Matt was sitting in a new-made room. The whole sect was busy at work with constructing the new stronghold and he was stuck here with them. He had spent a couple of months hovering in the clouds and watching for any potential spies or people that could cause trouble. The life of the sect leader was proving to be somewhat boring.

His two friends weren’t here either. Huo Qiang was patrolling the borders and Feng Liena was moving between the lands and guarding their resource convoys. He, as the strongest of their cultivators, was defending the Dimensional Regalia along with the new location. There was nothing interesting to keep him busy though.

He couldn’t really cultivate as they needed him to keep watch. There was no radio, no TV, and the holograms that he made were back at the old Zhang headquarters. If they were here he could at least listen to some news and laugh at the stern presentation.

‘This sucks… how much longer will this take?’

They had managed to prepare a makeshift room for him. He had a quill in his hand and there was a large canvas on the wall. He was using it to redraw the area around them while using the system map as a reference.

He did find some mineral pockets deep underground along with some other resources. They could use them to bolster their depleted stock as after the war there wasn’t much left. Luckily the Feng Clan and Huo Clan weren’t hit that hard, they still had all of their stock.

After Huo Qiang’s father discovered that his son was using an immortal grade technique, he quickly changed his tune. He was all in from that point, Qiang even asked Zhang Dong if he would permit him to let his father use the same cultivation technique as him. He just shrugged and gave him the okay, he had given Qiang that as a present and he could do with it as he pleased.

The idea of drawing the map came to him as a means to end this boredom. He was also working on copying down some cultivation techniques for the future sect disciples. He had even decided on the color grading of the robes. With the help of some sect members that were not as color blind as he was.

At first, he wanted to separate everyone into a different element. Red for fire, blue for water, and so on. This would be a bit jarring as there were quite a few elements and it would just be too bothersome.

First, the disciples would start out in plain gray robes. These would be what every outer sect disciple would get. Then the inner sect disciples would get blue robes and the core disciples violet as it was apparently a color of nobility and royals. He and the other two grand elders were free to choose their own robes.

The elders would have the same color coding but they would have added symbols to their robes that would distinguish them. There would be other markings if the person was part of another inner group like their alchemist association that still needed to be made. Everyone would also have the character for their sect sewn into the back of the robe. This would let everyone else distinguish them from the masses.

They needed to house various types of learning halls to produce specialists in professions. They needed pill makers, weaponsmiths, beast tamers, and of course a martial hall to house the best fighters.

They had a long way to go as they were just setting up the basic scaffolding. It would probably take at least a year till this actually started to look like something. Luckily he didn’t have to lift a finger during all of this. His main purpose was to act as a deterrent against the other sects but this also meant that he needed to remain here.

‘And done…’

With the last stroke of his quill he had finished the large map of the area that he was responsible for. There were many large cities that housed millions of people in them. This world was truly gigantic, it was even bigger than his previous home planet.

It took about two days to make a round trip around his old planet. When he was at core formation his flight speed was comparable to a jet plane and he still needed a day to fly between some cities and sometimes longer.

He was now the proud owner of this land. There were many millions of people living here, most of them scared as a new force had taken over. To them there wouldn’t be much of a change, from one tyrant to another was their consensus. No one thought that the other large sects would be any different from the others. Overbearing and quick to anger if face was being tarnished was the way people lived in this world.

Matt was trying to defend himself against this way of thinking but even he saw that it was hard to make these people change. Even he knew that unless you had the biggest fist around, no one would listen to you. He didn’t want to rule with it though, he would rather have everyone work together in a more coherent way.

‘Living as one big happy family is all nice and fine, but…’

He still would need to use his fists. The sect was weak and they had many eyes looking at them. Looking for them to fail, ready to pounce at an opportunity. He would still need to act as a powerful and all-knowing leader. Maybe if he had ten more nascent soul elders on his side he would be able to relax. Though controlling so many powerful individuals might cause some internal disputes.

The finished map would be placed in the new meeting room. It would act as a good prop for further plans. He decided to take a stroll through the new area, outside he could see his sect members working together. All of the three main clans were here, everyone working diligently new relationships created day by day which made him happy.
He looked to the side as his senses picked something up. It was one of their large transports bringing over more building materials from the other clans. This one arrived from the Huo Clan. He perked up a bit as he felt a familiar person coming with this convoy, it was Feng Liena acting as the guard.

