Within a single day, Alexei completed his planned expansion of the villager housing district inside the mountain.
The two remaining zombie villagers finished their conversion process and officially joined the community. After being converted using his brewing stands, the village population finally reached ten inhabitants.
The roster consisted of:
- 1 Fisherman
- 1 Toolsmith
- 1 Shepherd
- 1 Armorer
- 2 Librarians
- 4 Clerics
The iron farm was also up and running, though its output was a bit underwhelming. After half a day of operation, it had produced a grand total of 36 iron ingots. At that rate, he could expect maybe 80 or 90 ingots per full day.
According to Minecraft mechanics, every ten villagers increased the iron golem spawn rate by one. Once the population reached twenty, the farm's efficiency would double.
Which meant he needed more villagers. His days had become an endless cycle of curing zombie villagers and assigning them professions.
At least the monotony was productive.
On a more positive note, he had finally upgraded his diamond armor set.
The process had been tedious. He first enchanted gold armor pieces at the enchantment table, then used his Deconstruction ability to extract the enchantments and transfer them to his diamond gear. It had taken hours of work, but the results were worth it.
His current setup included two pieces with Protection IV. Together they provided an additional 32% reduction to incoming damage across his body. Not bad for someone who kept dying to giant spiders and crystal scorpions.
He also had two pieces with Thorns III.
Thorns was an interesting enchantment. Each level provided a 15% chance to reflect one to four points of damage back at an attacker. At level three, the trigger chance reached a maximum of 45%. When multiple armor pieces carried Thorns, the percentages didn't stack. Instead, each piece rolled its effect separately, from helmet down to boots.
So even wearing four pieces of Thorns III armor, if only one effect triggered, the reflected damage would still be just one to four points.
But if luck was on your side and all four triggered simultaneously, each dealing maximum damage? That was sixteen points of reflected damage in a single hit.
That was enough to remove more than half of most enemies' health bars.
Aside from Protection and Thorns, he had also obtained several unusual enchantments from the modded Epic Enchantments system. These included Blazing Heart, Magic Resistance, Counterattack, Stone Guardian, Heart of the Earth, and Knockback Resistance.
Among them, three stood out as particularly powerful.
Blazing Heart could reach level three and only worked on chestplates. Whenever the wearer lost health, all hostile mobs within three meters would ignite. The burn duration increased by four seconds per level, similar to the Fire Aspect enchantment used on weapons.
The visual effect was extremely satisfying. Enemies would burst into flames simply for hitting him.
Magic Resistance could reach level four. It functioned similarly to Blast Protection or Projectile Protection, but specifically reduced damage from potions, dragon breath, and other magical attacks. Each level reduced incoming magic damage by 4%, and it didn't conflict with standard Protection enchantments.
Finally, Heart of the Earth could reach level five and was restricted to boots. While the wearer stood on solid ground, the enchantment increased armor toughness by three points per level.
At maximum level, that meant fifteen additional points of armor toughness.
That more than doubled the damage required to bypass his armor's protection. A full set of diamond armor only provided eight base armor toughness, so this enchantment was game-changing.
Alexei wasn't obsessed with min-maxing every piece of gear to perfection. He enchanted whatever seemed useful and called it good enough.
He could always breed more librarians later and trade for better enchantment books if needed.
"Good enough is good enough," he said to himself, closing his inventory. "Time for more important things."
---
Early the next morning, Alexei equipped his full set of diamond armor. He added a gold helmet, which was essential if he wanted to avoid provoking piglins, and crafted several blank maps at his crafting table.
Today was Nether exploration day.
The first time he had entered the Nether, he encountered a piglin brute almost immediately. That meant a bastion remnant was likely somewhere near the portal.
He only needed to find it.
Before heading out, though, he had done some safety testing using small insects as unwilling test subjects.
The results were clear. The Nether was extremely hot.
For Alexei himself, the environment just felt dry and uncomfortably warm, like standing too close to a large fire. It was irritating, but still fine.
For ordinary insects, the situation was very different. Even in the Crimson Forest biome, where lava wasn't immediately visible, they shriveled into crisp husks within seconds of arriving.
"Cultivators should theoretically be fine," he mused, double-checking his equipment. "But I am not testing that theory on anyone from the Aureate Summit Sect."
