During my time in the Verdant Fields Sect, I did a bit of research on the Wastes. As I had learned long ago, excluding the ubiquitous Blue Wind Pavilion, there were only three major powers in this part of the world: The Su Clan, The Twin Mountains Sect, and the Verdant Fields Sect. However, what came as a surprise was that the Wastes appeared to possess five special locations where children were born with higher affinities than normal.
The first was Dragon Gate City. As I had noted in previous observations, Disciples in the Su Clan tended to have unusually high earth affinities. While Disciples with seven-star affinities might not be too unusual anywhere else in the world, such affinities were notable in the Wastes, and the Su Clan was able to consistently produce at least two or three people with a seven-star earth affinity every single year.
Next were the areas surrounding the two sects. Those born around the Twin Mountains Sect had surprisingly high fire affinities, and those born around the Verdant Fields Sect tended to have better than average wood affinities. As I had seen evidence of essence harvesting during my time in the Twin Mountains Sect, this wasn’t entirely surprising, but it was notable.
The fourth location that caught my attention was the Rosehill Hot Springs. Nearly every metal cultivator in the Su Clan was born in this area. Rosehill Village was more of a high-end vacation destination than anything else, and not many children were born here, so I didn’t have a large sample size to work with, but the trend was unmistakable.
This was the reason I had initially been interested in founding my new clan there. With my formations, we might not need to be as reliant on innate affinities as other clans, but being located in a place that had an abundance of metal essence would still have clear benefits. Not only would our children be born with higher natural affinities, but our Metal Essence Gathering Formations would also be far more effective.
Centering the clan around the Rosehill Hot Springs would allow us to create a large number of refiners with minimal effort. While the outside world might fear and persecute refiners, there was little that anyone would be able to do to me or those I wanted to protect while we remained within the Wastes. With no Rulers to bother us, we could quickly become the most influential power in the region and create a domineering refiner lineage.
However, after much consideration, I eventually decided to abandon this plan.
Rosehill Hot Springs was too open. Once it was clear what I was doing. Once it became evident that I was building a clan strong enough to dominate the Wastes, I didn’t expect the Su Clan or any of the other powers with vested interests in the area to play nice with us. Building our clan in Rosehill would make us easy targets for anyone who wanted to attack us.
While I wasn’t afraid of losing my life, and while I was certain that I would be able to create a defensive formation capable of safeguarding the clan from direct attacks, I had to consider the possibility of ambushes and sneak attacks. If everyone knew where my clan was located, then it would be much more difficult for my clan members to leave and operate independently in the future. I wanted them to be able to go outside and explore the world if they wanted to.
Therefore, I chose to settle in the final of the five special locations that I had identified: Mount Jiang.
Mount Jiang was located in the middle of a large peat bog with few permanent towns or villages anywhere nearby. Instead, the area was rife with small tent cities that were little more than bandit camps.
However, what made Mount Jiang truly special was that it was well-known as an exceptional place to gather wild herbs. Dozens of high-quality Rank 2 and 3 wild herbs were harvested from the peat bog every year. This drew Master- and Grandmaster-level treasure hunters from all the surrounding areas, and this drew thieves looking to steal them.
If we centered the clan around Mount Jiang, these cultivators would function as a shield to hide us from our enemies, there would be countless opponents for our clan members to temper themselves in combat against outsiders, and our children would gain the benefits of living in a region with elevated levels of water essence.
Everyone would still need to stay within the clan’s walls in the beginning since exploring the area around Mount Jiang as a Martial Disciple was a quick way to end up dead, but once they advanced to around Martial Master 5 or so, they should be able to survive on their own as long as they were careful to not offend any powerhouses.
When compared against the Rosehill Hot Springs, Mount Jiang was the superior option by far.
To reach the Rosehill Hot Springs, we had ridden west from Dragon Gate City for four hours. If we had ridden southeasterly instead, it would have taken us roughly five hours to reach Mount Jiang. That meant I was about nine hours away from my final destination. However, that would only have been true if I were planning to ride in a carriage pulled by Rank 3 wind horses. Alone and on foot, it would take me far longer to reach my destination.
I could have chartered another carriage to take me there, but the entire point of coming to Rosehill Hot Springs in the first place was to hide the location of my base from not only the Su Clan but also from all the other powers who were keeping an eye on the Wastes. Using the System to change my appearance might have been enough to hide my tracks, but I felt that any carriage being charted from Rosehill to Mount Jiang immediately after what I did to the Su Clan’s palace would be suspicious.
I considered purchasing a teleport from the System, but the price of teleportation as a Grandmaster was a bit high. While it was still well within my current means, it was a bit more than what I was willing to casually spend without good cause.
“It needs to be a combination defensive and illusion formation that is designed in such a way that anyone without an appropriate formation key will continue to see the mountain as it stands today. When a cultivator approaches the mountain, no matter how close they get, even if they are touching it, I want them to see the mountain as it stands right now. Any structures we build on top of it need to be completely hidden from anyone without an appropriate formation key.”
After that, I detailed exactly how I wanted the formation keys to work. I wanted the formation to have different access levels for different members of the clan so that certain areas would be accessible to everyone, and certain areas would only be accessible to the clan elders or the like. I also wanted a series of safeguards put in place so that we wouldn’t need to worry about these formation keys being lost or stolen.
“Finally, it should have at least a limited life-saving function. If the formation detects that someone is severely injured or at risk of death, it should put an emergency shield around them to protect them until they can be saved. This only needs to be as effective as what might be expected from similar formations in other sects on the continent.
“How much would something like this cost?”
Calculating... Cost 700 million credits.
The cost was a bit high from a Rank 4 formation, but not exorbitantly so, and I would much rather spend credits than spend the time that would be needed to design and construct such a formation myself.
“Purchase.”
Purchase confirmed. 743,251,871,897 credits remaining.
The plateau that formed the crown of Mount Jiang was somewhat jagged, with the western edge rising 20 or 30 meters above the rest of the peak. Following my guidance, the System created the main node of the formation on top of this outcropping. This was where I planned to build my home, and placing the main node inside it would ensure the node’s protection.
Scanning the rest of the mountain, I found several additional formation nodes had appeared at regular intervals around both the crown of the mountain and its base. Even if over half of these were somehow destroyed, the formation should remain functional.
I took out the jade token that had appeared in my System storage and attached it to my waist. This was a master key that gave me complete control over the formation. After much thought, I had chosen to have the System inscribe it with the character for ‘Ancestor’ since while this token would always remain with me, I wouldn’t necessarily want to remain the Patriarch of the clan in the future.
After spending a solid two hours appraising the formation, I took out five blank jade tokens and placed them on top of the main formation node. An instant later, the character for ‘outer’ appeared on them. For now, these badges would grant full access to anywhere on the mountain except the areas immediately surrounding the formation nodes. That would change in the future, but until the clan was more established, there was little reason to set up any protected areas.
With everything in place, I took my five Disciples out of my storage space and placed them down on the ground in front of me. Starting with Liang, I drew a drop of blood from each Disciple and smeared it onto a jade token, binding the token to the Disciple and preventing the token from working as a formation key for anyone else.
Then, I placed a pill into each of their mouths and sent a surge of qi into their bodies to wake them all up at the same time.
As they sat up, their eyes roamed around the open landscape surrounding us. When they had fallen unconscious, they had been in the middle of a prosperous resort town, and now they were on top of a mountain in the middle of the wilderness.
I could tell they wanted to ask what had happened, but I didn’t give them the chance. Once everyone was awake and on their feet, I clapped my hands to get their attention.
“Welcome to your new home. This is where we will build our clan. It’s time for you all to get to work.”