Above The Sky
Chapter 90 - 90 86 Spirit Energy Illusory Vision

90: Chapter 86 Spirit Energy Illusory Vision 90: Chapter 86 Spirit Energy Illusory Vision Another morning dawned.

With the gradual brightness of the dawn, Harrison Port seemed to awaken and bustle with renewed energy.

The port had already resumed work, and the sounds of merchant caravans, horses, and pedestrians filled the air.

Mountain oxen, nearly one and a half times taller than a man, dragged massive carts over the mud and stones, kicking up clouds of dust.

The cries from the street stalls and shops, the aroma of fish soup and wheat cakes, and the shouts of the dockworkers all gave the city’s residents a sense of familiarity and comfort.

Today was October 9th.

Twenty days had passed since that terrible storm and invasion.

In just over twenty days, it was not possible to rebuild the damaged districts, repair the broken city walls, reorganize the city guard troops who had suffered heavy casualties, nor restore the network of towns centered around Harrison Port.

Even the outer wall of the Viscount’s Mansion hadn’t been fixed.

But on the ruins ravaged by the crocodragons, rows of temporary shacks had been erected, buildings modeled after the natives’ huts.

Though simple, they could house many of the refugees who had lost their homes.

Viscount Grant was not a noble who loved his people as his own children.

In fact, everyone knew how heavy the taxes were around Harrison Port… But at the very least, he did a lot with what he collected.

This alone set him above ninety percent of the Empire’s nobles and officials.

After three weeks of rest and reorganization, the city had resumed normal operations, with a steady stream of aid supplies and craftsmen from Nauman City and Sanhe City arriving.

This wasn’t out of kindness, but rather because even fools knew that if Harrison Port fell, there would be no one left in the Southern Territory to contain the increasingly united natives.

It was better to provide more money and materials and let others take the front line than to let the crocodragons burst into the city and wreak havoc.

The city’s reconstruction wouldn’t happen overnight.

It would take at least a year or two to restore the southwestern and northwestern districts that had been destroyed by the crocodragons.

But it’s easier to draw on a blank slate.

Because the natives had suffered heavy losses, and all their camps along the western banks of the Ivoke River had been uprooted at the start of the war, Viscount Grant planned to tear down the heavily damaged western city wall, leaving only a small section as a memorial.

He wanted to build a new city district centered around a brand new alchemy workshop on the ruins.

In addition, he intended to build a stone bridge across the Ivoke River, develop new city districts and watchtowers on the opposite bank, and completely push back the native influence into the Forest Sea of the Great Redwood Forest.

Of course, this was just incidental; Viscount Grant’s main goal was to break free from the current architectural plan of Harrison Port.

He wanted to construct several large residential areas and industrial parks in the new city, and use this as a starting point to gradually transform the old and dilapidated Harrison Port into a true large-scale maritime city.

The original Harrison Port was expanded from a fortress, and many of the designs were unreasonable, without leaving enough land for future development.

Now, with the natives being severely beaten and parts of the old city district destroyed, it was time to make the transformation more solid and sensible.

As for where the money would come from…

Of course, it came from the defeated natives.

There were over a hundred different tribes among the Redwood Forest Natives, including four large tribes, a dozen medium-sized tribes, and others not worth mentioning, merely vassals to the bigger tribes.

Even though the native alliance had failed, Harrison Port couldn’t penetrate Ivorybone Mountain, so the foundation of the large tribes wouldn’t be shaken… However, the influence of the other tribes was forced to contract.

Some were able to retreat back into the forest sea, and even migrate across to the Western Redwood Forest on the other side of Ivorybone Mountain to recuperate, but for those tribes with nowhere to retreat, if they didn’t want to perish, there was only one last choice.

That was to heed the directives of Harrison Port.

Just as the saying that had been spreading among the natives in recent years—Harrison Port is a tribe, and the Empire is an even larger tribe.

If everyone is human, what is the essential difference between being a vassal to other large tribes and a vassal to the Empire?

It’s not an easy question to answer, but in any case, Viscount Grant received a substantial amount of reparations, and Harrison Port, having eradicated several stubbornly resistant tribes, traded the captured native resources for quite a few rebuilding resources and funds.

Furthermore, with intentions for southern development leaked from the Imperial Capital, one could foresee that the future of Harrison Port would be increasingly prosperous.

However, compared to the stable and improving Harrison Port, Ian’s mood lately was not so good.

