"Wang Shouchuan, who had been working diligently and conscientiously throughout his life, probably did not expect that his last brilliance would have such a deep impact on the world. The Elders Guild conferred the title of Master on him without knowing that his research possessed the power of changing the world. They did not know this even after they built the God-subduing Peak using his knowledge. Perhaps the Elders Guild did not care about this at all. Seizures of power, fighting, and scheming among one another had depleted their time and energy, causing them to lose interest in knowing how the world would change. Far away from them, Wang Shouchuan’s disciple, Ai Hui, who had a bit of fame at that time, understood the value of his master’s research and became a forerunner in the field of elemental energy development. It was certainly unnecessary to elaborate on how Ai Hui’s later accomplishments were engraved in everyone’s memory."
——
The emergence of the God-subduing Peak had made a lot of people realized the value of Wang Shouchuan’s research. However, all of his research was confiscated by the Elders Guild and not a single piece of paper was left. The God-subduing Peak was a powerful and precious war machine, so it was heavily guarded. It was extremely difficult for someone to get close to it, let alone study it.
The Elders Guild was very pleased with themselves for their fast reaction in confiscating Wang Shouchuan’s work.
However, everyone overlooked one person: Ai Hui.
Logically speaking, no one would overlook Wang Shouchuan’s disciple. However, everyone quickly realized that [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth] was Wang Shouchuan’s last-minute, custom-made plan and that the science behind it was poles apart from his earlier theories.
At that point in time, Ai Hui was still fighting with blood fiends and blood elementalists. By the time he first came into contact with the plan, he was already preparing to lead a team to execute it. The science behind [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth] was extremely complicated and there were many blueprints on it. The Elders Guild did not believe that anyone could memorize everything about it in such a short period of time. All the craftsmen that were involved in building the gold needles were taken away by Elders Guild as well.
Furthermore, Ai Hui was only interested in swordsmanship. He was a typical fighting elementalist.
No one expected Ai Hui to not only memorize all the blueprints, but also to know the plan inside and out. For the past three years, he had never stopped studying the plan. To him, this was the last gift that his master had left him. If he did not understand it at all, how was he fit to be his master’s disciple?
There were two key points to setting up [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth]. The first one was to find the nodes of elemental energy, and the second one was to form the elemental traces.
The regions where elemental energy was distributed were important and would affect the flow of elemental energy. This logic applied to regions where multiple types of elemental energy existed as well.
Wang Shouchuan named these regions as nodes. If one wanted to control the elemental energy of a particular place, he or she would have to control the node of this region first.
So how does one control a node? Here was the second key point, elemental traces.
Elemental traces were nothing new to this time and age. The theories behind them were based on the spiritual traces from the glorious Cultivation Era. Forbidden arts, spells, and refinement of equipment were applications of spiritual traces.
Wang Shouchuan was not the first person to research elemental traces. There were countless people before him that desired to find the most important power of the Elemental Era, but they eventually failed to do so.
The reason why Wang Shouchuan succeeded was that he was the first who understood the importance of nodes. The energy level of elemental energy paled in comparison to that of spiritual force. Thus, only at nodes would the energy level of elemental energy be higher than the spiritual force. This was where the elemental traces would be formed.
Right now, Ai Hui was finding these nodes.
He had personal experience with finding such nodes. All the gold needles from the original [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth] plan were personally nailed by him.
In other people’s eyes, Ai Hui was just pacing around the cavern nonstop. There would be times where he stopped for a while and drew a circle on the ground with his sword.
They did not understand what Ai Hui was doing, but they could see the solemn look on his face. Everyone could not help but hold their breaths in anticipation.
For two hours, Ai Hui paced around in the cavern. More and more circles appeared on the ground.
When Ai Hui drew his last circle, he stopped and heaved a sigh of relief.
Then, he told Gu Tianning, "Nail the stone pillars 30 centimeters deep into these circles."
Gu Tianning acknowledged Ai Hui and quickly set off to work. He noticed a layer of perspiration on Ai Hui’s forehead and realized that he had exhausted a lot of energy just by pacing around the cavern for the past two hours.
