"I've told you everything that I know, now please let me go!" The young man was crying as he was struggling to move. After dealing with the old man, Ray thoroughly questioned him.
He was mostly trying to figure out what they were doing here and how far away the red mist sect was from here. From what he knew inner disciples were not usually allowed to leave a sect. They may not be as valuable as core disciples and are relatively easier to replace, but the sect still pours resources into them and it would be a waste for them to simply go missing.
'If that's the case, and if the old man was right, then those two hobgoblins were core disciples of the red mist sect. What the hell were they doing so far away doing manual labor?'
The red mist sect was relatively far away from here, about 100,000 km away, but the two of them were here on a quest provided by the red mist sect. The sect that ruled over this area was called the azure tiger sect and it was similarly a middle level sect.
The two sects were in talks of cooperation, and to show their sincerity the red mist sect sent out one of their inner disciples and a grandmaster tier follower to ensure his safety. No sect would allow a core disciple to leave just for a little conversion.
Even if the azure tiger sect didn't have any bad intentions and wouldn't kill a prospective powerhouse on the spot, that didn't mean that their enemies were the same.
After having a conversation on behalf of the red mist sect, the two of them started to travel back, but stopped to investigate when they sensed the mana in the area.
The cultivation technique that the red mist sect's inner disciples and their helpers had access to was called the blood mist cultivation method, while the core disciples used the blood fog cultivation method, and both of them were metal, blood and water aligned.
This made them very sensitive to those elements and the hole that Ray dug up was practically a beacon for them. When they saw the amount of corpses that were piled up, they got greedy.
The bodies of these ant's were chocked full of the metal element and while only one of the three elements in their cultivation method, it would be more than enough to increase their strength.
If he ate enough then the young man would have the chance to become a core disciple! That wasn't an opportunity he could pass up on, so even though they knew that Ray was much, much stronger than they were, they still took the chance.
"Is that it?"
"What?"
"Is that why the two of you came here? I thought that you knew something! Useless!" Ray placed a palm on his forehead, making the young fergati flinch.
But instead of everything fading to black like he thought, he saw a bright golden light instead. He quickly opened his eyes to see Ray walking away, collecting the corpses as he went.
"What..."
"What? What? What? Is that all you can ask? Get going, unless you truly want to die. And by the way, I'd advise you don't tell anyone about this, or else your head just might explode." He contemplated for a little bit before he threw a grandmaster middle tier corpse at him. "That should be enough to convince them about the old man's death. So take it and leave."
He didn't even look back as he collected the corpse and shot out of there, he didn't know what Ray did to him, but he wasn't going to tell a soul. He had seen the old man's head explode only a few meters in front of him even when he was at the peak of his power so he didn't doubt that the same could be done to him.
This may seem out of character for Ray, but it was actually a decision he made after planning carefully. For a sect to be classified as 'middle', the sect master had to be at the extremity tier. It also meant that it was riddled with saint tiers.
That's not a power he could currently rival. He was confident that at present he could easily combat a middle stage saint tier to a draw and even kill them if the conditions were right, but against hundreds of them he would have no choice but to run away.
And compared to the extremity tier he was no different from a child so he wouldn't be able to run away even if he wanted to. Every major tier was a qualitative boost in power, and this was especially so after the saint tier.
If he had no reason to go at odds with this kind of power then he wouldn't, he even gave them a gift of a grandmaster tier corpse that was rich in 5 common elements and all 4 special ones. Even if they knew what happened, they might actually come and thank him in person.
But that didn't mean that he suddenly became soft, the young man tried to kill him and claim his spoils. If he had been an ordinary cultivator and was truly spent, what would the situation have been like?
They said that if he just obediently gave them the corpses they would let him keep his life, but who would be foolish enough to believe them? The smart thing to do would have been to silence him so that this matter wouldn't get exposed in the future. The only reason that the young man even talked to him in the first place was so that he could feel superior to someone both more talented and more powerful than he was.
Ray had been calling him 'young man' this entire time, but based on his life signature he was about 60 years old. But this was actually pretty young for an ascended tier, it wouldn't be strange for some one to break through to that tier at 200 years old and most people wouldn't even get that far before their death.
He wasn't an inner disciple for no reason.
Not everyone could be like Ray who could not only survive, but thrive in the new world by himself and, with a mixture of a stroke of luck and his own willingness to take risks, get to the point that he was at now.
In fact, of the people that were still alive from the calamity, which was a surprisingly large number at 50 million, only about 10,000 were at the master tier or higher. Even the guild master was barely a master. Normally this wouldn't be enough strength to create or maintain a guild but a combination of her family and being an S rank allowed her to look over a few rules.
Seeing someone that was not even a third of his age be so much stronger than him and almost be able to found his own lower tier sect made the young man jealous and he was planning to kill him after humiliating him so that he could sleep well at night. If with his world-shaking talent he was only at the ascended tier, then how talented was a man young enough to be his grandson yet strong enough to spank him like a child?
Ray was no fool, so how could he not see this and not only let him go, but even send him off with a gift? Yes, he didn't want to be at odds with an extremely ranked powerhouse for no reason, but that didn't mean that he suddenly lost his temper.
