With the children treated, each having their own modified cultivation methods, the caravan was finally ready to pick up the pace and get to the nearest town.
That's not to say that the caravan wasn't HAPPY to be delayed. The goods Adam 'offered' to modify the schedule ranged in value from 'not bad' to 'HOLY CRAP, THAT BE VALUABLE'... although, since it was all free to Adam anyway, he didn't mind being 'taken advantage of' in this particular situation.
He... was not impressed. "That's a 'Trading Village'?"
It was less than ten houses, even if they were more large than usual. The defensive wall was also barely six feet tall, more useful for denoting the edge of the property than stopping attackers. Most of the houses were formed from prairie grass and mud... which considering the lack of trees nearby, made sense.
Sister Dian shrugged. "Technically, though this is more a dedicated supply station than anything else. Several Sects deploy disciples, food, water... nothing special. Their people get some practice defending a 'town' with no risk of consequences, and traders can get safe drinking water and food rations."
She grinned at the disappointed boy. "I'm sure the merchants were grateful to have you bribe them and supply practically free high quality food and drink... to avoid reaching a 'town' where they have to pay a good sum to buy normal water and dried food."
Adam looked away. "It IS normal water. For some definitions of normal." And... sighed. "I am not good at bartering."
She snorted. "You are GREAT at bartering... for the other side. If Sister Quan hadn't stepped in, you would have buried them under treasure and wandered away."
Humph. "Well, I guess it is a good thing we are getting normal supplies! Maybe I can save some money by only offering meals to the children from now on..."
He ignored Sister Dian's sudden concern and snapped his fingers. A guard knelt. "Get the resupply list from Sister Quan, verify that the Lead Guard doesn't have anything to add... get it done."
She saluted and vanished... well, vanished to most people. Sister Dian tugged his sleeve. "Hey, you... you were kidding about cutting me off, right?"
Adam walked on... but sighed. "Yeah, I was kidding. Did you review your modified cultivation technique?"
A nod, but a frustrated one. "Your version is a fraction the length of mine, covers more topics, has better warnings... clear language. It was pretty frustrating."
He wasn't sure if bad documentation was a cultural norm, a result of some sort of copy protection, or if living in a universe of concepts made writing down anything WITHOUT flowery language more tricky.
Adam had never had issues like that, after all... but he was able to resist stuff normal people couldn't honestly. On the other hand... if every manual you ever read felt like bad poetry, why WOULD you try to make something useful (but dry) like a VCR manual?
He watched the wagons unloading parts harvested from the Spirit Beasts destroyed recently, making room for the soon to be purchased goods. The cultivators, while still children, were doing THEIR job of staying out of the way and trying to create a stable perimeter.
Stepping further away from the chaos, he watched. "Will it be enough?"
She blinked. "What?"
Adam waved at the kids. "Will this be enough? To get you the leverage to fix the problems at home."
...No, she was still staring at him like an idiot. "Once I report to the Sect, bringing even a few of these children home with all the clients dead from battle would have been considered a huge merit. I would have been praised for salvaging anything out of an impossible situation."
She waved at the off duty children meditating in their cultivation circle. "Having no casualties, with all these little ones advancing their cultivation base? 'Personally' assisting them with their cultivation methods, using 'mine' as a base?" She snorted. "Hell, making these brats act like a unified group rather than a bunch of whiny self confidant accidents waiting to happen?"
A wave. "THOSE are miracles." She pointed at Adam. "Don't even get me started on meeting up with a wandering team from a powerful Sect, establishing good relations, opening trade negotiations, 'convincing' you to allow my people to act as quality testers with the Burning Sword Sect's restricted cultivation materials?"
Sister Dian chuckled. "Even those who see through our little deal will only be MORE impressed. This kind of political action, where there is compromise without betraying our moral code or our Sect loyalties? This shows leadership skill."
A nod. "So I'll be fine. Though if I can convince you to continue to supply 'Normal Water' at some rate to our Elders, I might be pushed into even higher positions of power, whether I want to or not."
He frowned. "That would be a bit tricky. And might convince your Elders to revolt, betray your people to outsiders..."
She sighed. "Yeah, I thought as much."
They leaned against one of the already unloaded wagons as Adam hummed. "If it makes you feel better, Sister Quan won't let me set up a spring for that stuff at our Sect either. Said it would cause major problems."
He grumbled, missing the stunned look on her face. "I've got whole LISTS of stuff I can't do at this point. I'm getting a bit frustrated. Frankly, the chance to just make what I want for your people is a relief."
Adam blinked as Rockette floated by, her tiny limbs holding tight to the tail of a baby Four Eye Flame Bull Chicken... thing. "Crap, I probably have to take care of that. See you later, Sister."
