Fu Anwen quickly realized that he could blink much faster than he could identify his surroundings. After blinking what he felt must have been a few dozen miles, which had taken less than ten minutes, he slowed down and began thoroughly scouring the forest for useful plants and trees.
He had a few immediate goals at the moment, which he kept in mind as he searched.
First was finishing his house. That was both the most important goal and the easiest to accomplish, as all he needed were some large trees and a few minutes of mental carpentry inside his space to wrap that project up.
Next was his martial farming project. While all of the necessary planning was complete, the practical side was still going to be a lot of work. For starters, he would need to teach one or two hundred children how to read. Eventually, he would also need to provide them with a large number of books on various topics, though the main focus would be on farming and martial arts.
There had been dozens of mortal methods for making paper or paper-like materials described in the books in the Royal Library, with the quality of the paper ranging from poor to excellent. Interestingly, the processes all had roughly the same level of difficulty. The main difference was in the availability of materials. He just needed to collect whatever materials he could find and leave the quality of paper he ended up with in the end in the hands of the heavens.
For now, wooden flash cards would be good enough for teaching his sect's future disciples how to read, while the children could practice writing using something reusable, like carving characters into wet clay or using a brush soaked with water to write them on a stone sheet.
Basically, he was looking for lots of wood, various paper-making materials, clay, animal hair for brushes, and any useful plants that he could grow either inside the space or on his upcoming sect's farmland. He also planned to see if he could find anything worth collecting deep underground, such as gems, metal deposits, or useful types of stone.
Fu Anwen's knowledge of herbs, including those used for both cooking and medicine, was at the level of a top expert. His understanding of plants in general was also at a similar level, though there had been fewer books describing various unimportant bushes and trees than there were books listing herbs that made food taste good or kept people alive. The reasons for that were obvious, but it still meant that he occasionally ran across plants he couldn't recognize. Unless he found an unknown plant that looked like it was special in some way, he planned to leave all of those alone.
As he blinked around, a huge amount of high-quality soil was brought into the space, only to be quickly turned into a large garden filled mostly with herbs and bamboo, the latter of which was a key ingredient in making many of the nicer varieties of paper.
Queen Fluffytail was also having the time of her life, as ripe berries far more delicious than the little green ones she'd been eating recently kept appearing on the ground all around her.
The animals Fu Anwen passed by in the outside world weren't having as nice of a time as Queen Fluffytail, though. Many of them suddenly started feeling a chill, as if the weather had turned cold without any warning. Fu Anwen silently apologized to the many critters who had sacrificed a portion of their hair to help create his future brushes.
After only an hour of searching and collecting, he had already completed his goals for the day. While he hadn't found the perfect materials, the items he'd collected were good enough to get the job done.
When he thought about how much had been accomplished in just a single hour, he couldn't even imagine what his situation would be like after another year passed. At the very least, he wouldn't be stuck making shoddy paper by then, that was for sure.
Fu Anwen took a quick break from searching to finish constructing his house. Each lightning-fast thought was equal to a wooden panel being sliced out or two pieces of wood being fastened together.
He didn't need to use nails to join two sections of wood together. His ability could blink a 'T'-shaped inner section directly out of two pieces of wood, then blink an 'H'-shaped connector into the gaps to securely hold them together. This made the house's construction very sturdy, while also making it trivially easy to build.
Eventually, a somewhat blocky looking three-story house sprung into being. The foundation was dark gray stone, while the rest of the house was made of cypress wood. There were also three separate basement sections, one of which was dedicated to cold storage for food.
The roof was covered with curved wooden tiles and sloped inward before rising to a point in the corners. About one foot up on the smooth walls was a row of windows, each with a small awning above it. The windows were covered with beautifully carved shutters featuring various woodland scenes, though most of the images seemed to focus on the actions of one particularly adorable fawn.
The largest issue marring the house's appearance was the lack of any sort of paint or staining on the wood. The house looked extremely plain. However, rectifying that would be easy to do in the future once more materials were available.
