Elder Cultivator

Chapter 974

Instead of arrows, Anton found himself shooting forth seeds. He could hardly compete with a workforce of millions or more, but providing an example was still valuable. He could at least set up one field… though simply looking at it would lose the nuances of the important balancing factors. The location on the planet and the season were significant factors in sunlight and temperature, and particular crops would need specific seed depth, watering schedules, and other care.

One example was insufficient, but there was a significant advantage in the Yoron system. While he still had to answer the questions for various different circumstances, that information didn’t have to be relayed to every individual. Indeed, Yoron was completely connected together as a single hivemind so his main limitation was how quickly questions could be formed and answered.

“You can plant your fields full of the most efficient crops that will provide the most food in a single season,” Anton explained. “But a year from now, your bodies and minds will crave variety, and so will the earth.”

Of course, most likely there were enough farmers among them to properly understand crop rotations and how variety was important. The things that Anton truly needed to explain were how natural energy was best incorporated into the farming process.

“Likewise, you can let crops grow naturally. If you infuse your energy into them this year, perhaps at the end you will come out with less energy. But if you start now, in a decade you will see results planetwide. In a century, you will come out ahead. We have all sorts of charts, if that interests you.”

Unlike most places, Yoron as a system had an actual opportunity for everyone to work together towards a common goal. Improving the growth of natural energy on their planets would likewise help with personal goals, and with the hivemind they would actually be able to share a mutual understanding.

With Yoron’s rise, a tangential connection to other systems and their local hiveminds was also established. According to what they had learned, it was more of a mutual awareness than the same connection as locals. Even with the two stars providing a bridge, the other two systems were not precisely unified, nor were their entire populations part of the same hivemind.

Individuals still existed, and seemed able to join or leave a hivemind- though repeating the process frequently seemed to have negative effects. Not that it happened often. Those who didn’t wish to be part of one would stay with their individuality, while those who chose to join felt vindicated. The rest had mainly been cautious experiments.

There was an intention for Anton to bind to Yoron’s star- but only after a decade had elapsed and they could validate some of the longer term consequences. Only then would the strongest hivemind be connected in that manner, if they hadn’t found any reasons not to do so.

It was an interesting side effect, that Anton’s bound stars brought the systems themselves into greater closeness. There had been no particular observation of that effect in their core systems, with Weos, Ceretos, and Rutera- but there had been so much cross-pollination between them that a similar sort of energy would have only seemed natural.

Now there was something for people like Matija and others to study. If bound stars provided a bridge between systems, what did that mean? Perhaps it was not something that could be practically taken advantage of except in special cases like the former domain of the Numerological Compact, but nobody really knew. Not even Anton.

The connections existed through him, but he felt his connections to the bound stars directly so it didn’t stand out to him that the stars were in turn connected to each other. It didn’t seem to affect their actual functioning as stars, which was something he paid very close attention to.

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If the Lower Realms Alliance didn’t operate with a sense of caution, the three systems would already have joined officially within the first few months of their freedom. As it was, they would definitely be the systems with the shortest time of mutual awareness to joining the Alliance. Obviously the public approval was somewhat skewed due to the hiveminds, but even the unassociated cultivators had a positive opinion of the Alliance.

Once they had an appropriate amount of time to understand that they really did come with motives beneficial to them, it was likely that those remaining would also support the connection. And if there was some reason they ultimately preferred independence, that was an acceptable solution.

Either way, they had little choice but to accept the Alliance’s help for a time, as the systems were expectedly unstable. Yoron was both the worst off and the best. With there being a unified hivemind, they were working with great efficiency. The downside of course was that the vast majority of their formations had been destroyed in the energy surge, leaving them lacking in basic functionality in many ways.

That included everything, including running mills and forges as well as providing important services like providing water to homes and collecting sewage. Fortunately, the latter examples were mostly functional without power, except the final purification of the collected waste.

With food being distributed between systems, nobody was in danger of starving- and in Yoron, at least, they could be certain that was true of literally everyone. Even so, to properly implement the various growth structures the Alliance had they needed more than manual labor. Cultivators could make unsuitable tools functional, but they needed to replace or retrofit all of their formations to function with their new developing system.

On the planets that still had a mostly functioning energy grid, the main intention was to replace the way they gathered energy. Nobody was keen to be restrained, but providing a steady flow of energy was an occupation that would be necessary. For the moment, they only had a small portion functioning.

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The methods of growing natural energy weren’t just limited to farming- that was just the most direct and basic one. Without food, nobody would survive. Plants weren’t just for food, of course, as they could also be turned into clothing or medicine. But just like on their other planets, an inclusion of natural energy into every aspect of life had astounding effects.

