Plans for the Tournament

[You have been in secluded cultivation for fifteen years. Your little friend has reached the Qi Foundation Stage three years ago, and is currently in seclusion, preparing to form another pillar.] the system responded.

"Huh, brother Ye is pretty good to break through so soon. Also, I should probably repay his kindness in teaching me by letting him know to at least build enough pillars..." Meng Li contemplated aloud.

With that, Meng Li stood up and gathered his bearing before leaving the small room.

The small public room which had doors to both Ye Jian and Meng Li's rooms was quite barren, save for the small table and two cushions. For now, Meng Li wasn't sure if he could intrude into Ye Jian's room since he could be deep in cultivation, that he shouldn't be disturbed. So, Meng Li asked the system once again.

[Your little friend isn't at an important stage. He's merely accumulating power for the next breakthrough, there is no problem.] the system's response reassured him, and Meng Li directly opened the door to Ye Jian's room.

Within, Ye Jian was sitting calmly at the mat in the middle. He was practically like a statue, save for a periodical breath he took, and sometimes used a strand of Qi to blow dust off of him.

The moment Meng Li entered the small room, Ye Jian was stirred. He instantly opened his eyes and locked onto Meng Li. Strangely, although the initial sharpness disappeared, there still remained some anger... Or rather, dissatisfaction.

"Brother Ye, how was your cultivation?" Meng Li asked with a smile.

"It went okay... I broke through to the Qi Foundation Realm. But brother Meng, shouldn't you have made some plans to let me alert you?" Ye Jian asked, frustrated. "It's been fifteen years! Fifteen!!! I know that for cultivators, merely fifteen years isn't much, but this is practically double my current lifespan..." Ye Jian truly was frustrated, but mainly due to another reason. No matter how he tried to alert Meng Li, even going as far as trying to open the door directly, he couldn't get through to him. Thus, he had been practically forced to stay in this small windowless house for a straight fifteen years, only cultivating...

A mortal might directly lose his mind from such a thing, but Ye Jian had an extremely resilient mind, having been a Origin Soul cultivator. Thus, he was merely a bit frustrated, and received no long lasting effects from the ordeal... If he did, he would be far angrier than he was. But Meng Li was still quite embarrassed - he had inconvenienced Ye Jian with this breakthrough... After all, despite time being practically frozen in the world, the time for Meng Li and Ye Jian was naturally the same. And Meng Li had accidentally forgotten this fact somehow...

"I apologize, brother Ye... I actually broke through to Origin Core Realm, and the breakthrough was a bit hard." Meng Li did his best to explain it without revealing his secrets to Ye Jian. Ye Jian was only exaggerating his anger to mess with Meng Li, after all - there was no real rush to do anything, and the environment in the control room was practically a divine place for cultivation. Even Ye Jian, after merely ten years, managed to break through to the Qi Foundation Realm, and in those five years, establish five pillars already! With merely four more pillars, he would be able to begin the Pillar Merging Stage, and quickly be ready to break through to Origin Core Realm!

Or so Ye Jian thought... When Meng Li saw Ye Jian's cultivation, he couldn't help but give him a few pointers.

"Brother Ye, it's pretty good that you were able to break through to the Qi Foundation Realm, but before breaking through to the Origin Core Realm, you should accumulate enough pillars." Meng Li begun speaking. Ye Jian listened only because he treated Meng Li as a brother, and doubted that he would be able to provide any good advice. However, he soon grew speechless from what Meng Li was saying.

"I created more than five hundred pillars when I started the Pillar Merging Stage, and you should probably make as many too." Meng Li finished, with a completely serious face, while Ye Jian looked at him like he was crazy.

At first, Ye Jian opened his mouth a few times while looking at Meng Li with some anger in his eyes, but eventually, he gave up and simply sighed.

"Brother Meng, can we just... return?" he asked, defeated. Meng Li, although confused as to Ye Jian's behaviour, was also eager to return. He quickly teleported them both back to the small clearing they made a stop at.

The location was identical to how it was all those years before, as after all, the world was froze. Meng Li suddenly remembered something and told Ye Jian.

"Oh yeah, during all this time, not even a second has passed here. And another thing you should know is that other people can break through to the Origin Core Realm now..." Meng Li said. Ye Jian turned and asked with a small frown.

"Weren't you saying that other people can only break through when you're a whole realm higher? How come they can suddenly catch up?" Ye Jian asked. Meng Li showed a small bitter smile and replied.

"I cultivate my soul too, and during the secluded meditation, I reached the level of being able to leave my body with my soul. Due to this, the laws my master has left behind wrongly recognized me as a Nascent Soul cultivator." the truth was quite funny to tell the truth, so Meng Li was a bit embarrassed about the matter. However, he wouldn't hide something from Ye Jian simply because he was embarrassed - they were brothers, after all!

