Read Rise Of The Worm Sovereign Chapter 121 - Preparations? online for free - AllNovelFull
Another hour had passed and even as the banquet had already ended the people had not left yet. They simply couldn't bring themselves too, they all wanted to talk with Young master Shirong. They were all asking him about anything he needed or what kind of area that he wanted them to prepare.
Each and every single word that he said was listened to by them carefully and they were noted down. Almost immediately, even if it was midnight, the town was woken up and the preparations were started. The workshops and refiners started working and would be working for a long time.
The citizens were unaware of what had happened and were wondering why all the blacksmiths and workshops were working at this time. They even wondered if a war decree had been issued and were a bit scared. Only after the clans assured them that everything is fine and that the more detailed notice will be given tomorrow morning did they go back to sleep.
The clans knew very well that their actions would have a lot of observers and the other cities along with the sects will be noticing them. They wouldn't be surprised if they decided to turn up too. Clan head Lu also wrote a report and sent it to the royal court of the Ling Kingdom.
The breakthrough of a Nascent soul realm cultivator was a big matter and each and every cultivator that did it would become a powerhouse that could lead a clan or even start a sect of their own. Thus it was important for the kingdoms to keep an eye on them.
They would even be willing to recruit the cultivator if they accepted their terms and conditions. The sects would also send invitations to the nascent soul realm cultivator to become an external elder in their sect. They would have made them a true elder but there were few cultivators that would accept something like that.
Only the bigger sects that had Dao shell realm cultivators could afford to make them true elders of their sect. Making someone a true elder meant that they not only had a new person under their command but that they needed to give them an appropriate amount of resources as compensation too.
Shirong had a top grade cultivation technique and thus had some very specific requirements for a tribulation platform. While he could breakthrough without it the same, the use of a tribulation platform was different.
When a cultivator underwent a heavenly tribulation, no one else was allowed to interfere or they would bear the wrath of the tribulation too. But the thing was that the other cultivators wanted to observe the heavenly tribulation to gain experience as well.
For this very reason, a tribulation platform was made. What it did was to shrink the area of effect of the heavenly tribulation. This allowed others to come closer and observe the heavenly tribulation, though there were still some risks of course.
Despite these risks, though tribulation platforms were quite popular though making them was often a difficult task. There were as many types of tribulation platforms as there were cultivation techniques in the world. There were even special tribulation platforms that could support the cultivator undergoing it.
Though the general rule of thumb was that the higher the grade of the cultivation technique the more difficult and expensive it would be to make a tribulation platform. Most often than not a tribulation platform was a single use item and would get destroyed after the heavenly tribulation passes.
Only the sects could have multi-use tribulation platforms that were attuned to most cultivation techniques. After another hour of discussion, it was finally decided that the tribulation platform would be made ten kilometers away from the city in an open plain.
Shirong had no problem with this and only asked to keep him updated about it.
Now that everything was done, the clans started leaving one by one, bidding farewell to Young Master Shirong. Meanwhile, Clan Head Lu was only starting to begin his original plan behind the scenes. While Shirong was still talking with the other people, a mature woman who seemed to be in her thirties was standing in a room in the clan.
She was dressed in long robes that accentuated her figure and deep cleavage could be seen at the top. Even her shoulders were revealed along with her fair neck. She had her hair in a long pony tail and had a few ornaments in them, increasing her charm.
This woman was none other than Lu Miao, one of the daughters of Clan head Lu. She was the most talented among his daughters and was only surpassed by his other son Lu Peng. Lu Miao was an expert in the seduction arts and cultivated a special technique for that.
She had been informed of the plan that the Clan head had made and she gladly accepted it. In fact, she was too excited and even asked if she could participate. But the answer to this was an absolute 'No' from the clan head.
Clan head Lu was worried that her technique may offend the Young master as they would muddle the minds of men. It was still fine if she was teaching her nieces as they would only learn the basic skills of seduction, but not actually a qi technique that was for seduction.
Lu Miao was looking at the ten girls in front of her and was judging them. Clan Head Lu had originally said to send all of his granddaughters for this, but Lu Miao opposed that idea. She instead told him that she would choose the ones that were the best and the most beautiful.
After thinking for a bit clan head Lu agreed to it and now out of the sixty granddaughters that he had, only ten had qualified it. The girls had worked hard and were extremely willing to devote themselves to Young master Shirong.
Shirong in their eyes was the perfect man… the Prince Charming that will take them away.
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Shirong was finally free from all the people and couldn't wait to get back to his room. The armor form of the spear was actually a bit uncomfortable, and he was not starting to feel the strain on his body. He had been continuously supplying spirit qi to his body to amplify his strength.
Otherwise he would have not even been able to stand, not to mention walk. It had been about five hours since he put the armor on, and this was the longest he had amplified his strength for. Lin Wu was also getting bored with all the useless talking that Shirong needed to do.
The only parts that interested him were that Shirong was gonna breakthrough, the tribulation platform, and finally the fact that he was gonna leave soon. He still wanted to read that letter and knew that he would have to figure something out for that.
Though the thing that made his heart ache the most was the food. It was taken away and he didn't know where it was kept. He had been salivating since he saw all the food and had it not been for his crystalline form, he would have created a stream of saliva.
"Young master, we've prepared a better courtyard for you. You'll like this one and it has more privacy too. We… also prepared some small surprises for you there." Clan head Lu spoke.
"Oh, you did? Thank you for the courtyard… though what is the surprise?" Shirong asked with curiosity.
He was glad that he would have a private courtyard again as he was paranoid about someone finding out about the spear. Since he couldn't store it in the spatial storage treasure anymore, he was anxious all the time, even when he had it on himself.
