A couple of months later, Shang got contacted by the Territory Lord again.
The Congregation was happy with Shang's progress, and they decided to give him funding worth 200 Grade Six Mana Crystals.
200 Grade Six Mana Crystals.
That was an insane amount of money, and this was just one payment. Shang had already gotten quite a lot from the Temple of Blood, and they would continue supporting him in the future.
One had to remember that 200 Grade Six Mana Crystals represented 200 years of condensing Mana for an Ancestral Mage, and Shang wasn't even in the Sixth Realm.
After looking at the available funds, the Territory Lord came up with the best way for Shang to comprehend the Concept of Subtraction, but she needed to talk with the Congregation again.
When the Territory Lord talked to the Congregation, she was offering something.
An investment.
Of course, that investment would consume a huge amount of resources, and 200 Grade Six Mana Crystals wasn't enough.
However, the 200 Grade Six Mana Crystals had already been promised to Shang, and they essentially viewed them as losses.
But if Shang were willing to spend these 200 Grade Six Mana Crystals to ease the cost of the investment, it wouldn't be so bad for the Temple of Blood.
After a lot of convincing, the Congregation finally listened to the Territory Lord and agreed.
What was this investment?
Well, 90% of all the profits from Shang's town had to either be reinvested into the town or handed over to the Temple of Blood. After all, this was the Temple of Blood's town, not Shang's town.
So, Shang's town was an asset of the Temple of Blood, and investing in it was the same as investing in the Temple of Blood.
However, not every investment was worth it.
But when one of the investments suddenly became 200 Grade Six Mana Crystals cheaper, it might become worth it.
The Territory Lord had the amazing idea to fit Shang's town with a very expensive weapon.
An Ancestral Beast.
Several cities had something called a Beast Residence.
A Beast Residence was a place where beasts could live, and if any foreign Ancestral Beast came close to the Beast Residence, the beast inside the Beast Residence would attack the intruder.
In a way, this meant that a city would receive an Ancestral Beast as a guardian.
Of course, creating something like a Beast Residence was beyond expensive. Not only would one need hundreds of different Magic Circles, but one would also need to make a lot of space for the beast.
However, the most expensive part was the beast's training.
It would be bad if the Ancestral Beast decided to eat visitors or attack the city. Because of that, the very few companies that specialized in that area had to invest a lot into training the Ancestral Beasts.
Additionally, the Ancestral Beast would never truly be tame. If any human still did something it didn't like, that human would very quickly enter the afterlife.
All in all, setting up something like that would cost around one Grade Seven Mana Crystal.
The advantage was that the city or town would be safer since there would be no reaction time for the Security Agency anymore. It would be like having an Ancestral Mage as a resident in the town.
This meant that the Temple of Blood wouldn't need to keep an Ancestral Mage on standby anymore for Shang's town. Additionally, more powerful people would be interested in moving to the town.
Of course, since this investment was also supposed to help Shang comprehend the Concept of Subtraction, the beasts had to be fitting.
After contacting one of these companies, the Temple of Blood made their choice.
They would go with one of the cheaper options, but the reason why the option was cheaper wouldn't be a problem for Shang's town and might even prove to be a good thing.
The Territory Lord talked with Shang about everything, and a couple of months later, the professionals arrived.
On this day, Shang had to welcome over 20 Ancestral Mages.
These 20 Ancestral Mages started to slightly alter the Magic Circles of the town to make it compatible with the new ones they were about to create.
Then, they dug deep into the ground beneath the town while severely strengthening several spots so that the town wouldn't sink into the earth.
They created a huge underground cavern below the town, which was about three kilometers wide and high. Without the earlier strengthening of the ground, the town would have collapsed above them.
After that, they summoned a humongous crystal, which was several hundred meters wide.
The crystal was black and shimmered in dark blue light.
This was an artificial object of concentrated Ice and Darkness Mana.
After placing the object in the middle of the cave, they created several Magic Circles to gather the Mana in the surroundings, convert it to Darkness and Ice Mana, and infuse it into the crystal.
When they were done with that, they placed a couple of smaller light crystals away from the cave in spots where they didn't want the beasts to go. Sure, if the beasts felt a foreign beast, they would just shoot through there, but that wasn't exactly the problem.
They just didn't want the beasts to come out of the ground near the mortal district and kill a couple hundred humans just by moving.
After preparing and testing everything for several days, the 20 Ancestral Mages called their superior.
And on that day, Shang met his first Mage Lord aside from the Territory Lord.
The Mage Lord arrived near Shang's town, and as soon as he did, the sky above the town became dark.
That wasn't due to his power but due to the two things levitating beside him.
Two Ancestral Beasts.
One had an Ice Affinity, and one had a Darkness Affinity.
And from now on, they would live beneath Shang's town.
When Shang took note of the two beasts, he became a bit excited.
Finally, he had something to help him comprehend the Concept of Subtraction.
