23: Chapter 23 Spatial Bottleneck Emerges

After Wang Chengyue left, Wang Pingan did not delay even a fraction of a second.

He returned to the secret chamber, activated the Formation, sat cross-legged, and sank his consciousness into the Divine Realm once again.

Within the Divine Realm, the three hundred Heavy Immortal-Martial Legion were recuperating quietly, and the twenty-seven individuals with severe mental injuries had been placed near the Small Spirit Vein to recover.

Wang Mu and Wang Shan carved the combat records of the Orc sparring partners into jade booklets, handing them over to the legion's elites for repeated study.

Wang Pingan was in no rush to purchase the next sparring session; instead, he let the interior of the Divine Realm digest the existing battle results first.

He understood clearly in his heart that training could not rely on blind pressure alone.

After experiencing life-and-death struggles, summarization and recovery were necessary before one could elevate further.

Time flowed in the outside world.

Maintaining the current limit of the Master of Time, the Divine Realm evolved rapidly at a flow rate of one day in the outside world to two years within the Divine Realm.

When the outside world reached the fifteenth day, a full thirty years had passed within the Divine Realm.

Thirty years seemed slightly long to a Mortal.

But to the civilization of the Divine Realm, it was a complete growth cycle.

The first generation of citizens gradually stepped from their robust youth into middle and old age.

Wang Mu and Wang Shan remained the two strongest commanders within the Divine Realm, but a large number of new-generation backbones had emerged by their sides.

From the moment they were born, the new generation bathed in abundant Spiritual Qi and Qi and blood.

They ate spiritual rice, consumed Purple Cloud peaches, and drank spiritual spring water, beginning to learn the Green Wood Breathing Technique and the Savage Bull Body-Forging Fist during their youth.

Many children were able to complete basic breathing and Body Forging movements just as they turned twelve.

Those who reached the age of sixteen with outstanding talent had all been incorporated into the combat reserve camp.

Under the tilt of resources, the population of the Divine Realm ushered in an explosion.

The initial one thousand people increased to over four thousand, and then climbed all the way up.

Five thousand.

Six thousand.

Eight thousand.

By the end of the thirtieth year, the population of the Divine Realm had reached nine thousand six hundred and eighty-seven, just a step away from the ten-thousand upper limit of the Divine Being stage.

Looking down at the land, what welled up in Wang Pingan's heart was not joy, but a heavy sense of oppression.

The one-hundred-square-kilometer miniature continent had been developed to its limit.

The initial small town had been expanded into three connected residential areas.

Wooden and stone houses were stacked layer upon layer, with residential houses lining both sides of the main roads, and later citizens could only build their dwellings at the foot of the mountains and the edges of the woodlands.

The area around the Small Spirit Vein was originally a Cultivation area, but now it was fragmented by spiritual fields, medicinal fields, breathing grounds, and residential areas.

The Purple Cloud Peach Forest was still expanding, but the distance between trees was forced to be significantly compressed.

Restricted by the competition for Spiritual Qi, the growth of some newly planted peach trees was noticeably lagging.

The situation near the Mysterious Blood Pool was even more severe.

The martial arts area was originally spacious enough to accommodate hundreds of people practicing simultaneously.

However, as the combat citizens surged, the martial arts practice field continuously expanded outward, and its edge was now close to the Red Blood Ginseng Field.

To ensure the progress of training, Wang Shan could only move some of the low-tier citizens to drill on the gravel land outside the small town.

The gravel land was pitted and uneven, and people frequently failed to steady their footing during heavy armor charges.

Ordinary drills could still be overcome.

Once the Army-Breaking Sword Formation was practiced, the Formation was immediately constrained by the terrain.

Wang Pingan brought up the Divine Realm panel.

[Divine Realm Population: Nine thousand six hundred and eighty-seven.]

[Body Refining Realm Citizens: Two thousand eight hundred and thirteen.]

[Body Forging Realm Citizens: Three thousand and forty-six.]

[Fifth Layer Body Refining: Two hundred and thirty-seven.]

[Fifth Layer Body Forging: Two hundred and sixty-one.]

[Heavy Immortal-Martial Legion: One thousand people.]

[Combat Reserve Citizens: Two thousand four hundred people.]

