The Undying Immortal System

Chapter 486 – Life 120, Age 63, Martial King 4

Restoring Kan’s and JiuLi’s memories was like adding wings to tigers.

Using the knowledge and experience they had gained from ruling the Nine Rivers Continent for several hundred years, they immediately began identifying and fixing countless inefficiencies throughout our lands. Trade routes that had once seemed acceptable were quietly restructured. Resource flows were redirected. Administrative redundancies were eliminated. Even the way minor officials recorded taxes and contribution points was revised.

At the same time, the perspective they had gained from their current lives allowed them to see where the methods they had used in the past fell short.

On the Nine Rivers Continent, essence had served as the backbone of our growth. It had been a universal incentive that everyone wanted, sought after by mortals and Sovereigns alike. Our entire system of governance had been built around its control.

The Central Continent, however, lacked such a unifying resource. Here, wealth existed in the form of gold, materials, techniques, and opportunities—none of which held the same universal appeal as essence.

This forced Kan and JiuLi to rethink everything from the ground up. Policies that had once relied on direct incentives were replaced with layered systems of indirect benefits. Instead of rewarding loyalty with raw power, they began offering stability, infrastructure, and long-term support.

Since most of these issues involved the various professions, they requested my input on proposed changes with notable frequency. We discussed everything from how much of each herb a city should export to which minerals we should produce with spirit fires. Each decision helped shape the long-term development of our cities.

Mei and Yan, meanwhile, focused on helping the pair navigate the continent’s unique political landscape.

Neither of them interfered unnecessarily. They did not offer unsolicited advice, nor did they appear without invitation. But whenever Kan or JiuLi encountered uncertainty, whether it involved inter-sect diplomacy or the unspoken rules that governed interactions between major powers, they were always available.

Their guidance was subtle, but invaluable.

As the structure of our territories improved, so too did the lives of their inhabitants, resulting in an increase in karmic energy production.

Elders who had long been stalled at the peak of Martial Lord broke through to Martial King. Each breakthrough drew them closer to Kan and JiuLi, while the petty schemes that had once occupied their thoughts lost their meaning. With their cores of fellowship reinforcing these bonds, trust in the pair quickly took root.

That said, despite our rapid progress, we were still limited to the territories of five kingdoms. Without more cities, we couldn’t reach the threshold required to produce Emperor-level energy, blocking our advancement to Martial Emperor.

Kan and JiuLi attempted to address this the same way they had in the past.

They implemented policies to encourage population growth, such as reduced taxation for large families, improved living conditions, expanded farmland, and incentives for long-term settlement. These initiatives were effective, but it would take decades for their benefits to be fully realized. And even then, there was no guarantee that the people who benefited from these policies would continue to reside within our territories once they had the freedom to leave.

The Central Continent was fluid. People moved freely between territories, sects, and factions. Without a compelling reason to stay, many would simply leave, taking their karmic contributions elsewhere.

Why study cultivation under us when they could learn from the clans backed by the Nine Rivers Saint? Why learn herbalism from us when they could join a Hall under the control of the Saint of Myriad Herbs? Why hunt the low-level demon beasts around our cities when they could fight beneath the banner of the Saint of Heroes?

We had been allowed to establish a semi-independent territory, one outside the direct jurisdiction of any Saint. This gave us the freedom to operate as we wished, but it also made us less appealing to outsiders. Why would anyone choose to live in an independent kingdom when they could reside within the domain of a Saint?

We needed an answer to this question. We needed something unique, something that would attract people from across the continent and make them choose our cities over any other.

I knew I needed to step in and help with this, but I didn’t yet have a solution. So, I took a step back and observed in silence, analyzing both our development and that of the surrounding lands to identify any critical deficiencies.

As the years went by, one issue steadily rose above the rest, becoming our most pressing concern.

After leaving the Heroes Domain, our people were no longer gaining as much combat experience. They could fight wild beasts, but there was no war in which to test themselves against other humans, and without the Secret Realms, they didn’t have the opportunity to fight against the overwhelming beast tides that had forged our foundation.

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Cultivation alone was not enough. There was something fundamental missing from our growth. This realization gave me the direction I needed.

Looking over the outline of my proposal, Meng LuYao frowned. “You want to build training rooms where people can fight illusory opponents? You do realize those already exist, right? There’s a reason no one uses them. They’re expensive, and they do a poor job of simulating real combat.”

I gave her a faint smile, unconcerned. “The cost is of little importance. In fact, I plan to spend even more than normal on this, since we’ll need these chambers to support highly detailed illusions of large-scale battles. However, combat needs to feel 100% authentic—like what we experienced in those Secret Realms. Do you think you can make that happen?”

