Chapter 1562 – Long-term Mission
Zhao Hai held the last flags of the formation’s 36 flags. He was quite nervous. It took five days for Zhao Hai to plant the formation flags and this was the last one. As long as this flag was inserted, the entire formation would be completed and the Hidden Cloud Village would disappear from the Cloudsea Territory.
Zhao Hai gripped the flag and then lifted it up as if he was holding a mountain. When his right hand reached its limit, he opened his eyes and then shouted, “Ha!”
Along with Zhao Hai’s shout, his right hand fiercely threw the flag downwards. A dazzling golden light erupted from his body and entered the flag through the star pattern.
As the golden light disappeared, the flag was placed firmly in place. Shortly after, Zhao Hai felt the s.p.a.ce around him distort as the flag vanished from sight.
Zhao Hai let out a long breath and then wiped a sweat off his brow. He discovered that arranging this great formation caused him to be exhausted.
After that, Zhao Hai’s figure flashed and appeared next to Mu Yu. Mu Yu was still holding the formation disk. The 36 circles around the disk were already lit up with red light.
Mu Yu looked at Zhao Hai, then he nodded and said, “It’s finally complete.” Zhao Hai also nodded and said, “It’s complete”. Mu Yu laughed as he patted Zhao Hai’s shoulder and said, “Good work. Let’s go. It’s time to move the houses.” Zhao Hai nodded and walked out with Mu Yu.
When the two went out, they saw the cultivators from the island waiting for them. They had been told to not go out of the island in the past few days. These people couldn’t help but feel awkward. They were already used to heading out to do missions. Now that they had been ordered to stay, they suddenly found themselves with nothing to do.
As soon as Mu Yu and Zhao Hai went out, the cultivators of the Hidden Cloud Village immediately turned towards them. Zhao Hai looked at these people and said, “I asked you to stay inside the village for the past few days because I was arranging a large formation outside the island. From now on, n.o.body besides us will be able to know that the village exists. Naturally, you can still enter and leave the village. Alright, all of you line up to receive these tokens. Remember, if you lose this token, you will no longer be able to return to the Hidden Cloud Village.”
These people knew that Zhao Hai would arrange a formation outside the village. So when they heard him, they immediately understood what was going on. Then they lined up and received the token one by one.
Once everyone received their token, Zhao Hai immediately asked them to move their houses. Naturally, the people didn’t oppose this plan. Moving houses for the people of the Cloudsea Territory wasn’t a huge deal.
By this point, the people of the Hidden Cloud Village were fully obedient towards Zhao Hai and Mu Yu. This was because they had already tasted the benefits of the missions. And the source of the missions was Zhao Hai.
Zhao Hai would issue a mission and they would complete it. Once they return, they would receive contribution points which they could exchange for whatever they want.
In order to facilitate the exchange of points, Zhao Hai opened a computerized exchange kiosk in the village. Operating this kiosk was very simple and was on a touch screen. The items to be exchanged were divided into medicine, weapons, armor, cultivation methods, and other categories. All of these things were very much needed by the people in the Hidden Cloud Village.
The people in the Hidden Cloud Village were of the poorest of the cultivators in the Cloudsea Territory. Adding on to the fact that they cannot easily leave the region, they were very starved of cultivation materials. The existence of the exchange kiosk gave them all that they needed. This also made them feel that they belonged to the Hundred Treasures Realm.
When everyone arranged their houses according to Zhao Hai’s layout, they immediately felt the difference. They discovered that the spiritual qi inside their houses had become better. This made them understand that this was because of Zhao Hai’s arrangement. This made them even more thankful towards Zhao Hai. At the same time, they believed that Zhao Hai was a formations grandmaster.
Formation grandmasters were different from refiners or alchemists. It can be said that no matter which realm, almost every cultivator has some understanding about formations. However, there were very few who were very good with it.
This was the reason why learning formations was an extensive and profound task. All cultivators knew that there were even more formations than the countless amount of cultivation methods.