She blinked, still off tilter as Adam began to catch up with the baby animal running around... strike that, animals. Little Tianshi must have freed all four of the tiny things.
Thankfully, it would be two years before these little guys grew up enough to exponentially increase this issue of baby cattle wandering. Unless their parents had laid another clutch.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Tianshi threw her hands up. "YOU SAID DISTRACT HIM!"
Sister Quan groaned, the five guards with them inside Rockette chuckling as they watched Adam miss capturing another fluffy bull thing. "Because if I told him to shut up about the many, MANY secrets being spilled... he would calmly explain to Sister Dian 'Sorry, the following things are super important! Please notice them!' which would be bad."
She glared at the child with exasperation. "If YOU asked him to do... ANYTHING, he would just drop it all and show up. Problem solved."
Tianshi paused... and felt warm inside. "Huh."
Sister Quan pet her hair. "Yeah. I DIDN'T expect you to oil up the calves and set them loose. Especially that quickly."
The girl waved it off. "I had a different prank planned for the oil, but this seemed like a good time. I had Rockette get some for me, but she says it isn't meant for cooking."
Wait. "What do you mean?"
The child pouted. "The guards wont tell me, but I think it is because this oil comes from the wiggly seed gardens."
Sister Quan looked back at the display.
...Was Adam attempting to capture baby animals covered in lubricant? Sexual lubricant?
It would explain why the guards were snickering. "And was one of your guards helping you out at the time?"
The five armored people went silent, but Tianshi was already nodding. "Yeah, but she took a bunch for some reason."
...Heads turned to the one guard, her face already bright red.
Sister Quan... let it go. "Well, I hope they are as durable as Adam when it comes to untested products. HE can handle liquids suddenly turning into acid or having similar unexpected consequences."
The woman shifted to a horrified expression... before seeing Sister Quan hold up a hand. "In this case, thankfully, Rockette would have verified any substance Brother Adam's Disciple would come in contact with. Even odd liquids from a rape plant."
Raised eyebrow... and the shaken guard nodded. Good, it was important to treat Adam's untested products carefully... they could be all kinds of strange and unexpected.
Aphrodisiac filled lubricants would be a mild concern compared to mind corruption oils or slave goo.
They paused as a loud squawk echoed over the crystal display.
Adam was now ALSO covered in lubricant, and was beginning to flail in every direction while chasing the baby bulls... and the five OTHER adults trying to help him were having similar if lesser issues since they joined in the madness.
Sister Quan blinked. "Oh dear, the children are about to try and help too."
Her guard passed her some popcorn equivalent. The fire salt coated berries crunched nicely.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Self propagating sexual lubricant that evaporated completely after a set amount of time.
Adam wasn't sure if he wanted to sell this stuff or lock it away forever.
By the time Rockette or the people in his Martial Spirit decided to explain the situation, Adam and over half the campsite was COVERED in slippery goo, stuff that somehow made rocks and gravel not matter as the entire camp surface acted like flat plastic covered in olive oil.
It wouldn't have been NEARLY this bad, since it required spiritual energy to 'duplicate' itself to this extent... but since Tianshi was the one who pulled this 'prank', Rockette had decided to 'help' it succeed.
She had pushed THOUSANDS of units of spiritual energy directly onto the oiled bulls. Which, yes, had eventually been collected and returned to their unconcerned parents in the caverns.
While the adults had lost ALL patience fairly quickly, at least the kids found the situation hilarious... Tianshi was still grounded though.
More for the 'Using untested materials' than the 'forcing Brother Adam to chase oiled baby bulls' thing.
And if a few people asked for a supply of the goo, Adam just made the trades quickly and tried not to think about it.
Attractive women (or men) covered in oil? Not bad.
THESE people? The Traders were not cultivators, were not idealistic visions of beauty and flair like usual. The mental image of that guy covered in hair suddenly being super slippery... eugh.
Side note, after going to Sister Quan about his... less than great bargaining skills, she helped him talk with their lead guard who apparently had a background in negotiation.
True, hers may have been a bit heavy on the 'force' and 'leverage' side of the deal table... but compared to Adam's 'Have a few thousand gold, do you want more?' approach, this was probably a step up.
Still. "How long until we reach an actual city? Some place with more than a hundred people."
Sister Dian looked away from her Sect members following the meditation class Sister Quan was delivering. "Normally, a month or so. But with you adding to the resources of the caravan, I think they are planning on taking a longer route that normally is quite profitable but annoyingly out of the way."
...Well, they were supposed to take AT LEAST three years out and about before heading home anyway. "Huh. At least this place had a few useful things we could purchase for my gardens."
Mostly seasoning plants. Every home tended to have a few, as importing them got expensive quick. Though since ginger and other herbs could theoretically become spiritual plants as well, the new samples had been added to the Soil Grid gardens for testing.