Meng LuYao’s expression shifted.

“The Secret Realms…” she murmured, her tone turning thoughtful. “They felt realistic, but the underlying illusions weren’t actually that impressive. Most of the creatures in those beast tides just needed to do one thing: charge. They didn’t adapt or respond to our strategies. They were overwhelming, but they weren’t intelligent.”

She paused for a long moment, then spoke in a slow, careful cadence. “You studied illusions back on the Nine Rivers Continent, so you should already understand the basics. Formation-controlled illusions are inherently limited. Every possible reaction has to be written into the formation. The more complexity you want, the more layers you need to build in. It scales poorly.”

She glanced at me briefly before continuing, “If you want an illusion that behaves realistically, one that can react, adapt, and respond, it needs to remain under the control of an illusionist. But even then, you’re limited by the illusionist’s understanding. If they don’t know how a creature would behave in a given situation, the illusion won’t reflect it. A cornered boar, for example, doesn’t just charge blindly. It hesitates, circles, looks for openings. Miss those details, and the illusion feels wrong.”

Her gaze returned to me, sharp and certain. “That’s why these systems fail. They can look convincing, but they don’t behave convincingly.”

I nodded slowly, my expression turning serious. “I’ve been studying the underlying formations, and I believe I have a solution. However, it all depends on the quality of the illusions. As long as the beasts are constructed with enough realism, my formation should be able to control them.”

Meng LuYao rested her chin on her hand, thinking. “The Central Continent has techniques for weaving wu into illusions, making them far more realistic than anything we had back in the Nine Rivers. In time, I should be able to create illusions that not even you will be able to pierce. But I’m not there yet. For now, I can only fool Lords and below. Anyone stronger will still be able to detect anomalies.”

After a moment of consideration, I grinned. “That should do nicely. High-level cultivators can wait. For now, let’s just focus on Disciples and Masters.”

How could one create an illusion that perfectly replicated the behaviors of demon beasts? As Meng LuYao had already pointed out, the usual methods were to either inscribe detailed responses into a formation or rely on an illusionist to control them directly. However, both of these approaches came with clear drawbacks.

If I wanted to create training rooms that would make our territory famous, I couldn’t rely on these existing methods. I needed something better.

The foundation of my idea lay in the Anti-Soul Lamp Formation I had once developed with Emperor Shen. It had been designed to extract a fragment of a person’s soul, ensuring their Soul Lamp would remain lit even after death.

This formation could extract a fragment of a soul and preserve it. If I used it as the focus of an illusion formation, could I create a construct guided not by prewritten logic, but by the instincts of a real creature?

Using fragments of human souls like this would raise serious ethical concerns. Demon beasts, however, were a different matter entirely. Ideally, I wanted to create training rooms where people could face humans and beasts alike, but for the time being, realistic combat against demon beasts would have to suffice.

At first, I wasn’t even sure if my idea would work, but a few short tests proved the idea was viable—more than viable. The soul fragments wanted to live. The moment they were placed inside a realistic enough illusion, they took control and began fighting for their survival.

From here, I simply needed to build a training room around these illusions that was both safe and effective.

I originally wanted to create a single room where a person could choose the type of beast they wished to fight. However, this idea quickly proved unworkable. While using soul fragments simplified the formations, each one still required more than a dozen square meters of complex inscriptions. Adding multiple beasts of the same type wasn’t an issue, but combining different types led to interference between formations.

Instead, I shifted to a tower design, with each floor dedicated to a specific type of beast and higher floors featuring stronger opponents. Upon entry, users could choose their desired room and fight as long as they wished. As a safety feature, the formation would monitor each battle and automatically terminate the illusion if it detected an imminent fatal injury, summoning assistance in the process.

The first tower was built in Black Eagle City, with five floors for Martial Disciples and five floors for Martial Masters. The moment construction was complete, I handed it over to Kan, trusting him to turn it into both a training ground and a beacon that would draw people in from neighboring empires.

Despite its effectiveness as a training tool, this tower held little appeal for outsiders. Why would they pay to fight illusions when they could just leave the city and hunt real beasts for free?

Thankfully, Kan saw what I had missed.

Less than a month after the training room opened, he shut it down and rebranded it as the Tower of Trials.

Entrants had to climb from the first floor to the tenth, facing more than a dozen illusory beasts on each level. Records for completion times and floors cleared at each cultivation level were displayed prominently, encouraging competition. Rewards were granted whenever those records were broken.

The Tower saw immediate success in Black Eagle City, and we quickly replicated the model across all our other cities. This still wasn’t enough to draw many immigrants, but Kan and JiuLi were already planning to expand into nearby empires, turning the Towers into a source of both wealth and fame.