Matt felt uncomfortable, those kids had those puppy dog eyes and were worshiping him like some kind of diety. He on the other hand didn’t feel like he deserved this. If his communication skills were better then maybe this whole fiasco wouldn’t have occurred and he would have years to cultivate himself and the whole clan into a great strong sect.
“That being the case, you need to alert your Master if you are facing odds like that!”
“I will give you two something with which you can contact me without the use of a communication jade…”
“Still, even though what you did was noble it was incredibly stupid, you endangered your whole clan and people close to you!”
Even though Matt agreed with the moral choice that he made. It was only that, the boy had no plan besides beating up that enemy in front of him. He didn’t think about the master behind him, or that he was putting everyone there in danger by proxy.
“Y-yes Master, I did a great disservice to the clan…”
The young man that was all smiles after hearing the prise just a second ago went back to frowning.
“If it would be any other situation you would be punished severely, but we don’t have time for such things now.”
“Go see if you can help the other elders with the evacuation of the regular folk, you too Xue.”
The clan for the past two years had been expanding, they created a large system of tunnels under the city for situations like this. They would have various traps along with being more or less a maze. This was to evacuate people and if someone decided to chase afterward they would find it hard to get through.
This was the time to use it, the low-level cultivators and non-combatants were useless and more or less dead weight in this situation. They needed to be evacuated so that the warriors in the city had less to worry about when the Dark Palm Sect finally arrived.
“Yes, Master!”
The two didn’t stay for much longer, they agreed with everything their glorious master said. Matt started thinking that if he told them to jump off a cliff they would probably do it without even thinking.
“This devotion might be a double-edged sword…”
He shook his head, this wasn’t the time to think about the consequences of being too devoted to one person. He needed to make those blasted skills! He activated his crafting abode and appeared withing the large area, various smelting devices all over the place along with some weapons that weren’t quite finished.
“I need to get this over with quickly and then use the nascent soul weapon I got from Wu Ming to advance my cultivation!”
He headed to the spot where the skill combination device was. He already knew what kind of cultivation method the two used thanks to his analyzing skill, and it was something that they had taken from the secret ground. He had copies of those manuals right here along with his own that would be used. Before he started he quickly glanced at the two booklets as if checking if he really took the right thing with him.
“Okay, these are the ones… who comes up with these names…”
He arrived at the technique combining contraption that looked like a large desk with many small drawers in it. He placed the technique that Feng Liena used in first as the base, then his own Divine Golden Lightning Nascent Soul one was placed as the supplementary. This would produce a better version of her manual, but it depended on how compatible the two were with each other.
“Hope this works… what kind of name will this produce though…”
He looked at the compatibility percentage, it wasn’t super high but it wasn’t low either.
“Well, it’s above 60%… almost 70% that’s still good… guess I’ll need to spend some points to improve it…”
Matt stared at the crafting screen, if he left it as it is the technique would end up an Immortal early graded one. But he didn’t want it to just remain at the bare minimum. He started adjusting the sliders and clicking some options, the divine part of his own cultivation method wasn’t very compatible with this, this was the first thing he dropped and focused on combining the lightning and wind components.
“I am using two types of Dao’s with my own cultivation, so it shouldn’t be a problem if she has that too… lightning and wind should be compatible…”
The options were clicked, he favored increasing the attack and speed of this technique dropping most of the defensive options in their favor.
“You don’t need defense if you can dodge everything… but can’t overdo it…”
The base manual was already focused on speed and long-ranged attack, he was just min-maxing a bit to give it even more power in that regard. In the end, after all the options were chosen and the technique was upgraded he remained with a manual in the immortal middle grade, but the advance grade for it was quite good at an A.
“Even with just this… I need to spend over 25 million points on this… will I have enough points to further their cultivation to the maximum so they can breakthrough?’
He started sweating, this was close to a quarter of his whole spirit point pool. He could exchange the points at a 1 to 1 ratio for crafting points so at least he didn’t lose out in that regard.
“Here goes nothing…”
He activated the machine and saw it glowing. It took a minute for the rumbling to stop and the large drawer in the middle popped open with a green looking manual.
“Okay… that sounds nice…quite the long name there…let’s move on to Qiangs…”
He pocketed the green manual and absorbed the knowledge from it into his system library. The next one in line was the Flame Emperor Pure Yang manual. He just replaced Feng Liena’s old manual with Qiang’s and looked at the options that were given.
