Library

As ordered by Jack, the headquarters was transferred to the mainland. The process was smooth; the silver badge easily solved every problem that occurred.

The headquarters was relocated to a rural area far from Sky City. After all, even though Jack had the permission of the Brown Dynasty, it didn't mean he could just seize land. The sect grounds required a lot of space, and land near Sky City was expensive, so there was no choice but to build the headquarters far away, where the land was cheap.

Still, with Jack's speed as a Nascent Soul cultivator, he could cover the distance in just half an hour, so it wasn't a problem for him.

Immediately after setting up a temporary headquarters, he left the rest of the work to Faith and traveled to Sky City; he could not wait to see the library.

The library is not free; using it requires contribution points. The good thing is that one can buy contribution points using energy stones.

Jack is very rich for a Nascent Soul cultivator; his sect had a monopoly over the world's resources for years and gathered a lot of energy stones. Not all of the resources went into his pocket; many people who discovered mines were given shares of the profit. Faith and Amber also got a lot of money as the leaders of the main branches.

Still, as their master, Jack also took their energy stones. After all, they also needed the Nascent Soul chapter of the Heaven's Way cultivation technique. As such, nearly all the disciples pooled their wealth and provided Jack with over one million large energy stones.

Of course, Jack only gives them the simplified version; only his trusted disciples can get more complete versions of the technique.

...

Looking at a small building called Library 81, Jack sighed. He knew exactly how the Brown Dynasty's internal structure worked; after all, he wrote all of this.

The Brown Dynasty keeps all of its books in Brown City, its seat, where its patriarch lives. The branches have limited access to the books but can improve their access if they pay up.

The library branch in Sky City actually has quite a lot of rare books; for a viscount branch, its library is quite big. For Jack, however, those rare books are pipe dreams; he doesn't have enough money to even look at their covers.

One million large energy stones translated into one million inferior contribution points, which was good enough. Books at the energy gathering level usually cost between 1 to 10 inferior contribution points. Those at core formation cost between 11 to 100, those at Nascent Soul cost between 101 to 1,000, those at divine soul cost between 1,001 and 10,000, and those at substance soul cost between 10,001 to 100,000. Finally, books at multiple souls realm cost between 100,001 to 1,000,000, plus at least one mid-level contribution point.

Mid-level contribution points cannot be bought or sold; the only way to earn them is to please the lords of the Brown family. Brown family's knights, barons, and viscounts can all grant mid-level contribution points to those who provide valuable service to the dynasty. High-level contribution points can be granted by earls, marquises, and dukes, while Great contribution points can be granted by the emperor.

There is another kind of contribution point, called ancestral points, which can only be given by family ancestors. These are basically theoretical, as none of the ancestors paid attention to these matters.

Of course, there may be books that don't fit into these general categories. For example, a core formation technique may be low-level but contain crucial knowledge; such books probably require mid-level contribution points to access.

Jack recalled what he wrote in the settings of the Brown family. According to his setting, the agency responsible for organizing these books was called the Committee on Literature. It comprised cultivators, trusted mortal scholars, and at least one cultivator in the void soul realm. These books had been vetted thoroughly; there was an extremely small chance he could find a valuable book left somewhere without anyone noting its true value. Those things happen only in stories. In reality, forces as large as the Brown family would probably not make such amateur mistakes.

Upon entering, he saw a few people quietly reading, who ignored him. It wasn't as busy as one might expect.

One reason is that after borrowing a book with inferior contribution points, one can read it anywhere one wants; the only condition is not to let anyone else read it. However, one cannot take away books that require even one mid-level contribution point; it must remain in the building. These people who read books in the building are probably high-level cultivators reading valuable books borrowed using mid-level contribution points. Also, this building is only one of many library buildings, so it's not like everyone who wants to borrow books has to come here specifically.

Jack went forward and looked at a monitor. After entering his name, his profile loaded. It had details of his cultivation level, time of joining, age, and number of contribution points.

