Master of the System

“Vremya!”

Grandpa Vremya furrowed his brow. Usually, when the sect leader needed him for something, she’d send a disciple to inform him ahead of time. It was very rare for the sect leader to appear in person. It was even rarer to see the sect leader covered in soot and wearing tattered robes.

“Was that exploding golem in the sky your invention?” Rachel asked, her eyes red. When she had entered the whale golem, seven miniature explosions happened. Judging by what she could see from inside, those explosions were caused by pods leaving the golem. Before she could do anything else, however, the whole golem exploded, nearly killing her. If she hadn’t reached the peak of soul-seed thanks to the perfected Moon Lotus Cultivation Technique, there was no way she would’ve survived.

Grandpa Vremya tilted his head. “I don’t program my golems for explosions,” he said. “So, it probably wasn’t me.”

“Is that so?” Rachel asked. She nodded and sat down off to the side. “I used up the last bits of my energy to come here to question you. If you want to kill me, now’s your chance.” She closed her eyes and proceeded to cultivate, ignoring Grandpa Vremya.

Grandpa Vremya shifted his gaze away from Rachel. Why in the world would he want to kill the sect leader? She was his umbrella, guarding him from the outside elements. When it rained, she would be hit first. When troubles came, they’d bother her first. He’d have to be a moron to give up convenience for the sake of some glory. However, he was a bit intrigued. Someone else was capable of building golems strong enough to heavily damage a soul-seed expert upon exploding? It seemed like a wave of enemies had come just in time for him to temper himself, how awfully convenient.

A moment later, Rachel’s eyes opened. “It really wasn’t you, huh?” she asked before standing up. With a wave of her hand, her messy appearance disappeared. Her clothes changed in the blink of an eye, and the smudges on her face were wiped away by spiritual energy. Earlier, she had lied to see if Grandpa Vremya really was the culprit. If he couldn’t help himself and tried to attack her in her weakened state, she would’ve killed him. “Come to the main hall. I’m assembling the elders.”

At the main hall, Grandpa Vremya took a seat beside Azalea. Since she had formed her nascent soul, she had also become an elder. Although the sect was filled with geniuses, forming a nascent soul was still a difficult task. Of the ten core disciples who had accompanied Grandpa Vremya on the trip to the pocket realm with the miniature titans, only four of them had formed their nascent soul. The rest had passed away, all traces of them to be forgotten through the passage of time. As for the four, naturally, Grandpa Vremya was included as one of them. Ruby and Michelle had formed their nascent souls as well. As for the fourth core disciple, Grandpa Vremya didn’t think she was important enough to remember her name. In fact, if Ruby and Michelle were to appear in front of him, he wouldn’t know their names either.

“We’ve been invaded,” Rachel said once she saw all the elders had arrived, skipping the pleasantries. “They’re people who come from beyond the sky. Maybe they’re demons; I didn’t get a close look at them. I had a feeling of being watched for the longest time, and I located the source way above me. There was a flying ship, much like Elder Vremya’s flying whale golems. I broke through a barrier and boarded it, but it exploded shortly after. Before it exploded, seven things escaped from the golem and flew towards the ground.”

“A standard hunting mission?” Michelle asked. “Locate the seven individuals and capture or kill them?”

“It’ll be trickier than that,” Rachel said. “There must’ve been a soul-seed cultivator onboard. The barrier generated by the golem was strong, even by my standards.”

“Seven soul-seed cultivators?” Michelle asked, raising an eyebrow. Even including the ancestors, the Moon Lotus Sect only had a total of three soul-seed cultivators. Considering the other sects barely had two between all of them, it was an impressive number; however, it was nowhere near enough to deal with an invasion of seven soul-seed cultivators.

“I think there’s only one of them,” Rachel said. “If there were more, they would’ve confronted me instead of fleeing. It’s also possible they were seven nascent-soul cultivators using a formation technique to defend against me.”

“Even if they were core cultivators, it’s still a mess,” Ruby said from Elder Formation’s seat. Ever since Ruby became an elder, she had taken over Elder Formation’s role, and the old elder went on to become an ancestor in seclusion, hoping to enter the soul-seed stage. “How are we going to find seven people when the continent is so massive? They could literally be hiding anywhere.”

“We’re not going to find them,” Rachel said and shook her head. “The only thing we can do is … prepare for war.”

“Is that really the only option?” Azalea asked. “Can’t we broadcast a message to make peace with them?”

“It’s too late for that,” Rachel said. “They detonated their golem while I was inside of it; clearly, they aren’t here for peaceful reasons.”

Maybe if you didn’t charge their airship, they wouldn’t have been so aggressive? Azalea knew better than to say her thoughts out loud. She nodded at Rachel and sank back in her seat. It seemed like Grandpa Vremya knew exactly what he was talking about. Who knew that enemies would show up right when he needed them? It was almost as if he could see the future.

***

Roger looked around the tavern while sipping on a cup of wine. He wasn’t selected to be a pilot for no reason. Anyone could fly a spaceship thanks to the help of the artificial intelligence on board. The real reason he was selected was because of his score in his infiltration training. To understand the language of the natives, the first thing he did was find someone old, elderly, alone, and relatively strong. After finding a suitable person, he used his spiritual energy to scour the person’s mind, absorbing all their memories. He had suspected it upon reading the data signals, but he never really expected to find a planet full of cultivators who were living at least three thousand years in the past. The most recent industrial innovation they’ve stumbled upon was very recent; an elder of the Moon Lotus Sect started heavily promoting the use of golems just a few hundred years ago. Other than that, they might as well have lived like pigs.

A world like this was perfect for exploitation. All Roger had to do was set up the signal beacon, and it’d alert the homeland of this world’s existence. Afterwards, their expeditionary armies would be deployed, and the rest would be history. It wasn’t too difficult for Roger to set up the signal beacon either. The main component was stored inside of his interspacial ring. As long as he could gather a few materials and create some formations to amplify the signal’s strength, he’d be done. Even if he failed, there were six other pilots all trying to accomplish the same mission as well. The experts of this world weren’t that strong either. Contrary to his expectations, there weren’t any false immortals hanging around. With his strength as a nascent-soul cultivator, who practiced with modern techniques, there was no way he would encounter any trouble.

After Roger familiarized himself with the world, he went about robbing people to purchase the materials needed for the beacon. It took him three weeks to get everything ready, and it took another three days for him to establish the beacon deep within the wilderness, killing every mercenary who had stumbled upon his creation. Roger took the core component out of his interspacial ring and slotted it inside the appropriate nook within his beacon. The metallic structure rumbled, and a beam of light shot towards the sky. A faint smile appeared on Roger’s face. With that, his mission was complete. Oh, right, he still had to spread the knowledge of potato chips throughout the world for some reason.