Calculating Cultivation
Chapter 121: A Fresh Start

“This is worth, 82,152 units,” the energy trader said while looking over piece of equipment after putting the token I had inside of the scanner, which gave a reading we could both see. The glasses I was wearing translated the information.

“That seems a lot less than what it should be. Based on the energy of these tokens, nature, and how compressed it is,” I argued.

“It is. But there is a standard ten percent fee for such transactions. I have expenses as well,” the trader said.

“Ten percent is robbery,” I replied.

“And four fifths of that is taxed by the Administrator. I am making only two percent.” I pulled out my pad and checked. The trader wasn’t lying.

“That seems excessive,” I muttered.

“It is, but that is the Administrator for you. Regular stuff you can trade without much issue. But anything with energy and there are heavy taxes and fees. Not bringing the stuff here, but any transactions are taxed,” the trader said.

I didn’t want to trade one of these ten tokens the folk of the Great Tree had given me, but I needed units. But it was a small amount to the total amount of units I would actually need and it was the currency. According to She Who Seeks Knowledge, my cannister was worth ten thousand times one of these tokens, and I needed the energy equivalent to around ten of the hyper compressed energy cannister I had recovered from the Infinite Ring Complex.

That meant I needed around ten billion units to get the energy I needed to advance to immortality. I said a silent apology to Yang Heng for going back to numbers even after his warning, but it was the only way I could think of to advance. I did not have a super organization backing me up.

I checked my pad for the current market prices and everything matched up to what the trader was telling me. Anything involving energy was traded like a commodity. The price was regularly updated and fairly stable. Unless a large super organization dumped a lot of energy the price wouldn’t change much. And even then, it would only go down so much.

As for going up, it was what people were willing to spend for anything involving energy. The market had stabilized at this current point. While the amount in units might not seem like much, there was no inflation with the currency. The Administrator kept it highly regulated and personal goods were incredibly cheap.

Meals, basic housing, and menial jobs cost a single unit or a fraction of a unit. I couldn’t be bothered with keeping track of change. I needed units regardless, even if I didn’t want to trade away the energy I had in my possession.

“Give me the units,” I said heavily. The trader grinned at me and my pad was updated with my new balance.

“Pleasure doing business with you. Feel free to come back if you want to trade again,” the trader said.

“I will,” I replied politely. I wasn’t planning to come back to such a small trader again, but there was no reason to be rude to the mortal. I sent 50 units to pay back the debt I owed Bai, the young man who had shown me about the Free Port and Sphere and answered my questions.

That much would cover the secure storage facility I had rented for the golem and the cannister I had brought with me. My next stop was to go to a café that catered to humans in the Free Port. One unit got me some food, a fruit drink, and I would be left alone for a day. It was nice to be back on regular time again that was used by the Heavenly Alliance.

Each section of the Sphere used local time and all the equipment I used would update with this information. Far better than trying to work out weird conversions I had to endure in the past.

I pulled up the trade function on my pad and navigated through it. I began writing up information on the golem I had recovered from the Soaring Star Society and looked at other items in the market that were similar. It was a unique item from a super organization that had been completely lost to Chaos.

To have any remnants of such a civilization increased by the value by a factor of five from what I could tell. Then I had to work out its functions compared to other golems I saw listed and try to come up with a working price point.

I was in no rush to sell it, so I decided to go on the high end. I just needed to make one sale. This was not going to be a repeat business. I put the golem up for 500,000,000 units. It was a high-end product in good condition from a super organization that had vanished. The material, construction methods, energy use would all be of interest.

On the trading application I made note that only units or an equivalent trade in energy would be accepted, nothing else. There were countless items offered on the trading application. I had no doubt that super organizations kept people here to keep an eye out for anything interesting. That was who my customer would be. A super organization looking to gain some unique knowledge and reverse engineer the golem.

I also noted that the verification fee would be split between both parties if Administrator oversight was required for the trade. That would add another 25 million units to the cost, but that was acceptable in my mind. If someone wanted confirmation this wasn’t a scam, this was the best option.

It took hours to do all of this while I poked through my pad. I had considered something smaller, but I liked the larger display. The ergonomics were very suited for humans as well. Once I got the golem posted for trade, I began browsing to get a better sense of the Free Port.

I had browsed in the past and there was just too much. Too many beings, too many goods, too many things going on at the same time. This place was stupidly massive with other beings besides humans. Most beings didn’t go deeply into other sections where their species wasn’t located since services would be more difficult to access. It was possible and I had seen a couple of weirdly shaped beings pass by. But for the most part communities were only connected through the online network the Administrator managed.

