Adrian navigated through the Azure garden's inner zone, and he eventually reached within the central administrative building, the towering structure integrated into the massive root system of the garden's central tree.
As he stepped through the quiet corridors and entered a room at the top of the building, he found Hestia seated at the head of a curved table.
She wore her deep crimson robes, which cascaded elegantly over the edges of her high-backed chair. Her pale golden eyes were focused, scanning rapidly through multiple holographic projections suspended in the air before her.
Hearing the footsteps approach the threshold, Hestia paused.
She dismissed the projections with a casual swipe of her hand, the blue light fading, and leaned back in her chair. Her gaze shifted, locking directly onto him. A familiar, teasing glint appeared in her pale golden eyes, softening the authoritative look she had moments before.
"Oh, you are back?" Hestia said as she crossed her arms beneath her chest. "I thought you would only be back to check your UNI-OS in your private chamber back in Andromeda and return for your trip".
"Hey, hey," Adrian protested mildly, pulling out the chair beside her and taking a seat at the curved table. "I said I would frequently visit back to check up on you guys. You know that, don't you? Isn't that why you are here now?"
Hestia let out a soft scoff, "Don't assume yourself," she retorted, raising her chin slightly. "I am here to manage the dumped works you put on us".
She leaned slightly forward, resting her arms on the table. "So, since the Supreme Emperor has returned from his vacation, I assume you want a progress report on the nightmare you handed us?"
"I would love one," Adrian smiled, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers together. "How is everything going on?"
Hestia swiped her hand across the smooth surface of the table, and a large holographic display appeared in front of them. Within that projection, it showed the images of massive construction sites.
Hestia pointed toward the flowing data streams accompanying the visuals and said, "The construction of factories for the artifact bases are basically just getting started. It's only been less than a month in external time since we planned all this. Elder Varcain has placed the orders immediately after the meeting".
She shifted the projection, highlighting material intake reports, transit manifests, and supplier contracts. "But it took us all this time to get the materials ready for construction, since we had to wait for the external market suppliers to process and ship everything. Even with the authority we now hold in Andromeda, large-scale procurement still moves through boring channels like verification, scheduling, route clearance, and delivery priority. Nothing about building a secret industrial foundation is quick when we still have to pretend everything is ordinary."
The holographic display then zoomed out, transitioning from the localized construction site to showing a lush planet floating in the dark void of space.
Hestia continued, "This is the selected planet for establishing the factory". She tapped the projection, "Octaven and Kaelar selected this planet near the center of the Virelith Galaxy. It would also be a good position to establish the headquarters of the Origin Sect there."
Adrian nodded with a smile. Hestia was not only working on the planned factories they had discussed during the meeting, but also preparing a secure and permanent base for the Origin Sect. The Virelith Galaxy was the perfect blind spot, completely devoid of decentralized public networks and untouched by the probing eyes of the Major Sects. It was isolated, underdeveloped by wider universal standards, and insignificant enough that no cosmic power would think to look there for the foundation of an organization that would eventually shake the universe.
"How are things going with Lysandra, Selena, and Mira?" Adrian asked, his curiosity shifting to them.
At the mention of those three, Hestia's expression shifted instantly from teasing banter to genuine admiration.
"They are terrifying," Hestia stated flatly, shaking her head as if still trying to process their competence. "They have already completed the two tasks you gave them and taken several steps beyond what I expected."
"Within a week after you left, they had already memorized and mastered the rune schematic you gave them for the Willforce Recovery Artifact."
"And then they selected and trained a few highly talented inscribers from our people," Hestia continued. "Surprisingly, those inscribers have been showing much faster progress than ever before. The manufacturing division is slowly growing, and by the time the factories can produce the artifact bases, they will be ready."
Adrian was truly surprised to hear it. He could not help but wonder if the miniature Source Seed was the reason for this. He knew it helped with comprehension, accelerating a cultivator's ability to grasp the rules of reality, but here Adrian had not given them the full knowledge of the Willforce Recovery divine concept, since he himself did not possess the complete understanding of the arcane concepts that composed it.
He had only given them the raw rune symbols for it, treating the divine concept not as a philosophical truth they needed to embody, but as a complex mathematical circuit to be memorized. Even with that limitation, they had managed to memorize an impossibly complex pattern at a speed that defied his expectations. It seemed the miniature Source Seed had endless things hidden within it, bridging cognitive gaps in ways he had not entirely predicted.
Adrian then asked, "What are the three of them doing now?"
