The Law of Thermodynamics, as Sage had named it, related to the transfer of heat. He deciphered it in Icefire Valley after watching the tragic couple, Hong Ri and Hei Yue. The Fire and Ice Clans were at odds with each other so of course their most important geniuses would fall in love and play out a tragedy. Living their story in such detail seemed to combine with Sage’s understanding of heat from Earth and took it into a direction that seemed to be very rare on this world. These people thought only of fire and ice as two disparate and opposing elements of nature.

Sage, on the other hand, saw them as great heat produced by combustion and low temperature water turning into a solid. They were outward expressions of chemical reactions and varying levels of heat energy. From Earth, he knew it was related to the energy of particles or molecules, but he wasn’t a physicist so he didn’t know the specifics. Even so, just the general idea of cold actually being merely the absence of heat energy was enough to open the door to this law of hot and cold. So far he’d been using the Winter Lotus technique to channel this law, and it fit so perfectly that he wondered if someone in the past had invented it specifically for this reason. He’d gained the Winter Lotus technique from that rich kid from the Cult of the Woodlord he’d assassinated long ago. In fact, if it hadn’t been so long since then he would have never dared to meet with a higher up of the Cult of the Woodlord. Thankfully, it seemed he didn’t leave any evidence and the crime had never been pinned on him.

Maybe I offered them that artifact to sweeten the deal because I still feel a little guilty over that time?

Putting aside the idle thought, he focused on trying to combine his daughter Yujie’s fire school of techniques with the Heart of Eruption. In the past he’d attempted to use her techniques along with those of Bingqing, but neither of them were focused on specifically hot or cold. Each of them instead decided to combine fire and water with poison instead. Yujie developed a flammable poison gas, while Bingqing used water style techniques with large volumes of liquid poison. To make it worse, the Heart of Eruption was technically an Earth type of Heavenly Material and its compatibility with fire techniques was even lower.

Even so, Yujie’s fire techniques were specially created to match the Lang Clan’s body and so they were a good foundation for him to experiment with. Using them as a base, he would modify them using the many earth and fire techniques from the Timeless Master’s library. Yujie had used these fire techniques as a base in the first place, so he would be able to see how she had made changes and also how he might alter them to match the earth element. The only downside was that he didn’t have a Heavenly Material that embodied cold which he could use to balance the Heart of Eruption.

Even so, he didn’t give up on this route. Even if he couldn’t perfectly make use of warm turning cool, he could still use the Law of Thermodynamics with the Heart of Eruption creating a rapid increase of heat.

He split his attention between training and traveling, but the trip was still without any interruption. He’d traveled this route multiple times in the last few years, and after cleaning out the big bosses that wanted to harass him it seemed nobody else was brave enough. It might also be because he was a tiny object flying at high speed and not a giant spider the size of a hill, but he was almost disappointed that no large flying Demonic Beasts ever attempted to intercept him. It was a shame he couldn’t recruit more members for the Tiankong Clan.

After a few months of travel, he arrived back in 10,000 Wave Province and used the Merciful Mollusk to travel just outside of Lionheart Town. Much of the Clan was present, but a considerable number of them were spread about the province to stabilize their position. It had been years since they took control of the province from the Chong Clan, but it was a large place and they took their time to pull everyone over to their side. They didn’t want to be nursing snakes in their own nest, so they did their best to convince everyone of their ability. For those who were truly antagonistic, they could wipe them out, but for most of them they wanted to form a friendship and not just rule through terror. If the people of the province obey only out of fear of their strength, what happens if they ever suffer a setback in the future? Wouldn’t the people jump at the chance to stab them in the back?

Sage approved of their tactics, and after returning he spent a few weeks with Ling and Jiao. Then, he sent out a summons to his children. This time he planned to leave for at least a few decades so he wanted to properly say goodbye to them. He had already discussed things with Ling and Jiao and they preferred to stay here to oversee their giant family. While they would be separated once again, they had spent hundreds of years together raising this family into what it was. Most marriages had trouble surviving decades, let alone centuries. Sage even considered it a win that neither of them hated his guts at this point. There was also the fact that he didn’t want to tie their lives to his own. If he was ever killed for good, the entire Inner World would collapse.

He had a large group of his distant descendants that ran the Lang Clan on the Inner World, but they had volunteered for this. If he were to ever fall, he would at least die knowing that his wives and kids outlived him. This was also another reason he went so out of his way to head back to the Holy Flame Sect. The complete heritage of professions was not just for the Inner World, but for the whole Lang Clan. Many copies of the Million Skill Library as well as the Arborist Knowledge he’d gained from the Cult of the Woodlord. An entire library as well as a secret backup were set up in both of the Lang Clans, giving them a strong foundation on the outside world as well as the inner one.

Sage also passed along all his personal notes for each of the professions. The Soul Clone kept a detailed journal of all his experiments and notes for the different recipes and materials involved with each profession in the hope that his experiences could improve the learning speed of his descendants. There were also similar books from the researchers of the Inner World and the Lang Clan was abuzz with excitement. Thousands of years of research had been conducted on the Inner World since the Lang Clan left, and dozens more generations were born there.

It was a pretty surreal experience for his children. They, the inventors, of different martial paths, were faced with the advancement of their own techniques. They had tenth generation descendants that were improving upon the techniques they created in their early lives and had constantly improved upon for hundreds of years.

After a few weeks waiting for all of his children to return and the Tiankong Clan to arrive, they threw a massive banquet and party that lasted for nearly a whole week. There were so many people in the Lang Clan and Tiankong Clan that had to meet and they took their time getting to know each other. Sage wanted to deepen the friendship between clans so that it wasn’t just his own personal friendship and this was a perfect opportunity before he left.

There was one last person he needed to visit before he left.