Plans were made to deal with various issues John had seen from his recent survey of the continent. There wasn’t anything absurd, as each region did well enough watching over itself. Some issues they might have been unaware of, and others they might have been embarrassed to ask for aid. Cultivators liked to deal with troubles themselves and hated to owe anyone anything. But if it was important, they should.

  There were small bits of unrest as well. John hadn’t interviewed people and asked if they hated him, but he did learn some people’s opinions about him and his sect. Certain negative feelings were similarly held against his closest allies. People could feel what they wanted, but if John thought it might turn into something foolish then they needed to do something about it. It would be far better for people to be stopped before they hurt anyone, or even threatened someone. Because otherwise he might have to kill them.

  Arranging for such details was important because he was going to be away for a while. Publicly, because diplomacy behind closed doors was often something else entirely. They weren’t going to declare they were good friends with the Empire of Elements anytime soon, but it was important to solidify in everyone’s minds that they were definitely not enemies. For that, John had to visit them. Otherwise, it was just one-sided.

  -----

  John was trying to determine what retinue would make the biggest impact. He needed people from all over so that nobody felt excluded. He couldn’t bring too many of his close friends and family. Yustina had to come because he wanted to give her the opportunity to see her former homeland- even or especially if she wasn’t interested in revenge. Her husband would obviously be included, as separating the pair would be foolish. And if he for some reason needed combat support, they were among those he would trust with that the most.

  The Molten Sea as a whole wasn’t ready to properly make amends with the Empire of Elements. They had borne the greater costs of the war, and even if they had been repaid with the lands of their former neighbors- who were also quite often enemies as well- they could be left to simmer for a while longer. Aldara wasn’t going to become less of an Exalted Soul Phase cultivator, and without meaning any offense to the Molten Sea he doubted any of them would have a chance to make the advance any time soon. He wasn’t specifically trying to aid any of them, and those he knew were still struggling.

  Sitora would come. The Sky Islands were just as much of the continent as anyone else, and a transmigrated individual from another period could be valuable. After some discussion with Renato and Deirdre, they decided not to finish the club. Plenty of people were aware of their connections, but it would just be too many people closely tied to John. This wasn’t supposed to be John Miller, the Six Elements Crossroads, and his friends. It was supposed to be the continental alliance… which he happened to be the core of while many of those friends were the pillars.

  Mandlen was included because he was a likely reincarnator that wasn’t one of John’s friends. They weren’t enemies, either. They had pleasant conversations and publicly agreed on many policies. But that was the extent of things. The Indestructible Kapok Grove hadn’t made the best first impressions on John, but he had long since gotten over that. Their upper members were fine, but that didn’t mean he was going to like them all.

  Venkat of the Boiling Springs was invited because he liked shot put. And because if he came Ursel was more likely to go deal with that stuff in the Viridia Wildlands instead of asking to come along so she could fight the Empire of Elements’ best earth cultivators. If she wanted to do that… it could be on a later trip. Ursel wasn’t avoiding Venkat. She was just waiting for an opportunity to officially crush him in battle first.

  John snagged various others from different regions. It happened that many of them were higher cultivation, but that was because cultivation rank was almost directly tied to leadership. In clans, the strongest members might merely advise the clan head and elders might surpass a sect head in raw power… but rarely. Though some saw the benefits of proper leaders and the stability it could bring, instead of just whoever could hit hardest.

  John hoped he was one of the decent leaders. It was unlikely everyone he was close to was lying to him, but they absolutely could be biased.

  -----

  John sailed with the others through the northern seas. Even if the Molten Sea was a shorter distance it wasn’t actually a faster journey in most cases. It certainly wasn’t an easier journey, and they didn’t need to bother the nice buffer zone by making a fuss about their diplomatic ventures in that area.

  The northern seas were cold, but just along the coast they were mostly imbued with relatively tame water element. Not too many storms or anything of the sort, and the beasts weren’t all that bad.

  All John was worried about on the journey was what he would say. He knew the words. He had plans for all of the official things that the continent wanted. None of them were important if he failed to provide. As long as he didn’t somehow restart the war, it would be a success.

  He didn’t think he was going to. If he had any belief that the Empire of Elements would try to kill him, he wouldn’t have gone. Everything should have been fine.

  Steve clapped him on the shoulder. “It’ll be fine. You’re acting like you’re going to see your highschool crush.”

  “I wasn’t even worrying about that,” John said. Yet. His feelings about Aldara and Matayal would never be anything but complicated. Feelings weren’t logical and didn’t fit into neat boxes. John couldn’t declare that logic was above everything else, though. Cultivators relied on feelings all the time, to great success. But John sometimes did wish the world was logical, even if he still might not understand it. As it turned out, things were even more complicated from the top.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  -----

  Sitora was cozy inside her cabin. She was still an Ascending Soul Phase cultivator, and thus defending herself from a bit of cold was possible. However, that wouldn’t mean it was comfortable. John had seen the signs of age in his first life and his current one. Sitora was already old when they met, and she absolutely wasn’t getting any younger. That was something cultivators could do, but she only had small steps she could make with her cultivation. If she had been capable of reaching the Exalted Soul Phase, she would have held the position of the First Peak island master.