He would just have to wait for some idiot enemy to deliver themselves to his doorstep in the future. Then he could conduct proper heat tolerance experiments on hostile test subjects with zero guilt.
As for his ender pearl stasis chamber for Nether exploration, he had installed it in his courtyard.
The device was elegantly simple: a daylight sensor, a trapdoor, an ender pearl, and a soul sand bubble column.
When the sun fully set each evening, the daylight sensor would detect the absence of sunlight and emit a redstone signal. That signal closed the trapdoor. The ender pearl, which was perpetually suspended in the bubble column's upward current, would collide with the closed trapdoor and instantly teleport him back to this exact spot.
He had tested whether it would work from the Nether using a timer system.
The answer was yes.
Unlike in the game, this world didn't unload entire dimensions. The Overworld and the Nether existed at the same time, which meant his contraptions continued running no matter where he was.
It was convenient, though occasionally a little concerning.
He approached his Nether portal and stepped through without hesitation.
The familiar sensation of pushing through a thick membrane washed over him, and then he was standing inside his safe house in the Nether.
He pulled out a blank map from his inventory and activated it.
The entire map immediately filled with black and white static patterns. No Nether terrain appeared, which was exactly what he had expected.
The Nether's upper layer was covered by bedrock, making it impossible for maps to record the environment from normal positioning.
He placed down a cartography table and used paper to upgrade the newly created map four times, expanding its display range from 8x8 chunks to 128×128 chunks.
That translated to roughly two kilometers by two kilometers.
This would be his search area for the day.
Bastion remnants were supposedly common in the Nether. They couldn't generate in Basalt Deltas, but they appeared freely in Nether Wastes, Soul Sand Valleys, Crimson Forests, and Warped Forests.
Logically, a 32×32 map should have been sufficient. But Alexei preferred to be thorough.
He set off in a straight line from his portal, weaving between towering piglins who grunted and snorted at him but didn't attack thanks to his gold helmet.
The Nether was as miserable as always. The Crimson Forest biome where his portal was located at least had some variety with its fungi and giant mushroom structures, but it was still fundamentally a hellscape.
He checked his map periodically as he explored. The areas he passed through left black marks on the parchment, indicating explored territory.
128 chunks sounded large in theory. In practice, it only took him about half a day to cover the entire mapped area.
And he found absolutely nothing.
"Are you kidding me?" he stared at his completed map, which showed zero bastion structures. "How is that possible?"
Maybe the bastion was buried underground?
No, that didn't make sense. If it was underground, where had that piglin brute come from during his first visit?
Refusing to accept defeat, he pulled out a fresh map, activated it, placed down his cartography table again, and upgraded it to level four.
"Let's try a different direction."
He set off again, this time exploring perpendicular to his previous route.
He found more Crimson Forest, more piglins, and more lava.
There was still no bastion.
By the time the sun began setting back in the Profound Sky Continent, he had searched nearly four square kilometers of Nether terrain and found exactly zero bastion remnants.
"This is bullshit."
---
Mengyao was having a much more peaceful evening.
Since moving next door to Alexei's residence, she had been splitting her time between cultivation and caring for the small animals in Alexei's courtyard. The chickens, cows, and pigs had become a pleasant routine.
She gathered the eggs scattered across the ground, tucking them into a small pouch.
These eggs couldn't be seen by Alexei. She had learned quickly that he had an almost pathological inability to leave eggs intact. The moment he spotted one, he would immediately throw it at the ground to "hatch" it.
She had tried explaining that eggs needed to be incubated by hens. He had insisted that smashing them was the correct hatching method and refused to listen to reason.
So she had started secretly collecting all the eggs and incubating them herself using controlled fire-attribute spiritual energy. When they hatched, she could surprise him with chicks.
"Baa?"
Mengyao turned at the sound.
A sheep had appeared on the courtyard lawn.
"Baa?" The sheep tilted its head at her.
She felt her heart melt immediately. It was adorable. She wanted to pet it so badly.
CLICK.
The trapdoor of Alexei's ender pearl stasis chamber suddenly snapped shut.
FWOOSH.
Purple particles exploded across the courtyard as Alexei materialized atop the closed trapdoor with a trident in hand.