"Let me do it as well!" Qing Feng volunteered.
He was filled with curiosity and wanted to see what was so special about the stone pillars and the circles that Ai Hui drew.
However, when he nailed a stone pillar into a circle on the ground and saw that there was no reaction, he was slightly disappointed.
When all 20 stone pillars had been inserted into the ground, the initially spacious cavern looked cramped and small. At this moment, everyone noticed that the positions of the 20 pillars did not correspond to one another. They were randomly scattered all over the cavern, appearing to be in disarray.
A lot of people felt apprehensive. They really could not see the use of these stone pillars.
Ai Hui found a corner, sat down ,and called out to Gu Tianning, "We need to wait for two hours."
Gu Tianning walked over to Ai Hui and sat beside him. He was not worried that Ai Hui was just talking big about increasing the concentration level of elemental energy in this place. Why would someone spend so much effort if he was just talking big?
Ai Hui did not have the free time to do that. If someone said that Ai Hui was trying to scam them, then what would be the point of him scamming them if they had nothing and were poor to begin with?
The two of them began to chit-chat. It had been a long time since Ai Hui had left the Old Territory. He did not know what the current situation there was like.
Upon seeing that Ai Hui was interested in the situation of the Old Territory, Gu Tianning tried his best to tell him more about it.
The advancement of the Blood of God in the Old Territory was not smooth at all. Since the people in the Old Territory possessed a tiny amount of elemental energy, the speed at which the blood elementalists developed their blood spiritual force was very slow. Furthermore, the Blood of God still needed a very long period of time before they could fully absorb the Yellow Sand Corner and Fire Prairie. This was also one of the reasons why the Blood of God was not anxious about their expansion in the Old Territory.
When compared to the decaying Avalon of Five Elements, the Old Territory was less impacted by the Blood of God because the Old Territory was poor and barren to begin with.
For the past few years, after the collapse of the Induction Ground, youngsters from the Old Territory did not have the chance to even be selected for schooling. This caused a lot of youngsters to feel disappointed. For the last 1,000 years, no matter how much everyone disliked the Avalon of Five Elements, gifted youngsters from the Old Territory were always given a chance to study in the Induction Ground and change their fates.
The Elders Guild, which could hardly look after itself, no longer cared about the Old Territory.
Gu Tianning was very worried that these gifted youngsters would swear allegiance to the Blood of God.
When Ai Hui heard Gu Tianning’s worries, he could not think of any good solutions either. Nowadays, with a shortage of resources, price inflation, the issue of rebuilding the Thirteen Divisions, and the project of constructing God-subduing Peaks, how would the Elders Guild have the strength to care about the Old Territory? Ai Hui, himself, was a poor fellow too.
Two hours of idle conversations passed just like this.
"The stone pillars are changing color!" someone cried in alarm.
The cry of alarm interrupted the chit-chat session between Ai Hui and Gu Tianning and made everyone look in the direction of the stone pillars.
At this moment, the granite stone pillars had become dark-red in color, resembling heated iron pillars.
The weird thing was that the temperature of the cavern had not increased by much. The dark-red stone pillars rhythmically lit up and extinguished.
As Ai Hui walked among them, a look of satisfaction appeared on his face. It seemed that the positions of the nodes he found were rather accurate. Setting up the stone pillars was merely the first step. They absorbed the fire elemental energy from the earth fire and converted it into earth elemental energy.
If one took a closer look, he or she would realize that rich earth elemental energy was gathering at the top of each of the stone pillars.
Ai Hui took out 20 Earth Sentinels from his sand compass. These were the spoils of war that he obtained after defeating the Sand Sentinel. An Earth Sentinel was a particular sand puppet model from the Sha Family. Their quality was first-class and considered one of the best sand puppet models currently available.
When Gu Tianning and his counterparts saw the 20 Earth Sentinels, their jaws dropped. After the Yellow Sand Corner was annexed by the Blood of God, the prices of sand puppets had been continuously climbing. With a single glance, one could tell that these Earth Sentinels were of superior quality and that their prices were extremely expensive.