  “Thank you for agreeing to come,” John commented. “I know it’s not easy to share such details with strangers.”

  Sitora shook her head. “That might have been true once, but at this point I’m not afraid of much. Whether death takes me forever or I get a third chance… I think I’ll be content either way.”

  That was a good mindset. John couldn’t say it was the best one because he honestly didn’t know, but being depressed about potential death wasn’t beneficial to anyone. Not that people often had a choice about their feelings in the short term. In the long term, people actually did have quite a large influence over what mindset they carried. That included people that weren’t cultivators, though the willpower necessary to control spiritual energy and the additional time to grow likely made cultivators more individually successful at mental control.

  “The continental alliance will miss you.”

  “It doesn’t need to,” Sitora commented. “But perhaps an empire could.”

  John rolled his eyes. He wasn’t sure how serious Sitora was about their continent becoming an empire, but ever since she’d heard about it she’d brought it up when they met. More once she found out it annoyed him.

  “I would still miss you, at least,” John finally said.

  She smiled lightly. “We’re barely even friends. The only thing we have in common is the same planet.”

  “It’s weird, isn’t it?” John said. “Because that makes four of us. Even if there are many other transmigrators that we aren’t aware of, it seems like an anomaly.”

  “What do you think it would mean?”

  John frowned. “Maybe that our universes are closer than others.” John looked up into the sky. He had stared at them long enough with little enough knowledge of astronomy that he convinced himself he recognized constellations he barely even knew about, then reconvinced himself he was making things up. Currently, he was of the mindset that they weren’t the same, which might not mean a different universe but maybe meant a different galaxy. John really wasn’t sure how to pick out the milky way. In the right places, he could see the galaxy around them. It looked a lot like the milky way, but they probably all did from inside any similarly disc shaped galaxy. “Metaphysically, perhaps.”

  “And us speaking the same language?” Sitora asked.

  “Random luck. And the willingness of the English to form a widespanning empire.”

  How many people was it? About one in four or five. He had no idea about the statistics in the time Sitora came from. If they were the only four from Earth, it would be one in six hundred or more. That sounded unlikely, but it really wasn’t compared to the whole transmigrating thing. But John had figured out about the others specifically because they spoke English- Sitora had even been using it as a code language- so it was probably far from random.

  Hopefully they could compare with a good number of others from the Empire of Elements. There were supposed to be both reincarnators and transmigrators after all.

  -----

  If only pleasant things like asking if people came from Earth and spoke English were first on the agenda. Sadly, it involved a lot of travel once they landed.

  The region they landed in was a land of lightning. John found it quite believable that ships would be lost if they didn’t know how to navigate into the port, because the lightning was about as constant as the Glass Hills. Except this particular area had built in lightning rods… which also happened to be pointed pillars of stone upon which ships could run aground.

  The pillars continued inland. They seemed almost entirely natural, though John thought they might have repaired or recreated some of them. They just felt different, even if he couldn’t explain how.

  It might have been a coincidence that they were asked to arrive in that particular port. It was one of the close ones, after all. However, as they were escorted throughout the Empire John found their route quite meandering… and it happened to pass through some of the most impressive elemental regions. Maybe their continent should have done the same- though Aldara probably had some idea about most of them to begin with.

  The next region of note was one of near-constant earthquakes. One would think that would be a major issue, but humans were surprisingly adaptable. Buildings were built on wide lots and made to shake. They even leaned into it by adding bells on some of them, ringing on the corners when the hourly quakes appeared. Not that they were on the hour. They just averaged something like that, not counting the various waves of aftershocks every major earthquake had.

  Next was a land of constant rainbows. Without light element it wouldn’t have even been close to possible to see clear rainbows in nearly every direction, sometimes double or triple, but with an abundance of a particular sort of light element it just worked.

  Next was a tri-element region. The allied cycle of water, earth, and darkness. Specifically, an underground lake system. They absolutely didn’t need to have routed through that area, because it meant leaving behind the carriages they had been taken in and acquiring new ones on the other side. The maps they had of the Empire of Elements weren’t terribly precise, but it was more than clear to John they could have just gone around.

  He did appreciate seeing the sights, though, even if he could recognize the purpose. He was supposed to recognize the grandeur of what they had. Admittedly, the areas were quite impressive. So were places like the Phoenix Forest and other special zones from his homeland.

  John kind of wished he’d gotten to spend more time in the lakes. He found darkness quite pleasant, even if he was a six element cultivator now. Likewise, everyone liked water. It was peaceful, and the solidity of the caverns had been reassuring.

  There were probably blind cave beasts that ate people, but you couldn’t have everything in life. Sometimes you had to make compromises.