A tall, and full-figured, mature beauty wandered down a picturesque ancient city that was somehow simultaneously crowded and empty at the same time. All around her there were people leaping and jogging on the rooftops, or gently flying overhead on spiritual clouds and flying swords. The streets of the city seemed to adjust themselves in such a way that one would be aware of other people without being unnecessarily imposed upon by their presence.

The woman lightly ran her fingers through her blue-white hair as a crisp and refreshing breeze, that would be more at home in an open and unspoiled wilderness, than in a crowded urban area like, blew past. She couldn’t help sighing and she wasn’t entirely sure whether it was a sigh of contentment, or a sigh of pity for her old friends, who’d chosen to jump into a beast pit in their desperation.

Maeng Young-Soon, Ancestor of the Thousand Winters Sect had managed to escape confinement and prosecution for part in Zheng Zhiqiang’s idiotic attempt to sacrifice the whole middle-realm in a play for godhood. She and the other old seniors who’d stepped away from the table before that troublesome day were all more or less able to wiggle their way out of being held responsible for that mess. They did so by relying on their connections, calling in favors and giving away benefits, and of course, shamelessly and skillfully denying any direct involvement in the whole affair.

The only ones who weren’t able to wiggle their way out of the trouble that came to Zheng Zhiqiang’s former cohorts were those who were captured during the incident and those who reached the end of their lifespan during the investigation. For the peace of their Shattered World, after the associated sects and families of those people paid a certain price, the matter was quickly dropped. This was the shattered world, after all, someone was always trying to take over the pearls, or flip the realms on their head.

“Ah, Zheng Zhiqiang...You really died a stupid death,” grumbled Maeng Young-Soon. Sighing again as she thought of her old friend. Inwardly, most of her pity was also chased by a mixture of fear and relief, as Maeng Young-Soon found that yet again the reliability of her divination abilities.

Maeng Young-Soon had known that Zheng Zhiqiang’s plot was liable to end in disaster but she hadn’t believed it’d be such a complete and thorough rout. Yet, as her feet carried her out of the city and onto a cliffside that overlooked a massive waterfall filled with flying fish, draconic serpents, and dream-like fairy-jellies, she couldn’t help but feel like the conspiracy was doomed from the start. Going by what she’d witnessed from afar, and what she was seeing here today, Zheng Zhiqiang and his friends bid to beat the reaper by making a play for godhood was forever fated to be thwarted even if they “had” known that those monstrous Calloways were a thing.

*************************************************************************************************************

“Heh, so we finally meet! Good, good. Allow me to thank you, on behalf of our Forest of Life and the Death, and the myriad subordinate sects that would have been wiped out if not for your timely aid,” said Yang Shichao. The bulky, burly, old bear of a sect-master of the Forest of Life and Death smiled broadly as stroked his gray and gold beard. His sunken hazel eyes shining with merriment and curiosity.

“No...I-, I was just doing what I was supposed to as an Elder of the Forest of Life and Death, and the Tree of Passionate Verdance,” said Jill. Sounding flustered.

Jack stood behind her husband after pushing him forward into a speaking role for once.

“Oh ho~! How commendable, if only others in our sect and the cultivation world, in general, had your righteous spirit and dedication...Beyond that, let me thank you for kindly remembering our sect when you created this…”Empty Dream” of yourself,” said Yang Shichao.

“No...Well, I just figured that the Empty Network that this is based on, had gotten stable enough and expansive enough to open its use beyond just a few close friends and well, Jack and I are members of the FLD and TPV. It only made sense that you’d all get an invite to the opening,” said Jill. Stumbling on his words a little while he chatted with the sect-master and the other seniors that had come to great Jack and Jill during the opening of their Empty Dream.

For once, Jack was taking the background role. Part of it was simply Jack wishing to observe the background data for the Empty Dream for the sake of keeping an eye out for any troublesome user activity or bugs. Jill had really outdone himself here, and despite the fact that he was upright, and doing his best to play the part of a good host with the seniors of the FLD, the TPV, and the numerous groups that had been invited to this event, he was a little too tired to watch all those data-streams by himself right now.

Jack’s other reason for taking the background role, was because she kind of wanted to see Jill taking the foreground role for once. She wanted this to be “his” moment, not another moment that sort of turned into her moment because she was the one doing all the talking.

She was pleased to find that even if he still tripped up occasionally, and was hesitant at various points, he quickly adjusted. Gaining confidence and ease, as time went by and the conversation carried on. Jack was trying to push Jill just the littlest bit outside of his comfort area, and she’d felt that here inside a virtual realm that was completely and utterly under their control, was the best place for her to do so.

If Jack had any complaint about her husband, it was that her man had far too little greed. He was just a tad too comfortable playing the background role for her tastes. He was a dragon with wings that could dwarf a thousand skies, yet his preferred dwellings were the dark depths of the sea and soil.

She was normally fine with that. Aware that if they were both extremely greedy people, their dynamic probably wouldn’t work. Yet, sometimes, Jack wished that the rest of the world knew just how marvelous her lover was, even if it was just a little bit. Thus she was taking this chance to have her man show off for a bit.