I needed a way to make units. A lot of units. I had encountered this problem in the past, when I had been born in Cloudy Moon City. Trying to turn a small amount of currency into a larger amount of currency. The problem was this was a post scarcity society. There would be no mining here or making rocking chairs.

It was tempting to go back to the Inner Sphere and get a house there to research instead, but that would create a false sense of comfort. The cultivator community here was like a domesticated house cat compared to the lion that the Forever City was. It wasn’t a bad thing since the Administrator kept everything running, but it also meant it was too easy to fall into a sense of comfort.

Bai, the mortal who had shown me around, would never reach immortality. While he had talked about it and earning units, people and beings were mostly content with their lives. The living standards were quite high as long as you were willing to work. The Administrator slotted everyone into their slots and assigned tasks, like a calculator would.

Yang Heng’s warnings from the past made even more sense now. If one wanted to tread the path of a cultivator and reach immortality, following the lead of something like the Administrator was the wrong path to go down. One did not reach immortality by following something like that. Sure the Forever City paved Yang Heng’s path, but there were many key differences in the details.

The most important one was that the Administrator had no expectations as long as one followed its rules. That was both bad and good. Bad due to the fact that I would not get any extra assistance. Good due to the fact I wouldn’t owe any debts as I worked to acquire units.

Taking menial jobs like Bai had to show me around would only pay about a unit an hour. The more complicated or skilled work required that amount would go up to ten units an hour for technical repairs or construction. The Administrator didn’t offer anything beyond that. So working for it to earn units was pointless for me to reach my goal of ten billion units.

That reminded me to pay my residency fee. I accessed the application on the pad and paid 1,000 units to cover me for a 100 cycles. One needed to work about ten hours a year to pay their residency fee for the first hundred years for a human. After that the residency fee would increase to 500 units each cycle over a period of time.

That was why immortals couldn’t stick around unless they were willing to pay quite a bit. There was a big difference between 10 and 500. Since I was a new arrival and this was my first time at the Free Port, I was considered a new born for the purposes of taxation.

It was a weird immigration rule, but I had no complaint. In fact I would guess it was meant to encourage immigration while also encouraging people to leave. The Administrator clearly liked turnover in the populations it managed unlike the Forever City which liked to keep everything static as much as possible.

But that place was a complete and utter mess from all the competing factions and attacks from outside super organizations. Cultivators were messy and conflicts were messy. That was most likely the reason why the Administrator cracked down on violence.

The calculator had a good set up to earn a lot of energy. While I had no doubt the fees to maintain this place were massive, the amount of traffic to this Free Port was incredibly high. New vessels and beings arrived and departed daily in large numbers.

Ultimately this trade and these transactions benefited the Administrator. There was no public data, but estimates put the annual volume of fees and taxes into the trillions. I needed to just tap into a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that immense wealth and I would finally achieve my long held goal.

The hard part was finding any opening in the market, which was completely saturated in every conceivable way. Games, entertainment, food, drinks, goods, even from completely alien cultures. That was a big draw of this place as well. The tourist industry was alive. For people wanting to travel outside their super organization, but wanting somewhere safe, this was the place to visit.

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It was all a matter of wealth at the end of the day. If you had units, you could get almost anything here and live a life of hedonism and luxury. If you were poor you had to work, but you wouldn’t starve or suffer. It was a paradise for most people, but again there were many pitfalls.

The value of units was closely tied to energy, since the Administrator was carefully managing everything. Based on the information I could find there was very little inflation or deflation over long periods of time.

“New here?” I looked up to see a woman opposite me. A mortal woman, since her cultivation was quite low.

“Fairly new,” I replied curious to where this conversation would go. I put down the pad I had been looking though.

“You should check out the Red Line Club. It caters to more powerful cultivators who might be visiting,” she said and pulled out a business card. She smiled at me while putting it on the table. No doubt there was some attempt at seduction going on. I could care less about such things.

I looked at the card in front of me but didn’t take it. One of the many nuances of this place. Some cultures might think she was offering the business card to me. In reality she hadn’t said anything about giving such an item to me, and merely set it down while talking. It would be in the same category as a drink. If I took the business card, that could be taken as stealing.

It sounded stupid and it was, but she would make a couple of units off of such a scam. Most likely there was an organization behind this woman, and she was using her life to try and get benefits from more powerful people while using the Administrator as cover.

