Elder Cultivator

Travel between the upper and lower realms was still limited, though no longer was the primary reason a lack of appropriate vessels. They were able to produce them at a slow but steady rate. However, they limited themselves to a certain level because of other factors. Specifically, the need to keep them secret.

The distance between the lower realms and the Scarlet Alliance was significant, and with the great powers poking their heads into the Scarlet Midfields once more they were making it more difficult to avoid them. More circuitous routes had to be taken to maintain their safety. Losing a few ships wouldn’t matter. It would be inconvenient if the hostile factions could transport their people safely to the lower realms at any point, but it wouldn’t be in significant quantity even if they replicated the technology.

The largest actual risk was them making a connection between the Scarlet Alliance and the lower realms. Because they could certainly organize more than a handful of sects and a single Domination cultivator to act against them, given the repeated humiliations they had suffered.

Of course, the current extent of their secrecy was already in question. The rank and file of the Imbued Fragments had not been aware why they were involved in the attack, but there wasn’t much reason for them to do so except the events in the lower realms. Long term investigations of the combined sect were still underway to reveal their motives.

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Humans were fascinating. Crossed Antennae strongly believed that. In her mind, she lumped in all the people of Akrys into that category. Energy cultivators, for the most part, aside from rarities like Nthanda who still had some energy of her own.

Her royal guard had learned much from cultivators, and Crossed Antennae had picked up a few snippets here and there. But she was uninterested in poisons or of making her jaws cut more sharply than they ought to. Despite what her closest sister seemed to think, void ant queens weren’t meant for battle. It was merely the case that any who lived long enough could grow to suit it.

Despite having no interest in learning anything in particular, Crossed Antennae still paid attention to all the humans around her for purposes other than spying. And she finally understood the passion her Royal Guard had.

It hadn’t come all at once. The first time she’d seen the techniques of the Spirit Slicing Sect, she found them functional but unnecessary. After all, void ants could naturally devour energy- they didn’t need a technique to do anything of the sort. But Runa did far more than simply prevent energy from going point to point. She also negated the connection to energy beyond in a way that void ants only achieved by coincidence.

Small strands of cultivator’s connections to their techniques would naturally slip from the grasp of a hungry void ant as they tried to protect that all important connection. And for Crossed Antennae, that didn’t really matter. If a technique even could threaten her, she could devour enough of what was directly in front of her to effectively negate it. But that wouldn’t protect humans, or young void ants who were still susceptible to sufficiently powerful energy.

So cutting off the connection was interesting. She tried her best to figure it out on her own, though her training partners were quite limited in variety and she could never quite get it. So she did the only obvious thing. She asked about it.

“Runa. Can you teach me how to perform that technique?”

“Can I?” Runa raised an eyebrow. “Can void ants even use techniques like that? It also uses voidsteel’s properties and certain insights… I suppose the energy isn’t strictly necessary.”

Crossed Antennae nodded. “It’s mainly for mobility, correct?”

“The attack needs to be swift and precise. But obviously voidsteel isn’t augmented by the energy. That’s the whole point. I suppose I might be able to teach you. I know some of your people have gained certain insights. But I’m not sure if I should.”

Of course. “It is a secret of your sect.”

“That’s true,” Runa agreed. “But that’s not the only reason. I taught Velvet, after all. But I don’t know you as well. Give me time to think about it.”

Runa also intended to contact Velvet to ask if there was any reason she shouldn’t teach Crossed Antennae. Because Velvet should have been able to do it herself, right? Runa had developed a friendship with the void ant, but it was nothing like the longer term connection to her other friend. She was willing to trust the void ants on Velvet’s word in general, but this was a unique situation. Obviously she wouldn’t be telling Crossed Antennae the true reason for the delay, though.

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A dozen tiny ants marched in formation, carrying equally tiny components to a circuit board and placing them in. It was… surprisingly inefficient. Juli could have put them in by hand more rapidly one at a time with tweezers, if she needed to avoid using energy. Or if the parts weren’t energy-sensitive, she could just pop them all in at once. And if she took the time to set up the parts so that the void ants could be more efficient, she was just using more of her own time.

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Sometimes inefficiency was fine, though. There were certain goals she had that revolved around things like this. It wasn’t her intention to make some sort of void ant assembly line. She could set up an actual assembly line far more easily. But they might want to have one. Though actually… they might also set up a real assembly line more easily in the long run.

Juli’s main problem was, intended entirely without malice, that most void ants were uneducated. Oh, they learned to sign and could often read, but aside from queens that tended to learn history and other more complex things, they tended to just… stop. And why not? To them, there wasn’t any reason to have further knowledge. They weren’t going to improve their lifestyle.