Both to see what variants could be discovered and, more importantly, how NOT to turn all his seasoning plants into stuff that civilians couldn't eat due to spirit energy.
Seriously, 'Research' was going nuts trying to NOT soak everything with heaven and earth energies while still allowing the plants to grow in a healthy way. The power density inside Rockette's Crystal Caverns was beyond dense, even outside the cultivation caves... it made an issue when growing 'normal' plants.
Because the FIRST thing Adam tried? A crystal cave without ANY spiritual energy.
Everything died.
So he needed SOME energy, of various ratios. And if it was too little, the plants barely grew at all. If it was too much, it would... turn blue or something.
Rockette was handling the tests, Adam didn't want to bother with that mess. It was unrewarding, annoying, and as all his people were cultivators anyway? He was mostly doing this research so he could enjoy garlic bread without it turning green or exploding. That and for completionists sake.
Having a private super garden with thousands of bizarre plants but no pepper? Frustrating. Though he had several near pepper substitutes, but the point still stands. Sort of.
Waving away Sister Dian (Unlike Adam, she had actual work to do), he relaxed in his extracted flame wagon (Mmm, toasty) and waited until it was time to move on with the caravan. Eventually.
Because bored or not, trading took time. Sometimes weeks, as other trading groups could arrive or depart and change existing deals or suggest new ones.
And he was stuck here.
...Didn't he have those random items bought from the Burning Sword Sect Store? And he needed time to dissect a few storage rings too...
Humming a happy tune, Adam began moving through random items passed to him by Rockette, the gently blue flames of his wagon rolling over his body joyfully.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
As expected, the more powerful storage rings were portals to other, tiny pocket dimensions.
However.
What was NOT expected, was how they 'paused' time when holding stuff.
Because they didn't. Not really.
Adam grinned as an extra storage ring floated mid air.
The cheap, weakest rings connected to a single space pocket. Larger ones than you would expect too, and a bit flexible... but with obvious limits. Anything too large, too long, too powerful? Pop!
But these powerful ones? They were more space clusters. Dozens upon dozens of tiny dimensional connections, with a 'gateway' pocket filled with... VERY interesting formations.
Very. Very interesting.
Unlike the formations he had seen and learned about so far... these were almost unstructured.
Clearly, storage rings were not made scientifically. The process, whatever one the Sect used, would attempt to construct this super space pocket, then stuff that pocket with raw spiritual energy and Qi, and use brute force to 'convince' that space to work as expected.
As Adam had already discovered, if you had enough power? Either from cultivation or through the sacrifice of powerful treasures, or by supplying items with deep conceptual value to reality?
You could force a wish.
Pure desire would MANDATE the resulting product.
There were drawbacks, of course. The larger the world, plane, dimension, or pocket? The power requirement became exponentially higher.
Thus, the storage ring work around.
Step one, find a random space pocket. There were an infinite number available, with many being created at every moment, so this was easy and nearly free in cost.
Step two, stabilize the pocket. Otherwise it would pop at any moment. This would cost more based on how large the pocket was originally... they could be smaller than a pin head or larger than a solar system or twelve. From what Adam could see, this step was luck based, or required advanced spirit sensing skills to determine how expensive each attempt would be.
Step three, dominate the pocket's reality. The 'wish' portion of creation, where the Sect member would use their powerful cultivation base and possibly some tools or resources, and use some mantra or skill (if they were not good enough to impress their will through sheer force) to 'explain' what they need to that pocket.
To be fair, Adam was guessing at step three a bit... but each of these storage rings had different formations within their parent pocket space. VASTLY different, with an organic or almost random pattern designed to take advantage of concepts that might ONLY EXIST within that INDIVIDUAL space pocket.
Formations had patterns, design patterns... signs that displayed certain schools of thought, basically fingerprints that could identify the author or Sect that created them.
Those patterns were within the stabilization formations, within the cluster pockets deeper in... but NOT found within the super space pocket itself.
Adam was passing the scans of the pockets and the 'natural' formations built within to 'Research' of course, HE wouldn't pass up such interesting data so easily, but it did mean that the next steps were very uncontrolled for normal Sect item creators.
In a way, the examination process would be MUCH easier because all these storage rings were TRYING to do the same thing, even if they did use 'wish' magic to force it into existence: To create the children cluster of space pockets.
Or more accurately, to scan for space pockets and 'bookmark' them.
Adam shook his head, focusing. Right, the steps.
First, find a pocket. Second, Stabilize it. Third, establish a Master Pocket.
Fourth, the job of the Master Pocket? Detect as many OTHER space pockets as possible, bookmark them, and then attempt to stabilize each one.
THIS was the step that determined the quality of the ring... and it was random.
If the space pockets discovered were of average size? Great! It was marked as usable.
Too small? Marked as unusable.
