The Elven Cultivator

Chapter 138: Chapter 136: Mountain Protection Array

"One more thing."

Anton’s tone changed. "Although the Clan can’t enter the city for now, we can develop the surrounding metal veins."

"As long as we clear out the roaming Mind Flayers and their slaves, these veins can be safely mined."

The Great Elder nodded at once. "No problem. I’ll arrange for our people to enter the Dark Nether Realm in batches to take control of these veins."

After their population surged to nearly ten thousand, the Silver Moon Race had far more people to spare than before.

Plus, they had Lizard-man slaves.

Even without collaborating with Gray Rock Castle, the Clan had enough power to develop the veins around the city on its own.

The group then went on to discuss the specific details of the plan of action.

Cedric and Romance were put in charge of the cleanup operation, responsible for leading teams to hunt down and kill the roaming Mind Flayers and their slaves.

Meanwhile, Elena and Darian would lead teams to take control of the mining areas and handle all the preparations before extraction could begin.

Afterward, the group pooled together over a dozen Dimension Rings and Dimensional Bags and gave them to Anton to transport the resources.

Without any delay, Anton made a trip back to the Silver Moon Forest, deposited the materials in the Clan’s storehouse, and then rushed back to the Dark Nether Realm to sneak into the city and move the rest of the supplies.

After five round trips, he had finally cleared out all the resources from the storeroom.

There were so many resources that the Clan had to hastily build several new storehouses to hold them all.

Everyone in the Clan, from the highest to the lowest, was ecstatic at the sight of the overflowing resources.

In the days that followed, the Clan buzzed with activity.

Cedric and Romance each led their own teams, beginning to clear out the Mind Flayers and their slaves in the area around the city.

Armed with Peaceful Spirit Talismans, Clear Heart Talismans, Exorcism Talismans, and more, the Elves were overwhelmingly successful in their fight against the Mind Flayers.

It took only half a month for the Forest Guard to sweep the entire surrounding region clean.

Romance, however, was left wanting more.

It had been a long time since she’d had a proper fight, not since the destruction of the Molten Spike Tribe.

If she weren’t so hopelessly outmatched by the Sighing Clusters, she probably would have charged into the city to pick a fight with one.

At the same time, the Clan secured a total of twelve mining veins around the city.

More than half of them were veins of rare metals.

There was also an extremely rare Mithril vein.

The output from these twelve veins alone was enough to satisfy over eighty percent of the Silver Moon Race’s annual demand for metal ore.

And that was only because the variety of ores wasn’t diverse enough, forcing them to purchase certain metals from outside sources; it wasn’t an issue of insufficient yield.

The surplus ore could be sold along the trade routes the Clan had established in recent years, which was enough to boost the Clan’s annual revenue by sixty to seventy percent.

Driven by the promise of such tangible and substantial profits, the Elves worked with immense vigor.

In less than a month, mining operations at all twelve veins were running smoothly.

To the relief of the entire Clan, it turned out that Anton and the Great Elder had been right. The Sighing Clusters paid no mind to what was happening outside, remaining in the city to focus on absorbing elemental energy, living a happy, reclusive life.

Still, just in case, Anton set up a Nine Heavens Thunder Suppression Array in front of several of the rare metal veins, including the Mithril mine.

Should the Sighing Clusters attack the mining areas on a whim, the Arrays would hold them off long enough for the Elves there to retreat.

The output from the twelve veins, combined with the sudden massive influx of other materials, greatly eased the Clan’s resource shortages.

The Clan immediately accelerated its pace of development.

First was the expansion of the Spirit Gathering Chambers.

The Clan built over thirty new Spirit Gathering Chambers in one go, a number nearly equal to the total they had painstakingly constructed over the past several decades.

This brought the total number of Spirit Gathering Chambers to a staggering seventy.

This was enough to meet the current cultivation needs of the Clan’s Silver Tier Warriors and Casters.

They could even spare some for use by the Black Iron Tier Elves.

Second was the transition to cultivating the Eight Desolates Prison-Suppression Scripture.

The Elder Council lifted all restrictions on the scripture, allowing all Elf Warriors in the Clan to freely switch to cultivating the Eight Desolates Prison-Suppression Scripture, with the Clan subsidizing the necessary Cultivation Resources.

As a result, the rate at which the Clan’s Warriors increased their overall strength soared to new heights.

Finally, there was the matter of refining Rune Equipment.

With Dragon City turtling up and refusing to venture out, Anton was unable to hunt the Dragon Race.

The Sighing Clusters in the city were a tempting target, but there were too many of them. Deeply afraid of stirring up a hornet’s nest, he dared not make a move for the time being.

All at once, Anton found that he had time on his hands.

Aside from his daily cultivation, condensing Dark Heavy Water, and refining the Five Camp Divine Soldiers, he actually had a considerable amount of free time.

So, after some thought, Anton laid out a series of new projects for himself.

The first was to refine Rune Equipment.

In the past, the annual output of Rune Equipment had been limited, not only due to his own limited time but also because the supply of raw materials couldn’t keep up.

Now that both problems were solved, the production of Rune Equipment could increase dramatically.

Anton planned to spend two years achieving the goal of having the entire Forest Guard equipped with Rune Equipment.

Across the entire Eldron Plain, besides Kresol Dragon City’s Radiant Flame Legion, no other legion had managed to fully equip its members with Micro-Light Level Magic Equipment.

But before long, the Forest Guard would be added to that short list.

For his second project, Anton planned to refine a new Magical Artifact.

The experience of hauling resources back and forth from the city’s storeroom made him realize that not having a storage item with enough space could be a huge liability at a critical moment.