Though he did wonder what surprise the clan head had prepared for him. He guessed that it must be some gift since he was about to break through soon. He already knew that the other clans would be sending their congratulatory gifts tomorrow as well, and it was obvious that the Lu clan being his host wouldn't give up the opportunity to be first.
"Hahaha! Why doesn't young master see it himself, I hope you'll like it…" Clan head Lu said and walked away.
Shirong was a bit surprised that he left him like that, but then a steward came to him and said to follow him to the new courtyard.
Shirong nodded, and about five minutes later they were at the new courtyard. This one was located near the Lu clan and seemed to be even bigger than the one he previously had. Just from the outside, he could see that it was of a high quality and sensed the formation arrays that were set up in it.
"Hmm, seems like clan head Lu did his best to make it good…" Shirong muttered to himself.
"Please enter young master, this is the farthest I'm allowed to guide you. If you need anything, you'll find your 'personal attendants' inside." The steward said in a strange tone and walked away.
Shirong raised his eyes at this, but still entered the courtyard. There was a large garden right at the entrance and the inner courtyard's gate could be seen, decorated with the motif of a crane.
"Huh… seems like they modified it for me…" Shirong muttered to himself.
As soon as he got closer, the inner gate opened up and Shirong saw two rows of girls waiting for him there.
"Welcome Young Master!" All the girls greeted with a bow.
"Huh? What?" Shirong muttered, feeling a bit shocked.
Even Lin Wu was kind of freaking out seeing the girls there.
"Oh, no… oh no… no, no, no! NO! This isn't happening! Don't torture me like this!" Lin Wu yelled in his mind.
"Please young master, come in~ we have a lot of entertainment prepared for you tonight~" The girls spoke.
Looking at their attire and the looks that they were giving him, Shirong finally understood what Clan head Lu was implying as a 'surprise' before.
"Seems like clan head Lu is really intent on the alliance, huh?… well doesn't matter I already chose him so may as well enjoy this…" Shirong muttered to himself as a smile appeared on his face.
Seeing the charming smile of Young Master Shirong made the ten girls blush, and some of them couldn't help but squish their legs together in excitement.
"Kiyaa~ Young master is soooo handsome!" One of the girls said and saw Shirong coming towards them.
"Well, then shall we go inside?" Shirong asked in a calm tone.
The girls couldn't hold back anymore and pulled him into the room. Meanwhile, Lin Wu was bashing his head into an imaginary wall in his mind.
"I can't see… I can't hear… nothing is happening…" He kept on saying to himself, trying to ignore everything that was happening around him.
The room this time was about five times as big as the one that Shirong previously had. And just the bed was huge, occupying half of the area of the room. Seeing the shy and red faces of the girls made Shirong excited too now.
"Let me help you change into something more, conformable Young Master…" a girl said as she came close to him and slowly untied his robes.
Shirong felt like he recognized this girl and then remembered that she was one of the granddaughters of the Clan head that he had seen back when he first came here. But comparing her to back then and now, she looked quite different.
In fact, now that he thought about it… all of the girls seemed to be family to him.
'Did he really send his granddaughters for this?' Shirong wondered.
But looking at their expression and behaviors didn't make one think that they belonged to an aristocratic clan, rather it seemed as if they some high class courtesans.
'What did clan head Lu do to them? Did he really get them to learn the 'arts'?' Shirong now thought.
But a moment later he pushed these thoughts aside and just decided to go with the flow.
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Having made his mind up, Shirong got in the mood. But then he heard a shriek in the next moment.
"Eiyaa~ The Divine armor!" The girl who was removing his robe exclaimed.
All of the girls trained their eyes on the emerald green armor that gleamed under the light of the lamps. Their eyes were glowing with amazement and they couldn't take their eyes off the armor.
"Young master can I… touch it?" The girl asked carefully.
Shirong had kind of forgotten about the armor due to getting engrossed in his thoughts, which led to this situation. He wanted to reject it, but then seeing the sheer awe in their eyes made him think otherwise.
"Alright… but be careful…" He agreed.
"Really!? Yay!" the girls yelled.
It was not every day that they got to see something like this. After all, all these girls here had some talent in cultivation and were at the late stage of the qi refining realm at the very least. With three of them being at the very peak of qi refining realm.
"Bitch, I dare you to touch me, even if I want jade beauties I won't get the ones that weren't meant for me… wait a minute! Can't I use this to my advantage?" Lin Wu muttered.
The girl extended her hand and placed it upon the center of the armor. But as soon as she did,
"OUCH!" She yelled in pain and jumped back.
"What happened?" The other girls asked with concern.
Looking at her, one could see that there were tears in the corner of her eyes and she was biting her lips. Hearing the words of her sister, she flipped her palm to show them. A burn was clearly visible on it, and it seemed as if there were even small prick marks on her hand.
Shirong was surprised by this too and didn't know that this would happen. Now that he thought of it, ever since the connection between him and the spear was formed, no one else had touched it till now. Before this, the first person to touch the spear was Ye Dai, but even he told him that the spear was powerful and made him scared.
Just the bloodline suppression that arose out of it was enough to knock out all cultivators of the Deer wood city, which showed the true might of the green crystal spear. But now this had actually given him an opportunity to test this out.
Seeing that others could not touch the spear other than him actually made him happy secretly. But on the outside, he had a concerned expression.
"Oh, sorry! I didn't know it would do this…" Shirong said in a pleading tone.
Hearing his voice made the girls go weak in the knees.
"It is fine young master Shirong, it's not your fault. I should have been wiser. Of course, a great armor like this wouldn't allow just anyone to come in contact with it." The girl whose hand was burned spoke.
Shirong walked forward and held her by her waist.
"Aiya~" She shrieked lightly.
He made her sit in her lap before carefully holding her hand and looking at it.
