A white-haired man was sitting down, he was surrounded by various blades and weapons from all sides. His chest was exposed and it was glistering with sweat. His body was glowing in a golden hue radiating more and more power. This bright golden light soon filled the entire room, everything became bathed in its radiance.
“Ugh…”
His muscular frame expanded slightly and you could hear cracking sounds. The top layer of his skin was cracking and peeling away, what was underneath wanted to see the light of day. With a resounding explosion, all the items around him that weren’t secured flew to the sides. The room was filled with even deeper golden light, his body crackling with awesome power.
“True Golden Body huh? Thought I’d move into Platinium, or maybe Diamond?”
Matt slowly stood up, the whole place was ruined and he would need to spend some time on rearranging everything. After almost two days of absorbing he had finally pushed his body refining technique over the limit. He was now a true nascent soul body refiner, together with his Qi cultivation he was truly one of the best masters in the land.
“Wonder if I can tank early-stage hits now…”
He took out the other heaven grade weapon that he had earned from the sacking, this one belonged to the elder named Zhu. This was a green dao saber. He moved it over to his forearm and applied some pressure the moment he did he could feel the sharp age scraping against his skin.
His skin was quite hard yet elastic at the same time, it was really good at resisting this heaven graded weapon. If he didn’t add much of his cultivation, it didn’t even leave a scratch behind, but he felt that if he tried whacking himself really good he would draw some blood.
“I should be able to resist some attacks, but I probably shouldn’t get too cocky…”
He felt like he could brush off early nascent soul practitioners with this. But if they had some better weapons then it got tricky, he should be fine if they didn’t get any good hits in.
“Done with this, on to the next one…”
He remained in his crafting abode and headed into the place where he kept the manuals he copied over. He had received some formation manuals from the secret ground. The grand defensive formation that was running through the city was also heaven graded, he would use that one as a base and level it up.
“The problem is the power source…luckily there were some treasures in those spatial rings, I think I should be able to make something akin to a Qi battery.”
He focused on the grand defensive formation, he needed more time before his allies increased their power and had no idea when the Dark Palm sect would arrive. The process was similar to the previous one, though this time around the compatibility of his cultivation technique with the grand defensive formation was quite low.
“Figures… one is a formation manual, the other is a cultivation manual for people…”
The only thing he could do was to put some other heaven grade formation manuals and spend some points to achieve a formation at the high heaven grade.
“This will have to do… the more important thing is the power source… It requires many tower-like nodes to be spread throughout the city and they all need to be powered…”
He rubbed his chin, he could place the cultivators that weren’t fighting as batteries around these spots. As long as the formation held up they wouldn’t need to fight. He could then battle the enemies outside the barrier if it came to it.
“Uh… luckily the Qi gathering formations are spread through the city…but they can be improved upon…”
He had all of the formations in the city mapped out. They were all placed during the two years of peace and were of high quality all things considered. He didn’t think they would stack up against the nascent soul monsters all too well though.
“Damn, if we have enough time to prepare… I could have made this into a giant fortress…”
He gave out a sigh and continued spending points while improving the formations with the help of his system. The millions of points were steadily decreasing.
“I need to get all the resources available in the clan, not sure I can make it cover the whole city…”
He left his crafting abode and raided the main Zhang Clan vault. The people guarding it after peeking inside couldn’t find a single spirit stone or beast core left to be found. Zhang Dong also gave an order for his people to gather all of the spirit stones, spirit cores, and spirit herbs that were good at storing Qi.
What followed was a slight backlash from the order, no one wanted to give up their riches. They relented soon though, some due to fear of their Patriarch, some realizing that riches like these meant nothing if they were all dead, others just loyal and not caring about the monetary gains.
While the people were gathering the items Matt was busy, he returned to his crafting abode and decided to start crafting. There was one thing in particular that he could make. It was a spirit cube, it was strangely similar to the one that he saw back at the secret ground. He remembered that it had given him a major injection of spirit points and he had a crafting method for it.
“This might be the crafting method that the cube was based on, not sure if it’s the same this one is mostly used for storing spiritual energy and information. I wonder if you could record movies on this…”
He recalled that that cube was made from some sturdy metal as at that time he couldn’t leave a dent on it. He began the smelting process almost immediately, he chose the best spirit metal that he could use and even began melting down the weapons that were made from it. This cube had to be tempered multiple times, each time he hammered a part into place some of the impurities would be dispersed into the surroundings.
It took him half a day to make a simple cube that was ten centimeters in diameter. It was glowing with a bright blue light as he had infused it with spiritual energy from part of his leftover spirit stone stash. He had to melt them down into spirit essence and then direct it into the cube.