"Finally! I found..." His expression froze. "Wait. No. No no no!"
The excitement died instantly.
"I BARELY SAW IT! I only got one glimpse of the bastion before this thing dragged me back! Blyat!"
Mengyao blinked at Alexei, who had apparently just been forcibly teleported from wherever he had been. "What bastion?"
Alexei looked like he wanted to scream into the void. Instead, he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.
"Nothing. It doesn't matter. I will find it tomorrow."
"Baa?"
The sheep stared at Alexei with vacant eyes.
Alexei noticed it for the first time. "A sheep? Since when do we have sheep?"
He looked around. "Weird. They usually spawn in groups of three or four."
He shrugged. "Ah well. One is fine."
Mengyao watched in confusion as Alexei crafted a pair of shears, and walked straight toward the sheep.
"Wait, what are you..."
SNIP.
He made a single motion through the air. The sheep's wool vanished in blocky clumps and flowed directly into Alexei.
The previously adorable sheep now stood there half-naked, retaining wool only on its head and legs while its body was completely bare. It looked significantly less cute.
"Perfect," Alexei said, satisfied. He deconstructed the shears back into iron ingots and started herding the confused sheep toward the cow pen.
Then he finally noticed Mengyao staring at him with a slightly dazed expression.
"You okay?"
He pulled out a piece of candy and offered it to her with a friendly smile. "Want some candy?"
---
After giving Mengyao her candy, he returned to his underground survival base and stored away half an inventory's worth of nether quartz.
He had mined all of it while searching fruitlessly for that elusive bastion remnant. Might as well put the wasted time to some productive use.
Nether quartz was incredibly useful material. Beyond crafting daylight sensors, observers, and comparators, it was also an excellent decorative block.
Well, technically three kinds of decorative blocks.
In vanilla Minecraft, you could combine four nether quartz to make a quartz block. But there were also these weird, almost useless recipes: two nether quartz plus two cobblestone made diorite. Then one diorite plus one nether quartz made granite.
He was fairly certain the vast majority of Minecraft players had never bothered with those recipes. That "vast majority" definitely included him. He had played Minecraft for years and only learned about the diorite-granite chain from a wiki article.
After organizing his storage, Alexei didn't leave the building. Instead, he headed back to the main living area on the first floor.
After Yan and Mengyao moved into the neighboring building, Qingxue began spending more time here. She still had her own residence elsewhere in the sect, of course, but she seemed to prefer the living room in his building. Perhaps she found it cozier. Perhaps she liked the furniture he had crafted. Or perhaps she simply enjoyed the easy access to his endless supply of snacks.
He found her exactly where he expected. She was sprawled across the couch in the living room, reading a book while her fox tail swished lazily behind her.
"Evening," he said, dropping onto the other end of the couch.
Qingxue glanced up from her book and shifted slightly to give him more room, though she didn't move that much. "Long day?"
"Yeah." He pulled out an Everlasting Peach gummy and popped it in his mouth.
"Mm." She had already gone back to her book.
Alexei caught a glimpse of the cover and did a double-take. "Are you reading a cultivation manual?"
Qingxue's ears flattened slightly, and she looked vaguely embarrassed. "I am a cultivator. It is important to maintain diligent study habits and never forget my initial aspirations."
Alexei stared at her.
"You ran out of novels, didn't you?"
"My dedication to self-improvement has nothing to do with my personal reading material being temporarily exhausted," Qingxue said with as much dignity as she could muster while her tail betrayed her irritation by lashing back and forth.
"Sure." He pulled out another gummy and tossed it to her. "You know you can just fly to Verdantree City and buy more books. With your sword speed, it wouldn't take long."
Qingxue's eyes brightened slightly at the mention of new reading material, but after a moment's consideration, she shook her head. "A trip there would take at least ten hours one way."
She didn't explain why that made the idea unacceptable, and Alexei didn't ask. Perhaps she had duties within the sect. Perhaps she simply didn't want to be away for that long. Either way, he let the matter drop.
She accepted the candy he was offering and went back to her book.
They sat in silence for a while, Qingxue reading while he planned tomorrow's tasks.
"You should try cultivating properly," Qingxue said suddenly without looking up from her page.
"What?"