"We need to take care of it quick or it may leave a scar… we don't want that, do we?" Shirong said before taking out a pill from the bracelet.
He then playfully bought it to the girl's lips and fed her the pill. But the girl didn't just eat the pill, but rather sucked and licked Shirong's fingers as well.
The other girls only got more jealous and stuck to Shirong.
"Aww! No fair… we wanna be coddled too…" A girl said in a meek voice.
"Ahaha! Don't worry, everyone will get the chance. But first… I need to remove the armor. We don't want a repeat of this, do we?" Shirong replied.
"Yes, yes, Young master. Please, you can put it in the study, there's also a safe prepared there." The girl who had welcomed him first said.
"Alright, that's good." Shirong said before gesturing to the girl who was sitting in his lap to move.
Then he stood up and went to the hall outside. He scanned the entire courtyard quickly with his spirit sense before finding the study, which was a few rooms after the one he was currently in. Opening the door, he could see a desk at the very end with a round ten large bookshelves on both sides of the room.
There was a smaller door attached to the wall behind the study table, and Shirong had an idea of what it was. That was the only room where his spirit sense couldn't penetrate, and he was able to sense the formations that were placed on it.
"Hmm, this safe is even more secure than the one before…" Shirong muttered before walking to the small door.
He opened it and saw the storage room. This entire room was the safe. He felt the connection with the Armour and willed it to turn it back into the spear form. About five seconds later, he very carefully placed the spear down on a weapons rack that was in the safe.
~Crack~
~Crash~
"Oh… forgot that would happen. I guess I'll just have to leave it on the ground for now…" Shirong uttered awkwardly, seeing the broken weapons rack.
The spear's weight had broken the rack in half and it had now fallen down. Shirong just placed it over the broken remains of the shelf and walked outside the safe. He extended his spirit sense and connected it with the formation array before putting a brand on it.
Since the formation array was newly set up and the courtyard was prepared for him, Clan head Lu had put no brand on it. This was made so that Shirong could use it easily at his leisure.
"Hmm, now that this is done… I can get back to it… ~Sigh~ perhaps this will be my last day of relaxing for a while now…" He muttered to himself, remembering the tasks he needed to do next.
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Shirong left the safe and used his spirit sense to activate the formation array. A few seconds later, the door of the safe faded away and in place of it was a plain wall. It was as if there was nothing there now. Even if someone were to touch it, they would have no way of knowing if there was even something there.
"Hmm, everything seems fine," Shirong said before leaving the study and heading back to the bedroom.
Five minutes after Shirong was gone, Lin Wu started to move.
~Phew~
"Seems like he's really gone and hearing his words it seems like he's gonna be busy the entire nigh… ~che~ Lucky bastard…" Lin Wu spoke with a bit of grudge.
"But now that he's gone… I can finally move around freely!" Lin Wu exclaimed as he jumped up morphing in the air to his worm form.
"Oof! While it has gotten easier being in the spear form and the armor form, this is still the best. Though what would be even better is if I was in my full size, that would really unwind my stiff joints…" Lin Wu muttered to himself as he moved toward the door of the safe.
He extended his spirit sense and found that it was blocked from the inside as well.
"Hmm as I thought, it's gonna be a bit difficult…" Lin Wu said before holding the handle of the safe's door with his tail.
He gave it a turn and the door opened. "Or not…"
But he didn't leave the safe yet, even if it was easy to leave the safe from the inside, he didn't know if it would be possible to get back inside again.
"System, analyze this." Lin Wu ordered.
~Ding~
——
ANALYZING: Illusory and restrictive formation arrays detected.
LINK FOUND: Creating virtual interface… please wait…
LINK ESTABLISHED: Virtual interface created successfully.
——
Because the formation array had Shirong's spirit sense brand, the system had no problem in replicating the same process as before and making a new interface. Now it was as if it was Shirong controlling the formation array when in reality it would be Lin Wu.
"Now we can leave safely," Lin Wu spoke before closing the door behind him.
"Ooh! Didn't know it could do this…" Lin Wu said upon seeing the door automatically disappearing after it was closed.
"Reminds of a certain series from my past life, which was quite famous…" Lin Wu muttered as he looked at the virtual interface.
~Ding~
——
Formation array virtual interface:-
1.Open Door
2.Close Door
3.Enable invisibility
4.Disable invisibility
5.Activate Defenses
6.Deactivate Defenses
7.Revoke Command permissions.
CURRENT STATUS: Options 2,3,6 are active.
——
"I guess activating defenses mean locking it, perhaps? And what's this last option? Revoke common permissions? Wait! Does this mean I can take over the control from Shirong?" Lin Wu wondered.
~Ding~
——
ANSWER: Yes, every virtual interface that has the 'Revoke Command permission' option can be overridden by the host. This depends on the difficulty of establishment of the interface, and certain ones may not be available at all.
The higher the permission the system acquires, the more functions will be available. Currently, in the case of this formation array, the host has all the permissions and the formation array had been linked by the system completely.
——
Seeing the system's answer made Lin Wu excited. He had seen the virtual interface it made for the spatial storage ring before, but it had no options. The only thing that it allowed him was to leave it at any time and hide his fluctuations from others.
"Hmm, the system has still not completed its previous analysis of the incident. I need to be cautious before I enter any spatial storage treasure." Lin Wu muttered to himself.
He then activated the defenses of the formation array and scanned the area with his spirit sense carefully. Thankfully, he had gotten plenty of practice in the banquet before and had become quite used to it now. There were a lot of people using spirit sense back at the banquet, which made it the easy for Lin Wu to hide his own in the crowd.
Though the thing was he was actually detected back there by a lot of people as he had brazenly tried to check their cultivation bases. These people were none other than the people of the clans and were a bit shocked at this.