“Hmm….”
He had spent hammering and working on this thing for close to twelve hours. He was slightly proud as this was the first heaven grade item that he had produced. Even though it was just a plain cube, it was still a monument to his progress.
“Now to make five more…”
The defensive formation was in the shape of a hexagram. He needed to place these cubes at those locations to support his cultivators. These cubes had a function of absorbing spiritual energy from the surroundings and from people. They would be placed in six locations along with people that would supply them with more Qi to run on.
“I gave Kuo the plans for the improved formation arrays, hope they can make the changes in time. This formation has a size limit placing it around the whole city would require multiple hexagram formations. I hope we have enough time to cover everything.”
Luckily he had all those books from the sacred ground. For the past two years, he had shared them with his whole clan. In those books were secrets of formation arrays and he had some of the able people learn the production process. He couldn’t take care of everything himself, if he had the time he would come check up on them but for now, he needed to make even more of these.
“Time is of the essence, maybe I can reforge this black sword into something better if I have the time. Now time to make more squares.”
He hammered away in his crafting abode while his clan members were running outside and frantically getting the defenses up in place. Most of the citizens that wanted to leave were already going through the long maze under the City. The path ahead of them was long but they would come to emerge at a safer location in a faraway forest. This forest had many places to hide, animals to feed on, and water to drink. They would be safe for months, they also had some food spatial pouches that they borrowed from the Zhang Clan.
This was also the time where other Zhang Clan members were arriving. Some more honorable ones had decided to lend their family a hand, while others took a more wait and see approach.
They weren’t the only reinforcements that were arriving though, The Feng Clan was a close second. Their Matriarch was all in on this battle so they brought over all of their forces. Besides Feng Nuana and Feng Maling, there were various other core formation ladies. They were mostly in the early or middle stages but would come in handy in powering the new defensive formation that was being reinforced.
As always they were a head-turner, their quirky hairstyles and the overuse of bright cosmetics was something that these old fashioned cultivators weren’t used too. Feng Maling gave everyone the orders, they were to support the Zhang and Huo clans. The women gave out a battle shout after hearing that they were preparing for a defensive war and that their Matriarch might be reaching a new level of power soon.
The last Clan to arrive was the Huo Clan, this clan also had the biggest force from the triforce alliance. The Zhang Clan was only in a higher position thanks to their Patriarch. The Huo Clan’s fire lord had come as well, they all had to flee from their domain after hearing what was going on. The only hope was this Zhang Dong that was supposed to be a nascent soul master now.
“The Zhang Clan greets the Huo Clan’s Patriarch.”
A large man with a full beard and white hair walked down from one of the docked battleships. He was wearing a tight sleeveless red robe, this allowed everyone to see his thick tree trunk-like arms. His skin was quite dark making him look like he was a part of the gyaru clan.
“You’re not Zhang Dong, I demand to see your Patriarch! This Huo Gang wants an explanation!”
Behind the Huo Patriarch stood a group of ten core formation elders. The one receiving them here was Zhang Ya, one of Zhang Dong’s retainers. The lady just smiled while keeping a poker face, she knew that their leader moved to places that they could find him so she had no idea how to arrange a meeting. Zhang Dong at the time was busy hammering away on the battery cubes that were paramount to their survival.
“Let me guide you to the inner sanctum, your clan members like elder Qiao are there.”
She tried moving the conversation in a different direction, maybe she could shove the responsibility on the elder from the Huo Clan instead.
“Qiao? What is that idiot advising my son? How did this all come to be?”
Huo Gang exploded in fury, his beard turned red and it looked like it was flaming. Zhang Ya had to back away, she was still someone only in the foundation establishment realm.
“Please my lord calm down, we are all allies.”
She moved her head down not knowing what to do, infighting was something that she and the newly created sect wanted to avoid.
“Now now, please calm down… we are all in this together now.”
Zhang Ya was finally able to relax as a strong counterforce pushed Huo Gang’s killing intent away. Who appeared was another white-haired elder his name Zhang Jin. He was all smiles and was wearing a more robust looking battle robe. He did a complementary fist bow at the large angry looking man and then started talking.
“I’m sure we can talk everything through like civilized cultivators, isn’t that right Lord Gang?”
Zhang Jin smiled but he was panicking inside. He knew that the man in front of his was more powerful than he could hope for, he also didn’t have his black armor anymore as it was turned to scrap metal by Wu Ming. The two remained in place just staring at each other, no one saying a word.
