While Kane is relieved to finally be back in his own territory, he is still well-aware that he has things he needs to do somewhat quickly. He quickly and silently places his signifiers around the Bahamas, claiming the final unclaimed island nation in the western hemisphere. He carves his formation around the islands, sheathing it in its energy and causing rapid, widespread terraforming due to both the spreading effects of the World Soul Refinement and sudden influx of qi and ways to utilize it, spread by Kane's juniors of course. He flies around the south-eastern end of his territory and uses his earth alchemy dragons to create a few small, rocky islands for ambassadors and messengers to use, labeling them appropriately and very visibly.
With that, he enters his territory proper, though his work still does not stop. He lands on the uninhabited Navassa Island, originally part of Haiti, and begins experiments involving the many different plants and plant-based creatures he just purchased. Using a combination of his wood dragons and a more refined version of his original mutation powder, the island is quickly covered in an incredibly dense jungle of towering bushes, trees, and flowers, webbed with innumerable vines. He pays particular attention to this Chlorophyte substance he acquired from Yorsha. Even with his expertise, a living, plant-based metal such as this is quite the rare find, and as such he intends to use it well. With the help of a few dozen juniors who are more skilled in horticulture than the norm, he sets up a plan for turning the small island into an airborne plant-based fortress. He just needs to create a few specialized concoctions to ease it along and aid in the assimilation of the various forms of aggressive plants.
[6 charges used for level 7]
With that project mostly working on its own at this point, Kane changes his focus. Rather than like before where he was essentially using the many different plants as ingredients to an organic slurry to grow across, over, and into Navassa Island, he instead focuses on their specific attributes.
The first he looks at in regards to those with specialties is the Mourning Wood. It is clearly analogous to a gravewood tree, a tree that stands over a vast graveyard and collects deathly qi and yin energy from the many corpses buried around it. Frankly speaking, given enough help these sentient trees can become powerful cultivators in their own rights, but Kane lacks the knowledge and expertise required to create such a thing. However, he can still aid it collecting and utilizing the energy given off by the dead and dying for various purposes, such as growing itself or enacting various attacks.
Next is the three Colgera he purchased. Large, flying insectoid creatures with the ability to control the weather, particularly associated with blizzards. Truly, these are perfect vessels for the deathwinds produced by gales infused with yin energy, sapping the life and warmth from whatever they touch and adding the souls of the dead to their own power. Plus, if increased in size by a few times, they make for good transport.
Third is the Mucktorok. A relatively small creature, yet quite feisty, endlessly producing and spread toxic sludge from within itself. This thing merely passing by would spell the end of mortal empires, but at the scale the conflict of warlords is reaching, it is a tad quaint. However, with some tweaks, it isn't at all hard to increase its toxicity and production rate, filling it with innumerable poisons and concoction waste products, essentially turning it into a living landfill. He ends up making a quarantine island for it, just in case.
Fourth is the Marbled Gohma. Kane sighs as he looks over this creature, realizing that it was a bit of an impulse purchase. The other two creatures at 300 pills were both extremely appealing and will definitely be substantial additions to his forces, but this requires a bit more effort. Its ability to corrupt and manipulate nearby stone is interesting, particularly once Kane manages to increase its size. Yeah, this can work...
Moving on from the somewhat depressing Marbled Gohma, the various elemental dragons and golems are much more straight forward to enhance. While the Gleeoks don't tend towards the more extreme aspects of yin and yang energy, the Talus' certainly do and will make for very effective shocktroopers in the future, combined with some aesthetic redesigns and size increases. The Gleeoks receive similar though less pronounced enhancements, though throughout the process Kane notices that two bony protrusions akin to oversized shoulder plates appear to grow out of either side of their necks. Kane sees this as odd, but not much of a concern as it doesn't seem to injure them.
With those projects also delegated to their own crews and sets of alchemy dragons, Kane is left with the one major project he cannot leave to others. Or, well, two, but that only becomes apparent later. This being the spiritual bloodline creature he would trade to Yorsha for those essences. The process he devised for this is to implant tissues, particularly bone marrow and various organs, from born-spiritual beasts, using Divine Sense and various drugs to condense the recipient's blood essence and prevent tissue rejection or any number of various injuries this can cause. He is fairly certain that this will work, though it will require many successful recipients and time to produce a bloodline of any substantial potency. Of course, he already has a rather clear idea of what bloodline he seeks to emulate with this, as his experiments are primarily using large turtles and tortoises.
