to the Dusky Peak sect, a small third order sect in the south. Something gave him pause, the robes the young man wore were of the same quality as the robes worn by disciples of True Martial hall. He didn't understand how as his was a first order sect and the boy's was third order, a sect of that level should never be able to afford robes of that quality.
The audience watched the eight turn to four and then to two. The puppeteer and beast tamer lost to a young man named Yao Tianxu, a genius hailed from the western region. Dispite being a genius, both of those fights had been much more difficult than he had anticipated. Now only one arena platform was set in the middle of the arena, and he looked across at his last opponent. It was Liang Zhenyu, the Dusky Peak disciple.
Zhao Kuang looked in interest as the head judge commenced the final match. The battle between the two immediately became intense as Yao Tianxu aggressively fought for the advantage. The arena platform lit up as the western genius used a combination of fire and saber techniques to attack Liang Zhenyu. At first, most of the audience and Zhao Kuang himself thought the contestant from the west would easily win, but seconds turned to minutes. Using their senses to watch the fight, everyone found that the boy from the third order sect was using earth techniques and an odd sword to stay in the fight. This surprised everyone because this combination was rarely seen before. Most swordsmen consisted of fire, water, or metal spiritual roots, and earth cultivators tended to use blunt weapons like staffs, hammers, or maces. Instead, Liang Zhenyu used a normal length sword that was wider and looked denser than normal. It also had a yellow sheen around the blade that Elder Zhao recognized as earth armor.
After a while, the two turned into something else as the crowd cheered, one looked like an untamed wildfire and the other like a majestic mountain. With each exchange, Liang Zhenyu used his abilities to perfectly block Yao Tianxu's assault.
Zhao Kuang watched for a bit longer before he spoke out loud, "This is one of the few times where my initial evaluation was wrong."
The elders from the other sects looked at him in confusion until one posed the question, "Are you saying that Yao Tianxu will lose?"
"Have all of you only been watching the match?", Zhao Kuang looked slightly disappointed, "Use your senses and the answer should be obvious to all of you."
All the elders from lower sects turned their attention back towards the field, and after a few moments they all had looks of realization on their face.
"I'll give Yao Tianxu credit", Zhao Kuang spoke, "His abilities are definitely outstanding. Unfortunately, he ran into a literal wall. That boy has perfect control of power. He's capable of sensing everything in his surroundings, and using the right amount of power in response. At this rate, Yao Tianxu will exhaust his qi and his opponent will find an opportunity to finish the match."
All the other elders nodded in agreement and a minute later, everything went as Elder Zhao said. The tired young man from the west was trying to stand as he found the strange sword pointing at his neck. He surrendered, and the head judge announced the winner of the fight, Liang Zhenyu. Everyone returned to their seats as the ceremony to reward the top performers was being set up.
Zhao Kuang and all the other elders had left their seats in the arena, and had made their way to the field. Once in place, the head judge called the names of all the entrants who had earned the right to enter True Martial hall. The process was the same as always. The member called would walk to the stage and the sect elders of True Martial hall would compete over who would become the master. Unfortunately, this year something happened that had never happened before, all the members from the north and south regions rejected entering the sect.
It was especially jarring to most of the audience members and sect leaders when Liang Zhenyu respectfully responded to Elder Zhao Kuang's personal invitation, "Thank you for your kind intentions, but I already have a master named the Drunken Sword Immortal."
Fang Shi was sitting in his flying boat that was acting as current residence as he looked at the system panel in front of him. The task [My own worse enemy!] had the status (Completed) next to it. It had been longer than a season since all his guests had sailed off into the distance, and by his calculation they should return soon.
Since their departure, Fang Shi and the two puppets he had as helpers had been working every day to get the new store ready for customers. He had a checklist of tasks that needed to get accomplished before, and the three of them worked on it everyday. Since he wasn't worried about his own safety, he had converted the second puppet from security mode to artisan mode to get things done faster. The first task were to establish a farm since he didn't have his wall scroll to supply him produce and food. Other tasks included building all the buildings, searching for the essence crystals, searching for secret realms, creating a tv show for his customers when they returned, deciding on a product line, making a more efficient power grid, and more.
The island he made his home was a tropical paradise so it made farming more convenient. Multiple fields were created on the island, and crops were planted in a staggered rotation. This was done to make sure the store always had product. Staggered planting and limiting the amount a customer could purchase worked together to achieve this. Since a season had already passed, the first harvest had already begun and his storage artifacts were holding it.
