With the heavens will as a witness,any breach of the contract would lead to death.
After the storm dissipated,Zach and his men planned on their return. As for Mamba,he woupd not be leaving the bandit lair for the time being,as most of his men were close to breaking through into the spirit qi gathering realm. He wanted to take advantage of the high level of spirit qi in that region to at least help them breakthrough into the mid stage of spirit qi gathering realm.
That would take them at least six months,at which Zach would commission his men to build a large court yard for Mamba and his men,as well as breakthrough into a mid ranked formation master.
As a mid ranked formation master,he could create and lay out mid ranked formations, increasing the defence of his and his affiliated territories and the strength of his men.
It took the transport and logistics division two months to transport half the resources and materials from the bandits lair to Zach's settlements,as Zach and the fifteen guards had left with the spirit boat. Nobody knew of their destination.
Zach and his fifteen guards were out hunting foundation establishment realm beast as they headed to the core region of the forest.
Zach and his guards would set camp for three days. The guards would spent the nights cultivating while Zach stood guard and during the day,they left in parties of five,one peak stage spirit qi gathering realm guard and four high stage spirit qi gathering realm guards.
Each party had three goals in mind. The first was to map out the path and region they were in. Secondly,they were to gather spirit herbs and spirit plants or any other cultivation resources they came along as well as scout for mines and spirit qi veins,thirdly,each party had to fight at least five foundation establishment realm beast,as they were plenty in the deeper regions. They were to also bring back two carcases.
As his men were out gathering, hunting and training, Zach was left behind at their camp improving his experience in formations,pill refinement and spirit tool forging.
They had come across two a hundred year old low ranked spirit oak. These were cut down and Zach used one of the oak tree to forge four low ranked spirit boats. What had previously taken Zach several weeks to forge,now took him three days,thanks to his improvement and breakthrough into a mid rank formation master.
His breakthrough led to a dipper understanding of spirit tool forging,as the two depended on each other, resulting to his breakthrough into a mid rank spirit tool forger.
With five low ranked spirit boats, logistic was not a challenge.
As for pill refinement,Zach held back on his practise. He currently prioritized the formations and spirit tool forging,as a progress in these two would boost his and his settlement growth by leaps.
Also, what he needed to further his advancement was experience at refining thousands and thousands of different low ranked pills.
Unlike formations and spirit tool forging that depended on ones cultivation realm, compression and knowledge to advance,pill refinement depended on ones experience in pill refinement and their knowledge on spirit herbs, spirit plants and other materials used for pill refinement.
Also, the pills that Zach needed the most were just three,the spirit qi gathering pills,the foundation stabilizing pills and the healing pills. And he had refined hundred of these.
For three months,Zach and his men maintained their pace and routine. At this time,they had already reached the edge of the core region.
At the moment,they were all resting above the canopy of trees. Trees in this region were more than fifty metres tall and thicker than a cabin.
Each guard had a low ranked spirit boat assigned to them. Zach had forged more after they came across more low ranked a hundred years old spirit oak tree. From each tree,Zach could forge four low ranked spirit boats.
These spirit boats may be low ranked but Zach had tempered with them, further increasing their speed and defence by use of booster formations, and even adding a camouflaging formation that adapted to the boats surroundings when activated, hiding it from normal sight.
He had also added a masking formations that masked the occupant scent as well as hide the spirit boat from spirit sence of those below the core condensation realm.There was also a spirit qi channeling and gathering formations. These two were mostly activated at night,as Zach had created an original formation array that linked the sixteen low ranked spirit boats into one floating ring.
With his boat,the first of the sixteen at the centre,the others were linked to it in a ring formation. The spirit qi gathering formation 9n each spirit boat provided the needed spirit qi for the spirit boat to remain afloat,as the spirit qi channeling formation replaced the guards,since the spirit boats remained stationery hen the linking formation array was activated,there was no need for a guard to control or channel their spirit qi as to fly them.
The spirit qi channeling formation channelled a potion of the spirit qi gathered by the spirit qi gathering formation to keep the spirit boat afloat. The remainder was used up by the guards for cultivation.
All these formations that were added were all low ranked formations,as the spirit boats could not support the mid ranked formations. If there were levels for low ranked spirit tools as there were for mid rank and above spirit tools, Zach's spirit boats would be placed at the peak level of the low ranked spirit tools.
The only reason there was not a level ranking for low level spirit tools was because no matter how many improvements were made,a low level spirit tool will never surpass the strength or efficiency of a foundation establishment realm cultivator. A peak level mid ranked spirit tool was comparable to a saint realm cultivator.
Forging such a tool was way beyond Zach,he at least needed to be at the mid stage of soul fusion realm to successfully forge one.
Zach's innovative had ended up with him creating a floating camp for his men. And in a forest region where core condensation beasts roamed the grounds freely,there was no better place to set camp than the tree tops. Though they still had to keep an eye out for core condensation realm,and above, beasts and birds that called the tree tops home.