章 15: Spiritual Gathering Array

Ten days had passed since Minos's mother visited him. At this point, she had already gone back to the Flaming Empire, where her Gray Clouds Sect was located.

In those ten days, Minos had made significant progress, reaching level 16 and had already trained his technique, Spatial Sword, thousands of times, and in less than a week or so, he would conclude the first phase of the technique as well.

Along with that, he also had already discovered a specialized defense technique for his next advancement in cultivation to the Spiritual Beginner, which should also happen in the next two weeks.

The technique was called Indestructible Body, a Golden-grade classification, and had nine phases. When activated, it could render the user's body indestructible for 10 seconds against opponents who are up to 100% stronger than the user.

That meant that if the user of the technique was at level 20, he would become indestructible for 10 seconds against an opponent of level 26 and could attack him without being worried about their own defense.

However, against someone above that level, the defense would only weaken, and at the higher levels, this ability to defend against those at the greater levels would only decrease as the difference in energy only gets bigger and bigger through the ranks.

It begins with just the 10-second defense in the 1st phase that goes to the 9th phase. In this phase, the user would have an insuperable defense and be able to use his own body as a weapon.

Besides Minos, Dillian had also managed to advance to level 46!

After all, the butler still had a Black talent, and there were no bottlenecks within the steps. Even if they were in a low-density region, he would still advance to at least level 49, as long as he had time.

Of course, they would not wait for long, when there were enough spiritual crystals, the cultivation speed of all of Minos' subordinates would increase consistently.

...

Meanwhile, a few kilometers from Dry City, a merchant carriage was approaching the region with a large volume of items. On that carriage, there was a symbol of a silver ship.

That was the symbol of the Nash family from Stone Island!

"Hey, big brother, what are we doing by going to Dry City? We usually don't come here when we are going to deliver resources to the Brown Kingdom," the muscular man asked.

"Hm, we usually don't, but Ms. Elen has made an accord with the new local sovereign of the Black Plain. So, before we continue our journey to the Brown Kingdom, we are going to leave these four spiritual gathering arrays here," an older man who had a scar on his left eye responded.

...

Some time passed, and soon the carriage reached Dry City.

The door was flung open without a knock causing the two present in the office to have their brows raised high, but after seeing the person they nodded.

"Young master, the spiritual arrays promised by Ms. Elen has just arrived," Mia informed right after entering Minos' office while panting and gasping for breath.

"Oh! That was fast, Grandpa Dillian, let's go get this," Minos nodded with an animated expression on his face.

Soon after, the young man and the middle-aged man went to receive the arrays.

After walking for a few moments, the two finally arrived at where the delivery men were waiting. There were a total of three people in the group. One was a teen who didn't look much older than Minos, a muscular adult, and a middle-aged man.

"Hello, friends from Dry City, I'm Sarek, and these are Firrol and Rex Larson," said the middle-aged man with a scar on his eye.

Then, the young man in the group stepped forward, "Nice to meet you. You can call me Rex, I'm here to inform you about some details related to the function of these arrays..."

After that, Minos chose four local guards to learn the basic details of the arrays' operation from the young array master.

This was common in this world. Although the arrays would work automatically most of the time, there was a need to follow specific processes when manipulating them. This was a job that was typically done by array masters, like the young Rex, who was still a beginner.

However, in Dry City, there was no one like that...

So, this young man had come with the group to teach these basics.

But it wasn't difficult. It was just something that most people were not able to learn because they either didn't have crystals to buy an array or because they had someone else to do these services for them.

After that, it didn't take long before the arrays were installed in four points of the city.

The arrays would cover just over a third of the city's total area, which included the entire central section, which had the highest population density.

And, according to the young Rex, these arrays could increase the spiritual density of the affected region by 15% if they were to be supplied with only free spiritual energy from the Black Plain region.

However, the improvement would rocket by at least 50% if about 10,000 low-grade spiritual crystals were supplied each month.

As for if they wanted an even more spiritual density than that, they would have to buy an even higher level array since these high-level grade-1 ones had low efficiency, which limited any further development.

And so, the group said their goodbye, going to the east of the Black Plain, heading towards other regions of the Brown Kingdom.

"For now, we will not be able to supply these four arrays with crystals since it would cost 40,000 crystals per month. But we will do just fine with a 15% improvement," Dillian said, holding his hands behind his back.

"Hmm, it should take at least six months before we can start supplying one of them monthly and a year for all four..." Minos said with a thoughtful countenance.

Pyke, who was also present in the group, said with a big smile on his face, "Haha, it doesn't matter, Young master. Even if it were two years or more, it wouldn't make a difference for us. Even having any improvement in the spiritual concentration of the region is already beyond our dreams."

After that, other guards nodded their heads.

What Pyke had said was true, with an improvement of 15% in spiritual concentration, they would be able to cultivate much faster and this was already very good for the humble people of this city who did not want to take chances in stronger places with better spiritual concentration.

...

Night quickly fell, and the four arrays were all already in operation.

That night, many people noticed a sudden increase in spiritual concentration in some parts of the city.

...

Meanwhile, in various parts of the city, people who were starting to cultivate realized that the time it took for them to gather spiritual energy around them was shorter than usual!

"Huh? Why does it seem so easy to gather spiritual energy?" an adult man thought while he was cultivating.

...

Elsewhere in the central parts of the city, a small group of people were talking.

"I'm telling you, the spiritual density is really higher than before. When I cultivated today, it took 20 minutes less than usual for me to gather the surrounding energy," a young man exclaimed with a euphoric expression on his face.

"But that doesn't make sense. Why would the spiritual concentration improve like that all of a sudden?" a middle-aged man asked in disbelief.

In this world, sensing the surrounding energy was something that everyone could do, but those who were weaker needed to cultivate it in order to realize that.

However, when a cultivator reached level 40, he could use free energy in heaven and on earth. Consequently, they could also feel the differences in spiritual density even without cultivating. But there weren't many within the city at the level to do so.

Thus it didn't take long before a new rumor slowly began to spread throughout the city, stating that the spiritual energy was more concentrated than usual.

The population also realized that this was not happening all across the city, instead, was something that was limited to the regions closest to the central part of the town, which covered about a third of the entire Dry City.

...

Five days quickly passed in the Black Plain and during this period, the cultivation levels of the people were growing even faster than expected, while the central region of Dry City was getting busier each day.

Some people were already struggling to get a place to live in the central part of the town!

Minos had also increased his cultivation these days, reaching level 18, and was almost about to reach the Spiritual Beginner level!

It was not just him who was improving, but Mia, Minos' young secretary, had already reached level 25 in the nearly two months since Minos' arrival in Dry City. Just like young Stuart's other subordinates, she was also training in Black-grade techniques, which as a result had significantly increased the speed of her cultivation!

During those days, the students that Minos brought into his forces had also turned 10 and came to the mansion to receive their cultivation techniques.

Both Lee and Alison received the same Black-grade cultivation technique which was passed on among Minos' subordinates, thereby beginning to cultivate.

And being individuals with Black talent, the two also had an excellent cultivation speed and had already reached level 2 by now.

At that point, even the wheat, corn, and rice crops were almost ready to be harvested, which would allow some more of Minos' plans regarding the development of the city to be put into action...