Some of them even felt angry and tried to follow the spirit sense back to its source, only to find out that it was actually coming from Young Master Shirong. Seeing this made them calm down and actually even a bit excited. They thought that since Young master was paying them attention they perhaps he was happy with them or was interested in them.
This was another reason why everyone was so enthusiastic at the end of the banquet and was bidding Shirong goodbye, but not before inviting him to their own clans for banquets of their own. Shirong of course accepted them on the surface, but this underlying meaning was of polite rejection.
There was no way he had any more time to attend banquets. Unknown to him, Lin Wu had changed his perception in the eyes of the other clans and had actually increased it. The other clans now thought that Young master Shirong was quite humble and not arrogant at all.
"Hmm, there are formation arrays on the entire courtyard… should I take over them too? Or can I just leave without it, perhaps?" Lin Wu wondered.
Lin Wu thought for a moment before deciding to be on the safe side.
"Alright, system take over the formation array of the entire courtyard as well." Lin Wu ordered.
~Ding~
——
ANALYZING: Defensive, restrictive, offensive, and privacy formation arrays detected.
LINK FOUND: Creating virtual interface… please wait…
——
This time it was taking much longer than it had for the system to make the virtual interface for the safe. It was evident that the difficulty this time was much higher than normal.
"Let's take a look around here while the system works…" Lin Wu muttered and looked at the bookshelves.
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It was currently a little past midnight and Lin Wu reckoned he had plenty of time to do what he wanted to do. Thus he could afford to wait till the system set up the new virtual interface for the Formation array of the courtyard.
Just from the number of arrays that were placed on it, Lin Wu could tell that it was a few times more complex than the ones that were placed on the safe. So to pass the time he checked out the books that were placed in the study.
There were ten bookshelves here in total, five on each side. Each bookshelf extended from the floor all the way to the roof, covering the two walls completely in books, scrolls and wooden slips. Lin Wu looked at the size and estimated that each bookshelf was about five meters tall and three meters wide.
There were at least five hundred books on each shelf, which meant that there were around five thousand books in the entire study… well approximately. Lin Wu wanted the system to scan the books, but it was already busy with five tasks currently because of which it couldn't do that.
The system was making the virtual interface, analyzing the incident with the spatial rift and the spatial storage ring, analyzing cultivation techniques, analyzing the unknown energy and finally maintaining the passive functions of the system.
Lin Wu had asked the system before what the maximum limit for the number of tasks it could simultaneously was, but the answer it received was something unexpected to him: Unknown.
Even the system did not know the maximum limit, but at its current capabilities, it told him that five tasks were the most it could do as of now. Lin Wu asked how he could extend the limit and was told that it should happen naturally as his cultivation base rose.
Apparently, there were a lot of Computational A.I.'s that were part of the system in addition to the main A.I. which was the core of the system. The most that the system could activate right now was two computational A.I.'s to assist it.
The system also told him that upgrading its data banks can accelerate this process and thus he wanted to gain even more information and pieces of knowledge. And now one of the biggest potential sources was in front of Lin Wu. He went ahead and picked up one of the books with his tail, which he transformed to have two prongs that held the book in them.
He then looked at the title of the book and carefully read it.
"F*ck, what's this language!?" He cursed upon realizing that he didn't understand what was written there.
While he found the characters to be similar to the ones he had learned before, there were still some difference which made it unreadable to him. Till now Lin Wu had learned two languages, the Common tongue, and the Dao script.
"Is this a different dialect or something?" Lin Wu wondered and placed the book back.
He then picked up another book and found himself unable to read the title again.
"Dammit!" He placed the book back and pulled out another.
"Oh? Wait, I can read this…" Lin Wu uttered just as he had given up hope.
"A Brief History Of The Lu Clan." Lin Wu read the title.
"So this one is written in the common tongue that I originally learned from the data node of the cultivators' memories. The other one though… what is that dialect?" Lin Wu said.
He flipped to the first page and started reading. The book was relatively small, being around a hundred pages. Lin Wu read about two pages before putting it back.
"Hmm, this is pretty much generic. Nothing special in here… at least not at the start. I'll read it later when I come back." Lin Wu stated.
He then checked the other books briefly and found that there were books of at least five languages here. Of all these books here, he could barely read ten percent of them.
"Damn, this will be a problem… I'll need to figure out how to read the rest of them." Lin Wu muttered to himself.
About half an hour had passed since Lin Wu began checking the books, and finally the stem's notification sounded.
~Ding~
——
LINK ESTABLISHED: Virtual Interface Created Successfully
——
"Good, just in time." Lin Wu said in a pleased tone before looking at the virtual interface window.
"Oh? This time there aren't that many options…" He muttered.
~Ding~
——
Courtyard Formation Array Interface:-
1.Activate Formations
2.Deactivate Formations
3.Assign Key (Assigned keys= 1)
CURRENT STATUS: Option 1,3 is online
——
Unlike before, there was only half the number of options that Lin Wu had seen. Another thing was that the options were less detailed than before and seemed much vague. In the case of the virtual interface of the safe, Lin Wu could choose specifically which formation to deactivate and what to activate; whereas here he could only do that for all the formations together.
"This assign key option should be the one to allow one entry, I think…" Lin Wu muttered before choosing that one.
He suddenly felt something coming in contact with his body, and he realized that it was none other than the formation array. Lin Wu could tell that a wisp of some kind was attached to his body now.
"I guess this is what it meant by the key to the courtyard. I should be able to go in and out freely now." Lin Wu said before leaving the room.
He briefly scanned the room that Shirong was in and could very clearly hear the moans and cries that were coming from there. He got a glimpse of the 'arts' that were currently being performed in the room and silently cursed Shirong in his mind.