This information was all provided by Jack himself. After obtaining the identity badge, all sect members were required to fill out membership forms. They did so, and the ministry quickly entered all the information into its database. Of course, the dynasty is not stupid; it knows this data may be false. But for those below the substance soul level, it really makes little difference; it can be said that the dynasty is really lax in its treatment of weaker cultivators.

Jack entered the main portal, which had many categories: cultivation techniques, spell books, knowledge in different Daos, crafting, pill making, commonsense knowledge, knowledge about magical beasts, and even poetry and immortal arts. Every category was further sub-categorized by cultivation rank; for example, poetry was divided into energy gathering level, core formation level, Nascent Soul level, and so on.

Jack checked the energy gathering level of the poetry category. There were trillions of different titles on all subjects. It was extremely vast, exactly as he wrote it into the Brown Dynasty's backstory.

One might think, what is the use of poetry? After all, cultivation has nothing to do with art. But they would be wrong. Poets usually put deep meaning into their work; the same is true about immortals. The work of a Nascent Soul can be extremely enlightening for core formation cultivators. Hearing a poem can enlighten a cultivator, helping them to break through their bottlenecks or inspiring them to find solutions for their issues in cultivation.

The same is true about paintings; one simple look at the work of a high-level cultivator may have a ground-shaking effect on a lower-level cultivator. These things, however, were not really useful for Jack; his level and vision are too high, so it's unlikely the work of a mortal could inspire him. Even ancestors of the Brown family at rank 8, in front of his real body, are not even as big as dust.

He directly ignored these and went straight into the 'miscellaneous knowledge' category. After searching for the word "heaven," he found a few books, all of which were at least at the level of the multiple souls realm; he could only see their names, not even allowed to see their covers.

"As expected, research into Heaven's Way is not deep here. The little available knowledge is only accessible to high-level cultivators," he nodded. He knew the Brown family and even the four great sects knew very little about Heaven's Way.

Still, he wasn't disappointed. Direct knowledge about Heaven would have helped, but he could still gain knowledge about Heaven in a roundabout way.

He started buying books about tribulation clouds, lightning, resentment, the elements, wills, anger, emotions, the art of expression, suppression, energy, etc. Jack bought over 100 books, all about very general topics, nothing difficult, things that at first glance may sound unhelpful for improving a cultivation technique.

What is the Will of Heavens? It is the will of the world, its self-protection mechanism. But one can look at it another way: the Will of Heavens can be seen as the world's emotions, its feelings. Through Heaven's Will, the world expresses itself through tribulations.

What is Heaven? Some may say Heaven is what is in the sky, the clouds, etc., but that is false. Simply put, Heaven is all there is in a world, elements, and energy. The world is created by complete laws, but that is from a creator's perspective. On the ground level, the world is made of two things: elements and energy. By understanding energy and elements, one can indirectly learn about the Heavens.

By reading these simple books, Jack can increase his knowledge base and finally attempt to create the Nascent Soul chapter of his cultivation technique. His main problem until now was an abysmally low level of research into the basics. With these books, his main weakness would be patched.

Still, these 'low' level books still cost over 500,000 inferior contribution points. Jack was satisfied and kept the rest of his points.

All the books he ordered suddenly appeared on the counter. They were produced by a spell cast by a formation. Jack didn't have an spatial storage, so he was forced to put them in a carriage and flew to his seat while carrying the carriage. In all his time in the building, none of the cultivators sitting and reading paid any attention to him.

Now that he has the books, he has to start reading and absorbing their knowledge. After he does that, he can probably create the Nascent Soul chapter of Heaven's Way. He can only do this for two reasons: first, his vision is far beyond everyone else's; he knows the destination and only lacks knowledge about the road to get there.

Second, he already has the base technique of Heaven's Way. Using the base as a prototype makes creating the Nascent Soul realm much easier. The base version was made using his knowledge as a follower of Rachel, so its value is immeasurable even though it is only at the core formation level.

The books have a small formation that detects the person who reads them. For this reason, Jack didn't dare let anyone else get close to the books; he would be heavily fined if anyone except himself read them.

As a result, he went into long-term closed-door cultivation.