The data was extremely dazzling.

Placed in the hands of any newly awakened student, it would be enough to attract exclamation.

Yet as Wang Pingan gazed at this set of data, there was no sense of relief in his heart.

The Heavy Immortal-Martial Legion had expanded from three hundred people to one thousand people.

These one thousand people were all combat citizens of the fourth layer and above, clad in fine steel heavy armor, wielding rune longswords and fine steel round shields, divided into the Shield Armor Battalion, Sword Qi Battalion, and Reserve Battalion.

Strictly speaking in terms of paper combat strength, it far exceeded the five hundred people during the weekly assessment.

But they completely lacked sufficient space to deploy a complete military Formation.

Wang Shan had once organized a thousand-man-level Army-Breaking Sword Formation drill in the Northern Plains.

At the start of the charge, before the front row had advanced to the designated position, the rear reserve camp was blocked by the terrain and tents.

To maintain Formation distance, the Sword Qi Battalion was forced to detour around a newly built residential area.

Before the Formation could rise, the rhythm of the three teams was already broken.

Wang Shan smashed a training wooden stake beside him with a punch, but he could not change the predicament of land scarcity.

Wang Mu was facing equally difficult hardships.

Cultivation Citizens needed tranquil breathing grounds, Spell testing areas, and sufficient distance to practice Sword Qi arrays.

Right now, the breathing ground was right next to the spiritual rice field, and outside the spiritual rice field was the new residential area.

If the Sword Qi deviated even slightly, it would cut off farming tools or affect the eaves of houses.

Wang Mu had no choice but to lower the intensity of Sword Qi training.

Once the intensity dropped, the legion's progress slowed down accordingly.

Seeing this, Wang Pingan truly experienced the fatal nature of what Wang Chengyue called spatial depth.

If resources were insufficient, they could still be purchased.

If equipment was in short supply, it could still be added.

Only a lack of space would choke off all vital arteries.

Conflicts everywhere in the Divine Realm erupted simultaneously.

Residential areas needed to be expanded, newborns were gradually increasing, and young citizens needed to establish new households upon marriage.

Spiritual fields needed to be expanded, and the population surge brought huge food ration pressure.

The Purple Cloud Peach Forest and the Red Blood Ginseng Field needed to be expanded, as the total number of cultivators already exceeded five thousand.

The martial arts practice fields and military camps needed expansion even more, as the pure Combat Path needed to maintain high-intensity off-production training.

Yet there was a total of only one hundred square kilometers.

If one side occupied more, the other side would inevitably be squeezed.

Inside the small town's council hall, Wang Mu and Wang Shan had a dispute for the first time over land allocation.

Wang Shan pressed his palms on the edge of the table, his voice revealing anxiety: "Without a martial arts practice field for the legion, the Army-Breaking Sword Formation cannot be practiced. With the Nova Assessment imminent, we are entirely counting on these people to go into battle and kill the enemy!"

Wang Mu furrowed his brows deeply, arguing logically: "If the spiritual fields shrink further, the output of spiritual rice will inevitably drop. The Cultivation Citizens need Spiritual Qi for breathing, and the combat citizens need food rations to fill their stomachs. What will you use to support the legion?"

Wang Shan stood up eagerly: "I am not trying to seize the spiritual fields; what I want is a flat piece of land that can accommodate a thousand people charging!"

Wang Mu pointed at the map on the table: "The Northern Plains have already been entirely assigned to the legion. The rest are all the Red Blood Ginseng Field and new residential areas. Which place do you want me to demolish?"

A pin could be heard dropping inside the council hall.

Several new-generation managers stood quietly with lowered heads, not daring to breathe loudly.

Wang Pingan stood in the firmament, looking down at the council hall, without any intention of blame arising in his heart.

Neither Wang Mu nor Wang Shan was at fault.

One protected the resource Foundation.

The other protected the legion's combat strength.

The real crux was that the Divine Realm was too small.

Wang Pingan cast his gaze toward the Northern Plains.

There, it was crowded with tents, training grounds, equipment areas, recuperation areas for the wounded, and war beast breeding pens.

If the one thousand Heavy Immortal-Martial Legion wanted to form a complete array, a large area needed to be cleared out.