When he put his hand on his head, he put a very intricate yet simple curse on him, it didn't even have a name. Under the effects of the curse, his mana core would begin to madly absorb mana. This wouldn't be an issue at first, actually a benefit, but he made it so the longer it went unchanged, the harder it was to stop.
If the young man took the time to properly inspect himself after the fact he could easily notice that something was wrong and ask for a senior to deal with it for him, but Ray was banking on him not doing so.
If it went unchanged, the young man would quickly gain strength, flying through the tiers, gaining fame and glory before… pop! His mana core would explode, killing him very slowly. The young man's mana core was situated in his abdomen so exploding it wouldn't instantly kill him, but it would cripple him, leaving him severely injured.
He would then die a slow, painful death filled with nothing but agony and confusion. There was no medicine for a broken mana core, as it was already a foreign object in the first place. To develop a mana core, one needs to suppress their immune system to allow its existence.
The entire time that they have a mana core, up until the saint tier, their bodies would actively reject it. If it suddenly went missing and tried to form again and the immune system could do nothing to stop it, then what would it be worth?
Hence the second time condensing a mana core was next to impossible. Unless it was someone at the extremity tier assisting. But who was he? Just an inner disciple, and he would be a crippled on at that.
After a bit of investigation, how could an extremity ranked powerhouse not be able to tell that his recent rise in power was due to an originally loosely placed curse and not his own talent?
And on top of all that, if he even attempted to tell anyone about this then it would immediately go haywire. The golden light that the young man saw wasn't Ray putting the curse, he could do so to an ascended tier without even looking at them, but it was a very rudimentary soul contract.
It would not only activate the curse at its maximum potential if he told anyone about it, even if he just so happened to write it down then it would accelerate the process. This contract was naturally not stable enough for him to get the benefits of Ray's talent.
Now that! That was a type of revenge that Ray liked. A slow, low-burning one that would ultimately lead to the most painful and agonizing outcome of all. He didn't learn much from his mother, but he did know that food that took longer to cook always tasted better.
He quickly collected all of the bodies, including that of the old man, and with a wave of a hand, all of the soul power that had been collecting dust rushed over to him.
He made a grasping motion and it quickly transformed from a gas to a liquid. This was the condensed version of soul power and he made it like this so that he could absorb it in the near future. If he wanted to store it for even longer, then he would have to turn them into soul stones.
He was on the very verge of breaking through to the saint tier, but it wasn't as simple as getting to 10,000. From the saint tier to the deity tier one had to condense soul power into their bodies.
To do this they had to form a second mana core or pool, but in his case it would flow side by side with mana. From his own experiments the two of them shouldn't be compatible, but after observing the mana flowers he realized that soul power and mana, even if not one and the same, should be very similar.
One was more condensed and violent than the other which was more readily available and stable.
This was why mystics were so unpredictable, their mana might not be strong and their physical bodies weak, but they can call upon the powers of those at the saint tier or above before reaching there, though limited. Even after the fact they would still be more proficient as they would have had many years of practice.
A good example was one of his instructors that was a mystic. Using soul power she could bring beings from the new world into the old world even though her power was only at the ascended tier. That's an advantage that couldn't be ignored.
But the reason that he was hesitant to break through to the saint tier was because if he delayed it his potential would be far greater than any other.
Because whether or not one was in the saint tier was predetermined by the existence of soul power being stored in their bodies, his physical power and mana could theoretically get as strong as the deity tier before beginning the transformation.
Others might not be able to do this, but he knew that he could. And that's because he had an example of success. The reason Itroth was known as 'The Calamity' was exactly because he increased the strength of his physical body at the grandmaster tier all the way up to the supremacy tier. He could even break the dimensional barrier with his physical prowess alone.
After being stuck there for thousands of years he finally took the step to becoming a saint. With his physical power being at the peak supremacy tier, even as a saint no one under the deity tier could even hope to rival him.
But this alone wouldn't be enough to convince Itroth to spend thousands of years suppressing his strength. What would it matter if he was invincible under the deity tier when he himself became a deity. Then his thousands of years of preparation would be meaningless.
What he was after was the increase in potential. As someone who had a heart of mana, mana and subsequently soul power could act as a part of his own body. Because of this the stronger his physical body the higher his capacity for soul power.
When he broke through to the saint tier, he had the same capacity as a supremacy tier, and he could still reap the benefits of advancing to become a legitimate supremacy. Even after becoming a deity tier he would still be leaps and bounds ahead of normal deity tiers no matter what they did.
And that only for the supremacy tier. Itroth was limited to the supremacy tier but Ray wasn't. With a combination of parts of Itroth's experience and one with mana, he had the opportunity to become a deity tier physically before breaking through to that stage conventionally. This was because in the extremity tier mana would be completely converted to soul power so the higher the mana capacity the better.
Since he set his sights out on this then he would naturally prevent him breaking through on accident. If he consumed this soul power then his body would automatically use it to become a saint so for the time being he wouldn't absorb any more soul power to increase his strength.