“Kiri no Machi…” The Onmyoji whispered, recognizing Mizuki’s domain. Its tone contains a heavy pang of nostalgia.

  < City of Fog > Gurren transted, < Does it have any significance? >

  “Naturally.” Onmyoji replied in a matter-of-fact tone, a bit surprised at the ck of information Gurren has. “He was born in the province of Japan before Old Terra fell to the enemy of the world. Imagination, historical records, comprehension of the elements and intense emotion is indispensable to Magus Psykers. With this, Master had turned the region into one of the nameless cities of Old Terra.”

  There was no more reply from Gurren, as movements were detected from Mizuki on top of the tower. When his truesoul is exposed to the natural elements without a mortal shell, he feels the natural rate of soul decay is significantly lessened now that he has established a Domain, but the infinitesimal rate means it still erodes. Relying on the high moisture of the air, his truesoul turned into a streak of electric current, allowing him to almost instantly return to the orbital drop pod.

  The Onmyoji seemed to have expected this and selectively allowed his truesoul to pass through his Kekkai. After arriving, the first thing he did was to enter the st redundant mortal shell that he brought before pnetfall: the android mortal shell.

  Unlike the st one which was purely an analog mortal shell with a psychic emitter, this is a tech mortal shell. Up to a certain point, this machine is designed to mimic the biological human need almost perfectly, including breathing and eating food. Although it does not possess the extreme high-end technology the rank 5 mortal shell has, this android is still a treasure vault of rank 1 technologies.

  From the hardware perspective, there’s a lot of things that he can do to further upgrade this rank 1 Mars-pattern artifact, as it was not something that was designed to hold the truesoul of an Armored Soul Tribe. The compatibilities were a bit off as the blueprint for this specific model were outdated, but it's not like he has the facility to remake one.

  “Master… you’ve returned.” The two-tailed fox initiated a conversation as it watched the android’s system slowly turn on after a long period of non-activation.

  “Hmm.” Mizuki moved his body like how a professional athlete stretched their muscles before exercise. “The operating system has never been updated for four hundred years. But then again, this old model was kept for a redundant servitor...”

  Mizuki initiated a series of software updates, but there’s no connection to the Imperium’s quantum network so he had to hardcode them himself. Early estimation indicate it’ll take at least a handful of months if he dedicates all of his time since he also needs to upgrade the programming nguage a few times, but he refrained himself as he had to update it again to the new environmental data once further observation is made at the world outside his Domain. Rather than wasting his time and effort, he pushed that task to the AI Support Units who have access to the crystal processor of the rank 5 mortal shell. With its computation power, it should be finished in a few minutes at most.

  Approaching the mainframe, he let the Kasumi-controlled Epic mortal shell touch his head. A series of prismatic light slithered from his palm like micro-tentacles. It slowly twisted into wires and made their way into the gaps of the android’s neck before physically injecting the codes, along with some nanomachines to upgrade some part of the crystal processor to accommodate said update.

  As he had expected, it sted for a full fifteen minutes. When the strands of prismatic tentacles split from his android mortal shell, he already felt his depth of field and reaction time increase. Unfortunately, nanoms, which was the base for creating the Imperium’s nanomachines and nano-mods, were a limited resource so he could only upgrade the crystal processor.

  With this, he could connect and utilize the computation resource of his Epic mortal shell as long as within the range, using it as cloud computation resources which opens up a lot of strategic options.

  “Thank you for your support, Onmyoji-sama.” Mizuki offered a deep bow towards the fox, before doing the same to the AIs. “Wenren have assembled the immortal soldiers, I shall converse with you ter.”

  Exiting the pod, he approached the vilge pza where Xuangu Wenren and a Centaur Knight had already stood. The mist has spread thick enough to the point that it has become difficult for mortals to see things over a dozen meters ahead. The high moisture also slowly changes the environment, but according to Kasumi, it should take some time before the perpetual thunderstorm might occur but it was a topic of observation for ter. For now, he urgently needs to sync up with Xuangu Wenren and decide his next action.

  “I failed and cost us the st remaining Terra-pattern mortal shell.” Mizuki told them the truth. “I will need your help in creating a new one to make sure I can get outside this domain without deploying the AT-Field.”

  “We can use the metal in this area to support our haul.” As if following Wenren’s cue, the centaur knight next to him dropped a rge bone coffin straddled on its back. “I have awakened four other immortal soldiers. They will be returning soon with their loot, we can make a biomechanical one but the psychic emitter…”

  “Yeah, we can’t make them without making contact with the civilization of this world.” Mizuki shook his head in regret. While a mortal shell can be refined from all sorts of materials, the raw ingredients to refine a psychic emitter is quite difficult to fulfil.

  “Good news, Master. We don’t have to wait for long, we have identified at least 4 unknown groups showcasing intelligence.” Wenren eborate.

  There were two necromancer groups who had their attention drawn into this pce, while the remaining two were human-like. He did bme them for this, as terraforming two mountains was a feat only Legends and above could achieve. Still, reports from the wraiths indicate the necromancer groups had done something unnecessary to further incite the group of beasts, purposely attracting hordes during his most difficult time. If not for the Onmyoji’s chess piece, the vilge would be ravaged by the beasts.