Furthermore, there were 20 of them… How much would that cost?
The sound of heavy gasps resounded through the cavern in unison. The faces of the Gu clansmen were bright-red. They wished they could pounce on the Earth Sentinels.
Qing Feng was an individual who had experienced a lavish lifestyle. As such, he was not fazed by the mere 20 Earth Sentinels. However, he was rather curious about what Ai Hui was going to do next. The dark-red glow of the 20 stone pillars was pulsating rhythmically, and he could sense the powerful auras of fire elemental energy and earth elemental energy from them. He could also feel another mysterious aura within them as well.
Ai Hui picked up a Earth Sentinel and placed it on top of a stone pillar.
Following which, something weird happened.
The Earth Sentinel melted and became a pool of quicksand that flowed down the stone pillar. After a while, the pool of quicksand completely engulfed the stone pillar. Like a yellow snake, the quicksand wrapped around the stone pillar and kept on swirling around it. Its swirling speed became faster and faster.
Eventually, the quicksand became a high-speed spinning sand tornado that engulfed the stone pillar and gave off a vibrating buzzing sound.
The sand tornado began to grow taller and taller. The top of the sand tornado opened up and the border of its mouth started to extend outward, resembling an umbrella that was being opened up.
Gradually, more sand tornadoes were formed with their mouths opened up and extended outward.
The buzzing sound of the sand tornadoes was intolerable. Other than Gu Tianning and Qing Feng, the rest retreated in panic and stayed away from the cavern.
Gu Tianning’s face turned white. He felt that his entire body was trembling violently, causing him to feel extremely nauseous.
Excitement swept across Qing Feng’s face as he widened his eyes. He was afraid of missing out on any details of the process. Until now, he still did not know what was going, but this did not stop him from acknowledging that the scene before him was spectacular.
Ai Hui had inherited Wang Shouchuan’s knowledge!
This thought flashed through his mind.
When the last sand umbrella opened up, the 20 sand umbrellas extended toward each other and fused together, appearing as if they were attracted to each other like magnets of the opposite polarity. When the last gap was closed up, all the vibrating buzzing sounds suddenly disappeared. A dome-shaped sand canopy was formed at the roof of the cavern. The 20 sand tornadoes supported the dome-shaped sand canopy like 20 pillars.
If one took a closer look, he or she could clearly see that ripples were formed continuously on the dome-shaped sand canopy.
The sudden moment of silence stunned everyone.
Very soon, Gu Tianning yelled in alarm. His voice was filled with ecstasy "The concentration level of the earth elemental energy is rising!"
The rest of his clansmen rushed into the cavern. Cries of alarm and surprise resounded through the air incessantly.
"Oh my god, it feels so comfortable!"
The concentration level of the earth elemental energy is still rising!"
Shocked, Qing Feng stared at Ai Hui. He had not expected Ai Hui to succeed!
At this point in time, Ai Hui felt a sense of achievement. This was the first time he put his master’s theories into practice. Even though it was a simple process of convert fire elemental energy into earth elemental energy, it was still not easy to create a well-distributed amount of rich earth elemental energy.
The earth elemental energy within the stone pillars was transferred to the dome-shaped sand canopy and gushed out from the countless grains of sand. This in turn caused the concentration of earth elemental energy in this area to rise.
Gu Tianning was unable to control his emotions. Since when had he trained in such an area that contained so much earth elemental energy?
A lot of Gu clansmen embraced each other and cried tears of joy. The concentration level of elemental energy in the poor and barren Old Territory was pathetically low. After they arrived at Silver Sea Mist, they did not know what to do next and their future was bleak. The earth elemental energy in Silver Mist Sea might be more concentrated than Old Territory’s, but the place was still metal-attributed after all.
It was only until now that their bodies were filled with immensely rich earth elemental energy. This was a scenario that they did not even dare to dream of.
"Brother Gu, I have completed setting up this place. However, there is one flaw with this place that Brother Gu must take note of."
Ai Hui’s voice rang across the air in an untimely manner.
When everyone heard that there was a flaw with this place, their palpitating hearts stop momentarily in unison.