Pushing this thought to the bottom of his mind, Lin Wu made his way outside silently, which he didn't even need to really as there was no one except him, Shirong, and the girls in the courtyard.
"Now then… Let's go raid the kitchen!"
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Lin Wu got near the gate of the courtyard and could feel the wisp of aura that was placed on to him by the virtual interface to resonate with the formation array.
"Huh, so this is how it recognizes the owner of a key." Lin Wu muttered to himself.
Having a key to the formation array didn't mean that anyone couldn't go in and out. But rather they would be detected and an alarm would be rung. While it could be made so that the Formation locked the courtyard completely, that function was unavailable to Lin Wu.
Lin Wu extended his spirit sense and scanned the area around the gate, only to find it completely empty.
"Why is it empty? Shouldn't there be more guard here?" Lin Wu wondered.
But then when he scanned further with his spirit sense, he discovered the reason for it.
"Oh… the range of the formation array extends beyond the courtyard and reaches the end of the street." Lin Wu understood.
With the extended area of detection, the guards were standing outside its radius. This way, if someone were to enter the radius of detection, the owner would get a small notification. But unauthorized entry to the courtyard itself would cause the defensive measures to start up.
Lin Wu slightly pushed the gate of the courtyard open and peeked his head out, confirming with his own two eyes. Seeing that no one was really there, he exited and closed the gate behind him.
"Ooo! This feels like back when I used to sneak out at night in my past life. The warden was such an a*shole, getting us in trouble all the time, even if we were a minute late to enter." Lin Wu reminisced.
Lin Wu remembered the path he had seen when he was with Shirong and followed it. After exiting the radius of the formation array, Lin Wu saw the guard for the first time. They were standing around and would occasionally scan the area with their spirit senses.
Thankfully for Lin Wu, they were only at the qi refining realm and the maximum range of their spirit sense was only ten meters. Lin Mu easily found a blind spot and used that to get through them. Even though he had a very easy method of hiding, which was digging, he didn't use it.
The ground here was paved with flat stone tiles and thus would leave behind traces if he dug in. He could have also skipped the guard by going over the walls of the other houses, but that was problematic for him. All the houses in this area had formation arrays that protected them.
If he crossed the border of one, he would be detected again. Thus he had no other choice but to sneak past the guards.
Finally, having crossed the guards, Lin Wu arrived at the main crossroad. The path opposite to him went in the direction of the Xiong and Mu clan's mansions, while the one left of him took him to the main city area. This left him with the one to the right that went to the Lu clan mansion.
The streets were dimly lit with street lamps, which created plenty of dark spots, which made it easy for Lin Wu to hide in. Even at this time, there were occasionally people passing from the road while the guards would patrol the area too.
While he was a bit slower while crawling on the ground instead of digging, Lin Wu's speed was still faster than a cultivator that was sprinting. Five minutes later he had successfully reached the Lu clan's mansion. This area was well lit and a lot of people were coming in and out from the clan.
"Looks like they're getting ready for all the preparations of the Tribulation platform." Lin Wu muttered to himself.
Lin Wu circled around and found another smaller entrance that was used by the servants.
'This should be fine… but nows the moment of the test, let's see if it works for me too…' Lin Wu thought.
The test was none other than the key to the formation array. Lin Wu thought that he should have the same signature as Shirong did, thus he shouldn't have the problem in entering the courtyard, and that was exactly what happened.
Though even if that was not possible, Lin Wu reckoned that with the number of random people going in and out of the clan, he would be unnoticed. Thankfully now, the ground here was just simple dirt that Lin Wu could dig through.
He found a small bush to the side, which would be large enough to hide the hole he would dig and entered the ground from there.
"System, make a map of the area." Lin Wu ordered.
~Ding~
——
MAP FUNCTION ACTIVATED: Scanning the area.
SCAN COMPLETE: Map has been updated.
——
Lin Wu looked at the map window and saw that it only had the area that was inside the confines of the formation array. The formation array functioned the same for the system's scan as it did for spirit sense and isolated the signals.
Lin Wu had not made the map for the entire city yet, as he was not sure if others would detect it or not. But now that he had tested it on a smaller scale, he could do it freely when he left the courtyard later.
"Hmm, now where is the kitchen?… this part was the entrance that we went through and this was the main hall. If I remember correctly, the servants were bringing in trays of food from the lower two doors of the hall. Then the kitchen should be… right here!" Lin Wu observed.
"System, activate the navigating HUD." Lin Wu ordered.
~Ding~
——
NAVIGATION HUD ACTIVATED: Finding route
ROUTE FOUND: Plotting on mini map.
——
Having found his target location, Lin Wu began his journey. Digging through the ground, he reached the building that was the kitchen. There he came out of the ground from under a pile of chopped logs and looked around.
"Hehe! Time to Raid!"
Lin Wu didn't come out directly but rather scanned the area with his spirit sense. He was now getting habitual to it and was feeling proud of himself for that.
"Hmm, so fifteen servants, three guards and four clan members around here." Lin Wu observed.
The kitchen of the Lu clan was actually quite big as they needed to prepare food for more than five thousand people every day. The Lu clan had around two thousand direct members and three thousand branch members, not to mention the non related people like servants that worked there.
The kitchen of a clan as big as this usually functioned all hours of the day as the people could need food at any time. There were a majority of cultivators that needed this as they cultivated for long periods of time and would take a break in the middle of the night to get food.
For them, time had long since become a foreign thing in terms of normal schedule.
"Hmm… now how do I actually go about getting the food?" Lin Wu wondered as he saw the servants busily cooking.
"Hurry up, the clansmen are still waiting for food. Even if the banquet is over, the others have still not eaten!" One of the clansmen nagged.
"Yes, Senior. We'll get it done, don't worry, but the problem is a lot of our workers are out preparing for the tasks Clan head ordered. We are lacking at least a hundred workers." One of the other clansmen spoke.
