After Sage built weapons for his friends, it was time for him to make use of his newfound wealth.

Previously, he’d invested most of his funds into a business, then he was lucky enough to stumble upon another small fortune that was just enough to support him in rushing towards rank 4. Now that he was officially level 41 he had entered the level where merely accumulating energy wouldn’t help him break through. It still had to be done, but he would be blocked from advancement if he didn’t also understand the mysteries of the world. Trying to decipher the wonders of the universe was not something with a set and simple to follow path. Every person had their own route and their own understandings. If he were to sit in his house and meditate in seclusion, Sage wasn’t sure of how many decades it would take for him to reach level fifty, let alone to break through and form his Core.

With this concept in mind, Sage decided that it was time for him to start a training expedition. He’d gone out more than a few times to hunt for treasure, but he’d never embarked on a long term solo training expedition. When he was training to be a Hunter, and also Butcher, he’d taken many jaunts out into the mountains around the Sect to hunt for beasts. Those trips had only been for a few days, each time hunting for specific beasts or at least beasts of certain ranks and types. Once he’d found the one he needed he would return to the Sect. In addition, most of those trips were with teams of others training the same profession. Only for the final test as a Hunter did he have to hunt and survive in the wilds for a set amount of time. He had been given three months to find, stalk, and hunt the most impressive beast he could. It was also still within the relative safe area around the Sect.

This time, Sage wanted to push himself and head out into truly untamed areas. There was a portion of the maps from the Soul Taming Abode that led out into one of the wild areas on the map. Before, he’d stuck to the markers on the map that were within the controlled territory of the Sect or nearby the cities in the province. This time he would go out of his way to journey into the depths of the woods where only beasts lived.

Ahh, such a huge world. I wonder how big it actually is?

According to the largest maps he’d found so far, this place was absolutely massive. A village extended to about a 10 mile area of control and influence. Large towns or cities usually controlled an area of about a hundred miles, which included five to ten villages within it. Next, a county. Each county spanned an area of nearly a thousand miles, with up to a dozen cities under their scope of influence. Five to ten counties then made up a province, and each province was at least the size of the continents back on Earth, some even spanning ten thousand miles. After that came Kingdoms, and then Empires. A province was many times the size of the north american continent from back on earth, yet it only had a few thousand villages. Humans only occupied relatively small pockets of land, surrounded by huge and vast wilderness.

When Sage had traveled from the Dou Kingdom over to the Shihu Kingdom to escape the Fu Clan assassins, it had only been possible because he was a cultivator and his home province, the 10,000 Wave Province, was near the border of the Dou Kingdom. In addition, most Kingdoms had set up transportation arrays to facilitate trade with others. While each kingdom claimed an area of many tens of thousands of miles, just like the smaller divisions within they were mostly clustered together in the centers of their territories with wilderness surrounding them. Human civilization here was more like a collection of colonies, a constant battle to try and claim more of this massive world from the hands of the Demonic Beasts and other beings that ran rampant within it.

Before he left, Sage had a few preparations to make. Since he wasn’t sure how long he was going into seclusion for, Sage did what he could to prepare for the long haul. The Insect Shed was cleaned out, with the exception of his Habitat rooms. He instead purchased a few materials and upgraded the arrays in the Habitat rooms, making sure they were self sufficient and tiny eco-systems. He brought along a large portion of the materials he’d gathered from the Hidden Domain to use in his research, leaving the rest locked up in a pair of storerooms. Otherwise, he prepared his home to leave, boarding up the windows, sealing up every crack, and leaving not a crumb out to attract animals. Of course, a couple arrays that he set up already kept out the pests, but he wanted to be thorough.

After that he had a large party with his friends and told them of his plans. They were sad to hear he’d be gone for many years, but the life of a cultivator was long so it wasn’t a big deal to them. For some reason Wan Ling seemed upset, but Sage couldn’t get her to explain the reason. Try as he might, he couldn’t discern the source of the problem, but he still felt something was off. Putting aside his concerns, Sage’s last task was the most important one. Gathering supplies!

He made sure to buy some extra gifts for Wan Ling as well as some things for his friends. On top of that he purchased many miscellaneous materials that he thought might be useful for his future research and also many necessities he wouldn’t be able to scavenge from the beasts he’d be hunting. For food, he only took a small amount of rations along with hundreds of pounds of spices. He could hunt wild beasts for meat and scavenge or grow his own garden of vegetables, but proper spices were very important. The same went for water, he took along one of his water heating and cooling devices filled with a few hundred gallons, but he planned to settle near a water source. In the worst case he could even use arrays to gather water from the sky so it wasn’t a huge concern.

The most expensive of his purchases was actually two items. The first was a communication device. Many methods existed to pass messages around between cultivators. Signal talisman, twinned magical devices, and most commonly flying messengers. In sword sects, it was most common to attach letters to flying swords. Their airspace above a sword sect literally hummed with the passing of flying blades. In other places many types of spirit animals or demonic beasts were bred and tamed to carry messages since they were cheaper than using consumables like talisman to pass notes. Each of the different methods had benefits and drawbacks like cost, range, the amount of information that could be shared, or even strange things like limits on when they could be used or to who they could be sent.

Sage was going to be very far away and he wasn’t even sure where he was going to exactly so he had to choose carefully. A twinned device would have been ideal, but one with such a large range was far beyond his means. Even as rich as he was now, he couldn’t afford such a treasure. An animal messenger was an option, but that would make it easy for him to send back messages, but not to receive them unless he settled down in a single spot. There would be no way for a messenger animal to find him unless he had sent it over in the first place. In the end, Sage settled for using consumable messengers. A talisman was prepared using the blood of the message recipient. Then, whoever used it could write a message on the back of the talisman and when it was activated it would transform into another form and fly to the recipient. They were consumable and more expensive than most other options, but it was a very secure method and the distance it could travel was only limited by the grade of the talisman. Even of this typing there was dozens of styles.

Sage chose a very generic one, the Red Crane Message. It was written on red paper and transformed into a little origami crane before flying off to its recipient. It was reminiscent of the tradition of sending ‘red envelopes’ for birthdays or special occasions. The red envelope was a symbol of good luck and filled with money, which made the Red Crane Message pretty popular as a formal option for messages of good tidings. Sage gave a dozen of each to his friends along with more than fifty of them for Wan Ling. He made sure to prepare an equal number of messages with them as recipients before handing out his presents to them and leaving for his trip.

The other important item he purchased was very expensive. His other preparations only totaled about ten thousand spirit stones, mostly the price of gifts for his friends, while this second item was an even hundred thousand. Sage had an amazingly large and special storage ring, which he constantly worked to keep a secret. On the other hand, his beast bag was of a purely standard size. While he felt there was something special about the beast bag he got from his ancestor, he still wanted a larger one. Sage sold off the beast bag he got from the Cult of the Woodlord member, as well as the creature within it, making sure to sell them anonymously to a distant town. The new bag was simply called a ‘Beast Pack’ and it was just a larger version of the bag. Instead of a wide belt pouch, it was a small knapsack with many straps and adjustments so it could be worn high or low on the back quite easily. He didn’t get rid of or empty out his old Beast Bag, he just wanted a way to transport more creatures and give him space to do more breeding and experimenting.