"You have been attending the morning qi-sensing sessions less and less. In fact, you have stopped attending entirely."
Alexei grimaced. "Because they're boring. I just sit there doing nothing while everyone else senses energy that I can't detect at all."
"That's how it works for everyone at first. Sensing qi takes time and patience. I have neither."
"But you should still practice." Qingxue finally looked up from her book, fixing him with one of her rare serious expressions. "Even if you can't sense qi yet, the meditation itself has benefits. It calms the mind, improves focus, and prepares your body for when you do break through."
"If I break through."
"When." Her tone left no room for argument. "You have potential. You're simply... impatient."
Alexei snorted. "Yeah, well. Sitting still has never been my strong suit."
"I have noticed. But humor me. Try meditating tonight before you sleep. Who knows, perhaps the evening atmosphere will be more conducive to sensing qi."
He was about to dismiss the idea outright, but then he paused.
Becoming a cultivator who could fly on a sword under his own power would be useful. And honestly, how impressive would it look if he flew on a pickaxe instead of a sword?
"Fine. I'll try it tonight. But if I spend an hour sitting there and sense nothing, I'm blaming you"
"I can accept that." Qingxue returned to her book.
---
Later that night, after Qingxue returned to her quarters and Alexei finished his usual evening chores, he sat cross-legged on his bed and tried to recall the meditation instructions from those morning sessions he had mostly slept through.
He needed to straighten his spine, relax his shoulders, and breathe slowly and evenly. After that, he was supposed to focus inward and search for the flow of spiritual energy that was said to exist within all living things.
He had done this dozens of times before during the mandatory training sessions. It had never worked. He always just ended up bored, restless, and increasingly convinced that cultivation was a scam.
But tonight he was trying.
He focused on the instructions instead of planning his next construction project.
He inhaled slowly and then exhaled, trying to steady his thoughts and focus inward.
But nothing happened.
That wasn't surprising. It had never worked before. Still, he kept his breathing even and continued searching inward.
Minutes passed with no change.
He remained seated, stubbornly repeating the process.
Fifteen minutes slipped by, then twenty.
At this point he was beginning to suspect the entire exercise was pointless. Cultivation manuals loved to make everything sound mystical, but right now it felt more like sitting still and wasting time.
He was about to give up when something flickered at the edge of his awareness.
A faint sensation appeared. It felt like warmth, though not exactly heat. It felt like pressure, though nothing touched him.
The sensation flickered like a candle in the wind.
Alexei's eyes snapped open. "What the hell?"
He closed his eyes again and tried to recapture the strange sensation. For a moment there was nothing, then it returned.
The feeling was faint, yet it was undeniably there.
It felt like some kind of energy flowing around him and through him, responding weakly whenever he focused his attention on it.
"Huh."
He remained seated and tried to follow it, guiding his attention toward the faint current of energy. The sensation would grow clearer for a moment before fading again, forcing him to start over.
The process was slow and frustrating.
Still, it held his interest for a while.
After about an hour, the novelty had completely worn off. His back ached from sitting in the same position for so long. His legs had gone numb, and sitting still while trying to sense invisible energy had become incredibly dull.
"That's enough of that," he muttered as he opened his eyes and stretched.
His spine cracked several times.
He had definitely sensed something tonight, which was more progress than he had made in months. Still, he had no intention of spending the entire night sitting motionless.
"I'll try again tomorrow."
He lay down, pulled the blanket over himself, and fell asleep within minutes.
---
The next morning, Alexei woke up unusually early.
He had a mission today. This was the day he would finally raid that bastion remnant properly instead of getting auto-teleported away the moment he found it.
He rushed through his morning routine while planning the route in his head. Just as he was about to leave, he suddenly paused.
He should probably try sensing qi again.
However, before doing that, there were still several materials he hadn't yet assimilated with experience. It would be better to deal with those first.
Before doing that, he opened his status interface and checked his level.
[Level 80]
That was a comfortable reserve, but he still didn't want to waste too much.
He pulled the items out one by one and began channeling experience into them. As the process continued, the materials gradually transformed into proper MC blocks.
Once he finished, he sat down and attempted the meditation exercise he had practiced the night before.
He slowed his breathing and focused inward.
