With my ministers taking care of the distribution of the pills, all I had to worry about was producing them, so I headed back to the factory.

The first production line had been a success. The next step was to create four more. Nearly all the Hu Clan’s most skilled artisans had been assigned to this job, and all the necessary formation designs had already been verified. So, it wasn’t long before the five initial Nutrition Pill production lines were in place.

Unfortunately, this was when we ran into an issue.

After three of the production lines were up and running, the qi in the factory became turbulent. Instead of flowing smoothly from areas of high density to areas of low density, the qi formed eddies in the air that left some areas almost entirely bereft of energy.

This reminded me of the problems I had with my Rank 1 cultivation technique. When I had created multiple qi vortices in a single limb, I had needed to be careful with both their size and placement, since they tended to interfere with one another. I had addressed this problem by simply reducing the size of the vortices until they no longer interfere with one another.

Unfortunately, that solution wouldn’t work here. These formations needed a fixed amount of energy. Making their vortices smaller, thus restricting their energy draw, would only prevent them from functioning properly.

I remembered the Earth-Rank cultivation technique I had stashed away in my mental library. It seemed to have some method for controlling this kind of turbulence, but without cultivating it, I couldn’t be sure of how it worked. I could give the technique to a Hu Clan youth with high earth affinity and learn from their experiences, but I didn’t know if that would be a good idea.

While I was pondering this, the Hu Clan’s representative walked up to me and broke me from my musings. “This level of turbulence is already troublesome, and we’ve only installed three of the five production lines. By the time we’re done, this floor alone is going to have between forty to fifty formations. It’s… going to be a mess.”

“Do you have any ideas for how to fix it?” I asked.

“This was one of the reasons we suggested installing the Rank 4 Qi Gathering Formation. We were hoping that, by pumping the area full of qi, there would be enough ambient energy in the place that the turbulence wouldn’t be an issue.”

He sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, it has helped. With the extra qi around, the formations are able to draw in enough energy to remain functional. The turbulence is still preventing them from running smoothly, though.”

We walked around the factory floor together while he contemplated how to proceed.

“As I see it, you have three options. The first is to install a few formations around the walls to generate independent qi flows over each individual production line. That would somewhat

isolate the effects of each production line to its own stream and reduce the overall turbulence. This would require constantly moving large volumes of qi, though, so it won’t be cheap. We’re talking large-scale Rank 3 formations that will need to be regularly replaced.”

I shook my head. With a high price and low effectiveness, this wasn’t the way to go. “And the other options?”

“The second option is going to be even more expensive. This problem is caused by having dozens of independent formations all within the same room—each drawing upon the environment to power themselves. The simplest and most straightforward way to fix this is by integrating them into a grand formation. As I understand it, you should be able to tie everything together—including the Rank 4 Qi Gathering Formation—and have it work as a single, united whole.”

His phrasing made me raise an eyebrow. “As you understand it?”

“Yes…” He paused before explaining. “No one in the Hu Clan—no one in the entire kingdom—knows how to craft grand formations. The Bagua Formation is an example of one, but it is old, and the knowledge of its creation has been lost to time. To transform this factory into a unified grand formation, you would need to hire an experienced Formation Lord from beyond the kingdom. With the complexities involved, you might even need a Formation King. The cost of that would be…”

He just shook his head, not finishing the thought, but I didn’t need him to. Hundreds of spirit stones? Thousands? While I had a wealth of gold, I didn’t have even a single spirit stone, so recruiting foreign Rulers was not going to happen.

“You should know that isn’t going to happen, right? What’s the actual solution that we’re going with?” I asked.

He gave a wry chuckle. “Well, you built this monstrous damn factory. It’s over a hundred meters long. We had thought that this would give us plenty of space for future expansions. Now, though, until we can figure out a better solution, we should just spread things out as much as possible.”