Once cleared, several hundred households of citizens nearby would need to relocate.

Relocate to where?

There was no land to go to.

To the east bordered the spiritual rice field.

To the west connected the Purple Cloud Peach Forest.

To the south relied on the main body of the small town.

The north had approached the edge of the continent, and further out was the Void Realm mist.

The land at the edge of the Divine Realm was enduring over-development.

Several hillsides were forcibly leveled to build houses and pave roads.

The original forest trees suffered large-scale logging, and the habitats of small animals plummeted.

The ecology panel popped up prompts one after another.

[Residential area density is too high.]

[Spiritual field expansion is blocked.]

[Training ground space is insufficient.]

[Ecological buffer area is declining.]

[Large-scale legion drill efficiency decreased by forty-six percent.]

[Risk Warning: If ecological space continues to be compressed, food production fluctuations will occur within three years.]

Wang Pingan stared at these prompts, his state of mind growing increasingly calm.

The crisis was already laid out before his eyes.

The population was approaching the upper limit, the land was terribly crowded, the legion could not deploy, and the resource areas were trampling on each other.

This was still in the Divine Being stage.

If he Breakthrough to demigod, the population upper limit would jump to one million, and the area of the Divine Realm would also need to expand to the thousand-kilometer level.

If the spatial predicament was not resolved right now, the future army-flooding path would become castles in the air.

Wang Pingan did not forcefully issue a divine decree ordering the two to make concessions.

Forcing a compromise within the narrow Divine Realm would only drag down all development sectors.

He had to break the situation from the root.

The next day, Wang Shan organized the thousand-man Army-Breaking Sword Formation drill once again.

Wang Pingan deliberately did not intervene, quietly looking down from the firmament.

The legion formed up in the Northern Plains.

Five hundred people of the Shield Armor Battalion stood in the front.

Three hundred people of the Sword Qi Battalion were in the middle.

Two hundred people of the Reserve Battalion brought up the rear.

Wang Shan raised his heavy sword high and shouted loudly: "Army-Breaking Sword Formation, rise!"

Qi and blood connected.

Spiritual Qi nodes lit up.

The front-row Shield Armor Battalion marched and charged.

At first, the Formation was considered neat.

But charging less than a hundred zhang, the right-side team was blocked by a newly built warehouse and had to shift to the left.

The left side was already close to the Red Blood Ginseng Field; although the citizens tending the ginseng field avoided it in advance, the ditches on the ground still tripped and disrupted the pace of the military Formation.

To closely follow the front row, the Sword Qi Battalion was forced to contract its Formation.

Once the Spiritual Qi nodes became chaotic, the sharpness of the Army-Breaking Sword Formation suddenly appeared dim.

Before the reserve camp had time to fill the vacancy, the rear team was congested in front of the tent passage.

Wang Shan's face was filled with anger, but he could only forcibly order troops to withdraw.

One thousand elites stood stiffly in place, weighed down by heavy armor, their Qi and blood unsettled, and their chests full of stifled grievance.

They had clearly become stronger.

Their numbers had doubled.

Their cultivation had advanced.

Their equipment was complete.

Yet because of the cramped Divine Realm, they could not even complete a single smooth charge.

Wang Shan knelt on one knee, raised his head toward the firmament, and pleaded guilty: "Divine Master, it is Wang Shan's incompetence that I failed to drill the legion well!"

Wang Mu also knelt down following suit: "Divine Master, it is the improper allocation of the Divine Realm's land; please punish us, Divine Master."

Wang Pingan gazed at the two, and the divine decree fell flatly and smoothly: "This matter has nothing to do with you."

Wang Shan raised his head, his expression still bitter.

Wang Pingan continued: "This deity is already fully aware of the legion's predicament."

The divine decree echoed across the Northern Plains.

All citizens held their breaths and listened quietly.

Wang Pingan looked down at this loaded continent; what met his eyes were crowded houses, restricted spiritual fields, military Formations that could not be unleashed, and the elites standing in the camp full of unwillingness.

At this moment, he was certain.

The spatial Bottleneck pointed out by Wang Chengyue had truly arrived.

Without expanding the Divine Realm, the army-flooding path was out of the question.