It took Yao Shen over an hour of deliberation to decide which five modern weapons he would offer Vondar in return for one self-destruct greater rune and four auxiliary runes that would amplify the Lumenite Armor’s functions.
There was a reason why Yao Shen had requested for only five Greater Runes was because Vondar had clearly explained that adding any more would risk destabilizing the Lumenite that would serve as a base for the armor. Besides the self-destruct rune, the other Greater Runes that Yao Shen had chosen were fairly standard choices.
The ‘Amplification’ Greater Rune could be activated by the wielder’s divine sense, increasing the draw on the Lumenite Armor’’s reserves to defend from more powerful attacks. The ‘Discharge’ Greater Rune called upon the Lumenite Armor’s reserves to release an expanding ring of condensed Spiritual Qi that would expand outwards until exhausted, incinerating weaker enemies and pushing back stronger ones.
The ‘Control’ Greater Rune was another one that focused on defense, though its approach was far subtler. It allowed the wielder to redirect and focus the Lumenite Armor’s innate Qi at specific plates, helping to minimize the impact from the strike. Finally, there was the ‘Diffusion’ Greater Rune, which Yao Shen personally considered to be the most interesting of the selections available.
The Diffusion Greater Rune converted the vast reserves of Qi contained in the Lumenite Armor into a thick mist that surrounded the armor. A talented enough cultivator could either rapidly absorb the Qi mist to replenish their own reserves or even use the increase in ambient Qi to amplify his attacks.
However, a simple fact remained. The Self-Destruct Greater Rune that had to be imbued with his own soul was the single, most important rune that he had traded Vondar for— to the point where the other Greater Runes were meaningless without it.
The secret of the Lumenite Mines could not be allowed to escape the Azlak Plains and as such, Yao Shen required a contingency measure for every set of armor he gave away. In the event that the armor left the Azlak Plains, or Yao Shen was to learn that one of the Elders he had bestowed the armor to had betrayed the cause of the Modern Sect, then his Divine Sense imbued in the self-destruct rune would send the command to detonate every ounce of Qi contained within the Lumenite Armor—- resulting in an explosion that would be enough to grievously injure, if not instantly kill, any Nascent Soul Cultivator caught in it’s blast radius.
The greatest weakness of the Modern Sect, as Yao Shen presently saw it, was its inability to defend itself against powerful threats in his absence. Soul Emperor though he maybe, he was ultimately but a single cultivator and he did not wish to be tethered to the Azlak Plains for the remainder of his lifespan. However, even if he was willing to make that sacrifice, what was he to do if two or more powerful threats sieged his territory from different directions?
As it was, his Human Dao wasn’t offensively inclined and his three Major Daos on their own were nothing that would give him an edge over enemies at his own level.
That was the reason why Yao Shen had no choice but to make the trade with Vondar. In truth, the knowledge he possessed was not very valuable on its own. He had been a businessman in his part life and as such, his knowledge of the sciences was mostly surface level. To most cultivators, his insights would sound like incoherent ramblings on the creation of inefficient artifacts and he would not be surprised if most considered the use of high-speed projectiles to be both cowardly and easily countered.
But Vondar was not most cultivators.
Even in his diminished state, the Ancient Dwarf had retained a large chunk of the knowledge he possessed in his prime. Yao Shen was a powerful cultivator, a Soul Emperor, but he was not worthy of the title of ‘Scholar’. He suspected that no one in the present Azlak Plains was.
Few walked the path of Artifact Creation and almost all the Artifacts in circulation within the Modern Sect were passed down from ancient times. Not only were most of the techniques employed in Artifact Forging lost to the Azlak Plains, but embarking on the little traversed path could only be accomplished at the cost of sacrificing one’s own progress in cultivation. Yao Shen did not require first-hand knowledge in the field to conclude that artifact forging required a large degree of trial and error, along with copious costs that were likely too large for any one individual cultivator to bear.
While he could not speak for all Human Cultivators, in the Azlak Plains, Yao Shen knew strength to be valued above all else. The Dwarves, though, had a culture that valued artifact and construct craftsmen equally, if not more than, their combatants. It was in such an environment that Vondar was bestowed upon the title of ‘Scholar’. Though his other achievements remained unknown to Yao Shen, he knew that the ancient dwarf was the first among his kind to discover a Lumenite Mine outside the bounds of the Dwarven Mountain Range—- an accomplishment that should have heralded him as a champion among his kind, only to have it all robbed from him at the whims of fate.
‘What could such a cultivator accomplish with designs born from the paradigm of another whole world?’
That question was the reason why Yao Shen couldn’t believe that he had come ahead of the deal, even when it’s terms seemed heavily skewed in his favor.
He supposed that only time would tell if his decision today was a wise one.
The five weapons that Yao Shen had zeroed in on were choices that he believed to have met the criteria he’d set in advance. If he wanted to secretly renege on the deal, he could have picked out underwhelming melee weapons from the medieval era, versions of which were already prevalent in cultivator society. However, cooperation with Vondar was essential to his future goals and the Dwarf was one of the few cultivators in the Modern Sect that could not be pressured by his might or even assuaged with ample resources.
Knowledge and knowledge alone was capable of satiating the Scholar’s appetite and to that end, Yao Shen could not offer an underwhelming selection. Vondar’s experience with the Human race had been dismal as such and as a practitioner of the Human Dao, Yao Shen had to strive for far better if he wished to change that impression.
At the same time, he did not have the slightest of intention to reveal any weapon that was capable of destruction at a large scale.
His final list came down to a handgun, grenade and sniper rifle in the lethal category, while for the non-lethal ones he came up with two of Earth’s ‘artifacts’ that he thought the dwarf would find interesting, namely, the taser and the drone.