  “So we confirmed Vorrath’s intel regarding the underground world, but civilizations that performed necromancy have a fundamental conflict of interest with us...” Mizuki pondered.

  The Imperium also practices necromancy, and it was not seen in a good light. The heroic deeds of the imperium’s undead could not hide the fact that their core needs still rely on the death or the misery of the living. The problem is, there’s only a limited amount of the living, and the undead cannot survive if the living is completely eradicated.

  “Shall we reduce the amount of competition, then?” the lich offered to decimate a civilization on a whim.

  Mizuki takes a deep look at him. Xuangu Wenren wasn’t all talk. He could definitely do that, given time and resources. Since he cked resources, then it’ll take some time for him to completely eradicate a necromantic civilization. The only hurdle in his campaign would be Legends or Paragons, but even then, it should be achievable within 100 years.

  But, that would mean he won’t be able to use Xuangu Wenren for a century.

  “Don’t bother.” Mizuki waved his hand in denial. The Imperium’s most precious asset is human resources and time. Xuangu Wenren has a special competency that Mizuki requires. When he is occupied, somebody else has to fill in the gaps, but he doesn’t have that many cohorts having the same specialty as him. “I need you to refine me a new set of mortal shells that could walk outside the domain.”

  Wenren nodded as he had expected, “Give me two days, I’ll come up with a new biomechanical design that fits your niche requirement, but if you want to mass produce mortal shells or expand our manpower, shouldn’t we resurrect the Flesh Sculptor first?” He paused, a hint of rare hesitation gleaned from his eyes. “From the looks of it, all of us are… too excited. We need to pacify ourselves as soon as possible.”

  “This soon?” Mizuki was caught off guard.

  Soul magus’ cultivation is split into three facets: soul strength, truesoul quality, and soul pacification.

  For any magus that cultivates their soul, these three facets are indispensable and must be cultivated in tandem, but Wenren’s concern is more focused on the st portion: soul pacification.

  A soul does not possess a traditional thought-processing organ like a brain. This is why the lowest tier undead, zombies and skeletons, are known to be retarded. Without orders, they would roam aimlessly, but they cannot comprehend complex orders either, so they can only only be used as cannon fodder.

  Therefore, to generate thoughts, the undead must consume their soul essence in a soul art.

  But there’s a huge problem with this method. Think of a soul like a flesh-and-blood body. If it was constantly being used to carry heavier weights than it was designed, wouldn’t the muscle eventually ripped and torn apart? Professional athletes are aware that they cannot constantly push their body to the absolute limit. Although not quite the same, the soul and the body have simirities in this aspect.

  A truesoul cannot constantly be ‘awake’ without a mortal shell supporting it.

  For Armored Soul Tribe, this problem can be greatly alleviated since they can utilize crystal processors to generate thought. The burden that their truesoul endures is minimized, allowing them to be ‘awake’ for an extended amount of time. With secret methods, their operational time can be extended indefinitely, allowing them to be perpetually functional as long as the conditions are fulfilled.

  This however, cannot be said the same with other undead.

  The analog mortal shell Xuangu Wenren occupies does not have a crystal processor. Even if it is equipped with one, he couldn’t integrate his soul with pure-tech artifacts. So what he’s doing is to carve some soul runes on the inside of his skull, turning it into a pseudo-artifact which optimizes the activation of killer moves that generates thoughts.

  This allowed him to have unmatched thought processing speed as long as he’s willing to expend soul essence.

  Naturally, the biggest weakness of this method is that it consumes an obscene amount of soul essence and puts a heavy burden on his truesoul. Wenren has been awakened and forced to inhabit a mortal shell that does not suit him, then pushed into an intense battle with terrible mortal shell-synchronization rate. Added with the sacrificial nature of his killer moves, the truesoul has become too excited and is slowly being damaged from all the accumuted stress.

  Due to this, the third facet of soul cultivation became even more important to Wenren.

  In essence, soul pacification is about pacification, recovery and healing.

  The best method to pacify one’s soul is, unsurprisingly, by sleeping. The typical Imperium’s undead spend most of their time sleeping to accumute thoughts. In these back-to-back emergencies however, sleeping is a luxury nobody can afford since time is also a resource that they do not have.

  Considering the alternative of pacifying the truesoul of his cohorts, Mizuki resisted the urge to sigh. It was the reason why having a fully awakened undead cohort is considered ‘high-maintenance’, even by the Sepulchral fleet standard.

  “Very well, I’ll prioritize the pacification problem next. The Flesh Sculptor is also my logistic officer, so her contribution in solving this issue is paramount.”

  Wenren nudged at the centaur knight next to him, in which the knight immediately moved. It quickly carried the bloody coffin to the small cave next to the orbital drop pod. “If we have the Flesh Sculptor, we can erect a corpse factory. By then, it won’t be long before we can fully resurrect Varkov’s Legion.”

  So-sama