Plants might have been the only thing that literally grew, but infusions of natural energy into clothing and tools while they were being made ended up with better, more durable tools. That was outside of specific enchantments, just the additional care and precision a cultivator could provide. When everything provided some of that natural energy back to the surroundings, the ambient levels grew- allowing people to better cultivate, and letting the cycle continue to grow.

There was sufficient knowledge of formations in the local area that the Alliance’s knowledge of technology was mostly superfluous, at least until they built back up to a higher tier. As it was, the majority of the knowledge still lived among them- or was being salvaged from the Numerological Compact’s vaults, where techniques they had stolen or developed on their own had been stored. With nobody to defend it all, retrieving everything just took time.

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The Numerological Compact’s connection to the upper realms had been clear fairly early on. They were a sect known in the Exalted Quadrant, though they hadn’t stood out compared to any of the other sects. Not as far as those living in the upper realms had yet seen. Now, they had to wonder how much information had been shared with the upper realms.

It seemed they had somewhat more efficient communication methods than most of the others discovered, though testing the exact strength was difficult as they couldn’t exactly expect the upper realms to cooperate with them. And they had no reason to risk messages being intercepted if they built something of their own in the upper realms. They would have to do with studying what they had.

There was about half a cycle left before the next heightening of the Tides of the World. Three centuries or less, in which time the systems would need to grow to defend themselves. There was no reason to believe the Exalted Quadrant wouldn’t find offense, and though what information they had received about the war was unclear expecting retaliation was only reasonable.

In the worst case, they became strong and able to withstand an assault and nothing came. It would be a different matter if they were still reliant on the rest of the Alliance at that time and needed reinforcements, but for the moment things were very promising. They hadn’t lost all of their more experienced cultivators- mostly those of the Numerological Compact- and they still had access to their cultivation techniques. More, even, and shared more freely.

Confluence cultivators- proper ones like Byron who effectively used the energy given to them instead of stolen power- would most likely be a staple of their society. The hiveminds were able to coordinate their energy, but having a single stronger individual to serve as an anchor point for their efforts would likely increase efficiency.

On the matter of cultivation, the hiveminds were overflowing fonts of devotion. Devon received much of it, and Anton found himself highly regarded as well. The effects were many times stronger than an equivalent population elsewhere, both through the strength of the feelings- they had been freed from slavery or potential slavery- as well as the unity of the hiveminds.

How much that would affect the growth of Devon and Anton in the future, or of their own cultivators, wasn’t entirely clear. But there were high expectations all around.

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“So how is it?” Anton asked the locust, Cultivates and Consumed Grain. “Being part of a hivemind, I mean?”

“It’s great!” Grain replied. “I think this is highly suited for us. Humans seem to require far greater numbers to make a stable group, but I believe we could form a stable connection with just a thousand or so. And if not… well, there are plenty of us. The meerkats might be interested too.”

“Well,” Anton shrugged. “They’re highly communal, so there’s certainly much to learn here. But a hivemind might not be their preferred method.”

“Right. I can’t wait for us to get back to Akrys, though! I just hope the link lasts for us. We’re only still here because we want a reliable way to get it back if we lose it. Even with all of Yoron, it’s hard to get the proper insights. Or at least to disseminate them to the whole.”

“It’s interesting,” Anton said. “It is a connection of natural energy, but also a mental connection, right? How is it that you joined with humans?”

“We’re good at being part of a group,” Grain explained. “And our thoughts work together to make something that fits with humans. Besides, most of our thoughts aren’t in our brains.”

“Well… I suppose that’s true of many residents of Akrys,” Anton agreed. “And perhaps most cultivators, beyond a certain point. Cultivation goes far beyond our physical body.” Anton knew that various people studied the mind of cultivators, but it was a topic that was very dense and difficult to understand.

Void ants had always been of interest, as they literally didn’t have brains big enough to support complex thought- and they didn’t augment that with energy the same way humans did. Akrys had provided many more examples of people with thoughts that didn’t match physical brain capacity. Ultimately, it was clear there was something different about awakened species but explaining what it was aside from something to do with energy was an endeavor just as challenging as binding oneself to a star.

There was one final reason Grain and the others had not returned to Akrys. The former Compact systems were under a loose quarantine. It wasn’t as a matter of distrust, or at least not directly. It was possible the hiveminds were capable of lying about their intentions and the way they functioned en masse… but the main issue was a matter of stability.

And while the Alliance was quite welcoming of different people, people would obviously be hesitant about the idea. The local residents merely had it forced upon them by circumstances, mainly as a way to try to save as many lives as possible. Only time would tell if they truly succeeded, but given the circumstances the results seemed acceptable. The hiveminds were sometimes unnerving and troublingly decisive, but they didn’t seem reckless or villainous and that would have to be good enough.

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