As the battle went on, queen Xenia was losing more and more ground. Every one of her attacks had reached the peak of the spirit realm, her inner breath exploding violently with every collision. But her opponent, the king of Scorching Sun Kingdom, had reached the silver core realm and his inner breath had transformed into spiritual power, giving him a distinct advantage over her.
The area all around them was in ruins, with the trees burned away and the ground scorched black. What remained was nothing more than ash and charcoal.
By this point, the fight was nearly over with queen Xenia pale in the face and struggling to catch her breath. However, there was still absolute confidence written on her face as she laughed like someone gone insane.
With a crazed look, she took out a black pearl from her pocket. It seemed that she had especially prepared the pearl for this moment.
In actuality, she did not want to use this pearl as it had come at great cost to her. However, faced with her current situation, she couldn't care less about the cost.
"You brought this upon yourself!!" she yelled, and with a horrid look on her beautiful face, she crushed the pearl in her hands.
Shortly after, a ghostly white claw started to materialize out of thin air. This white claw had come from the pearl, which was a life saving measure bought by queen Xenia.
As soon as this white claw appeared, the king of Scorching Sun Kingdom felt a sense of dread.
This dread came from the bottom of his heart. He had only felt such dead once before, and that was when he had encountered a fight between two cultivators at the third level of the silver core realm!! Such strength was enough that one attack of theirs could likely kill him.
Now, sensing the familiar energy of someone at the third level of the spirit realm, he could but help but be horrified.
Horror!!! There was no other word to describe it. It was a moment of pure horror that terrified him and made him turn and run. However, he had a feeling as if he had been locked onto as he tried to run.
Feeling this, he could not describe his fear. He feared for his life at the moment like never before. He couldn't begin to fathom where Xenia had gotten the pearl from, but none of that mattered at this moment as nothing mattered more than his own life.
Suddenly, the ghastly power which had been accumulating in the white claw all lashed out at once, quickly shredding the air and moving towards the king of Scorching Sun Kingdom faster than he could escape.
With one last attempt to save himself, he put all of his spiritual power into one attack and launched a massive ball of flames at the eerie white hand. However, the hand was only slightly weakened before it slashed through his body.
He only managed to let out a weak cry as the last thing the king of Scorching Sun Kingdom saw was his own wife's face looking at him with hatred as he died.
Just like that, an expert at the silver core realm, invincible in the Scorching Sun Kingdom, had died, with almost no resistance.
However, despite winning the battle, queen Xenia looked angry and grumbled to herself, "who did it? Who could have ruined my plan?"
She had been forced to use a lifesaving item that she had held onto for a long time. Of course she was upset. If her plan had not been ruined, she could have accomplished her goals without sacrifice and without risk.
...
Far away, in the center of Scorching Sun Kingdom, unaware that her father had just died, Kessia sat on the floor in the lotus position, cultivating peacefully. Near her sat Will, who was in deep thought.
He had been stuck with a horrible bottleneck for more than half a month now and had barely made any progress forward.
As he continued to sit there, he had dedicated all of his time to understanding the 'symphony of the heart' that was the emotions all around him. In his body, his Ruby heart was beating steadily and quietly. His whole body was peaceful and steady.
He had been in this state for a few days now, without moving an inch. Suddenly, he opened his blind eyes. He was disappointed to find that once again, he had made no progress on his bottleneck, but he was pleased as he had finally found a way to settle into a proper meditative state.
Meditative state was the most important thing to a cultivator as it would not only help them to cultivate quicker, but it would also sharpen their minds and make them purer.
Reaching a meditative state, however, was not as simple as it seemed. Very few people in the world could accomplish meditative state, and Will was one of them.
The highest level of meditative state would allow one to be in tune with the universe, perfectly in sync with all that was.
The reason that meditative state was so hard to reach was that many personalities would conflict with it, leaving only a select few certain personalities. Of those few, only a small number could ever learn to steady their heart and clear their minds. From there forward, only a rare few could learn to be in tune with their surroundings and environment. At the end of all this, there was barely anyone who could achieve this state in the whole world.
For these reasons, someone who has achieved meditative state would be highly valued if their talent was high enough.