After making the decision to go along with Guan Zhenyan’s deal, Sage felt no anxiety or regret at all. He had already deliberated over this decision for a long time before making his choice, so now that he had there was no need to feel any unease. The great time dilation between the outside and the Inner World had greatly increased his decisiveness. It was a problem that he hypothesized that a person with super speed might face. If the world around you seemed to move at a snail’s pace wouldn’t you have a hard time being patient? That line with a five minute wait might end up feeling like hours to you. Would your conversations be going on in slow motion? It was like the feeling of dialogue in a game, and that growing desire to constantly skip forward and get back to the ‘action’.

Sage had no desire to waste any more time and Guan Zhenyan was immediately put to work as soon as the decision was made. He gave the projection a serious gaze, “How do we start?”

Facing this more decisive version of Sage than he was used to, Guan Zhenyan was a little taken aback, but he quickly got over it and brought out a Blood Contract for Sage to sign. The page was pressed up against Sage’s hand after he cut a small slice into it, and despite the difficulty of this action under the water it only took a small bit of Qi to keep the water away and guide the blood onto the page made of an unusual material. Once the agreement was made, the sloppy fellow gave him a lesson.

“This is an exceedingly rare find. It is known as a Realm Heart and it is quite valuable to those at the highest echelons. If one of those people learned that you found one, you’d be lucky to keep your life. They’d rip your soul out to search it for information, a tortuous process might I add, that even if you survive your mind is likely to be crippled afterward. Consider this your official warning to never tell another soul of this find.”

He paused, probably to try to make it seem more important to Sage, but Sage just gave him a disinterested look. Zhenyan realized that he wasn’t getting the response he wanted so he just moved on to something that he knew would elicit a reaction, “The Realm Heart is the core of a Law Realm. You’ve likely never heard of a Law Realm, but you can consider them to be similar to a Hidden Domain. A whole world of sorts that has a hidden entrance and can form the foundation for a whole great power. The difference is that a Law Realm is of a higher tier than a Hidden Domain. It is said that a Law Realm is the embryonic form of an entirely separate universe. As a Law Realm grows it forms its own sets of laws, and these laws are far easier to experience than those we’re used to.”

“It’s hard to get any data from a static object. You need to introduce a variable and then measure the changes.”

“Static object? Variable? How interesting. It seems you’re hiding more than I thought. Hah. This is the reason that a Law Realm is thought to be a budding universe. It creates new laws and grows in size, like an infant learning new words and constantly maturing. A Law Realm is a very valuable resource for those at the peak, but for you the best use would be to study these new laws. From the looks of this one, you’ve got a few thousand years left until this one stabilizes. Law Realms improve in stages, and after forming a new set of laws it can go dormant for millions of years before going into an improvement cycle and forming another set of laws. For our deal, once this period of formation ends then you’ll pass ownership of the Law Realm to me, understand?”

Millions of years? I definitely made the right choice here.

Why would he care about benefits that he might miss out on a million years from now? If he was even alive for that long, there would surely be more opportunities for him elsewhere. Guan Zhenyan said a bit more, but to Sage he caught an undertone that this additional information was only speculation.

“A Law Realm is the key component for the highest level Storage Treasures, more specifically a Realm Heart.”

After so much conjecture, he suddenly said that line with such conviction that Sage took it to mean the opposite. Zhenyan must be trying to belittle the Inner World, or to make him fearful by comparing it to super powerful cultivators. Sage was aloof to the intimidation once again and soon Zhenyan moved on again. This time he got into the important details: how Sage could gain ‘ownership’ of the Realm Heart. Contrary to most other treasures, there was no way to take the Realm Heart along with him.

“Once taking control of the Realm Heart, you will be able to control it to create an entrance nearby. There is no need to bring it away as you can access it from anywhere. Of course, creating an entrance is not instantaneous, nor is it without cost, so don’t even think about using it as an escape route. Even if you had an entrance already established you better not lead anyone to it. If you give away the Law Realm before our deal is complete you’ll suffer the consequences, even if you aren’t giving it away by choice, got it?”

Sage had already seen a clause that seemed to say a similar thing on the Blood Contract, but he now understood the full context after this explanation. He had assumed it to be this style of clause. Before he knew anything the idea of ‘giving it away against your will’ was strange, because after he was robbed by Hei Bai he had multiplied his security precautions. Unless he was dead, nobody should be able to steal from him again. If he was dead, why would he care about breaking the contract?

Now that he realized this thing wasn’t able to be taken away, this idea of ‘giving away’ wasn’t just transfer of ownership, but also included revealing the location or even existence of the Law Realm. He certainly didn’t plan on giving away his treasures, but this clause was something he had to be aware of. The power of a Blood Contract was not something to be sneered at so he couldn’t afford to suffer from breaking one without a good reason.

Hmm, did this old bastard break a Blood Contract? Is that why he complains about being weak and is using me to hide?

Guan Zhenyan started to impart to him the method to ‘tame’ a Realm Heart, which after some time in study, Sage and his team of researchers thoroughly mastered. They also came to the conclusion that this technique was less like taming and more like lying. It was not a process of domination and submission, obedience in exchange for treats, breeding for certain traits, or any other mutual exchanges. Instead it seemed more like tricking the Realm Heart into believing that you were a part of it. It wasn’t just trying to blend in and pretend to be its relative so it would look after you, it was far more invasive. Someone came up with the crazy idea of injecting the newly formed laws into their own bodies so that the Law Realm would treat them as a piece of its own self.