I could respect the hustle even if it was annoying to be targeted. “I will have to give this club a look,” I replied.

“You can find everything there. Information, contacts. It will help you advance your cultivation.” I was mentally rolling my eyes. There was already a glut of information out there. Unfortunately the glasses and ear pieces gave me away as someone new.

While I had considered more subtle equipment, I didn’t want to put anything into my body, no matter how much easier it made my life. If there were any hostile intentions by the administrator, that would be directly compromising my soul. That was why I thought of these cultivators as kittens instead of lions. They were so meek and accepting of what was happening to them it verged on the point of disgust.

They were only children abandoned here pretending to be cultivators. While the ruthless nature of the Forever City and the rest of the Firmament wasn’t something to emulate, it was honest in its brutality. This place and the people I had met so far felt incredibly fake. Pretending to a culture and heritage they didn’t understand or embrace.

I had no doubt this had occurred with other beings across this place as well. Once there was a permanent group, the culture of the Administrator would slowly dilute their original culture. In time this would only get worse. If I had to guess, I would even say that the Administrator would use some of these beings as spies to send out into the Firmament to collect information from factions that aligned with the various species present.

Picking up my pad, the woman left. I filed a report about her abandoned piece of property through an application. The Administrator would flag her in the future if she tried to make a claim of theft using a business card going forward and it would end poorly for her.

The only reason I filed a report was because it was such a stupid scam, but an effective one for idiots who didn’t know better. I was not going to mess with the rules of the Administrator. I had thought about this issue for a while, but I had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth the risk considering the discrepancies in our respective power.

I was living in a location that was managed by this calculator that had lasted for uncountable cycles. It knew everything. The scams, the deals, everything. The Administrator allowed for a black market and some areas to go dark, but I had no doubt it was still monitoring everything. This was the Administrator’s place of power and it was a machine.

Unlike a human cultivator, it could split its attention in multiple locations. While it hired beings and people speculated about its limited capacity, I knew in my heart it was all a lie. The Administrator was a God of this Free Port with a capital letter ‘G’.

It most likely used some kind of metric to base its decisions on who to kill and who not to kill. Cause enough trouble, or have something valuable enough, you would be killed. The second option would be much rarer, but I had no doubt that the Administrator had some powerful golems or individuals it employed.

While there was only the occasional breakthrough by a cultivator or other being, it stood to reason that the Administrator would recruit or be in a favorable position with those immortals. One every hundred cycles or so might not seem like much but spread across millions of cycles. Even if only a fraction of those immortals remained loyal or would work with the Administrator, which was still a sizable force.

On top of that the Administrator might have certain ties with other super organizations beyond trade. Knowledge, technology, and other items of interest could easily be traded from the vast amount of profit that it was generating as goods and beings were moved through the Free Port.

That was the power of the being that managed everything and why I wasn’t going to break the rules it had laid out on my arrival. No killing, fighting, or stealing. Simple, but effective rules that kept the chaos of this place from exploding out of control. There were nuances that the woman had tried to exploit, but as long as one knew the basics, then they would be fine for the most part.

I left the business card on the table and left the café. I wasn’t going to learn anything useful by poking about on the pad. One could get lost down that hole forever. Tapping a few buttons on the display, a vehicle arrived and I got in. There was a driver in the front, but unless there was a major event most of it was automated. That was why the pay for being a driver was so bad.

Reaching the Red Line Club a few minutes later, I got out. It had been a dizzying drive at high speeds. I couldn’t tell if it was using energy or some kind of technology for the rapid acceleration and deceleration that was involved. Perhaps different zones had different types of vehicles to monitor and test technology?

Looking at the club, it reached the ceiling way above and was a deep dark red. A flashing light on the outside listed the name. I approached the doors and they automatically opened. There was a waiting area and an attendant who was close to the first breakthrough in regards to their cultivation. Apparently working here paid better than other locations where the Administrator hired people directly.

“Welcome Senior to the Red Line Club. Are you looking for membership or something else?” the attendant asked.

“Business opportunities. But what would a membership entail?” I asked.

“There is only a small application fee of a thousand units and a membership fee of a hundred units every cycle after that,” the attendant explained. That was quite pricy for just a meeting area, but it was probably designed that way to keep the poor people out. Complaining about the price would only make me appear like an idiot and poor. Neither of which I wanted.

While the woman had tried to scam me to come here, she had been hired to go out get people to come here. That spoke to a large amount of wealth flowing in the club itself. Even if I didn’t go through any deals, the knowledge and information would help me going forward. I pulled out my pad and easily paid the thousand units for a membership in the club.