Hestia replied, "Before you learn what they are doing now, you need to know about a flaw they figured out in your plan."
"A flaw?" Adrian asked, his brow furrowing slightly.
"Logistical scrutiny," Hestia explained, leaning forward and tapping the table to bring up a data chart displaying galactic resource indexes. "You wanted us to build a massive stockpile of Willforce Recovery Artifacts. To do that, we planned to purchase hundreds of thousands of premium materials, pure Void Alloy and Graviton-reinforced composites."
Adrian nodded. That was entirely within his plan, to purchase the raw materials and make the artifact bases themselves in their own hidden factory. He had specifically said not to buy direct artifact bases like the ring bases he had purchased before, because having raw materials meant they could shape them into anything they wanted, giving them ultimate flexibility over the final product designs. If the Origin Sect needed rings, bracelets, amulets, weapons, armor plates, or hidden embedded arrays, they would not be limited by some preexisting market format.
Hestia looked directly at him, her tone turning dead serious. "Adrian, the UNI-Sect's algorithms track everything. Even if we purchase simple raw materials directly from the subsidiary sects we have now, the UNI-OS will still track them."
She brought up another display, this one showing resource flows, market anomalies, and projected intelligence flags. "If we use that material to build a headquarters within the Andromeda Galaxy, it would make sense," Hestia continued. "But think about it. We are purchasing nearly half of Andromeda's entire supply of premium materials and not doing anything visible with it. Such a scenario will immediately trigger red flags across every intelligence network. We cannot build an empire in the shadows if we leave a massive trail in the light."
Adrian nodded slowly, the realization hitting him. In his focus on the end product, he had completely forgotten about this. Mana signatures could be masked, identities could be forged, and portals could be hidden, but commerce had its own form of fate. Every order, every shipment, every sudden demand spike left traces that intelligent observers could read like a map.
"So, what was their solution?" Adrian asked, genuinely intrigued now, since Lysandra and the others had clearly already dealt with the problem.
"We establish a smokescreen," Hestia said. "Lysandra proposed that the Crimson Vital Sect officially and publicly launch an entirely new business division: Healing Artifacts."
Hestia continued, gesturing to the projections as they updated to show marketing strategies and draft public announcements. "We are already known as the premier alchemy sect in the galaxy." She swiped to a schematic of a beautiful yet simple ring. "Selena designed a basic Healing Ring using Starlight Jade, which is extremely cheap and entirely believable for our sect to produce."
"We are going to heavily market these rings across the Andromeda Galaxy. To support this new public enterprise, the Crimson Vital Sect will openly sign bulk-purchase contracts with dozens of blacksmith sects across Andromeda and even the blacksmith centers within the UNI-Market for various materials, including Void Alloy and Graviton Steel, claiming we are researching Divine Artifacts."
Hestia's smile widened with triumph. "No one would doubt us, since we have already shown our customized arcane artifacts back in the war. Most people know about that fact."
"By this logic, no one will question why we are suddenly buying so many raw materials. It will just look like we are aggressively expanding our market share. The trail ends with us in Andromeda, and the secret remains perfectly buried."
Adrian let out a long exhale, and a genuine laugh escaped his lips. "Lysandra's mind for economic manipulation is always brilliant," he praised warmly.
"She is," Hestia agreed gently as she pulled up another projection. It showed the visuals of a node. "This is what those three are working on now. Since we do not want to use the UNI-OS for matters of the Origin Sect, the plan is to use the nodes you already have back in the Milky Way Galaxy. Those three are working on establishing a galactic net formation at this moment."
Adrian nodded. It was something very important, and actually having it just under a galactic scale would not be enough for the long term. After his current trip, he had to work on it to increase its range. A private, independent communication and data network would be one of the most critical pillars of the Origin Sect's future. Without it, every hidden operation would eventually brush against the surveillance systems of powers far older than them. With it, they could build their own systems across galaxies.
Hestia dismissed the final holographic projections with a wave of her hand. As the glowing blue light faded, the natural sunlight of the Azure Garden filtered back into the room, casting soft shadows across the table.
She turned her chair slightly, her posture softening remarkably as she looked at Adrian. The rigid, authoritative Sect Leader facade melted away, leaving only the woman who had worried about him since the moment he had teleported into the unknown void.
"Now," Hestia said, her pale golden eyes studying him far too carefully, "are you going to tell me what actually happened during your research? I can feel the lingering tension in your mana. You did not just look at the stars, did you?"