"Wang Shouchuan, who had been working diligently and conscientiously throughout his life, probably did not expect that his last brilliance would have such a deep impact on the world. The Elders Guild conferred the title of Master on him without knowing that his research possessed the power of changing the world. They did not know this even after they built the God-subduing Peak using his knowledge. Perhaps the Elders Guild did not care about this at all. Seizures of power, fighting, and scheming among one another had depleted their time and energy, causing them to lose interest in knowing how the world would change. Far away from them, Wang Shouchuan’s disciple, Ai Hui, who had a bit of fame at that time, understood the value of his master’s research and became a forerunner in the field of elemental energy development. It was certainly unnecessary to elaborate on how Ai Hui’s later accomplishments were engraved in everyone’s memory."
——
The emergence of the God-subduing Peak had made a lot of people realized the value of Wang Shouchuan’s research. However, all of his research was confiscated by the Elders Guild and not a single piece of paper was left. The God-subduing Peak was a powerful and precious war machine, so it was heavily guarded. It was extremely difficult for someone to get close to it, let alone study it.
The Elders Guild was very pleased with themselves for their fast reaction in confiscating Wang Shouchuan’s work.
However, everyone overlooked one person: Ai Hui.
Logically speaking, no one would overlook Wang Shouchuan’s disciple. However, everyone quickly realized that [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth] was Wang Shouchuan’s last-minute, custom-made plan and that the science behind it was poles apart from his earlier theories.
At that point in time, Ai Hui was still fighting with blood fiends and blood elementalists. By the time he first came into contact with the plan, he was already preparing to lead a team to execute it. The science behind [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth] was extremely complicated and there were many blueprints on it. The Elders Guild did not believe that anyone could memorize everything about it in such a short period of time. All the craftsmen that were involved in building the gold needles were taken away by Elders Guild as well.
Furthermore, Ai Hui was only interested in swordsmanship. He was a typical fighting elementalist.
No one expected Ai Hui to not only memorize all the blueprints, but also to know the plan inside and out. For the past three years, he had never stopped studying the plan. To him, this was the last gift that his master had left him. If he did not understand it at all, how was he fit to be his master’s disciple?
There were two key points to setting up [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth]. The first one was to find the nodes of elemental energy, and the second one was to form the elemental traces.
The regions where elemental energy was distributed were important and would affect the flow of elemental energy. This logic applied to regions where multiple types of elemental energy existed as well.
Wang Shouchuan named these regions as nodes. If one wanted to control the elemental energy of a particular place, he or she would have to control the node of this region first.
So how does one control a node? Here was the second key point, elemental traces.
Elemental traces were nothing new to this time and age. The theories behind them were based on the spiritual traces from the glorious Cultivation Era. Forbidden arts, spells, and refinement of equipment were applications of spiritual traces.
Wang Shouchuan was not the first person to research elemental traces. There were countless people before him that desired to find the most important power of the Elemental Era, but they eventually failed to do so.
The reason why Wang Shouchuan succeeded was that he was the first who understood the importance of nodes. The energy level of elemental energy paled in comparison to that of spiritual force. Thus, only at nodes would the energy level of elemental energy be higher than the spiritual force. This was where the elemental traces would be formed.
Right now, Ai Hui was finding these nodes.
He had personal experience with finding such nodes. All the gold needles from the original [Treating The City As A Piece Of Cloth] plan were personally nailed by him.
In other people’s eyes, Ai Hui was just pacing around the cavern nonstop. There would be times where he stopped for a while and drew a circle on the ground with his sword.
They did not understand what Ai Hui was doing, but they could see the solemn look on his face. Everyone could not help but hold their breaths in anticipation.
For two hours, Ai Hui paced around in the cavern. More and more circles appeared on the ground.
When Ai Hui drew his last circle, he stopped and heaved a sigh of relief.
Then, he told Gu Tianning, "Nail the stone pillars 30 centimeters deep into these circles."
Gu Tianning acknowledged Ai Hui and quickly set off to work. He noticed a layer of perspiration on Ai Hui’s forehead and realized that he had exhausted a lot of energy just by pacing around the cavern for the past two hours.
