Book 10: Chapter 26: Changes (2)

Soul Universe had undergone a staggering number of changes over the last 12 years. Or, rather, it would be more accurate to say that the whole of the Mortal Alliance had undergone revitalizing changes.The first most prominent change was the infrastructure. Dyon had poured a lot of resources and effort into improving the way of life for even the poorest of his citizens. Now, the Mortal Alliance could only be described as breathtakingly beautiful.Every building, every fountain, every roadway, seemed to be perfectly in tune with the Heavens. Meiying had played such a pivotal role that Dyon struggled with finding a way to repay her. It could be said that she was even more busy than himself over the past few years, even beyond this last 12-year period.The Mortal Alliance had a distinctly modern feel. Many of the buildings were metallic and adorned with glass, but somehow melded into nature perfectly. Dyon didn’t want to completely forget his roots as a mortal, so he had encouraged Meiying to city plan with a futuristic mortal city in mind. The result was a land unlike anything the mortal plane had ever seen before, the perfect melding of the mortal and martial world.While some would fly through the air, beautiful flying ships and cars filled the skies as well. Looking around, one could often see large screens projecting forms of entertainment both the martial and mortal worlds could adore. Everything seemed to be flourishing.The second change was in the structure of the universe.The greatest weakness of universes was just how much empty space there was. There were countless trillion habitable planets, yet only a few dozen would be occupied at most, each of which would be a mind boggling number of light years apart. Even with teleportation arrays between them, such a matter was simply too inconvenient, especially when it came to defending.Over these last more than ten years, Dyon had taken advantage of his Immortal Sense to find enough timeless and spaceless stones to activate the Jafari Clan treasure once more, but he felt like even this wasn’t enough.He knew through Luna that the Sprite Alliance had a space sprite Higher Existence among their ranks. Such a person would only need a few centuries to break through the defenses of the Jafari Clan treasure, at worst, it would only take a few decades.Of course, these estimates were only if this person was allowed to freely attack without any interference, but Dyon didn’t like leaving things up to chance. So, he decided it was best that if his Mortal Alliance had both outer and inner protections.Making use of the Sage Tower’s ninth form, Dyon began to rearrange his controlled universes.First, he changed the layout of his universes, arranging them such that a single universe only gave access to at most two other universes through the Gates.In the mortal realm, arranging your cities in a straight line was about the dumbest thing you could do, but in the context of universes, it was safest option.As one might expect, this terraforming took a ridiculous amount of resources. Dyon simply didn’t have such funds on hand. In the end, he could only grit his teeth and use the origin crystals left behind by the celestial deer sect. This decision resulted in the effective destruction of a valuable master key planet grade array, but Dyon was at the point where he didn’t need to value them so highly. Still, the loss of a master key array was a painful choice to make.[Author’s Note: Remember that the planet grade master key arrays were all powered by origin stones. This was why Dyon never had to pay a price to teleport across the mortal plane.]Luckily, the origin crystal showed its worth. Despite moving several universes to form a V shape which protect Soul Universe at its point, Dyon could sense that the origin crystal still had over 50% of its energy left.This was a matter than astonished him. He had steeled his heart, ready to sacrifice more origin crystals, but even after moving the universes and even the planets and galaxies within them as he pleased, it could still do the process all over again and still have some left over!The best part about this was that this meant he could once more use the master key array he thought he had forever lost.Dyon really wanted to know just how the Celestial Deer Sect got their hands on such a thing… If the outer powers also had these crystals… He had to be more careful than ever.In the end, Dyon decided to put these matters to the back of his mind and continue working.After arranging the Celestial Deer Quadrant as he saw fit, he arranged their circumstances within as well.He moved all of the habitable planets and most valuable resources of each universe to its very center, creating an interconnected network of planets and abyssal cores. Then, he created several protective arrays formed of countless stars and even blackholes to surround them in a protective cocoon.Even he, with his Immortal Sense, would find it difficult even to make it out from within, let alone others attempting to make it in from the outside.Then, Dyon proceeded to devour stars. Using the seventh floor of the Sage Tower, he was able to convert the deaths of these stars into energy. The only reason he hadn’t done this to provide energy previously and instead used the origin crystal because he emphasized speed back then. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving his Alliance unprotected for so long.Devouring stars seemed great, but each star took several days to weeks to devour depending on its energy density. And, to match the energy of a single origin crystal, one had to devour ten thousand stars. One could see from this why Dyon would be anxious about time.But now that he was confident in the protections of his lands, he began to devour the stars he hadn’t used in the protective arrays. Like this, he could not only make it more difficult to navigate his territory by forcing his enemies to lost reference points, but he could also slowly gain a store of energy that would be an effective trump card in the future…