Sage had gained enough spirit stones this time he was out to start his training at the Sunfire Pagoda again, but he held back. There was no telling what might happen with his business, so he held onto his money reserves, nearly ten thousand spirit stones after creating the dozens more devices, and focused on his other training. He’d also thought about doing some research, but that also led him to a funding issue. There was no telling how much he’d end up spending if he started intense research. Instead, he turned to his free training options.

Studying. At the Timeless Master’s Cave he’d gained a whole library of information. So far he’d only had time to give it a quick browse and pick out a set of wood natured techniques along with the Human Seal. As he had learned earlier, he was still lacking a good option when things devolved into a stand up fight, and there was about forty different sets of weapon related techniques in the library. Additionally, the library had around five hundred books and scrolls on general knowledge of miscellaneous books that didn’t contain techniques. Besides these two options, Sage also had a long way to go with all the Wood techniques and the Timeless Eyes, having just barely reached the first stage of mastery with them before he had been called away.

While it was important to hunt for new treasures and experience danger to grow, he also needed time to digest those experiences and turn them into strength. Sage purchased a large amount of food and put up a sign outside his house. Unless a major issue arose with the Palace of Prosperity, he was to be left alone.

Unfortunately, a few months later, an issue came to his attention.

Wan Ling knocked at the gate till Sage finally gave in and opened it up. Ushering her in and offering her tea.

“It’s nice to see you again after so long, Brother Lang, but I’m afraid this isn’t a social call.”

Sage could only smile and let her speak. It seems that there had been a problem with the ‘Movie Troupe’. It was a simple name, since Sage didn’t feel like hearing suggestions from that damn Monkey again. The problem originated from another city in the Holy Flame Province. A local clan leader of some renown, Xiong Wu, decided to abduct the Movie Troupe. It seems he liked it so much he wouldn’t let them leave the town. He demands they leave the projector there and send him more movies, for which he will pay handsomely. Wan Ling wanted to accept, but it would also set a precedent for weakness in their company and interfere with their current plans.

Sage just broke into laughter, to which Wan Ling met with a cold glare. Sage’s laughter cut off sharply and he held up his hands, “Wait, wait! I’m not laughing at you!”

After a bit more placating, she finally calmed down and Sage explained, “We were starting the Movie Troupe to get more popularity for the idea. We shouldn’t be upset at this, it’s an opportunity! He wants our product so bad he will kidnap our men for it.”

“Obviously. The problem is that we can’t let ourselves get bullied around! What sort of business let’s itself get extorted?”

“It’s fine, I already had a plan for this sort of thing. We’ll just rent it to him.”

“Rent?”

“Yes. Just like a landlord with their tenants. We shall rent the projector to him, along with a team of ‘specially trained operators’. Or, he can pay another fee to have his own ‘certified operators’ which he can send over here to be trained by us. In addition, only our officially licensed movies can be shown. Oh, and on that note, start hiring movie producers. We can start with talented playwrights and expand from there. We can test them pretty cheaply, the Memory Spheres can be erased if the movies are horrible. We’ll start a test group.”

With another foreign term, Sage explained the idea. It wasn’t always the best option, especially if you get particularly biased testers, or use the same people every time. They might start resorting to groupthink, peer pressure, or take themselves to be professionals with higher standards. They could form a group of a dozen or so people, and if enough of them like it, then one of the six owners can review the movie and choose to approve it. The Xiong Clan having a projector was the start of the market.

“In the future when the next troupe travels we can have them spread the same terms to other places.”

The only bothersome part of this was that Sage had to make a few more ‘movie projectors’. The first one he made cost him some five thousand spirit stones, which meant if he spent everything he had he’d only be able to make two more. With that in mind, Sage ironed out a few more details with Wan Ling and then went to the Smithy. His other studying was put aside in the pursuit of making a cheaper movie projector and memory sphere. If he could reduce the cost it would make it much easier to spread the devices around and build a market based on the ‘software’ instead of the ‘hardware’.

A few weeks later, the deal with the Xiong Clan worked out to their favor. Although Lead Dog City was in the Holy Flame Province and many of its key locals were related in some way to Holy Flame Sect members, it didn’t mean they were supported by the Sect. A few of their relatives were disciples, but that wasn’t higher standing than Sage’s business partners consisting of multiple Sect Elders. The Xiong Clan had to compromise and they finally gave in, paying a rental fee every month for the projector and each movie. To reduce their own costs they also started to play movies to others, but Xiong Wu was addicted and while he played the movies over and over again other people could pay to watch with him.

Over the next few months, Sage spent half his spirit stones along with half his contribution points, over five thousand of each, and finished his second generation movie projector. He tried to adapt technique scrolls to be more like memory spheres, but each attempt was a failure. In the end, he instead constructed lower grade memory spheres. A normal memory sphere could hold vast amounts of memories and could be constantly erased and refilled with a memory altar. They also happened to require a mid-level monster core to act as the main material along with some refining of other expensive materials.

Sage instead chose to use a rank 1 monster core from a common species of beast mount that were raised in high numbers. It took some testing and many attempts with substitute materials, but eventually he created a ‘one use’ memory sphere. It could be played over and over again, but the contents couldn’t be changed. Once the memories were embedded it was fixed and once it was erased the memory sphere shattered. It also had a very limited capacity. The first few attempts only stored about ten minutes, but Sage found a way to push it up to two hours with a few changes. The end result was a memory sphere that couldn’t be edited, but also cost only five spirit stones to create rather than the fifty for a standard memory sphere. Sage named them as ‘Movie Sphere’.

The other success was the new Movie Projector. The old movie projector was based on the Memory Altar and modified to project the sounds and images out like a Scroll Scout. In this new iteration, Sage went back to the drawing board and completely dissected both devices. Instead of the Memory Altar as the base and altering it to work as he liked, Sage started with a Scroll Scout as the base and altered it to work with Memory Spheres. A Memory Altar was never needed to access a Memory Sphere in the first place, it was only used to record memories onto them. With this in mind, Sage started from scratch. This way many of the extraneous features could be left out and therefore reduce the cost many times. While they were currently quite unpopular and most people didn’t even know how to make them anymore, Sage had already previously reverse engineered the arrays used to create a Scroll Scout. It took quite some effort, but he finally isolated the necessary arrays and built a functioning projector from scratch. From there he experimented with different materials, reproducing the device a dozen times to find the cheapest ones. After he was finished the new Movie Projector had a final cost of one thousand spirit stones, far less than the five thousand for the first one.

Sage built a pair of the new Movie Projectors along with a hundred of the new Movie Spheres. Once a movie was approved, they could use these cheaper movie spheres to send it along to the Movie Troupe. One of the projectors would stay in Holy Flame City while the other would go along with a new Movie Troupe to continue to spread influence. Sage wanted to make more, but the revenue from the first projector was only a hundred spirit stones a month. They decided against a higher price in favor of keeping the Xiong Clan on the hook over a longer period, with their initial rental term being set for five years. They would act as publicity for them and hopefully drum up more interest. At the same time, spirit stones were only used by Cultivators, so there was no telling how popular the films were among them. Sage was sure it would make plenty of gold among the general populace, but he wasn’t sure how many Cultivators would waste their time on movies.

The distraction over, Sage went back to his home and started studying. Even better was that they’d finally delivered over the copies of ‘Introduction to Plant Cultivation’ and ‘Forging the Forest’.