“Worse but still not that bad… this is going to cost a lot more…”
He knew that Qiang was a close-range fighter that liked to use his large frame to overpower his opponents with large swings. So in contrast to Liena’s speedy build, Qiang’s came out quite tanky.
“Hm, does that make him the Tank of the party and Liena the backline caster? Guess I would be the all-around DPS or something?”
The cost of it all was even higher than what he had to spend on Liena’s, costing him over 40 million in one go.
“Well, they are immortal techniques… I’m lucky that mine is in the perfect grade so it lowers the cost substantially.”
He tried to see how much points he needed to upgrade a heaven graded technique to the immortal grade before. Without any good techniques to base it of, he would need to spend over 100 million points to just get it to the early grade. Though all things considered, that was still a low cost. The other sects would probably throw their spirit stone mines at him if he told them he could fashion them one for that price.
“Ah, the hard life of a rich person.”
The new manual popped out in the middle, steam rising from it.
“Nice red color… these booklets have quite the cool designs…”
“Oh? Plasma! That one is neat… might be even cooler than mine…”
He imagined a large devil made from plasma energy fighting together with Qiang, next to it a wind Phoenix kicking up storms and in the back a golden dragon bringing in the pain.
“Yes… this could work…”
He had spent over half of his spirit point reserve but had managed to create two really good cultivation manuals. He absorbed the knowledge from this one to his library as well, later on, he could try using them as bases and fashion some nascent soul techniques for his two companions.
“I need to give them these two manuals and then cultivate on my own… I also need to remake the grand formation, it won’t hold against those old nascent soul farts.”
He remembered the large wall at the border, that thing could take some damage even though he was using attacks that weren’t the strongest. They were still at the nascent soul level, he looked at this spirit point counter and would need to save some to upgrade the formation, and the biggest issue was the power source.
He exited his crafting abode and headed towards the clan’s pocket dimension. He could hear people running around, the citizens were getting informed and evacuated even now. They all felt shocked that they had to leave, but they also felt reverence to the clan that was actually helping them evacuate in the face of danger.
Normally sects or clans didn’t care about the general populace. When the Cheng Clan was fleeing from Moonlight city they took their core members and escaped. If the Zhang Clan turned out to be tyrants wasn’t something they were concerned with. The citizens from Spirit Spring City would remember this, their trust into the clan and now sect was going through the roof while they all evacuated.
Matt appeared in the medallion space and saw Feng Liena and Huo Qiang. The problem was that the two were bickering again, he wasn’t sure why but the two didn’t get along too well. He wasn’t sure what it was about, but he thought that it might have something to do with Qiang proposing to her once while having a hundred wives.
He was just in the time to behold Liena dancing around with the fans that he had gifted her, producing cyclone like winds that Qiang was finding hard to block.
“Hey you two, what are you doing!”
When the tanned girl saw Zhang Dong appear she stopped in her tracks, she was in the middle of her battle technique so she kind of fell on her butt afterward. This caused Huo Qiang to burst out in laughter.
“Hah, serves you right you violent woman!”
“Who you calling violent, you muscle brained pervert!”
The girl glared at the red-haired man, he in turn just smirked and shrugged. Matt quickly got between the two, his hand going down to help the gyaru up from the ground. This pocket dimension didn’t look too great after he was done training, a lot of the ground was mostly destroyed and dusty from all the craters.
“You two… here Sister Liena let me help you.”
He reached out his hand towards the lady, their eyes met. The moment they did Feng Liena’s expression changed, she started fidgeting and her gaze focused on the hand that was presented to her. An uncomfortable silence followed where the lady just stared at the large manly mitt, only snapping out of it when Zhang Dong called out to her again in that deep manly voice.
“Is something wrong? Are you hurt anywhere?”
She finally snapped out of it and grabbed his hand, the moment she was pulled up to her feet Matt could have sworn that he could hear a sound akin to ‘doki doki’
Matt might have been a dense person, but even he knew what this was. The woman was clearly interested in his and this wasn’t anything getting acted out like at the secret ground. She was showing clear signs of a maiden in love, this revelation only causing Matt to stutter in response before his tranquil mind calmed him down.
“U-uh… right… I’ve got your cultivation manuals from my master… he said that he would help me out this once but he won’t be helping us in the coming battle…”
‘Hey, don’t stare at me with those big blue eyes, this isn’t the right time for this!’