"Do you know how a cultivation prodigy is born? First they require a soul, then they require a will and lastly a body is forged, but none of it matters for the heavens decide whether or not you are born to cultivate. The very system of breaking away from the heavens is dependent on the heavens themselves, weather you are born with talent or not depends on the winds of fortune granted by the heavens, every treasure, every meeting, every passing hour of time is all pre-ordained by heaven, so are you truly free? or a proud son of heaven?"
-Pescre the valiant ~ Heaven defying Saint
As if the gloom across the realm disappeared the entire North point of the Vast tree realm shined with resplendent multi colored light.
The light streaked across the void and landed onto many arks still inside the vast tree realm covering them in a sea of light, the Arks inside the rift had avoided this light and only looked back in shock.
God Haven had arrived and was watching this in the shadows, he seemed to be on the verge of tears.
Lerim, the last lord of the Vast tree realm was laughing at this misfortune, the misfortune for those that had already entered the rift.
Lerim thought of the requirements to make these arks, other then the many common materials required others that had high durability against erosion in the endless void and the special tools and skills needed to creat one, one of the main materials used to craft them are the spirit veins of the land within the various continents.
This was to allow for spiritual energy to be stored in the Salvation Arks for years to come and even produce more of it, the spiritual energy within powered the entirely of the functions of the Arks besides for special circumstances.
The various Spirit veins could be small or large, and ranked differently based on the quality of the veins.
A small vein did not always mean it was bad quality, simply that less energy could be contained and transferred across and that less could be produced much like the veins in humans they are tough to pull apart and flexible but unlike flesh veins these were on a different level of durability.
These spirit veins were ranked as follows
- Dry - Almost no spiritual energy, can only spread energy across a couple hundred kilometers, few spiritual plants and animals can grow.
- Bottom - Common amount of energy, can spread spiritual energy several hundreds of kilometers and most normal spiritual plants and beasts can grow
- Low - Decent amount of energy that allows for thousands of kilometers of low grade cultivators to grow also also for more spiritual plants and beasts to flourish.
- Middle - The Perfect place to establish a major continental sect, spiritual energy can form a fog near the epicenter and spread for hundreds of thousands of kilometers allows for growth of all types of spiritual plants to prosper besides for those with extreme requirements
- High - Should only be used by the stronger cultivators as so much energy is produced it can be a negative for low grade cultivators (below deity transformation), it can spread spiritual energy several million kilometers Extremely rare spiritual plants can grow here with accelerated growth
- Top - Only those with extreme cultivation paths should enter this zones or those in the last 2 layers of cultivation, these veins generally never appear larger then 60 feet wide as such most are simply dug up to craft into Top grade spiritual stones the size of pinky finger nails but some are fully formed spreading spiritual energy across billions of kilometers, Heavenly plants can grow here that can't be found elsewhere.
- Spiritual Heaven - Energy so dense it becomes a lake or ocean, so heavy it feels like the air is stone and so pure just being near will cleanse your body but entering can assimilate you, all spiritual heavens are enclosed spaces as such they only spread energy within a certain location, Extreme plants and heavenly plants grow here rarely.
Currently most Arks under this light that were near the rift rushed into the rift in order to get away from unknown danger, but once they got out of the light and calmed themselves they noticed the changes around them.
They quickly regretted acting so quick as they could feel the spiritual energy in the Arks had increased slightly just by being inside the light for a few seconds and even their own cultivation seemed more pure.
It was to late to turn back, the rift pulled the ships forward and the vessels behind and to the sides did not allow them to turn around it was a true regret indeed.
Those Arks with the lowest grade of spirit veins saw the biggest improvement, going from bottom grade to low grade spirit veins in less then 30 seconds while those with low grade spirit veins felt a noticeable upgrade in their spirit veins although they did not go up in rank.
The five family union had yet to enter the rift being near the rear of the armada, although they had a relatively large ship it was nothing in comparison to others, and they simply did not have the power to compete as such they were near the front of the very back of the queue.
If they had the support of several soul integration stage cultivators they might have been able to form a good alliance without worry of being taken advantage of, but sadly those on board simply didn't see eye to eye with them.
Within the Five family Unions fleet of ships all the spirit veins on the arks were gradually improving to higher qualities, they had the luxury of owning 8 middle and 1 high grade spiritual veins and even a very small section of a top grade spirit vein that had gone un-mined.
This was something of extreme wealth for powers of their size and just holding 2 middle grade spirit veins would have been enough to be considered an entry level power on any continent.
How they managed to gather these?
The only way one can gain greater wealth in the cultivation world is to fight for it, as for the losses taken for such gains, well there's a reason why they can't take major risks.
Considering the amount of bottom and low grade spirit veins they collected, they were having a giant improvement to their home base.
Many of the smaller Arks owned by the Five family union were storage areas and only held dry to bottom grade spirit veins, but some of them were the holy grounds for some family's.
The Rubio family was one of the main families in the FFU holding two secret areas in separate Arks not counting storage or housing Arks. Each ship was designed to carry out one task, to grow spiritual metal ores and to protect the foundation of the Rubio family. With over 8 low grade spirit veins in each secret area with over 40 bottom grade ones to connect them all, now 40 new bottom grade ones started to take form and one mid grade spirit vein had appeared on each ship stabilizing the foundations of the Ark greatly.
