Sage left the Lang Clan tomb and returned to spend the evening having dinner with Ling and Jiao. They could hear the raucous noise of large and boisterous families carried over the night air. The home design for the clan all had their main room connected to their open air courtyards. Others might find this design to impinge upon their privacy, but Sage was quite pleased with how lively it made things. You would always be able to hear the younger children playing and the slightly older children training, even from down the block. While Sage and his wives no longer wished to be actively raising children anymore, it was still pleasant to have them nearby. Especially when those children were their own descendants.

In matters of the Clan, Sage let the Clan Head handle things. He was merely here to ensure their safety, and he’d already released the strongest members of the Purple Mist Sect to the outside world. They were now free of the limits that being on the Inner World imposed upon them and they could also act as protection for the Lang Clan. The five of them were all stronger than Sage and while it wasn’t detrimental for them to stay on the Inner World, because of the time dilation, they could act at their full strength in the outside world. If they truly found inspiration of the laws on the Inner World, they wouldn’t be able to test if they were correct because they were limited by Sage’s own level. It also meant they were as well defended as the average first rate power and helped him be far more at ease with leaving whenever he wished.

He didn’t plan on going anywhere for the immediate future, and spent the next few years just admiring the capabilities of the clan and studying to become a true Seal Master. He’d never bothered with this area much in the past as it was somewhat slow and restrictive in the middle of combat. If he was busy using Principle Vision to see a Crux then he wouldn’t be able to use Foresight at the same time to protect himself. The idea of going into combat with slow techniques was not something he thought was a good idea back when he was younger, but that was when he was far weaker and using different tactics. With this new knowledge of Seals, he realized that they were now perfectly suited for him. In most of his difficult battles he’d resorted to trickery and attrition, layering many methods to create a battlefield to advantage himself and weaken the enemy. Wouldn’t Seals be a perfect match for his slow restraining tactics?

With just a few years of familiarization, Sage mastered the five sets of techniques. Compared to many of his other techniques they were actually quite simple to understand. Finding a Crux was the most difficult part of making a Seal, and once that was complete he merely had to form his Qi and Spirit Power into a specific arrangement and then match it to the Crux. Repress techniques could be ‘built in’ to the initial Seal, or applied afterward to alter the functioning of a Seal that was already in place. The latter method was far more time consuming so it was much more efficient to use Repress initially. Siphon techniques had to be applied afterwards, but neither technique was mutually exclusive or required to be paired together. Since Siphon absorbed half of the sealed attribute, it was simply more effective when combined with a Repressed attribute rather than a more general Seal.

The five techniques he learned were respectively: Muscle, Reaction, Coordination, Flow, and Focus. Or at least, that was the more truncated version of their names. A set was more officially named as Repress the Coordination and Siphon the Coordination, for example. As for what they did, it was somewhat self-explanatory. Repress the Muscle reduces the power of the muscles. Reaction reduces reaction times and coordination makes the target less coordinated. The only ones with a little more nuance were Flow and Focus. Flow reduces the speed of a target’s Qi circulation, making them take longer to form Qi techniques and generally interfering with their rhythm. Focus on the other hand reduces the control over their own Spirit Power, making it harder for them to perform the precise actions that Spirit Power is usually used for.

Meanwhile, the Siphon techniques could send those same reduced attributes to someone else, but not without a cost. The distance between the sealed target and the beneficiary would reduce the effectiveness of the Siphon as it increased, and the beneficiary also had to supply Qi into this link to facilitate the transfer. Of course, the sealed target had no choice in the matter and more than one had lost their mind in anger when their enemy used their own power to defeat them.

It was also at this time that Sage brought out the improved version of the utilities tree from the Inner World. The experimental techniques had become a fully fledged technique and not just an amalgamation of other moves. Now the ‘Utilitree’ was a fully mature product after many thousands of years of use on the Inner World. The short five years on the outside that the Lang Clan used to get established was many millennia on the Inner World. Sage’s real body was constantly experimenting with Heavenly Materials while he left all his other learning and research to the Soul Clone.

The new Utilitree didn’t just handle plumbing to deliver fresh water from its boughs and remove sewage with its roots. It was now also a heating and cooling solution. The canopy of the tree naturally grew into a predetermined shape, that of a Qi Gathering Array, and the lower branches could be directed into homes to supply water, as well as to grow Winter Lotuses. These Winter Lotuses absorbed heat from the sun, summer air, and also cooking fires. Then the stored heat could be used to heat the water or the air in the winter. The Utilitree also had an alternate configuration to create public restrooms, shaping itself into a wide trunk with a small bathroom in the hollow of the tree.

For normal use the Utilitree would start at the water source where the tallest trees would be grown. Then it would grow into a chain of connected trees gradually getting shorter as they went along to keep the water moving along their internal aqueduct. For the neighboring buildings the tree would be directed to grow branches to extend into the building and branch into each room to provide heating, cooling, and water. Then the roots would be directed to sprout upwards and form drains where needed. The only real limitations were that another type of tree was required at the water source to act as a water tower and it took a lot more Qi than could be supplied with the built in Qi Gathering Arrays.

The Water Trees took more experimentation, mainly to combine a water natured Qi technique with a wood technique. The Qi gathering of the Water Tree powered the tree’s roots to suck up water from a water source and then stored it in a large chamber up in the air. The Water Tree’s height used gravity to pressurize the water and meant the other Utilitree’s only needed a slight slope to function properly. In fact, they would function without any slope because of the pressure, but as living things the internal ‘pipes’ didn’t always seal perfectly so it worked better with a little failsafe. The Water Tree was also quite a sight to see as it consisted of three immense trunks rising up into the air in a triangular formation and holding up a huge round tank. The trunks split into smaller branches and weave together to form an immense basket, then they fuse together to form a huge watertight tank.

The final problem of Qi supply required extra Qi Gathering Arrays over a large area, Spirit Stones, or Cultivators to supply power to the system. On the plus side, the power could be added into any of the Utilitrees and then flow out into the rest of the system since all of the Utilitrees in a town are technically part of a single network.

Lionheart Town was quickly transformed by the Utilitree network, but before Sage had much time to admire the look of the town full of trees, a messenger arrived for him.

It’s time!