"Let me do it as well!" Qing Feng volunteered.
He was filled with curiosity and wanted to see what was so special about the stone pillars and the circles that Ai Hui drew.
However, when he nailed a stone pillar into a circle on the ground and saw that there was no reaction, he was slightly disappointed.
When all 20 stone pillars had been inserted into the ground, the initially spacious cavern looked cramped and small. At this moment, everyone noticed that the positions of the 20 pillars did not correspond to one another. They were randomly scattered all over the cavern, appearing to be in disarray.
A lot of people felt apprehensive. They really could not see the use of these stone pillars.
Ai Hui found a corner, sat down ,and called out to Gu Tianning, "We need to wait for two hours."
Gu Tianning walked over to Ai Hui and sat beside him. He was not worried that Ai Hui was just talking big about increasing the concentration level of elemental energy in this place. Why would someone spend so much effort if he was just talking big?
Ai Hui did not have the free time to do that. If someone said that Ai Hui was trying to scam them, then what would be the point of him scamming them if they had nothing and were poor to begin with?
The two of them began to chit-chat. It had been a long time since Ai Hui had left the Old Territory. He did not know what the current situation there was like.
Upon seeing that Ai Hui was interested in the situation of the Old Territory, Gu Tianning tried his best to tell him more about it.
The advancement of the Blood of God in the Old Territory was not smooth at all. Since the people in the Old Territory possessed a tiny amount of elemental energy, the speed at which the blood elementalists developed their blood spiritual force was very slow. Furthermore, the Blood of God still needed a very long period of time before they could fully absorb the Yellow Sand Corner and Fire Prairie. This was also one of the reasons why the Blood of God was not anxious about their expansion in the Old Territory.
When compared to the decaying Avalon of Five Elements, the Old Territory was less impacted by the Blood of God because the Old Territory was poor and barren to begin with.
For the past few years, after the collapse of the Induction Ground, youngsters from the Old Territory did not have the chance to even be selected for schooling. This caused a lot of youngsters to feel disappointed. For the last 1,000 years, no matter how much everyone disliked the Avalon of Five Elements, gifted youngsters from the Old Territory were always given a chance to study in the Induction Ground and change their fates.
The Elders Guild, which could hardly look after itself, no longer cared about the Old Territory.
Gu Tianning was very worried that these gifted youngsters would swear allegiance to the Blood of God.
When Ai Hui heard Gu Tianning’s worries, he could not think of any good solutions either. Nowadays, with a shortage of resources, price inflation, the issue of rebuilding the Thirteen Divisions, and the project of constructing God-subduing Peaks, how would the Elders Guild have the strength to care about the Old Territory? Ai Hui, himself, was a poor fellow too.
Two hours of idle conversations passed just like this.
"The stone pillars are changing color!" someone cried in alarm.
The cry of alarm interrupted the chit-chat session between Ai Hui and Gu Tianning and made everyone look in the direction of the stone pillars.
At this moment, the granite stone pillars had become dark-red in color, resembling heated iron pillars.
The weird thing was that the temperature of the cavern had not increased by much. The dark-red stone pillars rhythmically lit up and extinguished.
As Ai Hui walked among them, a look of satisfaction appeared on his face. It seemed that the positions of the nodes he found were rather accurate. Setting up the stone pillars was merely the first step. They absorbed the fire elemental energy from the earth fire and converted it into earth elemental energy.
If one took a closer look, he or she would realize that rich earth elemental energy was gathering at the top of each of the stone pillars.
Ai Hui took out 20 Earth Sentinels from his sand compass. These were the spoils of war that he obtained after defeating the Sand Sentinel. An Earth Sentinel was a particular sand puppet model from the Sha Family. Their quality was first-class and considered one of the best sand puppet models currently available.
When Gu Tianning and his counterparts saw the 20 Earth Sentinels, their jaws dropped. After the Yellow Sand Corner was annexed by the Blood of God, the prices of sand puppets had been continuously climbing. With a single glance, one could tell that these Earth Sentinels were of superior quality and that their prices were extremely expensive.