Because recently, he often experienced strange hallucinatory phenomena.

Simply put, no matter when or where, he would suddenly see some bizarre things.

Like some rocks, a few people he didn’t recognize, thickets of grass and shrubs, or a silent and still lake surface…

The most bizarre occurrence was when he saw a figure with a pumpkin head dancing a strange and intense dance among a crowd of people—completely baffled, Ian asked his teacher about it, and Hiliard astonishingly explained that it was the Far North Kingdom’s Yanjiang special sacrificial dance, called ‘Glittering Harvest,’ which coincidentally was performed around this time.

Ian was astonished that he could see the sacrificial scenes from such a distant place, which he found quite incredible, and he exclaimed that Ian had extraordinary talent.

But no matter how unbelievable or how talented, the Illusory Vision still affected his life.

Without any pattern, never repeating, impossible to predict, and unstoppable, even in his dreams, Ian’s dreams would suddenly produce bizarre images like Fae playing cards.

It had nothing to do with sleep quality, nor with physical constitution or peculiar diseases.

According to Hiliard’s examination, Ian’s health was comparable to that of a young leopard, and he believed that, except for those noble scions who had been snacking on Origin Quality foods since childhood, there were not many of his age who could surpass Ian.

After all, there weren’t many people who could step onto The Path of Sublimation at such a young age.

It wasn’t a physical condition, nor was it Flash Mosquito Syndrome, having excluded all impossibilities, what remained must be the only possibility.

“All of this is probably related to your Spirit Energy,” Hiliard said seriously to Ian after several examinations, presenting this possibility, “You are a Postnatal Awakening Spirit Energy User, unlike those innate Awakeners who naturally grow Spirit Energy, and different from Sublimators who practice The Path of Sublimation, gradually refining Life Spirit Energy.”

“Your Spirit Energy is your desire.

To advance your Spirit Energy, you need to satisfy your desires, and continually give rise to new desires.”

“I do not know what your desires are, but I think, you might have accidentally met the growth conditions, your Spirit Energy has progressed, but your brain cannot withstand it, hence these precursory signs of a critical state.”

Due to this unusual circumstance, Ian even missed Viscount Grant’s commendation ceremony.

However, it was not a big problem, in the public narrative, the key shot that repelled the Spirit of the Mountain Tide was mainly credited to the four city guards stationed in that tower.

And Ian was just an enthusiastic member of the public assisting in the repair of the Alchemical Cannon.

This was actually a form of protection—after all, the Natives weren’t extinct, the Great Shaman and the Crocodragon were still alive, they must harbor deep hatred towards the person who hindered their final victory, and assassination or curse-killing was highly likely.

Moreover, the benefits Ian received far outweighed these superficial honors.

“Pattern of Canglan,” the Grants Family’s heirloom book of Aether Armament Inscriptions.

In theory, only members of the family could study this secret, but due to the decline over the past few decades, the Grant Family had not seen anyone talented in Inscriptions, so they had to let an outsider learn to help maintain the Aether Armaments.

Elder Prude, back then, learned this book with the tacit approval of the old Viscount, combining his own Dwarven Inscription inheritance to have the sufficient standard to repair Aether Armaments.

And now, this ‘honor’ had been passed on to Ian.

It must be said, the complexity of Inscription knowledge in “Pattern of Canglan” far exceeds the basic Inscription Studies taught by Elder Prude, and it contains many details about mechanical engineering, smelting, and material science.

Perhaps for others, the various disciplines and knowledge involved in Aether Armaments would be too complicated, and even those proficient in Inscription Studies might struggle to grasp it all.

But who was Ian?

In his past life, he was a senior engineer at East Asia Heavy Industries!

Although he now lacked the help of an AI assistant and an electronic brain, and did not have access to an online database, with his expertise, it was not so difficult to embark upon learning the construction of Aether Armaments from a higher perspective.

At the very least, he understood the designer’s intentions and techniques.

It was also somewhat coincidental that Ian began to experience frequent episodes of Illusory Vision shortly after he started studying “Pattern of Canglan.”

He had pondered whether there was a connection between the two, but it seemed more like a coincidence.

After all, if learning new knowledge could lead to Illusory Vision, that would be too absurd!

“No…

no, that’s not right,”

Realizing something during his morning exercise, Ian suddenly had an epiphany, “What if my desire is to understand the Otherworld, to learn about the new knowledge within Terra Continent?”

“In that case, it might make sense!”