Because of this, becoming a formations master required tons of time invested in understanding formations. Only by doing so could one be able to establish and break formations.
This also caused an issue. Because of the immense number of formations, researching them would take time away from your cultivation.
Although the life of a cultivator was very long, with Immortal Experts living to thousands of years, not every cultivator can reach this stage. A Foundation Establishment Expert can only live up to 300 years old, a Nascent Soul Expert up to 700 years and a Severed Soul Expert to 800 to 900 years.
Naturally, this was considering that the cultivator doesn’t suffer any accidents. Closing up until reaching the Immortal Stage was impossible. In order for a cultivator to break through their bottleneck, they needed to undergo a trial. These trials would put the cultivator in dangerous positions. Besides these trials, there’s also practicing how to use their artifacts and collecting techniques to supplement them. All of these take time.
If a cultivator just cultivates their entire life without practicing how to use artifacts, then they would be in danger once they head out. And this doesn’t include gaining knowledge about pills, refining, and the various materials in the universe. If they didn’t, then they might miss a treasure when they head out. And the most important thing was the acc.u.mulation of spiritual qi. Each cultivator needs spiritual qi to practice.
Time was the biggest enemy of Cultivators. Cultivators would go against the heavens and cultivate spiritual qi in order to reach a grand goal. In addition to becoming stronger and reaching the heavens, the most important reason why Cultivators cultivate was to become Immortal!
In order to gain eternal life, then there’s only one path to take, and that is to become stronger. How can one become stronger? Cultivate and be invincible in battles. The fundamentals are very important. Things like formations were just supplements to the path of Immortality.
With this in consideration, although Cultivators knew formations, not a lot of them were experts in it. In the Ten-thousand Realm Battlefield as well as the Cloudsea Territory, those considered to be formation grandmasters were extremely few.
The formation that Zhao Hai set up was enough for the people in the village to consider him as a formations grandmaster. This wasn’t far from the truth, since Zhao Hai could indeed be called a formations grandmaster.
Starting from the Machine Field, Zhao Hai has been paying great attention when it comes to formations. And every time the processing machine deconstructs an artifact, the formations inside it were recorded. And after arriving at the Ten-thousand Realm Battlefield, Zhao Hai was able to increase his list of formations even more. Then there’s his entry into the Hundred Treasures Realm. The Hundred Treasures Realm hasn’t been stingy with Zhao Hai. They provided him with various materials to learn from.
With the help of the s.p.a.ce and the existence of the Universal Processing Machine, Zhao Hai could now be considered to be a formations grandmaster. With regards to understanding formations, n.o.body could beat Zhao Hai.
Anyone who reached a high level in any field would receive great respect from everyone around them. Zhao Hai’s achievements regarding formations increased the respect the people in the Hidden Cloud Village had for him.
After the cloud houses had been arranged, Zhao Hai began to issue long-term missions; first of which was catching cloud beasts. No matter what cloud beasts, even cloud rats, could be exchanged for contribution points. Since this was a long-term taks, no matter what cloud beast one exchanged, they could get anything you wanted.
This was great news for the cultivators of the Hidden Cloud Village. Originally, the people of the village relied on catching cloud beasts in order to survive. Because of this, they were experts at the task.
The second long-term mission was more interesting. In fact, it might sound very simple, it was farming! Now that the cloud houses have been rearranged, the island where the village was in was left with large open areas to cultivate plants. Farming cloud plants required hard work and would take a lot of time for cultivators. If there were no points provided, then n.o.body in the island would want to farm the land. Because of this, Zhao Hai treated farming as a mission. Although catching cloud beasts provided more points, farming the island was much safer.
After giving the two long-term missions, the matters of the Hidden Cloud Village had been settled. It could now be treated as the Hundred Treasures Realm’s back-up base. There was no longer any need for Zhao Hai and Mu Yu to stay here.