Next was all the buildings. The main store had been torn down and rebuilt to handle a much larger customer base. A larger restaurant had been constructed on the second floor as well. He had originally planned to build several others but since he currently only had two helpers, it was unrealistic to do it now. The entertainment lounge was also expanded, and it now could accommodate five hundred people. Finally, a large course was built not far away from the complex. It had a climbing wall, parkour arena, track, and gym which had been inspired by muscle beach. To ensure that what was built would stay intact, he used tier 1 wood and stone to build everything. He had brought huge amounts of it, and mortals could never harm it even if they tried with all their might. As long as he provided the required amount of qi to the structures, the materials wouldn't degrade in quality.
To be able to run everything, the store needed power and Fang Shi made a three path plan. The first path would be to hunt down and collect more essence crystals. He had a feeling that if he could balance the five deposits on the island, it would create significantly more Qi of higher quality than it currently was. The second path was easier, he would simply bury all his spirit stones where the qi was generated at. By 'seeding' the center, those spirit stones should eventually turn into a spiritual vein. The third path was the most ambitious, since the demands for qi were practically nonexistent (other than his own cultivation needs and building upkeep). In his previous life, humans had founds ways to harness the strength of nature to provide power. He would the same, but he wasn't an engineer in his past life so he had to pay the system to design it for him. Although this put him more in the hole, he didn't hesitate to make it. Once everything was done, he had solar farms, windmills, geothermal plants, water wheels, and wave power generators. Tier one materials were used for these and the distribution system to power everything that needed to be run, saving himself from having to use qi to power them.
The puppets handled all the manual labor so what did Fang Shi do during this time? He traveled mostly with two objectives: locate materials to be mined or gathered, and locate secret realms. The first one was easy, he constantly found and marked down the locations of essence crystals and other materials. The second objective evaded him until yesterday, when the artifact he had brought to locate secret realms finally signalled the presence of one. He took the steps necessary to setup a formation at the entrance. This formation had two purposes: to hide the realm from others, and to allow him to enter even if he didn't meet the realm's requirements.
Once the entrance was hacked open, he did a quick search through and only grabbed a storage ring left by the owner. Fang Shi could only sigh that he was currently disconnected from the main system because the ring contained a large library of scrolls and jade slips. Skimming through it all he found a nice surprise, a technique for opening apertures called the '108 aperture opening' method. After reading through it he learned that the reason why foundation establishment qi felt stronger than the qi used by qu gathering realm cultivators is because during the foundation establishment stage apertures are opened. This allowed different types of energy to merge into a stronger form, and why foundation establishment cultivators call their senses true sense instead of qi sense.
[New! Reaching Perfection!
Since the beginning when mortals first began to walk the Dao, they explored how to create the perfect body. Today, you have found one of many of these methods.
Reward: Whenever you find one of these methods, the system will automatically check it for safety and implement it once it's deemed safe, 1/??.]
Fang Shi was pleased to receive such a good reward, and in the days following the discovery he had several sessions of opening his apertures. Not only did it make his aura feel deeper and more powerful than before, it also caused him to breakthrough to the late stage of Foundation Establishment.
The rest of the time was spent deciding what would be sold, the price, and adding a tv show for the mortals to watch. After much thought, the first show he decided to make exclusively for this branch was Avatar: the Last Elemental Sovereign.
With everything completed, Fang Shi said, "System, I'm ready to receive the reward."
[Reward for 'My own worse Enemy!' In progress…standby for teleportation portal opening…opened].
A small portal the size of a bracelet opened in front of Fang Shi. A moment later, he felt an extra storage ring get sucked into the portal. A few moments passed before the same ring came back through, and it fell into his hand. He had made a list of materials and resources wanted earlier, so he could guess that the main system had collected everything he had found here to add to the main store. In turn, it had also searched the list of my requests and sent back what was acceptable. Sure enough, when he looked in the ring, he found several more puppets sitting inside.
Fang Shi put the ring away, and looked at the island. The store was ready, power was on, and the natural formation had finally been balanced. As expected, the output from the formation increased tenfold, relieving his need to maintain operations using spirit stones.
"Now that I have additional hands, I should build a hotel", he remarked but something familiar caught his attention, "Look at that, everyone finally returned."