But nothing happened. He frowned and tried again, concentrating harder this time.
Still nothing.
The faint sensation of qi he had detected the previous night had completely vanished, as if it had never existed at all.
He opened his eyes.
"What...?"
He sat there for several more minutes, searching for that energy he had definitely felt before. But there was nothing.
"Was it a fluke?" he muttered as he stood up and brushed the dust from his pants. "Or maybe... I don't know. Maybe evening qi is different from morning qi? No, that makes no sense. Qi should just be qi. Maybe I was tired and imagined the whole thing."
He had spoken with Qingxue about cultivation the night before. Perhaps that conversation had primed his mind to expect something and created a kind of placebo effect. It was also possible that he had simply been mentally exhausted and imagined it all.
Whatever the explanation, he definitely couldn't sense anything now.
"It doesn't matter," he told himself, pushing the confusion aside. "I have more important things to worry about."
He could deal with the cultivation anomaly later. For now, he had a fortress to raid.
He picked up his diamond armor, placed the gold helmet on his head, and walked into the courtyard where the ender pearl stasis chamber waited.
His first priority was replacing the ender pearl. The previous one had been consumed when it teleported him back the day before.
He dropped a fresh pearl into the bubble column and watched it rise in the current until it hovered just beneath the trapdoor.
"Let's try this again."
He stepped through the Nether portal.
The transition was as unpleasant as always, but he emerged in his obsidian safe room without incident.
He oriented himself quickly, then set off toward the left side of his portal. That was where he had spotted the bastion yesterday, mostly hidden inside a mountain of netherrack.
He still didn't know which type of bastion remnant it was. It could be a bridge, a hoglin stable, a housing unit, or a treasure room. Each variant had its own layout, loot tables, and level of danger.
It took him a little over an hour of jogging through the Crimson Forest to reach the bastion again. The structure rose before him, half buried in the landscape. Dark blackstone bricks stood in stark contrast to the deep red of the surrounding biome.
He pulled out his diamond pickaxe and started digging straight into the netherrack, creating a tunnel toward the bastion's interior.
As he dug, he also sealed the path behind him with blocks. No sense leaving himself vulnerable to a piglin ambush from behind.
Thunk.
The block in front of him broke and absorbed into his inventory.
On the other side of that block was a piglin brute.
They stared at each other for a moment.
The piglin brute was massive. Its eyes blinked at him in confusion.
Who dis?
Then the brute's expression shifted.
"SNORT!"
"Oh, fu—"
"SNORT!"
"SNORT!"
"SNORT!"
The sound echoed through the entire bastion. Within seconds, pig-like squeals rose from every direction.
Alexei stepped back as the brute swung its axe, the blade whistling through the air where his head had been a moment earlier.
His mind processed the situation quickly. Every hostile mob in the fortress would soon be coming for him.
It was time for plan B.
Actually, it was time for plan A, since this was the exact scenario he had prepared for.
He switched to a lava bucket in his hotbar and dumped it into the piglin brute's chamber before the creature could recover from its missed swing.
Lava spread across the floor instantly, turning the small room into a molten death trap.
The brute squealed in pain and tried to charge through the lava toward him. It made it approximately three steps before collapsing, cooked from the inside out.
Footsteps thundered through the bastion's corridors as piglins poured toward the breach in their fortress. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, all charging at once.
The first wave hit the lava and stopped, unable or unwilling to cross the barrier.
The second wave didn't get the memo and kept pushing forward, shoving their allies into the lava from behind.
From the safety of his tunnel, Alexei watched the chamber descend into chaos.
Piglins screamed as they rushed forward. Some burned while others fell. Their drops vanished instantly in the lava below. More piglins kept arriving, charging mindlessly toward the same fate. The pile of corpses grew larger with every moment, and the smell of cooked pork slowly began to fill the air.
"This is kind of horrifying," he muttered.
He began counting the piglin brutes among the regular piglins. They were easy to identify
One... three... seven... ten... thirteen...
By the time the mob stopped spawning and rushing to their deaths, he had counted at least fifteen piglin brutes in the swarm.
That matched roughly with vanilla Minecraft spawn rates for a bastion remnant. Brutes didn't respawn naturally, which meant once they were dead, they were gone forever. Clearing them out would make the bastion far less dangerous.
