With the crisis averted, Sage could only reflect upon the fact that the Hoplites had only fought on equal ground with the Fierce Tigers. If the provincial rulers were first rate powers, and county level figures were second rate powers, then the Fierce Tigers could be considered a high level third rate power. They could easily control a city or more than one if they wanted to. That meant the Jade Horde was only a third rate power. While impressive for being established only a few years, it was still far from enough.

Sage didn’t want to take over a province or country, far from it. On the other hand, he didn’t want to be bullied by those first and second rate powers who did. In the capital there were many first and second rate powers that didn’t control any provinces or counties. They had the strength of such powers, but didn’t want to manage large swathes of land and people. Sage aimed to follow in their footsteps. To that end, he had to increase the strength of the Jade Horde. If he hadn’t been able to reinforce Whitestaff here, they would have lost the mine almost immediately. The Fierce Tigers wouldn’t have been hired since the Consortium branch forces would have overrun them.

He couldn’t afford the expensive cultivation resources that would be needed to push all the Seven Stars into the fifth rank, but he still needed to push their strength to a new level.

Seems I need to let go of a few more secrets.

The weapon upgrades for the entirety of the Jade Horde were sure to make a difference, but he was also going to need even more powerful equipment to give to the Seven Stars and their sub-commanders. They would need methods to deal with those existences in the fifth rank. If they were going to expand throughout the whole kingdom, they would need more than two people as backers.

Once these weapons are complete, I’m going to have to break through!

He’d been feeling the time crunch. He wanted to establish an intelligence network and restore the Lang Clan as quickly as possible, but it seemed both goals would require him greatly improving his own strength. All his tricks could bridge quite a gap, but he would be finished against a large group or someone at an even higher level. He intended the Jade Horde to be the secret army that the Lang Clan and the intelligence network could call upon for muscle. So, he needed to make sure that backer was firmly rooted and with power to spare. He didn’t want the Jade Horde to be threatening to the other large powers in the Kingdom, so he wanted to make their force based on quantity and not quality. If a first rate power saw a mercenary team with thousands of low rank cultivators, they wouldn’t be scared. Most sects had many thousands of weak disciples. On the other hand, if he equipped them with powerful weapons and they acted with perfect unity they would still be able to threaten small groups of stronger people.

Thinking to this point, it pointed him towards how to further improve the Jade Horde. Formations. Not teaching them to use array formations, or just arming them with Formation Plates, but using the troops themselves as an array. It was an idea he had long ago, and something that wasn’t unheard of for use among armies. The issue is that large groups of troops using their energy to create a formation was very demanding on their cooperation and discipline. Only the most elite units trained to create them and were skilled enough to sustain them. Sage had attempted to create them when he was experimenting with their memories and instilling them with combat tactics. The results were atrocious. He could barely ingrain a single formation into them, and even with their insect minds they still had trouble maintaining the array.

He’d only just now had an epiphany towards a solution. The Formation Machine had worked well in the confrontation, and he’d already tried a few methods of improving upon it. The essence of the Formation Machine was essentially applying object oriented programming, as a design philosophy, to an array formation. Normal array formations are very precise and purpose built machines, custom made to perfectly suit the location and environmental conditions. They are specially built to do a job and they do it well. The Formation Machine is his attempt to break that up into smaller arrays that can be mixed and matched, overlapping effects till they can be similar to a permanent purpose built array.

The materials that go into creating an array are quite expensive, and the more powerful the array the more exacting the requirements both in the setup and cost. His hope was that by pushing non-permanent arrays towards the strength of a permanent array the components would be reusable, mobile, and therefore far more versatile. Most of his hopes were realized, but there was still a weak point. The hoped for overlapping of strength had never been perfected. So, instead of combining many weaker arrays into a more powerful one, he could only rely upon rapid changes and combining arrays in confusing ways. It wasn’t any more powerful than other arrays, but it was unusual. Most Formation Masters drew from a similar pool of arrays. Cultivators with a lot of experience would be able to identify the arrays, then learn the best methods to break through them and what to expect if they were to be trapped inside. Instead of having to deal with variations on well known themes, the Formation Machine switched through many different, but simple, arrays and caused them quite some confusion.

The mine was truly theirs now, so Sage set them to building fortifications for a third time. After their work with the stone walls before, Sage taught a few that seemed talented, and got them to start enchanting stones. Surprisingly, some of the Hoplites were able to pick it up and Sage called for a test of everyone present. He was amazed to learn that most of the Hoplites were able to recreate the very simple strengthening array symbols. It was a very precise job after all, so it was surprising to see them successful. Perhaps it was a product of their constant training and ancestral memories focused on precision and care. Maybe it had to do with one of the creatures he’d mixed into them, or it might just be a sort of filter from their partial Human Seals. Whatever it was, most of them could carve the simple symbols with their Qi and Spirit Power.

Pleasantly surprised, Sage put them to work. Teams were sent to gather more stone blocks like on the first wall, while others were sent to the nearest city to purchase bricks. Instead of shuttling them back a few at a time on the Vulture Geckos he set a large portion of the troops to blaze a trail to the nearest town, and the order for bricks would be sent to that town and carted with Storage Chests in a caravan. Mundane bricks only cost gold coins, and Sage still had plenty of those.

With that underway, Sage retired to the Universe Ring to run some tests in his workshop. By the time the trail was finished and the bricks escorted back, he put the next phase into motion. All those who were able were set to carving a symbol onto a brick. Depending on their success with the application, the brick would end up two to three times tougher than it started. It was the same tactic the Holy Flame Sect used to train new refiners. In addition to ordering bricks, the troops recruited a few Craftsman. With their help, Sage drew up some plans for the site and they set to work. The Cloudmetal Charcoal had to be mined and refined before it could be used. Since he didn’t want to risk breaking the agreement with the Cloudmetal Consortium, he planned to build a refinery right next to the mine. While he was at it, he also added a forge and factory to turn that metal into finished goods.

He was already planning on making this place impregnable, so he might as well make better use of it. The new town would be built entirely of strengthened bricks with high stone walls and with a few layers of Array Formations. Once the plan had been laid out, Sage let the men get to work while he returned to his experiments. He planned to adapt the third weapon he’d slated for the Hoplites, an auto-crossbow, for general sale. With his troops equipped with the Arrow Wall shields, they would have nothing to fear from auto-crossbows. The models released to the public would be much cheaper and weaker than both the current weapons available and those he issued to his troops.

There was also the matter of equipping the Seven Stars, and combining the idea of army formations, and the Formation Machine.

I’ve got a lot of work to do.