Regardless of the reason, Sage settled down in the Great Pod for a decade. He’d already come to terms with a long stay away from his family before he left the Lang Clan. In fact he was already very used to being apart from them long ago because of the time dilation on the Inner World. The time he’d been away from his wives and children was already many lifetimes worth for a cultivator, let alone a mortal. He had been quite excited to bring the idea of a film industry to the Inner World, not just because of the joy it might bring to the populace, but also because he would need them to help break up the monotony of cultivation.

A cultivator’s mental fortitude and focus would inevitably increase dramatically as they increased in rank, and those who couldn’t handle the long periods of silent training and meditation would falter in their cultivation. Some of them would give up cultivating altogether and focus on creating sects or raising their families into great clans. Others were less fortunate and tried to force improvement, which usually led to a mental deviation. Their flawed cultivation would then turn against them. Most of them turned to crime or other terrible avenues and became public enemies to be hunted down. Others could still retain enough mental acuity to become hermits and isolate themselves from harming anyone else. Sometimes they were lucky enough to recover and return to a normal life.

Sage was worried about facing these issues. A normal Nascent Soul would have a lifespan around ten thousand years. It was an extremely large and amazing number. A person that could live through ten millennia. That was a longer time than the recorded history of humanity back on Earth. Of course, for a cultivator, the majority of that time would be spent in a sort of half-conscious state of meditation while they cultivate. Due to the clone he’d placed on the Inner World, Sage had already experienced more years than that and he was just getting started.

The Soul Clone was inextricably linked to his real self in the outside world and as long as he continued to exist, so would it. Due to the currently seven hundred times time dilation, if he lived for 10,000 years on the outside world, he would end up living for 7,000,000 years on the Inner World. With the mental fortitude of a Nascent Soul, he had no idea what might happen to him if he were to live hundreds of times longer than he was ‘supposed’ to. He wasn’t worried about his body breaking down, whenever he performed a true Merge he grew a new body for himself which undid much of his aging. In fact, other Nascent Souls were already powerful enough to rebuild and recreate their bodies and they didn’t even have all the cheats he did. Ten thousand years was the limit of the Nascent Soul itself, which then began to grow weaker and weaker until it eventually discorporated.

Sage had already had his clone on the Inner World for a decade and as he added another, he was quickly approaching more than two Nascent Soul lifetimes on the Inner World. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel any strain at all. He wasn’t sure if it was because of his true body remaining in the outside world or if it had something to do with all the advanced entertainment forms of the Inner World. There was also a chance that his true Merges with adult Demonic Beasts had an impact, but he would have guessed that experiencing another life in its entirety would reduce his lifespan rather than increase it, but perhaps it served as a palette cleanser? Whatever the reason, Sage didn’t feel any wear or any weakness of the soul. He certainly wasn’t going to complain, even if he knew who to complain to.

Does this mean I’ll have many times longer than normal to try and reach the next rank?

Over the course of this decade of training the Golden Song, Sage captured specimens of all the local sea life. He’d even gathered more than one group of cetacean bandits, using superior numbers to knock them out and take them to the Inner World. Unlike the less intelligent Demonic Beasts that he gave Human Seals and forced to follow a set of rules, he released the Cetaceans into one of the oceans and allowed them to negotiate with the local powers if and when they wanted to. Most of the oceans of the Inner World were not connected into a singular whole, so the new arrivals weren’t allowed the full run of the place. There were still oceans available for his forces to use as fisheries.

Over time it was interesting to see the balance of power shifting around in the oceans. Some of them went off on their own and became lords of their own isolated territories. Others formed a large city reminiscent of the Great Pod, while the most interesting ones made agreements with the other local powers and attained Human Seals, giving them the power to walk the land and experience the full extent of human culture rather than just the abbreviated bits that had previously been brought to the Great Pod by cultivators. While Sage was still curious of what their ability to perceive sounds as images was like, he still decided to ban Merging with the cetaceans unless it was completely voluntary for both parties. He didn’t want any of his researchers to be abducting any of the cetaceans. They were naturally much more intelligent than most Demonic Beasts so even without Human Seals he felt it was inhumane to do such a thing to them. Considering that it was already a difficult task even without his strict rule it protected them from becoming research subjects.

For Sage it was more than enough for them to simply be included on the Inner World. With time there was no telling how their influence could spread or grow. Outside of a handful of pet projects that the researchers focused on he preferred to let the Inner World evolve on its own. The Lang Clan just introduced a few key technologies and cultural innovations every so often and let things sort themselves out otherwise. To that end, the Three Kings passed away, the three Human Cultivators having lived great lives as monarchs for thousands of years. Their descendants took over ruling the ‘Three Kingdoms’, which was quite a funny name to Sage as there was no great war between the three. At least for now, the alliance between the three remained intact. Sadly, Sage was pretty sure the status quo was only maintained because all three nations knew they were beholden to a greater power and greatly feared the Purple Mist Sect.

As for those pet projects? The researchers of the Lang Clan had their own avenues of interest and research, but Sage set a research budget of his own towards two tasks in particular. The first was the advancement and integration of Arborist knowledge from the Cult of the Woodlord and Blacksmith knowledge from the Holy Flame Sect. For the second, he had a far more unusual task in progress.