After circling around for a while, Jiang Chen settled on a spot beneath a certain cavern. Though there was no natural crater to be found, he had the Gold-Munching Mouse clan as free labor, so he naturally had nothing to worry about.
One day of the Gold-Munching Mouse clan's excavation produced a pit larger than the original Wood Spirit Spring—perfect for use as a reservoir lake.
The spiritual energy in this area was also plentiful. Jiang Chen manually planted a great number of wood-attribute Spiritual Medicines to mask the aura of the Heavenly Jade Vine.
Once the Heavenly Jade Vine had been properly relocated, Jiang Chen summoned Long Xiaoxuan and had it release the full volume of the Wood Spirit Spring back into the basin.
An hour later, a new Wood Spirit Spring had taken shape.
Jiang Chen paced around the cavern several times, feeling that the perimeter lacked any real defensive capability.
"My private dwelling has a ban restrictions layer on the exterior, but there are no personal defensive formations inside the cavern itself. That's not a good thing."
Now that he had a private dwelling, Jiang Chen had no intention of letting just anyone wander freely through his territory.
Formations and restrictions were hardly foreign to him. In his previous life, apart from cultivation itself, there was no discipline he hadn't dabbled in—and the art of formations was no exception.
However, formations were inherently an expensive game. The Ling Shi consumed by a single formation could rival the cultivation resources of ten martial artists at minimum.
In other words, if Jiang Chen wanted to set up a defensive formation inside his inner sanctum at a level capable of holding off a Saint-realm powerhouse, the cost in Ling Shi would be staggering.
With his current financial resources, there was simply no way he could afford it.
Fortunately, Jiang Chen had a large flock of Golden-Winged Sword Birds and an even larger colony of Gold-Munching Mice.
Now that he had his own private domain, he could house the Gold-Munching Mouse clan right within this cavern.
Of course, the Wood Spirit Spring remained Long Xiaoxuan's territory—no one besides Jiang Chen was permitted to approach it.
The Golden-Winged Sword Birds and the Gold-Munching Mouse clan would be stationed on the first and second levels of the cavern respectively.
This way, a layer of artificial defense could be established.
Still, this was merely a stopgap measure. A powerful defensive formation remained an absolute necessity.
Jiang Chen surveyed the terrain around his dwelling.
His personal cave was situated not far from the cavern itself. After analyzing the surrounding landscape, a formation name rose to the forefront of his mind—
Nine Gates Burning Heaven Formation.
The terrain in this area featured nine undulating ridges, resembling the Nine Gates of Heaven and Earth. Given this geography, the Nine Gates Burning Heaven Formation would be an ideal fit.
This formation was quite well-known, leaving a deep impression in Jiang Chen's memories from his previous life. Moreover, it wasn't some celestial-tier formation—it belonged to the inheritance traditions of ordinary mortal planes.
With Jiang Chen's understanding of this formation, if he could activate it at full power, it would absolutely be enough to keep even an Emperor-level powerhouse from breaking through.
Of course, full activation was completely unrealistic for Jiang Chen in his current state. He simply didn't possess the resources required.
Unless the entire Danxia Palace's resources were at his disposal, he would only have a seventy to eighty percent chance of fully activating the formation.
Naturally, Jiang Chen harbored no such delusions.
His goal at this stage was simply to hold off Human Saint-level martialists, and that would be sufficient.
At just thirty percent power, the Nine Gates Burning Heaven Formation would be more than enough to repel Human Saint-level experts.
Of course, even at thirty percent power, the materials required were still formidable.
First came the forging of formation flags. The process, while less complex than crafting divine weapons, directly determined the overall quality of the formation.
The materials required for the formation flags were themselves quite demanding.
Beyond the flags, the materials inscribed onto the formation base were equally exacting.
And at the foundation of it all, the Ling Shi needed to sustain and operate the formation would require a truly astronomical amount.
With Jiang Chen's current monthly allowance, generating even thirty percent of the formation's power would demand at least ten years' worth of his salary—and that would only sustain the formation for a single year.
To maintain it for ten or even a hundred years would require a hundred to a thousand years of his monthly stipend. The numbers were frankly terrifying.
Jiang Chen estimated that only the sect elders could possibly come up with such sums.
And even they would be severely crippled by the expenditure.
"I don't need it to run for a hundred years, but a five-year minimum is the absolute floor," Jiang Chen calculated. Five years was his bare minimum.
Even so, five years' worth of Ling Shi would require fifty years of his monthly salary to sustain.
Even as the favored protégé of Palace Master Danchi, Jiang Chen knew that an advance of fifty years' worth of stipend was simply not feasible.
As for completing sect tasks to earn such quantities of Ling Shi, the difficulty of such a task would far exceed the eight-star mission he had undertaken before—helping Elder Yun Nie refine the Six-Vein Mysterious Dragon Pill.
This obviously wouldn't solve his urgent needs either.