It would be an oversimplification to say they were building a utopia, but the extreme time difference would give them plenty of time to change things. Especially since the Lang Clan had the most powerful organizations in the world as backers. They weren’t just tasked with improving the clan’s signature techniques, but they also had the huge list of research topics that Sage had assembled through his life so far, but never had enough time to complete. The Soul Clone led some of the research groups on these tasks while others were simply given the basic outlines of what he wished to accomplish along with sketches of how these feats could be accomplished. Then the research teams would try to produce the effect he described and then figure out how to do it as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

Most of these research topics he didn’t lead were, of course, attempts to reproduce the many common appliances that Sage missed from Earth. There were so many daily conveniences that existed only as magical devices and only available to wealthy cultivators because of their great cost. Heating, cooling, lighting, food preparation, food preservation, access to clean water, and even the existence of undergarments. On top of that, there were also plenty of devices that could make certain chores easier like vacuums, washing machines, dishwashers, and lawnmowers. The list kept growing longer, especially when he realized that it was even more important to focus on large scale agricultural devices and he had to do research on the steps of plowing, planting, watering, harvesting, and processing for the more common food crops. He was only vaguely familiar with what large farming vehicles were like on Earth so he had to research what was required before creating simple plans for them to use as a starting point.

The existence of cultivators and magical tools meant that the advancement of mundane science and technology was stunted. It also didn’t help that many of the basic laws of the world seemed different from Earth. Electricity, magnetism, and combustion did not work the way it did on Earth and so many things couldn’t be reproduced as he knew them. He could only explain the effect and how certain key parts used different physical or mechanical mechanisms and then let the researchers figure out a solution on their own.

Sage was focused on overseeing these changes to the Inner World for a few years, but on the outside he had merely spent a couple days in seclusion before checking on the progress of Lionheart Town. The city was a bit battered, but with Ling around they quickly restored things to the way they were before they were forced out. The Street of Immortals was rebuilt and the new owner of the Lioncloud Products buildings were bought out and the old stores reopened to the world. Along with the Lang Clan, many others were brought out into the outside world. Thousands of the top Prosperity Company members as well as hundreds of thousands of Dragoons.

With such great numbers, the Clan began rapid construction of new buildings and facilities. Lionheart Town was situated in front of a set of smaller mountains that took the form of a circle. The city was at the only pass to enter the circular valley between these mountains. In the city itself, the Lang Clan’s territory was at the back of the city, and the large valley was their ancient territory. Over time, the size of the city fluctuated and the Lang Clan declined to the point that only a portion of the territory was controlled by the Lang Clan while the rest was managed by the City Lord.

When he’d taken the city previously, Sage had been building a huge wall to completely block off any passage to the mountain valley from the outside world, but he’d been assaulted by a small army of Core Formation Cultivators and had to flee for his life. In the time since, the wall had fallen to ruin, but the airship tower was larger and more defensible than before. Thousand Treasures had taken control over the tower and used it to make the business of selling airships more profitable. The Lang Clan didn’t bother to take it back, as all the goods that were transported into the city would be taxed to fill the city’s coffers.

This time, the Lang Clan’s wall was not an extension of the city, but outside it. More specifically, they built not just a wall, but a giant fortress to close the gap between the mountains. Lionheart Town was left outside this immense fortress, nestled up against its base. A portion of the Lang Clan lands were given up to build the huge fortress so that their ancestral tomb and hall were safely hidden within and just inside the walls, respectively. They didn’t bother to devote that much effort to protecting the city as much as the clan, but the city was still an important way to earn revenue and connect with the outside world.

The plans for the fortress had been discussed for dozens of years on the Inner World, and was quite the contentious issue. Should they use rammed earth, the easiest to move and manipulate with earth elemental techniques and brute force? Maybe they should reshape the ground that already exists, or pull down parts of the neighboring mountains to fill the pass and then compress and carve a fortress into it? They could quarry stones from the mountains and enchant each of them to create a giant magical brick wall.

In the end, Sage pushed them towards his own favorite choice and grew the fortress. Just as the paths of his children had been developed, so had his own. Not only could they more easily control the size of the Sacred Banyan, they had also improved upon its compatibility with other techniques. Over the course of a few weeks two parallel lines of trees had shot up. Each of them were three hundred feet tall and sixty feet wide with a hundred foot gap between them. The trees formed three neat lines cutting through the city where the wall to the Lang Clan territory had been. Then, the canopies of these trees intertwined with each other and dropped aerial roots down. These aerial roots multiplied and intertwined, turning the two tree pickets into a solid wall of wood.

As the wall filled in, members of the clan coaxed the vines into different shapes and hollowed out walkways, stairways, and many rooms. The vines grew around these spaces, shaping into stairs, railing, and window frames. In just a few months the pass was now filled entirely by a giant wooden wall. A single gigantic tree, many thousands of feet long, three hundred feet tall, and more than three hundred feet thick. On the outside face it was quite flat vertically, while on the inside it had a gentle slope to accommodate many stairways, ramps and the majority of the canopy. Such a massive amount of wood took a considerable amount of leaves to collect energy, but they didn’t want the canopy to form in the standard shape as it would be more vulnerable to outside attack. Instead, the inner side of the wall was like a giant mass of roots, with a forest of trees climbing upwards at a 45 degree angle.