The Arks were now the perfect zone for anyone below body reformation stage to grow instead of staying stagnant for eons to come and even body reformation stage cultivators can be nurtured periodically given they had dao infused spiritual materials.
The growth was not only to stabilize the Arks foundations but also helped increase the growth rate of the spiritual metal held in each Ark and while it will not accelerate the growth speed much it will keep the ore mine in better condition leading to better and more pure metal ores to be found.
The Nordaine family on the other hand held 3 secret area Arks one of these ships happened to be the carrier of the Top grade spirit vein, an ark no larger then 5kms in size with several small mountains a a few larger ones with ravines caves and a forest with 3 small lakes making it look like a natural heaven.
This Ark was filled with space formations making the inside far larger that that of the outside, the inside was roughly 15 kilometers with an extra 2.5 kilometers on all sides making it into a floating island within and ark, few buildings could be sighted and small paths here and there.
Due to the small size of the spirit vein, the Ark was built around the fact that it could not provide widespread energy and was placed as the core of the Nordaine family secret area, with hundreds of bottoms grade spirit veins and tens of low grades ones.
The better the spiritual vein the closer to the center of the island a large mountain holding the top grade spiritual vein while the rest lied in the outskirts.
As All spirit veins were having improvements in their qualities and sizes, the top grade spirit vein was rapidly growing receiving massive amounts of spiritual Qi becoming larger and larger until finally transforming into a Spiritual heaven vein, although the area that held it was small the vein itself was no larger then then 15 feet on the surface looking like a small mound so although it was transforming into a Spiritual heaven it would be one of the smallest seemingly but this was already enough, because even thousands of other top grade spirit veins would not hold the amount of energy this single spirit vein could and although its small it holds the same amount of spiritual energy any spiritual heaven would.
Those spirit veins held on other Arks would not even be close to becoming a Spiritual heaven which was a blessing rather then a curse to the vast amount of weaker powers currently gaining these benefits.
A spiritual heaven can only form when the total quantity and quality of a spirit vein exceed a certain threshold, so even as small as the spirit vein looked it was so condensed it might just implode upon itself if even a little more was added causing a massive explosion.
Luckily this Vein was also growing larger slowly and had connected to all the smaller Spirit veins spreading the energy across the ark allowing for their continued growth.
As the head of the Nordaine family, Madame Nordaine steered the vessel from within the secret area of their family she was witnessing these changes firsthand, no one but her and her family could enter this Ark but unless she said so no one in the the family besides the direct line of decent could enter and that included only her and her sister even her elder uncle and his children could not enter.
Her sister did not like spending time with her always choosing to find excuses to avoid her, leaving madam Nordaine as the only person inhabiting this ark.
Madame Nordaine was watching as the Spiritual energy within the now newly created spiritual heaven was rapidly exceeding the limits getting closer and closer to its critical limit the light was glaring now, she quickly reacted and tried to get closer to lock out any energy from seeping in all the while closing of the Arks formations sealing it from the outside but to no avail the light phased through everything.
While still several hundred feet away the pressure coming from the spiritual heaven was to much for her forcing her down to her knees and crushing her body from all sides.
Her entire body was turning red, blood ran down her orifice spilling toward the floor.
She was rather tough enough though, so she resisted the crushing forces momentarily quickly drinking an elixir for recovery and strengthening pills keeping her body from being crushed into mince meat.
She backed away with all her might dragging her body and smearing blood on the floor.
She looked forward, dread filled her eyes slowly while she thought of how to get out of this situation.
The spiritual energy was overwhelming, she had only just reached early deity transformation 6 years ago and had only recently stabilized herself but now her body was being forcefully purified dragging out impurities in her body and increasing her cultivation base but she could not be happy about this right now for the spiritual heaven could imploded it crushing the entire ark and the surrounding void into itself.
A great treasure would be formed sure, but she would die.
While she was in pain it was just tolerable and she was making progress slowly pushing herself away from the area, but then a sharp pain was felt in her lower abdomen causing her to be unable to muster up any strength.
Her limbs locked, her eyes felt like they would pop and even individual strands of hair became so heavy if felt like dragging mountains.
Now she was truly in a bad situation, while the spiritual energy in her body increased her own body was unable to hold all this energy and several cracks appeared in her skin drawing blood which quickly burned up of flattened onto the ground.
She decided to use every means she had to try to lessen the damage being done, from pills to elixirs even secret treasures of the Nordaine family were used in an attempt to keep up and keep away from deaths door.
Just when it seemed that the energy was going to collapse... no it seemed to have already collapsed onto it self she simply needed to wait for death now, then the light changed.
From the fierce all consuming light a calm light quickly spread, warmly subjugating all that it came across, as it did a great emptiness could be felt across existence.
Madam Nordaine passed out, her wounds healing at an accelerated pace as her cultivation rose her life hanged by a thread, her cultivation rose from early deity transformation to late deity transformation and was still increasing steadily.