Ye Jian couldn't help but laugh a bit in response. He couldn't help but joke in response, too.

"Then you should hurry up and cultivate so that other cultivators won't get stronger than you!" he laughed.

Meng Li only embarrassedly touched his nose. It was a bit of a habit for him, and other people could tell if he was embarrassed by this motion. Of course, he only felt comfortable revealing such a thing to close friends, and wouldn't act as such in public.

"Yeah... I suppose" Meng Li laughed back. Even though he said so, he knew that other cultivators would have much trouble catching up since even the strongest ones currently alive were at the peak of the Qi Sea Realm... Correction, at the early Qi Foundation Realm. But that specific person wouldn't really live much longer, so Meng Li didn't particularly think he was a threat.

"So, brother Ye... What should we do now? I truly don't know." Meng Li asked. He felt as though he was asking it all the time, but there really wasn't any other way, since he had no experience at all with what they were attempting to do.

"Hmm... In my previous life, I have heard of some old monsters who constantly stayed in secluded cultivation, emerging once every few centuries, or even a thousand years... Those kinds of monsters have an extremely high cultivation base and since they're constantly cultivating, not many people know of them. Now that we, or rather I, am strong, then we can pose as one of those old monsters and simply get someone with more subordinates to spread the word." Ye Jian proposed. To be fair, this was really the only way to do so quickly.

After all, strength really speaks - the cultivator who used a secret art to break through with the limits in place could spread his name throughout the entire world simply by sending a few messages. Thus, if they came forward with such high strength as well, the news would be spread far and wide.

"Sounds good, but if we want many people to attend, then we will have to spread the message sufficiently soon. So for example, a few months in advance... That should be enough time. And better find a place somewhere neutral..." Meng Li added. "For example, if we make the announcement in the Full Moon Empire, the people from the Nine Sun Kingdom wouldn't be able to attend, right?..."

Meng Li remained silent for a bit, before suddenly shouting.

"I have an idea! Why confine the test to a single city when we can do many? I can probably find a flying treasure which can carry many people, and then we simply have to notify people across the continent to gather on a specific day... Then on that day, we fly around the world and gather all the people who try to take the test!" Meng Li excitedly spoke. Ye Jian listened while in thought, and as he listened, his eyes revealed that he was interested.

"Good idea... So, could you check if you have a treasure capable of containing enough people?" Ye Jian asked. Meng Li nodded and checked the summoning tab.

It turned out that breaking through caused many new things to appear within the summoning tab - probably since the laws even which the system's spirit couldn't control judged that he was in the Nascent Soul Realm. Meng Li wasn't quite sure, but he guessed it was the case, because the treasures he could now summon were... Powerful. And even with Meng Li's new cultivation, he felt some discomfort due to the pressure the amount of Qi required to summon the stronger ones.

He managed to find a few treasures capable of transporting a huge number of people, but unfortunately for him, all of them were quite slow. Well, they weren't really that slow, but far too slow for Meng Li's purpose. They needed a treasure capable of traversing the entire globe in less than a day.

With this new condition, there were far less treasures capable of such a thing. Meng Li did, however, find one which suited their goal. Strangely enough, it was a sword... A treasured sword which had a few functions. It could be used for attacking like normal swords, but the special function of this sword was the ability to grow to an enormous size and the ability to fly with merely the cultivator's control.

As far as the sword itself went, it wasn't specifically a treasure meant for transporting anyone, but the enormous size of the sword allowed for many people to board it. The only problem could be protection from the harsh wind, but that could be remedied by simply using some Qi, and could even be used as a tool to allow the potential disciples to train... Of course, that last part was Meng Li's wild imagination.

Meng Li tried summoning the sword immediately, but as the treasure was powerful, he found that actually summoning it would take a lot of time... The amount of Qi required was a few times bigger than Meng Li's entire Qi, so he would need to exhaust all of it, recover, exhaust it again, and recover again.

In total, Meng Li estimated it would take him about a week, but the treasure was worth it.

He informed Ye Jian of the matter, and told him about the size of the sword. When transformed to the biggest form, the sword reached a length of a kilometre, with the width of about fifty. To be safe, they wouldn't allow people to sit near the edge, with a margin of about five metres. Thus, the total area people could sit in was forty square kilometres, and assuming a person only took a metre squared, they could transport an enormous amount of people. But, for comfort, people required more space - Ye Jian estimated they could transport about four thousand people on the sword.

"So, I'll first summon the sword, then we will find the cities to notify." Meng Li summed up. Ye Jian nodded and found a clean space to sit. Meng Li already told him that doing so would take him a week, so Ye Jian prepared to cultivate for a week. Meng Li sat down too, and began summoning the sword.