Too large? The process failed, and it stopped searching for more dimensional pockets.
ALL the storage rings had thousands of unusable' bookmarks. It was the most common pocket found, each one using up a tiny bit of potential needed by the new ring.
If the crafter was fortunate, it may find a dozen or so usable dimensional addresses. This determined the 'size' of the ring. Once in a blue moon, one could bookmark hundreds or more pockets, making legendary items!
If luck failed them? It might try to connect to a moon sized space or something, shutting down the process instantly and wasting all energy and resources used to craft the thing.
If successful, the Master Pocket would then act as the interface, where the cultivator imprinted their soul signature if desired or simply accessed the 'contents'. As items were added, the Pocket would choose an unfilled cluster space and fill it up.
This was why you could store soup without it spilling, or getting your saved socks messy... each item was in their own cluster, not sharing air, gravity, or energy... and this was why time 'stopped'.
Because the cluster spaces were not connected to until used... and were closed when not needed. Time didn't exist the same way in those impossible places where space bubbled like foam.
Now, the tricky bits? How to ensure that the clusters pockets were big enough for the item being added? The method telling the user how 'full' a ring was? Being able to track those 'bookmarked' locations, if it was even possible for those pockets to move in the first place?
No idea. 'Research' was having fun looking at the various options though.
The more powerful or talented the creator, the more varied the resulting Master Pocket that formed... but they all needed to do the same actions, achieve the same goals.
It was like a translation key, a cheat sheet.
Rockette could of course act like a Master Pocket, if he desired. She already maintained another space, separate from everything.
But that seemed short sighted.
Adam put the most recent ring away. They were nothing more than a hard coded bookmark, to make sure the users didn't lose or forget where the Master Pocket was located in unreality. He didn't need a crutch like that.
His finger flared with Blue energy. ANY power would work if dense enough, although Space and Dimensional energy would obviously handle this action most easily... but Adam wanted a better connection, and Blue energy was the core of his spiritual network.
Eyes closing, he just... pressed against reality.
It... it wasn't so far. Not to the Abyss, not to that gray hunger.
This was more within this Realm... the entire Cultivation Realm, not just this one plane or any one planet. The boundaries between all these cultivating realities... and there were so many of them!
Where two boundaries touched? Space and time fizzled. Foamed.
...There were time pockets. Just like space pockets.
Huh.
Maybe later. For now, he simply tapped into a space pocket, and filled it with blue fire.
And filled it.
And filled it.
...Damn it, how big is this pocket!? He wasn't even making a DENT on the damn thing!
This was just one tiny bubble from the foam, yet it felt MASSIVE! What the hell!?
Frowning, Adam forced the pocket 'closer', whatever that meant in this context.
And closer.
...Huh. Scale was a bit difficult to determine here, wasn't it?
Abandoning the blue flames already committed, he zoomed in on the outer edge of the bubble.
At the boundary.
At the foam space and time pockets, previously too small to see.
And pulled the smallest one he could detect 'closer', now more hesitant to try and 'claim' it before examining the damn thing first.
...This bubble ALSO had 'foam'.
Adam grumbled. In a way, it was like his own conceptual recursion ability... the constant dimensional travel, the conceptual features of this reality, the abrasion and growing and shrinking pockets?
This was how new worlds formed here. New planes. New subordinate realms. They could shrink and grow, pop and form, all steps creating more and more foam.
With a small level of frustration, Adam continuously followed the smallest space pocket, checked the surface more foam... and repeated himself.
At least this was an easy process. Unlike with the various populated layers and realms that he ignored, the foam that surrounded the pockets were obviously empty and temporary.
Every ten or so layers, he would dedicate a few units of Blue energy to try and 'consume' the current pocket of reality. The rate of completion told him how 'small' the pocket was, and so far the exact measurements were ignored until he could nom one in a single 'bite', at the very least.
He had large energy reserves, after all... even something 'edible' would probably be far too large to use as storage ring's cluster pocket address. Thankfully, he should only have to do this 'scaling' process once... then he would instinctively know the shape and size of his working materials later on.
...Still, wonder what those time pockets are like? Might examine them later.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Sister Dian seemed hesitant. "Sister Quan?"
She blinked, turning away from her students. "Yes?"
The other woman leaned in. "Is... is it alright for Brother Adam to be transparent?"
Damn it Adam, what now? "Let me finish up here and we can go check on him. Is he still on fire?"
Xe Dian blinked. "Yes?"
Sister Quan relaxed. "Then he's probably fine. We'll give him an hour or so before trying to get his attention. Why not join me with answering the kids questions? I'm sure you could use a break from Brother Adam's... Adamness."
She seemed to relax slightly. "That... that sounds lovely."
Sister Quan felt quite a bit of sympathy... Adam's behavior required more than a little adjusting to, really.