Furthermore, there were 20 of them… How much would that cost?
The sound of heavy gasps resounded through the cavern in unison. The faces of the Gu clansmen were bright-red. They wished they could pounce on the Earth Sentinels.
Qing Feng was an individual who had experienced a lavish lifestyle. As such, he was not fazed by the mere 20 Earth Sentinels. However, he was rather curious about what Ai Hui was going to do next. The dark-red glow of the 20 stone pillars was pulsating rhythmically, and he could sense the powerful auras of fire elemental energy and earth elemental energy from them. He could also feel another mysterious aura within them as well.
Ai Hui picked up a Earth Sentinel and placed it on top of a stone pillar.
Following which, something weird happened.
The Earth Sentinel melted and became a pool of quicksand that flowed down the stone pillar. After a while, the pool of quicksand completely engulfed the stone pillar. Like a yellow snake, the quicksand wrapped around the stone pillar and kept on swirling around it. Its swirling speed became faster and faster.
Eventually, the quicksand became a high-speed spinning sand tornado that engulfed the stone pillar and gave off a vibrating buzzing sound.
The sand tornado began to grow taller and taller. The top of the sand tornado opened up and the border of its mouth started to extend outward, resembling an umbrella that was being opened up.
Gradually, more sand tornadoes were formed with their mouths opened up and extended outward.
The buzzing sound of the sand tornadoes was intolerable. Other than Gu Tianning and Qing Feng, the rest retreated in panic and stayed away from the cavern.
Gu Tianning’s face turned white. He felt that his entire body was trembling violently, causing him to feel extremely nauseous.
Excitement swept across Qing Feng’s face as he widened his eyes. He was afraid of missing out on any details of the process. Until now, he still did not know what was going, but this did not stop him from acknowledging that the scene before him was spectacular.
Ai Hui had inherited Wang Shouchuan’s knowledge!
This thought flashed through his mind.
When the last sand umbrella opened up, the 20 sand umbrellas extended toward each other and fused together, appearing as if they were attracted to each other like magnets of the opposite polarity. When the last gap was closed up, all the vibrating buzzing sounds suddenly disappeared. A dome-shaped sand canopy was formed at the roof of the cavern. The 20 sand tornadoes supported the dome-shaped sand canopy like 20 pillars.
If one took a closer look, he or she could clearly see that ripples were formed continuously on the dome-shaped sand canopy.
The sudden moment of silence stunned everyone.
Very soon, Gu Tianning yelled in alarm. His voice was filled with ecstasy "The concentration level of the earth elemental energy is rising!"
The rest of his clansmen rushed into the cavern. Cries of alarm and surprise resounded through the air incessantly.
"Oh my god, it feels so comfortable!"
The concentration level of the earth elemental energy is still rising!"
Shocked, Qing Feng stared at Ai Hui. He had not expected Ai Hui to succeed!
At this point in time, Ai Hui felt a sense of achievement. This was the first time he put his master’s theories into practice. Even though it was a simple process of convert fire elemental energy into earth elemental energy, it was still not easy to create a well-distributed amount of rich earth elemental energy.
The earth elemental energy within the stone pillars was transferred to the dome-shaped sand canopy and gushed out from the countless grains of sand. This in turn caused the concentration of earth elemental energy in this area to rise.
Gu Tianning was unable to control his emotions. Since when had he trained in such an area that contained so much earth elemental energy?
A lot of Gu clansmen embraced each other and cried tears of joy. The concentration level of elemental energy in the poor and barren Old Territory was pathetically low. After they arrived at Silver Sea Mist, they did not know what to do next and their future was bleak. The earth elemental energy in Silver Mist Sea might be more concentrated than Old Territory’s, but the place was still metal-attributed after all.
It was only until now that their bodies were filled with immensely rich earth elemental energy. This was a scenario that they did not even dare to dream of.
"Brother Gu, I have completed setting up this place. However, there is one flaw with this place that Brother Gu must take note of."
Ai Hui’s voice rang across the air in an untimely manner.
When everyone heard that there was a flaw with this place, their palpitating hearts stop momentarily in unison.