Fu Anwen was extremely happy with the finished product. He had used the most advanced architectural knowledge drawn from many generations of the Fu Kingdom's people to create his new house, and while it wasn't as attractive as some others, it had reached the pinnacle of functionality.
However, that was only true for Fu Anwen in particular.
His was probably the only house in the world that had been built with a two-foot-tall occupant in mind. While he'd left plenty of headroom for his body's future growth, as well as for visitors, he would finally be living in a house where everything was sized perfectly for him.
No more climbing up a chair like scaling a mountain, then standing on the chair to eat! Not only would he be able to see what was cooking now, he would even be able to do the cooking himself! And he would have to, since he planned to live here alone.
All the house was missing was the formations. He had already created all of the necessary formations during the long trip to Big Tree Village, but when he'd been brainstorming how to set up the formations for his sect's farms earlier, he had stumbled upon a much superior and less obtrusive method.
First, he'd pull a large block of stone into his space from deep underground. Next, he'd hollow it out, keeping the sides a few inches thick and carving the needed formation symbols and structures on the stone's inner walls.
This method would keep the formation safe from outside interference and avoid most sources of damage.
Now that he finally had the opportunity to test his ideas, he first needed to check how much spiritual energy was available in the area. The quantity and strength of the formations he could use would depend entirely on that. In the worst case, he wouldn't be able to use any formations at all.
The formation needed for this task was a very simple one—the aptly named Spiritual Energy Detecting Formation. It had been the very first formation he'd created after leaving the Jade Court.
Since the dense plants in the forest didn't leave much room for flat or open ground, he simply used his ability to pull an appropriately sized chunk of soil and plants into his space, then placed the formation plate on the newly cleared land.
With a thought, a round slab of stone about ten feet wide appeared on the forest floor. The border of the slab had hundreds of round slots inset into it, each containing a small stone disc.
The central area of the stone was covered with thousands of tiny, intricate structures. It looked almost like some kind of alien cityscape where strange creatures lived.
Structures like these formed the core of any formation. Using esoteric forces similar to gravity, they were able to attract and utilize spiritual energy in countless different ways. All formations relied on combining these structures together in specific ways to function.
It was strange to think that placing oddly shaped lumps of rock on the ground in the right locations and elevations could create an illusion or attract lightning, but the results couldn't be denied.
There were even natural formations that formed over time due to changes in rock formations or the growth of vegetation. However, finding one was extremely rare, mostly due to how quickly environmental changes occurred in nature.
One of the formation books in the Royal Library had contained a legend about a natural killing formation that had suddenly formed in a forest one day. After instantly slaughtering every living creature within hundreds of miles, it had quietly disappeared overnight.
Formations should never be underestimated.
After waiting for about two minutes, one of the discs around the edge of the stone slab suddenly floated up into the air.
"Success!" Fu Anwen cheered. "Now, we wait and see just how much there is..."
The wait was the worst part, but there wasn't anything he could do about that.
There were two methods of activating a formation.
The first was natural activation, which was the method that Fu Anwen was using in each of his designs.
Roughly one-quarter of the tiny structures on the formation slab were there solely to attract spiritual energy from the air, then redirect it to the relevant structures that would accomplish the formation's actual goal.
Natural activation was rarely used, as it was slow, dependent on the amount of spiritual energy in the environment, and required blending a unique Energy-Attracting Formation into one or more other formations.
The second method was to activate the formation with an energy source of your own. This could be a cultivator's own qi, spirit stones, or even the blood of a powerful being.
The second method was faster, but it was also much more costly to use, especially when it came to formations that were kept active at all times, such as defensive or illusion formations. Using the second method with a permanently active formation was a quick path to poverty.
Fu Anwen was unable to use the second method for obvious reasons, so it was fortunate that he was enough of a genius that blending two or more formations together didn't pose a problem for him.
He spent the next twenty minutes organizing the contents of his inner space. The rate at which the space was filling up made him frown. While there was still plenty of room for now, he still needed to collect many more resources. In addition, he also had quite a few future plans that would take up a lot of room.