She would be free for a couple of days now as everything needed to be unpacked. With her around, he could probably take a bit of a breather as she also was a nascent soul master with a powerful spiritual sense.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror while slightly nervous. Previously he never did care about his outer appearance, now he was checking out if his white robe didn’t have any wrinkles in it. He even raised his armpit to see if he wasn’t sweaty. Luckily his body had evolved so much that there wasn’t really any foul odor produced by it.

“Hello, how have you been?”

“Eyyy, how you doin?”

“Junior Sister, you’re looking as lovely as ever…”

He practiced in front of the mirror, his face looked tense, and the way he smiled looked forced at best. It was really hard for an unsocial person like him to actually talk to women. There wasn’t really anyone that he could ask for advice and most of them would probably just say that he should propose.

Dating as a concept wasn’t really a thing in this world. People got together with the sole purpose of forming family ties or making kids. There were relationships with love involved but most of the time it was arranged by your elders. Unless your standing was high, the privilege of choosing a partner wasn’t your own.

He wanted to punch the mirror in front of him as he looked like an idiot. The amounts of cringe coming out of his mouth were over the charts. He finally decided to leave his temporary room. His destination was the large flying ship that had precious cargo on it.

He went out instead of flying as the ship that had already landed. He had a bit of stage fright but he had gone on some mini-dates with Feng Liena a couple of times before. They had some tea with each other while discussing the sect's current predicament.

When exiting his room he garnered some attention from the other sect members that gave him the usual salute. He just nodded at them and continued forward, the guards by his new room followed right after him as they were ordered to tend to his needs. This didn’t help with his predicament as it only meant that there were more eyes on him.

He continued forward, whenever someone saw him they stopped in their tracks to bow. Even if they were performing some difficult task they would take some time to show their respect. He even saw some people dropping a massive block made from solid rock just bow with appreciation.

He took his time, not really being in any hurry. The days felt slow as he had to be here guarding the construction site. Taking a little stroll through the new land was one of the things that could make time pass a bit faster.

The sect workers were busy with flattening the land and clearing out all the trees. This was also the main reason why this was taking so long. They had to remove their roots along with the trunks. The only good thing about this task, they were getting a lot of free construction materials. The trees here weren’t of such good quality so they would probably be mostly used as timber or for furniture. They could also be used for things like shacks that didn’t need to be too sturdy.

The rapid deforestation caused a lot of friction with the beasts living here. They were all lower-level beasts so they didn’t pose a threat. By his order, they were to be captured for future beast taming training.

He came out of the corner and finally saw their ship. It previously had the Feng Clan flag hanging from it but now it had changed to the United Element sects characters. He didn’t hide his presence at all so people probably noticed that he was already approaching.

Feng Liena wasn’t the only person coming. To his surprise, his two disciples were also here, with them was Liena’s younger sister Nuana. She was hanging around Zhang Liu’s arm like a tick while the youth looked uncomfortable. His sister Zhang Xue was walking while being accompanied by Huo Kong, Huo Qiang’s most prominent son.

There were also various other members from the other clans from the junior generation tagging along. They had become bored with staying at the Zhang Clan sanctuary and asked Feng Liena to take them along on her escort mission. It was a lot more interesting to fly on a large ship and visit other places than being cooped up in one place. They had quickly gathered together and most of these people were the youths that had gone to the Dao Festival together. Matt even saw one of the youths being surrounded by at least ten Gyarus , he looked like he would be having a similar fate to his grandpa.

This made things a bit more awkward but he didn’t falter while walking forward. He wanted to try smiling in front of the arrivals to greet them but he came out stone-faced as always. The moment the people saw his white-robed form coming their way they all stopped in their tracks. This was their sect leader that was coming to greet them, they all felt honored.

“Greeting sect leader!”

Before he could welcome them they called out, giving him the usual show of respect. He glanced at some of the people, some were being more respectful than the others. His two disciples seemed glad that he was here and he could tell that they wanted to chat with him. His gaze was glued to the person that was walking in the front, his so-called ‘girlfriend’ Feng Liena.

“Ah, greeting to you all and to you to junior sister.”

He made sure to single her out from the group a little smile appearing on his face.

Feng Liena nodded slightly while covering her face with a fan. The people that came with her looked between the two, they had noticed that something was going on. The person most interested in this exchange was the one hanging on by Zhang Liu’s arm.