My Very Own Wasteland

Seething with rage, I tried to take it out on Cheon Nan-cho — only to get bounced away like so much garbage by a message that read:

Fuming with pure injustice, I rolled around on the ground.

"So this is your sect, Yu Hee? There's not a scrap of spiritual energy no matter how hard you scrub your eyes looking, and honestly it just looks like a wasteland."

"...You're telling me."

In the game, buildings just went up with a few clicks and some cash. Not so much here.

"Can't you put in a little extra time and use extreme-grade spirit stones to build spiritual lands on this place?"

"Not right now. Once I hit Golden Core, maybe...?"

"For your prisoner to reach Golden Core, you'd have to reach Golden Core first."

"I knew something was off — I had plenty of karma but my realm wouldn't budge. So that's why?!"

"Huh, you didn't know? Of course. Otherwise the prisoner status would just unlock."

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠iron grip of 100% Prisoner Mode. Cheon Nan-cho, having just learned this inconvenient truth, started rolling around on the dirt in the same outraged injustice I'd felt moments before. I watched her with dead, cooled-over eyes, then promptly snatched her up in my hand.

"Use the spirit stones you've got left and build as many spiritual lands here as you can."

"Huh? Why bother?"

"Because this land is mine now."

I'd chosen a random sect and gotten no master, no seniors, no wealth — but I had gotten real estate. And sure enough, having been Korean in my past life, the moment I thought of it as my land, attachment sprouted and flourished in an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠instant.

The reality patch only made it worse.

I'd even gotten a brand-new Base Return! An absolutely broken feature that let me return to base from any map, ignoring terrain scouting entirely, so long as I wasn't in combat.

"Hmm... now that I've got a base, maybe I can exploit the Invasion Event too."

The Invasion Event scaled in difficulty based on the value stored in your warehouse — random enemies just showed up and hit your base. Extremely annoying. Which meant, of course, there was a strategy for exploiting it.

Build a kill zone, and farm materials on autopilot like an idle game that scooped up loot for you!

The map had four hills neatly arranged in the four directions, so I decided to stack spiritual lands in bulk across the central basin. The goal was to pack the basin full of high-grade spiritual lands and turn it into a kind of spiritual-power training ground.

Slaughter energy was one thing, but now that I'd broken through and could use spiritual power as well, I keenly felt the need to train it. I'd entered the cultivator's path by essentially bypassing it with slaughter energy, and there was no denying I'd been high-passing my realms like crazy with the stuff.

According to Cheon Nan-cho, ordinary cultivators took centuries to raise their realm as a matter of course, and even with talent, you couldn't leap years at a time the way I did without a sect dumping massive support on you.

I needed to train spiritual power to some degree just to pick up basic techniques and cosplay as a normal cultivator! Plus, the training exp you got from spiritual-power practice was surprisingly generous.

Maybe because I'd only been gaining exp through slaughter energy, the exp from spiritual power — combined with the 20% to all exp from the newly opened racial window — made training exp come in pretty nicely.

And above all.

"A personal weapon!"

The fact that reaching Golden Core would let me obtain a personal weapon through spiritual power filled me with pure romantic longing, and of course the passion overflowed right along with it.

Using Rest at the Base meant fewer Events than wandering the map, so the eok-kka was definitely lighter — but lighter wasn't the same as gone.

"Urgh."

A Great Misfortune and Small Fortune event combo had demonic possession drop by for a hello, only to get crushed by slaughter energy before it could even introduce itself. The aftershock alone wrecked my cultivation, and black blood burst from all seven orifices. Blood from the eyes and mouth I could handle — but blood from the ears and nose was just filthy and gross!

It stung, it burned, and years of spiritual-power training under Double Speed Mode had been wiped out by a single event. Hollowed out, I rolled around on the ground.

Not having built a warehouse yet meant no Invasion Events, so I could train at the base at my leisure — nice — but spirit stones were running low. Naturally, that was less about building spiritual lands and more about Cheon Nan-cho gobbling spirit stones every single day.

Why did a prisoner cost money? Because you had to send them on prisoner expeditions.

As a field-boss-tier prisoner, her rates for great success and success on prisoner expeditions were disgustingly high, she brought back tons of items, and her special-event rate was high too — if not for that, I'd have been starving her and still sending her out.

Maybe I should carefully clear the map and find some dungeons to run.

The surest way to make money was beating up humanoid mobs, but...