This time, the distance was short enough that he could make multiple trips.

But if he discovered a treasure out in the world someday and couldn’t take it with him due to insufficient storage space, the regret would be unbearable.

Ultimately, whether they were Dimensional Bags or Dimension Rings, their internal space was just too small.

Therefore, Anton planned to refine a Magical Artifact dedicated solely to storage.

He quickly found a suitable schematic in the Taoist Jade Scroll: the Qiankun Bag!

It was one of the most famous storage-type Magical Artifacts in the Cultivation Realm.

Qian represents heaven, and Kun represents earth.

The name Qiankun Bag implied the concept of "a world within a bag."

Though the bag was palm-sized, it contained a universe, capable of holding a mountain in a mustard seed.

The internal space of a Qiankun Bag could be large or small, depending on the creator’s skill in Artifact Refining and the quality of the materials used.

The latter was easily solved.

Anton simply dismantled the dozen or so Dimension Rings he had on hand and used all of the smelted spatial materials to refine the Qiankun Bag.

All in all, it took him about a year, but he finally succeeded in refining it.

The finished Qiankun Bag had an internal space more than thirty times that of an ordinary Dimension Ring.

’A pity my Artifact Refining skill is still a little lacking, or the quality could have been even better.’

Anton felt a slight twinge of regret as he looked at the small, palm-sized cloth pouch in his hand. It was entirely gray, its opening cinched tight with a golden thread.

But he quickly cast that regret aside.

’It’s just a storage Magical Artifact, after all.’

’If it’s not enough, I can just gather more materials and make another one. No big deal.’

’With two or three Qiankun Bags on hand, I should be set for anything.’

After putting away the Qiankun Bag, Anton turned his gaze to the sheepskin paper on his desk. It was covered with a dense web of lines, depicting a complex and profound Array.

It was, in fact, an array diagram.

That’s right. This was Anton’s third project.

He planned to act on an idea he had harbored for a long time: to build a Mountain Protection Array for the Clan!

The main reason he had put it off for so long was a lack of resources.

Now, with the large quantity of rare materials he had brought back from the city, the resource problem was solved.

Naturally, it was time to put the construction of the Mountain Protection Array on the agenda.

Compared to the first two projects, this last one was undoubtedly much more difficult.

In the Cultivation Realm, a Mountain Protection Array is the very foundation of a sect.

If the array stands, the sect stands; if the array falls, the sect is destroyed.

This was an iron-clad law of the Cultivation Realm, unchanged for ten thousand years.

A Mountain Protection Array is not a single Array, but a "cluster of Arrays."

It uses a Spirit Vein as its heart and the mountains and rivers as its skeleton, nesting and stacking dozens of Arrays for defense, slaughter, entrapment, illusion, and early warning to form a three-dimensional defense system that covers the entire sect.

With Anton’s current Cultivation Level and skill in Arrays, it was of course impossible for him to deploy a true Mountain Protection Array.

Besides, the Silver Moon Forest had no need for one.

A true Mountain Protection Array often covered hundreds of mountain ranges, stretching for thousands of miles on a scale that beggared the imagination.

And while the Silver Moon Forest was vast in its own right, it was nothing compared to the territories of those sects.

To cover the Silver Moon Forest, a highly simplified version of a Mountain Protection Array would suffice.

That being said, for Anton, who had only ever deployed a few types of Arrays on fewer than twenty occasions in total, even a highly simplified version of the Mountain Protection Array was an extremely difficult task.

But Anton was not deterred by this.

The process of deploying the Mountain Protection Array would also serve to consolidate the knowledge he had gained from his study of Arrays in recent years.

If he succeeded, his mastery of Arrays would surely take a great leap forward.

Having settled on the plan, Anton didn’t rush into it. Instead, he proceeded with caution, taking it one step at a time.

First, he needed to select a suitable array diagram.

The Taoist Jade Scroll contained an overwhelming number of Arrays that could serve as a Mountain Protection Array.

Many of the Arrays made Anton’s heart race with excitement.

For example, the Immortal Slaying Sword Array, which used swords as its foundation.

Using a True Artifact-grade Ancient Sword as the Array Hub and drawing upon the spiritual qi of seven veins as its power source, it could, when activated, conjure a colossal, seven-colored sword in the sky, capable of slaying even an expert who had refined the void and merged with the Dao.

This array’s greatest feature was its principle of "offense is the best defense."

Its motto was, in essence, that killing one’s enemies is the best form of defense.

Then there was the Grand Array of the Celestial Cycle.

It drew upon the power of the celestial stars, and wherever their starlight reached, the array’s domain extended.

The Transformations within the array were infinite. There was no gate of life, no gate of death—only endless calculations and variables.

Without a profound mastery of Arrays, one could spend a lifetime trapped inside, never hoping to find their way out.

There was even the Grand Array of Myriad Demons from the Demon Race.

Using the essence blood of ten thousand demons as a catalyst and a Demon Race totem as its eye, the array would fill with the roars of myriad demons, its demonic aura surging to the heavens.

This array only recognized the bloodline of the Demon Race. A member of the Human Race who entered it would feel as if they were trapped in a quagmire, struggling to take even a single step.

But as powerful as these Arrays were, Anton could only look on and drool.

At his current stage, he simply lacked the resources and the power to deploy them.

Take the Immortal Slaying Sword Array, for instance. Where was he supposed to find a True Artifact-grade sword to serve as its Array Hub?

His own Sword Pill was still only at the level of a Magical Artifact.

It wouldn’t be too late to consider these Arrays once his own power and his "hardware"—his equipment—had improved.

For now, it was better to keep his feet on the ground.