Aimless Ascension

It seemed Sun Ziang had considered his proposal and even tried to form a band on this expedition. But unfortunately, the town hardly had people who could reach Sun Ziang's standard.

Most of the silver rankers he came across in this town were either old or just above average at best. As for iron rankers, most of them would only be burdens. Well, considering what he came across this time around, taking even the silver ranker from this town would be a terrible risk.

Sun Ziang clearly looked awful after everything he came across in the mountain range.

"Well, if I hadn't retired I might join you on this trip, but I have a place to build and a disciple to teach," Gale replied and considered. "However, I might be able to acquire you a good substitute. She might not be the type of companion you want, but her capabilities speak for herself. Let me see if she agrees or not."

Of course, he was talking about Twilight. Her abilities were completely unique to what he came across in this world. And it wouldn't be wrong to say her capabilities would come in more than just handy in most situations.

"That's one person," Gale continued, handing the white harried youth a cup of herbal tea. "You would need at least two more to form a dependable group."

"I see no promise in the town," Sun Ziang said. He washed and changed his clothes after Gale let him in as a guest.

"You can make a commission to the guilds around here. That might take a while, but that's the only way forward if you don't have others on your sleeve."

Sun Ziang grunted and sighed. "Anyway, you have a longread, right? Let me use it. I need to communicate with the clan."

"This way," Gale brought the youth to the other room, where most of his script constructs and the Longread were stored. Basically, it looked like a terrible version of a scriber's workshop. It would remain like this until he builds a new workshop in the mansion.

Gale pointed to a device that was double the size of an old typewriter, though both of the items have some resemblance to them. Longreads lets you connect to another longread distance away and both devices then can exchange text between themselves. Kind of like a fax that works on different principles.

It was one of the most recent inventions, barely having a history of over a dozen years. Still, with its growing popularity, it wouldn't be long before everyone would have a brick-like mobile phone with them, and they could communicate throughout the world.

"That's that device?" Sun Ziang lifted an eyebrow. His expression was incredulous. "Isn't it supposed to be larger?"

The one his family had to spare was around two hundred kilograms in weight and would have taken a fifth of his dimensional storage device. That's why Sun Ziang hadn't taken one with him when he was deported here.

Besides, many organisations provide communication through longreads in exchange for some spirit coins. Why bother wasting so much space of his dimension storage?

Unfortunately for him, it turned out this town barely had three working longreads; one at the enforcers' office, one at the mayors and the last one for public use at the Artisans' Guild.

Well, the number was four now, considering this device that hardly took a tenth of an actual longread's space was usable.

"This is one of the newer versions," Gale told him. "I don't know if this hit the market yet, as I assembled this one myself."

"You built this yourself?" Sun Ziang was startled.

"Assembled," Gale told him. "I had the old version, the one you're familiar with, and it wasn't working properly, so I broke it into parts. Turned out, it was full of useless stuff. The core of the device is small, but the keys that type the words out take up most of the space. So I just worked with a couple of other fellas to remodel the whole device."

"So you made it," Sun Ziang concluded, "but not alone."

Gale tilted his head and nodded. "We kept the core intact and threw away all the other stuff that was just taking up space or had other features I didn't need. Do you know some old versions have a feature that saves all the logs? Well, I can see the practicality in that, but people can easily spy on your conversation if they could just access the logs."

Sun Ziang frowned. All this talk was new to him. Considering his main focus had always been spirit arts, he wasn't surprised that he was hearing about all this for the first time. But it was a worrying matter indeed.

Although Sun Ziang had nothing to hide, his Aunt Min always advised him to use Longread through codes. Previously, he thought it was only so that his mother would never find out they were still communicating, even after his deportation, but now it seemed his aunt had other concerns.

"This one is just the bare bone of a longread," Gale said. "You can only communicate through the common tongue and almost anywhere in the world if you have the access key. I thought about putting emojis in them, but your world isn't ready for it yet."

"Curious," Sun Ziang said, ignoring the last part. "Can you make another of them just like this one?"

Gale lifted his eyebrows to stare at him. "Sure," he said. "If I had the parts, it's only a few hours of work."

"Then will you take my commission to build me one?"

"I see no harm in it," Gale said.

Sun Ziang was delighted to hear that, but then he remembered why a longread wasn't easily accessible to the common practitioner. It was so damn expensive that even most gold rankers couldn't afford it.

"What?" Gale could naturally see his worry. "You're the heir of the legendary Sun Clan, and you're worrying about money? I really haven't expected this."