Once you had a Base, the spawn rates for Villages and Forts on the map dropped hard. Cities and Metropolises already had abysmal spawn rates to begin with.

I tried a money-dupe bug just in case — only gold and silver coins came out.

In vanilla those counted as currency, but under the Xianxia mod they were pretty trash, so I ran them all through the crafting window into gold and silver bars and stacked them in my inventory.

Reality patch had its upsides for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stuff like this.

Of course, the only things you could make with those were high-value decorations for jacking up Invasion Event difficulty at the base, and they were basically useless among cultivators.

I left the Training Hall — a basic building that required nothing but ten wooden planks as materials, had zero value, and made you wonder why you'd even build it at a base in the first place.

With the reality patch, using it consumed slaughter energy and spiritual power plus spirit stones, but while you were inside you got a Pause, so you could train without worrying about lifespan. Absolute honey. Except, again, for those damn spirit stones.

"Stop eating them already!"

"But...! There's so little spiritual energy here that I can't survive without eating these!"

"You're eating them even inside the inventory!"

"There's no spiritual energy in there at all, so of course I have to eat them to survive!"

I don't know about that lore! With the cooldown locking me out of prisoner expeditions, I had no choice but to stop training and go map-hopping again. Using Base Return randomly replaced the maps around the base with undiscovered ones, so I'd have to scout terrain and reveal the map all over again.

At least the level correction on surrounding maps based on base value and player map still applied, so it wasn't bad for farming slaughter energy.

"The problem is exp barely stacks at all."

Having to rebuild the residual stats I'd prepared in advance for purifying slaughter energy before Golden Core made gaining exp several times harder.

Of course.

"Auto-Battle!"

Running Auto-Battle with my brain switched off meant lower exp gains, sure. Wouldn't manual combat be better? An unavoidable choice for my mental peace. The 20% exp that flew off with Auto-Battle was basically covered by the racial bonus anyway.

Having my body move on its own and fight as a proxy was so comfortable — I just had to say "Auto-Battle" out loud.

I'd even set up separate gear specifically for Auto-Battle. Only equipment with the Enlightened prefix for exp gain rate and the Greedy prefix for loot quantity, while managing durability as carefully as possible.

The downside? Zero skill exp from combat!

Gyaaah! Even without a skill window, I refuse to accept this kind of permanent debuff!

Regretting it was already too late.

Permanent debuffs could only be removed with a chance through special event-chain rewards, so I'd given up on that ages ago.

"How the hell is this a small misfortune, you bastard?!"

A bolt of lightning from the sky during Auto-Battle, and out came that message. I cursed and raged like any ordinary day.

At least if there were dark clouds I could brace myself — oh, today's misfortune event might drop a lightning bolt on me. But a bolt from a clear blue sky? What kind of sick mind put this event in?!

And Small Fortune that raised stats used the exact same visual, just to confuse people and piss them off twice over! Plus if your slaughter energy or spiritual power was bottomed out from Auto-Battle, it casually slapped on a Serious Injury debuff!

At the field boss's appearance, I immediately pulled out a rare-grade greatsword nearly twice my body size, slapped Spoon on it, and — kang — brought it down. One hit, and the field boss was a was.

"Without even using a transformation skill, just Earth Slaughter Art, and it's a one-shot!"

Even with only Earth Slaughter Art — a passive that could be toggled on and off — I'd reached the point of one-shotting field bosses. And not regular field bosses: ones with field-boss enhancement mode on.

Given that the mod made raid bosses and field bosses nearly equal in power aside from HP, I could probably kill a raid boss if I used a transformation skill!

"But fuck, what about the exp?"

Job bonuses are such bullshit!

"Tch... I need to find monsters higher level than me, or kill NPCs that give lots of slaughter energy."

Leveling by hunting on the map was a lost cause. Figure I'd filled up on slaughter energy and head back to base with spirit stones.

"I've got Inventory Expansion Mod and Inventory Increase Mod and still, fuck."

Why! Why the hell! Currency that doesn't even stack and eats inventory slots!!! Xianxia mod creator!!!! Do you have no conscience at all?! You call this currency?!!

"I still need to grab gear and crafting materials too."

Inventory management was already tight from treating weapons as consumables thanks to Spoon!

Of course, like all mods, as my level rose and max slaughter energy increased, the mods' performance scaled up on their own, so inventory expanded too — but it was still a pain to manage!

Without the Inventory Auto-Sort mod, I'd have given up ages ago on managing it like some unholy fusion of Tetris and a memory game!