“Junior greets Senior Yuan Zhou,” the attendant said after seeing my name listed on the transaction. “If you need anything request an attendant and we will be happy to assist. Basic services are free, but most things will cost units, which are sold more cheaply in the Red Line Club, compared to purchasing them from elsewhere.”

I nodded at this as the attendant laid me into the main club itself. Three stories with balconies around a large open area. There were a lot of alcoves in the upper levels with tables and chairs. In the center was a large bar with a jagged red light stretching up to the ceiling, clearly the namesake of this place.

“We are named after the Red Line, a large crystal that was recovered and installed here by the founder. You can feel the higher amount of energy in the air, which makes the environment more comfortable to our guests.” I had noticed that, but it was a minor difference. Still, this place was selling an elite experience and they were clearly trying to do everything they could to hype this image up.

Compared to the structures I had seen in the past. It was like a small child pointing out some wooden construction blocks compared to a skyscraper. It was a joke. But I would not insult these people since I wanted to understand the market in more depth from experienced individuals.

“May I ask what business you are in Senior in order to better direct you?” the attendant asked me.

“Profitable business. Is there any kind of financial market or something similar. I have a large number of units and I would like to know if there are investment opportunities,” I explained. I didn’t have high hopes of finding anything, but it never hurt to ask and to gain perspective on the Free Port.

“Please follow me Senior. Your best option would be to speak with Garzag. While he might appear like a brute, his financial acumen regarding the Free Port is quite exceptional. You can also look through our membership list and update your own with any services you might be willing to offer or make requests,” the attendant said. I nodded at this as we went to the second floor and a secluded alcove. There was a large man sitting in the back with two smaller men on either side of him.

Garzag was leaning back with both arms spread out behind him on the chairs next to him, behind his subordinates. His cultivation was less than mine, but he had gotten past the first breakthrough. “Garzag, this is Yuan Zhou who is interested in speaking to you regarding financial matters,” the attendant said. Garzag gave a nod at this, and I sat down across the table form him.

The man looked like a brute with tattoos depicting swords and monsters. He wasn’t even wearing a martial robe, but it was open to reveal his chest. His hair was messy. “Glasses, you are fresh here, aren’t you.”

“I have recently arrived at the Free Port. I was told you would be helpful in understanding the financial markets?” I asked.

“The larger the business, the harder it is to run. Businesses come and go for the most part. There has always been talk about setting up an actual exchange, selling shares, paying dividends, but the Administrator regulates such actions incredibly tightly. Looking for energy for your cultivation?” Garzag asked me.

“Yes. I need a lot of units to purchase the energy I need,” I replied.

“You and everyone else in your position.”

“How do you make your money if you don’t mind me asking?” I asked Garzag. His two female companions tittered at this.

“I organize the women and men to provide services of a personal nature for the most part. It seems one of the hopefuls didn’t manage to hook you,” he replied.

“I am new, not stupid,” I countered and Garzag chuckled.

“If you had fallen for such a simple thing, you wouldn’t be worth talking to. Even with everything I manage, which I inherited through my family, it is a massive hassle to advance one’s cultivation in the Free Port. Better to save up, buy a vessel and look for opportunities elsewhere. That is what most people do,” he said with a shrug.

“I might do that if I can’t start something here. But I have already done quite well in the Firmament. What do people want?” I asked.

“A good companion, comfortable life, and a place to live. I handle the first part, while the Administrator handles the rest. Let me give you some free advice. Trying to break into business here is expensive and a massive hassle. It all depends on reputation and what people know. People trust my establishments for discretion and a good time. Eighteen generations and one of my children who isn’t useless will inherit after me.”

“And you are saying it is impossible for me to compete,” I replied.

“Not impossible, just very hard. The businesses are profitable. Occasionally you will get some idiot selling their business to try and get enough energy to prolong their life or to buy something from outside the Free Port. It isn’t worth the loss.”

“Wouldn’t these businesses combine?” I asked.

“And which immortal wants to run a business for the rest of their lives? They pass out chunks to their children. That is how my distant ancestor got his share. There might be individual establishments, but competing with a chain brand, well you will need more than a couple thousand units.”

“My wealth is well in hand. Where would I learn about a person selling a business?” I asked.

“Word of mouth. These kinds of things aren’t posted for the most part, even on the Red Line app. And no, I would not be interested in selling. Better to have a stable source of income than one big payout,” Garzag replied.