"Did you try calling the others from the mansion temporarily?" The Senior clansman asked.
"We sent someone to call them, but no one has responded yet. I fear they may have been assigned to other tasks as well." The junior clansman who was assigned to oversee the kitchen spoke.
~Sigh~
"Seems like we'll just have to be late…" The senior clansman replied in a helpless tone.
'At least they are still cooking food that means I'll have the chance to eat as well. Damn that aroma though!' Lin Wu thought.
The aroma from the food was spread all around the area, and Lin Wu was tempted to knock everyone out and eat everything. Just as he was relishing this feeling, a few trays of food were brought out.
"Another round is ready. Please take this to the dining hall and put it there. They will take it on their own, and bring back the empty dishes." The junior clansman ordered one of the servants.
"Yes, chef!" The servant replied.
"Oh, so he's a chef…" Lin Wu muttered.
The servant then put the food onto a multilayer trolley and started moving to the building that functioned as a dining hall. Lin Wu looked at it for a moment and then looked back at the kitchen before making up his mind.
"I'll see where they go, perhaps I'll have a better chance there." Lin Wu said to himself before going back into the ground and following the servant.
It was easy for him to follow the servant hidden in the ground, but then he had to come out of it when they reached near the entrance of the dinner hall. Lin Wu spotted a brazier that was burning at one of the corners and found it to be the perfect place to come out of.
The brazier was brightly burning, thus the area directly below it was extremely dark, making it the perfect place for Lin Wu to hide. He waited for the servant to enter the dining hall before coming out of a hole below the brazier.
Usually, this spot would have been burning hot, but Lin Wu's resistance to heat made it easy for him and he felt nothing. The servant entered inside and exchanged the empty trays of food for the filled ones before taking them back.
Once he was gone, Lin Wu peeked through one of the corners. He saw the long tables that were set up in rows and the nearly hundred people that were eating there all at the same time. They were talking with each other as well, so barely anyone was keeping attention on the back entrance.
Lin Wu then saw a couple of servants that were acting as waiters to take food from the newly arrive trays and serving them to the people that were eating there. Lin Wu wondered how he could get some food now. While he was stronger than anyone in this room, he couldn't just start a straight up battle.
After observing for five minutes, he learned that there was a certain delay between when the servant took the food and went to serve it. During that period there was no one paying attention to the food.
"Looks like I found my chance!" Lin Wu muttered to himself before moving ahead.
He crawled from the very corner of the wall and headed under the table on which the food was kept.
'Annnd safe!' Lin Wu said in his mind after reaching the table.
The table was covered with a long table cloth so he was perfectly hidden below it.
"Hehe… now to sample some food…" Lin Wu spoke before checking the area with his spirit sense.
As soon as the servant was gone, he extended his tail from behind the table and stored the entire tray of food in his inventory. He then withdrew it below the table and ate a little bit before storing it in the inventory again and summoning it back on the table using his tail.
"Damn, this food is good!" Lin Wu praised as he relished the food in his mouth.
He had already changed his head back to its organic form so that he could fully taste the food. Which honestly was the best tasting food he had eaten. But that was probably because this was the first time he was eating in a long, long time.
Lin Wu had literally not eaten properly cooked food in about two and a half years now.
"Ahh! Who knew the food in a cultivation world could be so good!" He praised again as his eyes turned greedy for more food and he started scheming.
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Lin Wu now felt like he finally had a proper goal for himself in this life. Till now he had just been living for the sake of it and had a rough goal of becoming stronger. But there really wasn't much motivation for him after his lifespan increased.
Now Lin Wu wanted to try every delicacy in this world and enjoy it. That was the one thing he could do even if he was a worm. If he couldn't enjoy women, he would enjoy the food. Tasting the food from this world had only made him that much excited.
The food he had just tasted wasn't even anything special. It was made with normal ingredients and wasn't the special one made for the banquet that had spirit beast meat and spirit herbs in it. He couldn't imagine how heavenly the spirit beast meat and herb one would be like.
Lin Wu had already scanned the kitchen and knew that there were no ingredients for spirit food there, only the normal ones.
"Hmm, seems like they only supply the amount that's required and don't keep it stocked all the time." Lin Wu muttered to himself as he stole a bit more of the food.
Every turn that the waiter made, Lin Wu would take a little more amount. By the time the waiter had finished serving ten people, the entire dish was empty. But the waiter paid no attention to this and was simply working mechanically, as if bored out of his mind.
"Huh, so the dead-end jobs are the same here too…" Lin Wu said upon seeing the waiter's actions.
'Wonder if they get paid minimum wage too…' Lin Wu thought to himself.
Lin Wu had spent about two hours doing this, and it was at this time that the Chef came to talk with the servants.
"What's happening, why have the people not stopped eating?" The chef questioned.
The waiters stopped and became alert, rousing from their dazed state.
"Huh? Oh sir, we don't know, they are just eating more today I guess." One of the waiters answered.
"Is that so…" The chef replied before looking around the room.
All of the people seemed to be eating normally, and they would leave after they were done.
'That's strange why are they eating more, it's not even spirit food…' The chef thought before shrugging his shoulders and leaving.
While this had indeed increased their work load, there wasn't much they could do. All their job was to feed the people till they were satisfied. Usually, they were done with most part of the night at around this time. But today seemed to be strange. Even if it was a banquet, this was unusual.
"Seems like they finally noticed." Lin Wu said as he observed the Chef.
"Well… anyways, I'm done. Now that I know where to come, I can do it every day, Hehe…" Lin Wu muttered to himself in a creepy tone.
Lin Wu didn't know that in the time that he had been here, he had eaten about half of the food that was supposed to be given to the clansmen. But now that he was satisfied, he started to go back through the route he had come from.