He pulled out a blueprint that his team had drawn up and showed it to me. “The farther the formations are from each other, the less they will interfere with each other. Each formation only takes up about a square meter of space, and each production line contains three primary formations. If we put a dozen meters between them, then the turbulence shouldn’t be much of an issue. However, this will require a much more robust track system, and it will slow down our production speed, since the ingredients need to be carted across the entire floor.”

“Right now, our production lines are set up to only work on a single pill at a time, right?” I asked. “If we change it so that there are five or ten pills in active concoction at any given time, then travel time should be less of an issue. An herb gets melted, and when it advances to the purifying stage, another herb is added to the line to get melted immediately, instead of waiting for the first to complete the entire process.”

This was how true production lines were supposed to function. Machines on production lines were supposed to be constantly at work. They were supposed to wait for an item to pass through every subsequent machine.

“If the line is too long, and there is still a wait because of the herb’s travel time, separate the journey into steps,” I continued. “Melt the herb, move the track once, melt another herb, move it again, and melt a third. On the fourth step, a fourth herb is melted, and the first herb gets purified.”

The Hu representative looked pensive at this proposal. “Lord Su, doing this would indeed solve the issue of travel time, but it would also destroy the original purpose of spacing everything out. The herbs need to be suspended in trap formations. Adding dozens of extra trap formations to hold additional pills would only result in turbulence far greater than what we’re already dealing with.”

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I nodded. “I understand, but it’s just a matter of balance, right? By adding one additional trap formation per line, we would double our production speed. The tradeoff of creating a bit of extra turbulence should be worth it. We just need to figure out where the breaking point is. How many can we add to each line before the additional speed doesn’t justify the additional turbulence?”

“I’ll talk with the other specialists and see what we can do,” he conceded.

Construction in the factory continued for another week before everything was installed and operational. The formations weren’t perfect, but they were good enough.

My ministers had all been briefed, and they were ready to handle the first delivery of pills. Minister Lu would take care of purchasing the ingredients and selling the pills, while Minister Bei, my Minister of Personnel, took care of delivering them.

When the first cart filled with jade pill boxes left the factory, a surge of karmic energy streamed into my dantian. My subjects didn’t have the pills in their hands yet, but I had already been credited with changing the futures of hundreds–if not thousands–of people.

When I looked at my middle dantian, where my karmic energy was stored, I found that I finally had enough energy to advance. I was ready to step into the realm of Martial Lord.

Not wasting a moment, I rushed to the Water Library to review the Rank 4 cultivation technique.

The first part of the Water Lord’s technique manual focused on warnings about how to know if one was ready to attempt an ascension. This was how I learned how much energy I would need before I could proceed. Having met all the requirements, I was ready to take the next step.

This technique had been designed for use with only a single element, but after studying it, I found that combining it with my dual-element technique wouldn’t be a problem. I was cultivating both wood and fire qi, but I could simply feed my wood qi into my fire qi and use the resulting empowered fire qi.

After reviewing the technique, I got to work.

The first step was to create a karmic core. To begin, I took a small portion of karmic energy and shaped it into a compact ball at the center of my middle dantian. I didn’t have a karmic affinity–if such a thing even existed–so I could only rely on the strength of my soul to make this happen. Thankfully, though, as this technique had been designed for people without such an affinity, the manipulations it required were crude and didn’t pose any challenge.

Once the ball of karmic energy was formed, I treated it like a piece of clay. I pressed my will into its center and slowly molded it into a hollow, golden sphere the size of a large marble. Except for a small hole that provided access to the internal cavity, the surface of this sphere was perfectly smooth. The walls of this initial marble were extremely thin, though, so before they could set, I took additional karmic energy and layered it on top to strengthen and reinforce this sphere.

With the margins of the manual for this cultivation technique, someone had jotted down a note that suggested this layering process could introduce flaws into one's core. They stated that it would be much better to form the entire core at once instead of going through this multi-step process.

However, this commentary also stated that creating a core like this would require one to have exceptional control of their karmic energy. As I wasn’t entirely confident in my control of karmic energy, I decided to stick with the layered approach. But I kept this alternate method in mind for the future.