However, the process is, as one may expect, quite tedius and delicate. A single mistake can undo a relative hour of work or more, and Kane's mind is running rife with possibilities for something entirely unrelated, but perhaps infinitely more esoteric. After a while, he sighs deeply, setting aside his work on the bloodlines and instead picking up a pen and paper beginning to write a steam of consciousness, speaking out his thoughts as he does so, the voice resounding deeply within his isolated, silent lab.
"When I was receiving enlightenment, I saw many copies of myself being refined into the Neidan or Golden Core. There weren't just copies of me, but other versions of me. Young, old, living, deceased. Some wore clothes I have never seen, some wear the clothes of the Sect Ancestor. These are the alternate versions of myself, other lives I could have lived, but this enlightenment is beyond me. This is something that even those billion-year monsters rarely achieve. A Core Formation junior forming their own contained Cycle of Reincarnation, condensing the past, present, and future? That's a good joke. Such an attainment is far beyond what I am capable of, but I still grasped some parts of it..."
Kane stops for a moment before continuing.
"The Dao produced One, One produced Two, Two produced Three, Three produced the Myriad. The Dao forms wuji, the infinite singularity and monism; Wuji forms the taiji, yin and yang, not merely one duality but the consolidation and crystallization of every duality; Taiji forms the Three Pure Ones, the river of time, past, present, and future; The Three Pure Ones form all things, the five phases, the universe, space and time, etcetera. This is how creation was, well, created, or in another sense formed spontaneously, or perhaps simply always existed in some fashion. Some mystics from higher realms instead posit that it was not the Dao that begat this process, but rather Pangu, the Primordial Man who split the chaos, the hundun-state of existence, heaving apart heaven and earth, yin and yang. One is primordial chaos, Hundun, the universe merely a frothing bubble upon the unfathomable seas of chaos that expands from nothing, reaches a zenith, and then returns to nothing. A cycle of karma..."
Kane stops, realizing that a stream of blood is coming down from his nose. He wipes it away before continuing.
"What I grasped from my enlightenment is the opposite. The Myriad condensed into Three, Three into Two, Two into One. All reality condensing back into the thunder-egg. This is not an unnatural inversion, but just as natural as the formation. All things that come into being must one day cease to be. It is the natural course of the universe to eventually return to chaos. Within chaos is... everything. All forms of matter and energy, objects both natural and crafted, civilizations, universes, the five phases, yin and yang, and all daos. Everything is simply a transformation of the primal non-substance of chaos, a derivation from a state of infinite potentiality to one of more limited capabilities, which can then be returned to this state, A universe holds chaos, a mustard seed holds the Sumeru... Of course, not ALL daos, strictly speaking, are as such, but only those grand daos of higher realms are beyond this. So..."
He stops again, a drop of blood falling from under his eye onto the edge of the paper. He cleans himself before continuing.
"But what I saw was an induced inversion. The myriad into three, three into two, two into one forced by an outside power, like matter condensed to the point of losing any identifiable form. The universe compressed into a singularity; past, present, and future converging into a singular point of infinity; and yin and yang collapsing into a single state. I... cannot act on my enlightenment in this way. It is the most efficient way to do this, but it is so far beyond what I am capable of as to cease even being funny. I can avoid a lot of the more damning issues by focusing this inversion process onto my dantian, converging it into the thunder-egg and granting control over this primal chaos qi to ease the later processes, but how would I even..."
Kane stops writing yet again, but not because his enlightenment has taken a further physical toll. Rather, it is because his train of thought suddenly grinds to a halt at this point. He understands what this means; this is the universe telling him that is the most it can do for him, and that he will have to work from here. Of course, this is simply the mysticism that precedes the actual work. Perhaps Kane's profession makes him find this less helpful than he should, as he looks down on the paper with a bitter smile. Still, even he can recognize the importance of this.
With his mind finally cleared, he returns to work.