He easily sneaked past the waiters and reached the brazier below which the hole was. After entering, he roughly closed it with his tail and got back to the servant entrance. He left the confines of the Formation array of the Lu clan before getting ready for his next task.
"System, scan the city and update the map." Lin Wu ordered.
Now that he knew it was safe, Lin Wu made the map without hesitation.
~Ding~
——
MAP FUNCTION ACTIVATED: Scanning area
AREA SCANNED: Map Updated
——
Lin Wu looked at the new map window and saw the full area of the Deer wood city for the very first time.
"Damn this is much bigger than I thought." Lin Wu muttered, seeing the size which he had not expected.
"System, do you know what's the population of the city?" Lin Wu questioned.
~Ding~
——
ANSWER: The population of Deer wood city is: 124,691 humans; 14,750 Beasts; 160 Spirit beasts; 60,584 Animals.
——
"Huh, so it is roughly the same population as that of a city from my previous world. But the blank spots due to the formation array are a bit displeasing." Lin Wu said while looking at the map and saw the small arrow in the corner.
"Huh? What's this?" He asked before clicking the button.
The map shifted and Lin Wu could now see a completely different topography on it.
"Ooo! So it shows the underground area too." Lin Wu exclaimed.
The underground area was mostly empty except for a few places that seemed to be like rooms. There were eight major areas that were big enough to warrant his attention, the smaller ones just seemed to be blocked caves or empty air pockets.
"They seem to all be located under the Clans. Wait, if they are part of the clans then shouldn't they be protected due to the formation array too, why do they show up here?" Lin Wu wondered before taking a closer look.
He found out that the ones that were visible to him were the underground areas for the Lu clan and seven other smaller clans. He saw the underground area for the Lu clan as he already had the signature for the formation array which was a bit strange considering it was a secret area, while for the other seven clans it was simply visible because they couldn't afford to make a formation array that was bigger.
Lin Wu looked at the two empty spots where the Mu and Xiong clan were supposed to be and indeed found them to be blocked too.
'Hmm, there's are definitely some secret areas of the clan. But why would Shirong have the access to the secret area of the clan? Even if he is an honored guest, this doesn't make sense…' Lin Wu thought.
"Hmm, should I check the area out…?"
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Lin Wu thought for a moment and figured that he had three more hours until the morning. He could very well go and return back to Shirong. But then decided against it. There were still a few things he didn't know and wanted to be on the safer side.
"Hmm, now that I have the maps, I don't need to crawl all the way there, I can just tunnel my way to the courtyard." Lin Wu said to himself.
He then went back inside the Lu clan's compound and dug into the soft ground hidden under a bush. He then turned on the navigation and put Shirong's courtyard as the destination. Now that he had the keys for both of the formation arrays he was able to create the shortest route which was a straight tunnel.
What had taken him nearly fifteen minutes before now only took two. Lin Wu was like a drill traveling through the ground and quickly reached below the Courtyard. He picked another bush and dug out from under there. He scanned the area with his spirit sense and discovered that Shirong was far from done and was still performing the 'arts' in the bedroom.
The faint sounds of moans and cries could still be heard from outside, which only made Lin Wu a bit pissed. Ignoring it for his own health, he walked into the study.
'Now then, let's check out the books and see what the system can do with it,' Lin Wu thought to himself.
"System, scan all the books and see if you can figure out the languages." Lin Wu ordered.
~Ding~
——
SCANNING: Multiple targets selected.
UNKNOWN LANGUAGE DETECTED: Extrapolating information please wait patiently
——
"Wonder how long this will take now… hopefully it is done before Shirong is 'done'." Lin Wu muttered to himself.
He then looked towards the shelf, and an idea appeared in his mind.
'Might as well read to pass the time…' Lin Wu thought.
He then went and picked the book 'A Brief History Of The Lu Clan' and started reading from the place where he had left off from.
Lin Wu found out that the Lu clan had a history of about seven hundred years and the current clan head was the strongest cultivator in their clan till now. He was the only person that had reached the nascent soul realm since the beginning of the clan.
"So his name is Lu Ren, huh?" Lin Wu said upon discovering the name of the Lu clan head.
'Seems like becoming the clan Head means that few people would have the authority to call him by his first name in this city at least. Even Shirong only calls him clan head for respect.' Lin Wu thought.
Most of the things in the book were just the achievements of the clan, along with the names of a few prominent members. The rest just seemed like propaganda to Lin Wu, pretty much. He put the book back on the shelf and picked another one that he could read.
"A treatise on the twelve kingdom alliance," Lin Wu read the title.
"This sounds kinda… formal?" he muttered and flipped to the next page.
He read about ten pages of the four hundred that were present in the book before stopping.
"That is definitely not for me." Lin Wu said.
The book had all the political discussions that occurred between the twelve kingdoms alliance. Ling kingdom was part of this, and the book had a detailed log of everything that had happened. From conflicts to marriages, everything was covered.
"I'll just leave it for the system. This is perfect for it to upgrade its data banks." Lin Wu said, feeling a bit helpless.
'Let's find something interesting…' Lin Wu thought and started scouring through the books.
There were actually a lot of them which caught his interest and had some amazing depictions of their covers. But he was unable to read these books because of them being in a different language. One of the books he found was about the cultivation realms and explained some details.
But even that was less than what was explained in the Ji clan records that Lin Wu had read.
"Oh wait, isn't this the same thing that they were talking about earlier?" Lin Wu said after finding a book that contained information about Tribulation platforms.
He learned that there were chiefly three types of tribulation platforms: Generalized multiple use type, Generalized single use type, and Customized unique type.