The last step of the core formation process was the most difficult. Previously, I had needed to leave a hole in my core so that, as I advanced, I would be able to fill the inner cavity of the core with dense, compressed qi. Now, I needed to create an aperture over this opening that would act as a one-way valve, allowing me to push qi inside while letting none of it escape.

The valve design in the manual seemed… questionable. It was extremely complex and required the karmic energy in some places to act like metal and in others to act more like rubber. This difference was created by injecting small bits of qi into the karmic energy, thereby weakening it. After studying the manual for some time, I decided not to follow it. It was clearly stated that the only purpose of this valve was to seal in the qi that was injected into the core, and I believed that I could design something that was both more effective and easier to create.

I decided to use a design based on the poppet valves in internal combustion engines. In concept, they were simple to create, and they would create a positive seal within the core that should keep anything from escaping, even at extremely high pressures. Best of all, they could be created using only solid parts, so I wouldn’t need to weaken the karmic energy with qi.

My final design was incredibly simple. The core was a basic sphere with a single V-shaped hole drilled through it, and the ‘valve’ was essentially an elongated hourglass that sat in the hole. At rest, the pressure within my core would force the hourglass up, locking it in place and blocking any energy from escaping. When I wanted to force more energy inside, the hourglass would slip down and give me an opening to do so.

With my core complete, I could be considered a Half-Step Lord, but that was a meaningless title. All it meant was that I was ready for my real breakthrough.

Before, qi had refused to pass from my two outer dantians and into my middle one, but now things had changed. After my core was in place, I was able to easily pull streams of energy from both dantians.

I pulled wood qi from my upper core and entwined it around the fire qi from my lower core, making the fire qi fiercer and much more powerful. Then, little by little, I forced this new, combined qi into my core.

After an hour of work, the pressure started to build. I mentally grabbed the valve and slid it into place, trapping the qi in my core. I felt my power to see if anything had changed, but with my dantians empty, all I felt was a subtle exhaustion. My core needed more qi, but I didn’t have any to give it.

I sat down to rest and used Rank 3 Qi Gathering Pills to quickly restore my energy. Then, I set my jaw, gathered a large quantity of qi from both dantians, and sent it to my core. The pressure inside meant that I couldn’t open the valve with my soul strength alone, but by pressing on it with the force of my combined qi, it popped open easily. I didn’t want the valve to move too far out of position, though, so I didn’t push too hard. Instead, I slowly built up the pressure I was using, making sure to never have more than a small gap between the core’s wall and the valve.

An hour after I started this, my dantians were empty once again, and the flow of qi into my core suddenly cut out. The moment the external pressure vanished, the pressure inside my core slammed the valve shut.

I rested, gathered my energy, and began again.

After half a month of slowly forcing more and more qi into my core, I felt like I was on the verge of a breakthrough. I immediately cut off the stream of qi and allowed the valve to slam closed. If I had kept going, I would have broken through with qi alone, and that would have given me a far inferior result.

After taking time to refill my dantians, I centered myself and focused on my core. I pulled in strands of qi from both dantians and merged them, feeding wood into fire. Then, I grasped all of the karmic energy I had accumulated over this past half month and braided it into my qi, following the pattern described in my cultivation technique. This bonded my qi with the karma of the city, strengthening and empowering it.

Then, I forced this braided energy into my core. It met resistance almost immediately, but I kept pushing as hard as I could. A slow, sluggish qi flow wouldn’t work here. I need it to be sharp and forceful.

When my energy was nearly depleted, I felt the world break. The compressed qi at the center of my core collapsed into a singularity, opening a small hole into the world beyond.

A spear of braided qi and karmic energy pierced through this hole and attacked a chain forged from the Laws of Heaven and Earth. With the power of that strike, one of the invisible chains that had been restraining my body shattered, and the connection between me and the world around me weakened.

I had advanced to Martial Lord.