*************************************************************************************************************

I was exhausted by the time Jack and I were finally able to see off our guests and head to bed. First, I mentally and emotionally exhausted myself, creating an entire virtual space, that I called the “Empty Dream”. The Empty Dream worked by taking advantage of the spirit and mind interfacing technology and techniques used with the Empty Networks’ main communication program.

By tapping into the user’s mind and spirit, I could drag them into a complex, high-fidelity, illusory realm that felt, smelt, tasted, and for all intents and purposes “was”, essentially identical to the real world. The only difference being that I’d purposefully left behind a sense of unreality similar to what one would feel like when one realized that one was lucidly dreaming, to avoid creating addicts, or having people forget the difference between this and the actual real world.

As to why I’d even started this endeavor in the first place, the answer is maybe a little dumb, but after meeting Kalpana, getting to hang with her in person, Jack and I started to seriously feel homesick. We wanted to be able to hang out with the people we knew in person, and do the things we used to do in the 14th Pearl. For various reasons, we weren’t quite ready to actually go home so I made a virtual copy of home, so that everyone who was in our Empty Network could hang out with us there.

I made the setup as convenient as I could make it. First off, the flow of time within the Empty Dream ran between 3 to 3000 times the norm, depending on which zone you were in. Accessing the Empty-Realm would create a sealed space around the user that would protect the user’s body while they were in the Empty Dream, this included harm from physical deterioration. People below a certain level of cultivation would still be automatically logged out, after a certain time, to force them to eat, drink, and move around a bit.

Once one “logged in” the Empty-Network would kind of hijack the flow of spiritual energy through their bodies, to basically set their cultivation on autopilot. Meaning that us and our friends could essentially just mentally go on holiday while our bodies meditated on autopilot. Which according to all our cultivator friends, was actually something of a big deal, because as much as meditation was important, and something every cultivator made their peace with doing. Sitting and doing nothing channelling energy, while trying to stay in a specific mental state like that, was lost time. Time that could now be spent doing other things within the virtual space.

From there I continued to expand the Empty-Realm and its functionality, copying certain features that were already being implemented in my private dimension and implementing them in the virtual space, albeit in a somewhat reduced form, since some things had to be given up if I wanted the space to stay “virtual”.

Jack had the bright idea to copy some of the fun and weird environs we’d raided in the chaotic sea. I decided to add some virtual monsters that held packets of purified energy in them that could be absorbed so that one could train in this space and expand one’s cultivation using the monsters and resources spawned here as a resource.

We did this casually for a few...weeks?...months?...Years? Was it years? I don’t know, what I “do” know is that Jack and I were hanging here in the virtual realm with our friends from back home for while but then Alina, Trefor, and even that stoic, Hong Mirae, all sort of talked Jack and I into maybe opening access to this space and the Empty Network to more people.

Alina in particular was convinced that we had a goldmine on our hands, and well, since our produce, and materials, selling business seemed to be doing well, Jack and I had already been looking to expand.

So we went for it. Of course, there would always be sections of this Empty Dream that weren’t open to the general public, but a good deal of the realms here would be made available for those who invited in, or bought user-access passes, to play around in.

I surprised myself by going all in, because some part of me felt like this was something I should be doing as Empty-Archivist. I even went as far as creating skill and class books that essentially gave temporary access to certain stories and snippets of stories, within the Empty Archive. Thus expanding the readership, which was suddenly something I felt like I was always meant to do.

Since we were opening the door to the general public of course, it seemed wise to show a little favoritism to our sect, and well, we’d already made an exact replica of both the Forest of Life and Death, and the Tree of Passionate Verdance. It seemed a shame not to earn a few brownie points if we could. Sure enough, the higher-ups were pleased.

Pleased enough that Jack and I probably would have gotten promoted again if there was anywhere higher-roles they could have put us in. With some urging and the blessing from some of the sect-master, and some of our fellow ancestors, within the FLD, Jack and I decided to offer some of the sects and groups that the FLD was friendly with, the opportunity to pay for virtual real estate, and limited creator kits, with which they could set up digital versions of their sects.

Now the Empty-Realm was fully open for business, and thus far, besides a few continuous attempts to figure out how the hell we’d done what we’d done, and a few insidious attempts to try and co-opt control of the realm from us, that, of course, ended in automatic lifetime bans, and military action from our sect and our sect’s allies, things were looking pretty good.

Most of our Empty-Realm’s guests were behaving themselves. I’d set up content filters that low-key limited certain conduct within the Empty-Realm, to make the place safer since there were mortals and children around. After parting ways with the sect-master and other seniors, I still had more work to do. There seemed to be a never-ending litany of people trying to chat me up or shake my hand, and the virtual space still didn’t feel completely “done” yet to me.

I spent a great deal of time working on creating separate servers for the Empty Dream. I initially hadn’t done so because the Empty-Network’s breadth and depth were so expansive it was no problem to have all the users in one server.

However, I ended up changing my mind, because I found that breaking up the Empty Dream into separate servers made it easier to parse and monitor the data for the zones and areas that made up the servers, instead of leaving everything in a crazy jumble. The last thing I’d done was setting up a number of artificial intelligence to act as monitors, moderators, and quality control.