Vessel of Worlds

Flying cautiously the whole way, Andy spent more than ten days in the air and passed a dozen islands. He found things exactly as Xiao Ye had described: every island with a spirit vein had villages or towns of mortals living on it, while islands without spirit veins—regardless of size or terrain—were deserted wastelands.

According to Xiao Ye, this was because the Star Sea's weather was violently unpredictable, with hurricanes and tsunamis regularly battering the islands. Without the protection of formations laid down by cultivators, mortals simply couldn't survive. And cultivators had no interest whatsoever in islands without spirit veins. So even when those islands were rich in farmland and orchards, no one lived there.

Unlike the Golden Flame Kingdom, where the mortal world and the cultivator world were entirely separate and independent, mortals in the Star Sea depended on cultivators for their very survival. Those who lived on the islands under the protection of cultivators' formations had to perform assigned duties or pay a set quantity of spirit stones to keep their place. To the mortals of the Star Sea, cultivators were living gods—visible, tangible, vastly powerful, and high above them.

As the new lord of Luojia Island, Andy would inevitably have dealings with its mortal residents.

So when he arrived at Luojia Island after half a month of flight, he didn't head straight for Luojia Mountain to establish his dwelling. Instead, he flew to hover above the island's only town and addressed the crowd of mortals gazing up at him: "I am the new lord of this island. Whoever the town's mayor is, come see me at once." His voice wasn't loud, yet it carried clearly into every ear.

Several people immediately sprinted off to fetch the mayor. The rest stood silently in place, not daring to wander about, nor daring to sit and ignore him—just occasionally stealing a glance up at the immortal master before hastily looking away. Only a few children stared unblinking at Andy in the sky, faces full of dazzled envy, until the adults beside them quickly pulled them aside, terrified the children might do something improper and anger the immortal master.

A few bolder souls risked longer looks at Andy, hoping to read from his features the temperament of this great immortal whose whims would shape life on the island for a generation or more. Unfortunately, the immortal master's face showed neither anger nor pleasure, neither sorrow nor resentment—no expression at all. And anyone who stared too long received a cold glance in return that sent them ducking their heads at once.

The street, ordinarily bustling with noise, had fallen utterly silent under the gaze of this immortal descended from the sky.

About half an hour later, seven or eight people came hurrying up, travel-worn and breathless. Their leader was a slightly stout middle-aged man in his forties. Having run the entire way, he was red-faced and drenched in sweat. Stopping a short distance from Andy, he bent in a deep bow and panted: "This humble one is Zhang Mo, current mayor of this town. Forgive me for keeping the immortal master waiting. What are the immortal master's orders?"

Andy produced a token and sent it drifting slowly down before the middle-aged man. "Raise your head. Do you recognize this?"

The man straightened as instructed and looked at the token before him. "That is the credential of this island's lord. The immortal master must be our new island lord! This humble one greets the island lord!" With that, he dropped to his knees before Andy, and everyone else present knelt in a wave behind him.

Andy's brow tightened slightly—he was not accustomed to such scenes. "Rise, all of you. No need for ceremony," he said evenly. "Zhang Mo—how many spirit stones does this island's protective formation consume in a year?"

"In answer to the island lord: based on past experience, generally around twenty spirit stones. This island's mortal population is small—only a hundred and fifty thousand—and in a year we can scrape together ten spirit stones at most." The middle-aged man couldn't keep the dread from creeping in as he spoke. If this immortal master was dissatisfied with their tribute and doubled it, hard days lay ahead for them all.

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To cultivators, there was precious little mortals could do—menial labor and simple services for low-level cultivators, earning pitifully few spirit stones.

For a hundred and fifty thousand mortals—women, children, and elders included—gathering ten low-grade spirit stones a year was already no small feat.

"That won't be necessary. Here are five years' worth of stones for the formation. Every five years from now on, come to Luojia Mountain to collect the next payment from me. At all other times, no mortal is to set foot on Luojia Mountain!" Andy dropped a pile of assorted low-grade spirit stones at the man's feet and departed as lightly as he had come—by the final words, only his voice remained, his figure already gone.

"Thank you, island lord! This humble one obeys!" Though Andy was nowhere to be seen, the middle-aged man bowed with utmost reverence toward the direction of his departure.

The other mortals did the same, remaining dead silent, hardly daring to breathe even with Andy gone.

Only after the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, when the immortal island lord still had not reappeared, did the crowd erupt.

"Old Zhang, did I hear that right? This island lord doesn't want a single spirit stone in tribute from us? And he handed us a hundred spirit stones on top of it!"

"Heaven has eyes! Fortune like this finally comes to Luojia Island! The other islands will die of envy!"

"If you ask me, the island lord may have said he needs no tribute, but we should still set aside a portion. Best not to seem ungrateful and provoke his lordship."

"I'm not so sure. Better to save those stones up. Who knows when his lordship might change his mind—or when the island might get a new lord altogether? Prepare for a rainy day, I say!"

"Old Zhang has the right of it. We should plan for the long term!"

...

By then, Andy had long since flown into Luojia Mountain and begun searching for the Spirit Eye Spring.

Even with the big man's detailed directions, it still took him some effort before he finally found it inside a narrow cave.

The Spirit Eye Spring was every bit as small as promised—only two or three zhang across, with quite ordinary spiritual energy. Only within about a zhang of the water did the density barely reach the level of a high-grade spirit vein.

As for the earth-fire chamber where earth-lung fire could be drawn, it lay deep beneath a neighboring peak.

Andy considered briefly and settled on a plan.

He first spent half a day deploying the Six-Wheel Spirit-Severing Formation, covering the greater part of Luojia Mountain. Once activated, the formation proved wondrously subtle. Even with Andy's spiritual sense, from a thousand zhang away nothing about the peaks seemed out of the ordinary—the mountain looked utterly indistinguishable from any other, when in truth the scene it presented differed considerably from the mountain's real features. An illusion formation that blended truth and falsehood this way was extraordinarily difficult to see through. From now on, any spiritual power fluctuations Andy produced in his dwelling would be masked by the formation, causing no strange phenomena at all.

Though Andy had picked up a few extremely simple minor formations through his artifact crafting, they couldn't remotely compare to a restriction array of this class. Understanding none of it, he could only follow the formation's instructions to the letter, burying every flag and every disc in its designated spot without deviating a hair's breadth. The slightest error would tear a glaring flaw in the entire array.

The Heaven-Covering Twin Poles Formation, with its limited coverage, he deployed around the two small peaks housing the Spirit Eye Spring and the earth-fire chamber.

Both formations ran on mid-grade spirit stones, and setting them up cost him seven or eight at a stroke—an expense that would have made any other early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator wince.

With the formations in place, Andy set about arranging his dwelling around the Spirit Eye Spring and the earth-fire chamber as its heart.

First, he deployed the Gongbu Sword and four or five other high-grade blade artifacts, hacking relentlessly through rock to carve out a passage roughly a zhang wide connecting the Spirit Eye Spring to the earth-fire chamber. He sealed the chamber's original exit and opened two extremely well-hidden entrances instead—one at the Spirit Eye Spring and one near the chamber end of the passage—both within the protection of the Heaven-Covering Twin Poles Formation.

Then he expanded the cave housing the Spirit Eye Spring into a proper dwelling: seven or eight stone rooms, each a dozen or so zhang across. He set moonlight stones of various sizes into the walls and ceilings, and the whole dwelling brightened at once. As for tables, chairs, beds, and cabinets, he had already purchased them at the market. With the rooms carved out, he drew the furnishings from his storage pouch and arranged them through the stone chambers.