As the name said, generalized multiple use type and generalized single use type tribulation platforms were used by anyone and it didn't matter what kind of cultivation technique they practiced. This type of platform had a certain level of compatibility with most cultivation techniques.
Then there was the Customized Unique type, which was the one being made for Shirong. Because of his top grade Cultivation technique Immortal sky shaker art, there were a lot of requirements to it and would need quite a lot of resources to make it.
"Boy, Shirong really lucked out huh or it would have been difficult for him to break through to the nascent soul realm. I've read the Immortal sky shaker art, and it is gonna have difficulties when the heavenly tribulation arrives. There are some seriously strange things with that technique." Lin Wu muttered to himself.
Lin Wu had not realized it at first when he read the technique, but now he could see the flaws in the technique. It was obvious that there were some flaws in it. He was only able to see them due to the system's analysis.
The Immortal sky shaker art allowed one to gain comprehension over the Dao of Sky which included two elemental attributes; Wind and lightning. Now the thing was cultivation was said to be stealing fortune from the heavens and as a punishment for that, the heavenly tribulation would descend.
For Shirong, the Immortal sky shaker art involved absorbing and refining a very tiny amount of the tribulation lightning. While he would be bearing the brunt of the entire thing, refining even a minuscule amount was incredibly difficult and Lin Wu wondered if he would even be able to do it.
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Lin Wu read a few more books to pass time and two hours swiftly went by when the system's notification finally sounded.
~Ding~
——
ANALYSIS COMPLETE: New languages now available
DATA BANKS: Updated
——
Seeing that the system was successfully able to analyze and decipher the languages made Lin Wu amazed. Not only that, but the system had also scanned and added the contents of all the books here into the data banks which made it ways for him to read through them whenever he wanted.
The system also had gained new information which meant that Lin Wu would be able to ask it more questioned and it would actually be able to answer better. Lin Wu took a quick look through the detailed log and saw that it had gained a lot of information about the geography of the Continent.
"This will make it handy…" Lin Wu said nodding his head. "Wonder if he is done or not yet…"
Lin Wu observed the bed room using his spirit sense and saw that they were now just all lying on the bed in a pile, deep in sleep.
"Che! Lucky bastard…" Lin Wu said with envy before walking to the wall.
He used the virtual interface and revealed the safe before entering it and locking it back. It was already morning and the light could be seen on the horizon. While the sun was still hidden, the orange and red clouds showed that it wouldn't be too long.
"Looks like they'll sleep for a bit longer…" Lin Wu muttered before thinking of what to do next.
'Hmm, should I try refining spirit sense again? I haven't tried after the incident.' Lin Wu thought.
After getting over the bottleneck which was the 100 meters of range, Lin Wu wanted to see if he could go beyond it. He extended his spirit sense completely but couldn't make it straight due to the confines of the room. He just kept it a little coiled making it take less area.
He then guided out one single wisp of spirit qi and no more. Lin Wu didn't know what would happen, thus he was extremely careful. But after a few seconds he was dumbfounded.
"Huh? How? How the hell is it so easy now?" Lin Wu questioned in shock.
~Ding~
——
NOTIFICATION: New experimental data obtained from host!
ANALYSIS COMPLETE: Please view the report in the relevant window.
——
Just as Lin Wu finished adding the wisp of spirit qi to his spirit sense, the system suddenly gave out a notification.
"What? Wait, me doing stuff can accelerate the analysis speed?" Lin Wu wondered.
He opened the report and started reading it. The more he read, the more he was intrigued.
Apparently, the reason why it was so difficult for Lin Wu to refine his spirit sense was the spatial storage ring. And the reason behind its destruction was the spirit sense.
What was happening was that the more Lin Wu refined his spirit sense and increased its length, the more stress was being exerted on the spatial storage ring's dimension. While it seemed like the inside of the ring had no borders, it was not so.
Rather even in the darkness, there were only certain limits till which Lin Wu could go to. Beyond that, it was as if there were invisible barriers. Another thing was that every time an explosion happened due to Lin Wu failing, it would exert force onto the borders of the dimension.
It was as if a gas was stored in a metal container and kept on expanding. The container would be able to bear it up to a certain limit before exploding. That was what had happened here. But the thing with the spatial rift was a bit different.
Usually when a spatial storage treasure is destroyed, it cannot create a spatial rift as it would take a hundred times more energy than was used to make it. But here Lin Wu had compensated it by collapsing the dimensional borders with the spirit qi explosion.
This caused the small amount of spatial attribute qi that was used to make the spatial storage ring to be released explosively and ripping a hole in the fabric of space. The hole was quite small, barely the size of a pinhead but even that was enough for the spatial energy to start leaking out from the hole.
What it had done was create a connection between this world and the void, which was another layer of space that surrounded the world. Lin Wu had learned a bit about the void, but there was a lot of information still missing about it.
He compared the void to the outer space of his previous world. This hole then started sucking in everything due to there being a vacuum on the other side and also started leaking the spatial attribute qi from it. It was a strange contradiction where it was both sucking and leaking at the same time.
Even if normal spirit qi was being sucked by the spatial rift, the spatial attribute spirit qi was unaffected due to its special properties. It was also this leaking spatial attribute spirit qi that was keeping the spatial rift open and expanding it.
The system would have taken more time to analyze this, but when Lin Wu successfully refined the spirit sense again, it gained enough core data that it finished it instantly and inferred the cause.
"So the reason why it was so hard for me to refine my spirit sense was because I was doing it in a closed space?" Lin Wu uttered feeling a bit stupid.
~Sigh~
"At least, now I know it is safe being in a spatial storage treasure as long as I don't do anything that can damage it from the inside like refining spirit sense." Lin Wu concluded.
Having understood everything now, Lin Wu just decided to continue refining his spirit sense. He now wanted to see to what level he could take it to with his current cultivation base.
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