He needed to either expand the space, which he had no idea how to do, or set up an external storage area. The latter option wasn't as convenient, but he supposed it couldn't be helped. Setting up a storage cave a few thousand feet below his house wouldn't be difficult, and anything he needed would still be at his fingertips most of the time.
He checked back in with the Spiritual Energy Detecting Formation, which seemed to have stopped at eight discs.
"Not bad," he nodded.
While there were hundreds of stone discs around the border of the formation plate, there was probably nowhere within the lands controlled by the Fu Kingdom that would need more than two dozen or so. This was a large part of why their kingdom focused more on martial arts than on cultivation.
Any location that caused over a hundred discs to float would likely already be controlled by a powerful cultivation sect.
The level of spiritual energy near Big Tree Village would be more than enough to run the formations needed for his new house and his future sect.
With the test finished, he pulled the formation back into his inner space, then returned the soil and vegetation he'd brought in earlier.
He spent the next few minutes reconstructing his house's formations using his new hollowed-out-stone method.
Since he didn't want to get back late for lunch and make his mother worry, Fu Anwen decided to go ahead and call it a day.
First, though, he didn't forget that he still needed to check out what types of rocks and metals he could find underground. It wouldn't even slow him down if he blinked back while underground instead of above ground, anyway.
After three blinks, he was far enough underground that he could no longer sense the surface.
While sensing completely dark areas with his ability was nothing new, being entirely encased in darkness while underground was. He suddenly started feeling a little claustrophobic. He blinked over to Queen Fluffytail and wrapped her up in another hug to help himself calm down.
She didn't shiver quite as much this time, having already labeled him as 'food giver' in her mind. Reinforcing her belief, he soon handed her a few ripe berries and a diced mushroom.
"Hoo," he loudly breathed out.
Rationally, he knew that his inner space and the outer space weren't really connected. His mind wasn't completely rational, however, which had led to him needing a hug from Queen Fluffytail.
Now that he'd relaxed, he inspected his surroundings to see if there was anything new. He pulled in a few materials he didn't recognize, but they were just slightly different types of stone that didn't have any special uses.
He continued blinking until he was about a mile down, still not finding anything special. Even after blinking all the way until he arrived underneath the village, his search was still unsuccessful.
"I guess I can't always be lucky. Still, with all the valuable resources underground, it shouldn't take too long to find something good. Right, Queen Fluffytail?" he asked while scratching her behind her ears.
In a sense, he was right. There was no end to the useful or valuable resources underground.
The lowest level of materials, like copper, iron, silver, gold, and gems, were extremely valuable to mortals. Gems even had a use in crafting formations, as they were just barely suitable for storing spiritual energy.
Above mortal materials were spirit stones and spiritual ores that were extremely valuable to cultivators. Some economies even operated entirely on spirit stones.
Even more valuable grades of spirit stones and spiritual ores could be found in some locations, though it was unlikely for any of those to show up in the Fu Kingdom. It took a massive amount of spiritual energy being absorbed over countless years to form those, and the Fu Kingdom simply had too little spiritual energy for such a thing to happen.
Fu Anwen quickly blinked his way back up to the surface. As he'd expected, he was directly in the center of the village. He then blinked his way around the village in an effort to find a good location to place his house. He soon mapped out a circular area about five miles in diameter centered on the village.
"Strange. Where's the big tree?" he wondered. "Big Tree Village should have a big tree, right?"
Queen Fluffytail, of course, had no answer for his question.
He did manage to find an excellent location for his house about three miles away from the village. There was plenty of privacy, as well as quite a bit of open land all around to allocate as farmland for his sect.
He quickly pulled a twenty-foot deep section of land the same size as his house's basement into his inner space. In specific locations at the bottom of the massive hole, he placed several of the sealed formation plates that he'd recently created.
Once those were in place, he covered them with a few feet of dirt, then placed the entire house on top of the dirt. After two Cooling Formations were placed into their dedicated slots above and below the cold storage basement, the construction was done.
New house successfully acquired!