All of them worked and got fed. None of them had luxuries. At best, these void ants were the ones with all of the luxuries- as much upper energy as they wanted to consume. They didn’t have beds or fancy entertainment. Not even the queens. Their entertainment was all social, what little of it they had. Though that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The ability to be fulfilled without much was actually quite admirable.

There were a few void ants that were exceptions. Some of the Royal Guards got into various cultivation things and their training was their primary source of entertainment- that wasn’t odd for cultivators though. It was kind of like an obsession.

Juli understood that very well. It was why she wasn’t bothered that none of the void ants seemed to care what she was doing. Even though the project could eventually benefit them, they didn’t seem to find it necessary.

The ultimate goal being for void ants to be able to construct their own technology for necessary things. Like… space travel. And long range communication. Honestly, those were the only things they actually seemed to need. They could construct functional colonies anywhere, whether humans made things easier or not. Their metabolisms were efficient enough that a modest supply of food they farmed themselves paired with the local energy of any planet they would actually choose to live on would be sufficient.

But Juli couldn’t help but think it was a waste of potential. What if void ants could carry tiny weapons? There were a few pure tech things that were dangerous to cultivators. She… didn’t know how to compact them small enough to be carried by a void ant just yet, but she was figuring it out.

She sent a whole ton of questions to people back in the Scarlet Alliance on the regular. Half of the questions she answered herself before a reply came, but even then there was great insight added to what she knew and the other half cleared many things up. She still had so much to learn. A few centuries simply was not enough to learn everything.

Some people said it was impossible to actually accomplish given any length of time, given what different people produced. Uzun said not to let that slow her down. He figured he only needed to learn two or three times faster to keep up with all of the most important advancements in tech.

That did mean Juli needed to learn something like hundreds of times faster if she wanted to know everything, even if she theoretically matched Uzun’s speed of comprehension which she doubted. And that it was probably inefficient to be inventing her own new fields of study at the same time in void ant built tech.

But if she had an infinite amount of time, she could learn everything. Unless the infinities didn’t line up, but rather than accepting that the wouldn’t all she had to do was make them. That was what being a cultivator was all about.

Juli looked at some new schematics. These weren’t for sharing, but for her personal edification. New plastic materials and their properties. Obviously not common plastic, but something outside of the standard cultivator understanding of the world could actually be quite useful.

Those distracted her for a few hours, but it didn’t seem likely that void ants would work with those materials any better than anything else. The biggest issue was that they didn’t have hands. Though if she could set up something from which they could build basic parts with their limitations, including another machine, then they could really get going. And maybe one of these void ants would be the one to actually make use of that. They didn’t indicate much interest, but they also kept showing up even though it was entirely voluntary- though that might have been just because they were allies and void ants were helpful.

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Misi wished he could have been present to see the formation that freed Catarina and Timothy. Or that he was in the central Scarlet Alliance to learn from her or Koralo or someone another step or two down the line. But the amount of access he had for personal study was already quite great.

Between his sister and himself, they could probably learn everything. Probably. But if not, he’d at least be a useful backup in case something catastrophic happened in the Scarlet Alliance and wiped out the top hundred or thousand formation masters. Not that he thought that was likely. Catarina herself dying was fairly likely up until a few years before, though, until they had completed that project. And once someone died, all the information in their head was gone. Or at least, in any useful way. And Misi had studied brain scans from all sorts of people through various different methods.

If nothing else, cultivation insights were etched on the soul, or something. It wasn’t like people could reincarnate with memories if brains were a key part of that. There was something more to it. Did souls fall under formations? Maybe not. Certainly not tech, but there was a lot of middle ground for Misi and Juli to scoop up together.

Though he wasn’t part of the Chaotic Conglomeration, nor was he planning to stay forever, Misi still planned to bolster them as much as possible. The Exalted Quadrant probably wasn’t going to stop making a fuss just because a Domination cultivator died. In fact, just like before it would probably result in them ramping up aggression in various ways. To that end, good formations were needed to stop them.

But not ones they could easily steal and turn back against the Chaotic Conglomeration. He had to make some assumptions on what certain sects would know and who would end up where. Or he could just let the Conglomeration be responsible for what they did with their knowledge and succeed or screw up on their own merits. But he preferred to support them since he was currently living among them. At least for another few decades, maybe a century or two. But he would be going back to the Scarlet Alliance. They were still the ones supporting him even at a distance. And it was nice to know that they cared about him, unlike most of the Chaotic Conglomeration.