Chapter 103: Great War
“Senior, there is a problem,” former Vice Leader Tan reported. He was one of the cultivators who had decided to travel with me and the unofficial leader of the group. I was in the main cabin of my ship working on my cultivation.
The counter cube and arrays used to keep energy around the ship was about two thirds as effective as a nexus crystal. The movement of the ship itself was a major reason why energy was lost. Still, it was more than enough for cultivation, which made the cultivators on board quite happy.
“Speak,” I said. We had been traveling for over a decade now. There was a mortal crew that sailed the actual ship and the cultivators who handled expenses and other high-level issues. I had only been bothered three times in the past. Two of the times had been due to leviathan attacks. The third time was when pirates attacked. All of these events were easily resolved.
Right now, we were at port and would be sailing to the next canal, which implied there was a problem with the planned route. “The canal we want to take falls between two Empires and is currently the central part of their war.”
“Aren’t canals normally built through the middle of Empires?” I asked.
“The boarders have shifted over time. The Tree Empire split into the Leaf and Wood Empires. A pair of brothers over a millennia ago. The canal revenue was shared, but tensions have recently escalated and now there is war,” Junior Tan explained.
“Is the canal blocked in any way, or do both sides just attack whoever is passing through?” I asked.
“Both. To reach another canal it is at least two year trip,” Junior Tan added. That was how long it would take to reach the next canal. For a canal to be profitable, there weren’t that many. The journey had to be a minimum of a year away by ship. Even then they were often further due to terrain and political considerations at the time they were built.
“If the fighting stopped how long would it take to clear the canal?” I asked.