Chapter 87: Enlightenment

Standing on the city wall, embracing his beloved, Li Xian looked down at the bustling crowds both inside and outside the city, feeling an overwhelming surge of ambition.

In a hazy vision, he seemed to see colorful auras gathering from all directions. Some of these energies came from the sky, others from the ground, some from the mountains and rivers, but most flowed in from the people surrounding him.

This aura was mysterious, and Li Xian could distinctly “see” it. It penetrated through walls and human bodies, directly entering his own. 

The arrival of this aura was inexplicable yet continuous; Li Xian felt a strange astonishment within him, uncertain about what was happening.

What surprised him even more was that once these energies entered his body, his cultivation level began to rise steadily. In the blink of an eye, he went from the initial stage of Foundation Building to nearly perfecting that stage, almost ready to enter the mid-stage.

With his level increased, improving his cultivation became straightforward—just a few spirit stones would suffice!

As he approached the pinnacle of the initial stage of Foundation Building, the incessant flow of energy seemed to lose its potency, or perhaps it was simply running low. Yet these auras continued to surge into Li Xian’s body. When he reached a certain threshold, this ethereal, dreamlike energy suddenly overflowed from within him, first flowing into Xia Qingqing and then into the other nearby figures like Xu Ren.

“Destiny! Is this what destiny feels like?” Li Xian realized in an instant. Now that he had firmly established his foothold in Anyang, the destiny belonging to Anyang naturally came under his command.

The entire process unfolded spontaneously, without the need for special rituals or guidance. Strangely, this process seemed uncontrollable; no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t manipulate it even a little.

The flow of destiny followed a distinct pattern: first, it moved to Xia Qingqing, then to Xu Ren. Only after both reached their respective thresholds did it shift to the next level, like Fang Shijing and others. Eventually, it spread to the generals and various factory heads.

In that fleeting moment of destiny transfer, Li Xian could even faintly sense each person’s condition. However, once the flow shifted, he lost that awareness.

He observed closely, noting that everyone seemed unaware of the flow of destiny and could not perceive this marvelous phenomenon. They went about their business as usual; Xu Ren continued discussing strategies with Bei Chen Yuqing, while Ling Zhifeng was still preoccupied with feng shui, mumbling that the city gate direction was incorrect and needed adjustment, requiring the placement of qilin pillars to stabilize and rectify the feng shui.

It appeared that only he could see the flow of destiny. Why was that? Li Xian felt some confusion in his heart. Yet, having experienced such phenomena more frequently, his capacity to accept these occurrences grew—at least for now, all signs pointed to good fortune.

The next day, when Li Xian gathered everyone from the factory for a meeting, everyone expressed their surprise—seemingly, the cultivation levels had collectively improved. The changes were most noticeable among those below the Foundation Establishment stage, while the improvements above that stage were relatively weak.

Xu Ren then stepped forward to congratulate him: “Congratulations, young master. This means you have firmly established your footing in Anyang and truly gathered a group of people who belong to you.”

Li Xian knowingly asked, “Is this what you meant by luck?”

“Yes.”

“Then, does this mean I can only enjoy the prosperity of the mortal world and cannot ascend?” This was what Li Xian was most concerned about.

Xu Ren’s voice was somewhat low: “Young master, if you follow the normal path of cultivation, you might not even be able to reach the Nascent Soul stage; by consolidating this luck, at least you can cultivate to the Tribulation Transcendence stage. Once you reach the Tribulation Transcendence stage and possess a long life, you can slowly find ways to ascend.”

“Ah? That makes sense!”

Xu Ren was a clever man, and with just one sentence, he dispelled Li Xian’s worries.

The next part of the meeting was to sort out the current situation and see what problems existed so they could be resolved quickly.

After sorting through all the issues, Li Xian turned the topic to the most pressing matters—spirit stones and war instruments; currently, the research department, led by Tang Rong, was responsible for these two items.

“Teacher Tang, how is the progress in the research department recently?”

“The generator and the smelting of dark iron have made significant progress. Now we can produce about 500 kilograms of dark iron daily, with a purity level of 50%; in addition, we have two tons of dark iron with 95% impurities for wire production.