The last few piglins were now wandering around outside the room. They grunted and snorted in confusion.
He drew the bowstring to its full length and released. The arrow struck, and the piglin dropped instantly.
He nocked another arrow and did it again.
With his Power IV bow, the process was almost effortless. Each arrow killed its target immediately, and the Infinity enchantment ensured he would never run out of ammunition.
After a few minutes, silence fell over the bastion.
He waited a bit longer, just to be sure, then retrieved the lava and squeezed through the one-block-wide gap into the chamber.
He peeked through the hole in the wall that opened into the bastion's interior.
"Clear."
He spent the next half hour exploring the bastion's lower levels, bow at the ready, but encountered only one small group of three piglins who had apparently been too far away to hear the initial alarm.
Three arrows later, all three piglins were dead.
During his exploration, he also mined several gold blocks from the decorative "pig snout" patterns embedded in the blackstone bricks. Free gold was free gold.
More importantly, he confirmed the type of bastion he had discovered.
He found a window and widened the opening, revealing a long ruined bridge made of polished blackstone bricks stretched across the Nether. It extended so far that its far end disappeared into the red haze. Gold blocks dotted the bridge, and even from his position he could see piglins wandering across it.
"Bridge bastion remnant."
Bridge bastions were the poorest of the four variants in terms of loot, but they were also the most predictable. They spawned exactly five chests in fixed locations. And he knew exactly where each chest would be.
From the front, a bridge bastion resembled the bust of a piglin built from blackstone bricks. The central structure formed the piglin's head, complete with a prominent nose and two eyes represented by streams of flowing lava. Extending from the head were the shoulders, which took the form of two side structures. These shoulders could appear in either a high or a low configuration.
High shoulders always contained two chests. Low shoulders contained only one. Despite the difference in height, the chests were positioned at roughly the same level.
The chest behind the left eye of the bastion had a 100% chance of containing a lodestone, plus a 10% chance of a netherite upgrade template.
He wasn't counting on the template. In all his years of playing Minecraft, he had never pulled one from a bridge bastion. His luck simply wasn't that good.
But the lodestone was guaranteed.
With a lodestone placed beside his Nether portal and a compass used on it, he could craft a lodestone compass that would always point toward the lodestone's location. That would basically eliminate the problem of getting lost in the Nether.
Now that he knew the bastion type, he didn't need to waste time exploring randomly.
He returned to the window he had opened and started bridging outward with netherrack blocks, building up and around the exterior of the bastion to reach the left eye chamber.
It only took one stack of netherrack to build a pathway to the correct location. He dug inward, breaking through the wall into a chamber about thirty square meters in size.
Two piglins holding golden swords stood inside, grunting to each other.
He drew his bow.
Thunk. Thunk.
Both piglins dropped before they even realized they were under attack.
"Clear," he said again, and entered the chamber.
A chest sat against the far wall, exactly where it was supposed to be.
Creak.
He opened it.
Lodestone ×1, Arrows ×3, Golden Sword ×1, Gold Nuggets ×3, Leather ×7.
"No miracle today," he muttered as he transferred the lodestone, golden sword, and gold nuggets into his inventory. The arrows and leather were not worth the space, so he left them behind.
Afterward, he retraced his path through the tunnel and began building toward the bastion's shoulder structures, bridging along the outside wall.
This time, luck favored him slightly. The bastion had generated with uneven shoulder heights. One side rose higher, while the other remained lower.
The low shoulder's chest was located in the first room at the top of the structure. The high shoulder's chest could be reached by building horizontally from the outside.
Both were easy targets.
First chest: Magma Cream ×18, Arrows ×14, Gold Nuggets ×10.
Second chest: Diamond Axe ×1, Diamond Shovel ×1, Gold Blocks ×3, Netherite Scrap ×2.
"Now that's more like it," he said, grinning as he pocketed the diamond tools and netherite scrap. The gold blocks and gold nuggets were nice too. He could always use more gold.
With all five chests looted, his bastion raid was technically complete. But he didn't head back to the portal immediately.
Instead, he started mining the blackstone bricks from the bastion's walls.
These bricks would be perfect for renovating his sad obsidian safe house around the Nether portal.