As for the research on spirit stones, there hasn’t been any major breakthrough. However, we made an important discovery: using high-voltage electric currents seems to stimulate the spirit stones to absorb spiritual energy from the spirit gathering array, but the effect is very weak.

Additionally, the research on war artifacts has been completed. 

In fact, ‘war artifacts’ is a general term that refers to all large-scale instruments researched for warfare. These instruments have two obvious characteristics: first, the materials used are generally not very high-grade, but they are large; second, they are usually operated by multiple people and possess great power.

The war artifacts we obtained from the Cai Kingdom are the lowest-level war instruments, specifically called Floating Cloud Island, though they are also referred to as Flying Cloud Island or Flying Cloud Platform.

The core of Floating Cloud Island is the Floating Cloud Array, which is a very low-level formation that can be easily arranged.

However, a Floating Cloud Island may require the engraving of several thousand Floating Cloud Arrays to achieve lift. Among the Floating Cloud Islands we captured, the least had about two thousand seven hundred formations, while the most had over four thousand three hundred.

The more formations inscribed, the stronger the capabilities of the Floating Cloud Island—whether in speed, altitude, or load capacity. However, at the same time, the more formations there are, the more spiritual energy is consumed.

“Approximately two thousand Floating Cloud Arrays can consume a low-level spirit stone in just two hours.”

“Floating Cloud Island? War instruments?” A flash of inspiration seemed to cross Li Xian’s mind. “Teacher Tang, can we inscribe more formations on the Floating Cloud Island? That way, we can fly higher, faster, and carry more weight?”

At this moment, Li Xian had an idea—he thought of the aerial mother ship!

The more formations that are carved, the stronger the ability of Floating Cloud Island becomes, whether in speed, altitude, or carrying capacity. However, similarly, the more formations there are, the more spiritual energy is consumed.

With about two thousand Floating Cloud formations in operation, a low-level spiritual stone can be consumed in just two hours.

“Floating Cloud Island? A war artifact?” A spark of inspiration seemed to flash in Li Xian’s mind. “Teacher Tang, can more formations be carved into Floating Cloud Island? That way, we could fly higher, faster, and carry more weight?”

At that moment, Li Xian thought of something: the spaceborne mother ship!

Tang Rong shook his head. “I’ve already calculated it; it’s very difficult. The material of Floating Cloud Island is jade, and to carve formations, we must follow the spiritual veins of the jade. Therefore, the more formations there are, the larger and heavier Floating Cloud Island becomes, which also increases the consumption of spiritual stones. The end result is that Floating Cloud Island simply won’t be able to fly! If the issue of spiritual stones isn’t resolved, there’s little significance in studying Floating Cloud Island alone.”

Li Xian smiled slyly. “What if we use dark iron wire to create formations and lightweight stainless steel plates for the deck? Could we make one or two emergency quick-flying platforms? We don’t need heavy crossbow beds; we just need to enable snipers to attack from a distance.

For now, just achieving that would be enough.”

Tang Rong quickly flipped through his notebook and began calculating, smoothly using the recently matured mathematical computations from the Brilliant Star Group. “That should be sufficient. However, I suggest using sea soul silk; we still need to keep the dark iron confidential for now.

We can create ultra-small flying platforms about 2.5 meters long, which would reduce the weight by 30 times and increase the maximum speed to 200 kilometers per hour, comparable to the speed of a typical Golden Core stage sword flight.

With just one spiritual stone, we could carry about two tons, enough to transport tens of thousands of bullets and three snipers.”

“Two hundred kilometers per hour? That’s a bit slow. Is it difficult to temporarily increase it to 500 kilometers per hour?”

“The Floating Cloud formation is only a low-level formation. If we want to increase the speed, we need to add relatively high-level formations, which will increase the consumption of spiritual stones.”

Li Xian held his head. “Teacher, we have engines.”

“Yes, but what good does that do?”

“Have you heard of spinning kites? The ones kids play with?”

“Ah, ah, ah…” Tang Rong suddenly awakened. “We could use the engine to drive the kite!”

“Exactly! But we can’t call it a kite anymore; let’s call it… a propeller.”

“Propeller, great name! We’ll have a prototype in ten days!” Tang Rong left in excitement.

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