Everyone was cultivating peacefully. The tall trees provided shade and protection for some, while others cultivated near a small stream. It must be said that the kids were being a bit reckless; cultivating on open ground is tantamount to offering yourself as food to a pack of wolves. Indeed, Kaelen and the others were all focused on cultivating and couldn't simultaneously pay attention to potential dangers. Knowing this, Su Yao decided to wait and guard everyone while they made their breakthroughs. She sat peacefully beside Kaelen, hugging her knees as she watched over him.
Currently, Kaelen was absorbing the demonic energy within the cores at his disposal. Colorful streams of energy seeped out of each core, as with Raizel, and were absorbed through his palms, traveling through his body primordial meridians, towards his dantian. There were six colors of energy closing in, the moment they passed through the outer layer into the inside, the energies rushed towards the two elemental cores at the center of the crimson void. The amber-gold Infinite Sun core surprisingly absorbed four of the six streams of energy, namely gold, fire, light, and even water.
"Heh? My solar energy can even feed off of water energy… I guess it's not that surprising: while water and fire are polar opposites, solar energy is not fire. I believe it should also be able to grow by absorbing wood energy- if only I had a wood attribute demonic core or elemental stone. Anyways, these should be enough for two or three breakthroughs."
Sending his thoughts into his dantian, Kaelen could naturally see all that was occurring. He activated both his elemental cores to their maximum. Within the crimson void, the dark crimson core and the amber gold core immediately began spinning in place, swiftly absorbing all the incoming energy.
Time waited for no one; once again, night had fully descended. In their corners, everyone was doing their best to break through.
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
Consecutive explosions could be heard from Rai and Thorin's side. It turns out they were the first to take the next step. Thorin still had his eyes closed; his short dark hair glistened with an abyssal light. In front of his left eye, a ruby flame appeared, while on his right side, a black flame appeared. Within his body, a tumultuous amount of bloodline energy raged. His bones cracked unceasingly as his strength increased dramatically with each passing moment.
Thorin was previously at the 11th stage, so this breakthrough was his last extreme. The dual flame elemental energy within his body burst into countless molecular threads as they rushed into his brain for the final refinement.
On Raizel's side, a similar situation happened. The purple and gold thunder energies raged within as the crystal heart source was cleanly absorbed. The source energy rushed towards his heart.
"Puah!!"
At that instant, he spat out blood but kept going.
The source crystal energy was simply highly condensed source energy, which can't be compared to the quantity one can absorb when breaking through Elemental Resonance. It was more than a hundred times that. This is why they were so incredibly rare and useful. It is also why only those source crystals can be used to refine the Heart of Element. Raizel grunted and growled as he felt his heart go through intense refinement. The purple-gold thunder and metal gold energies raged within, strengthening his heart. In the meantime, his innate mystic thunder washed over his entire body, unlocking more of his mystic lightning bloodline.
The beastly white tiger bloodline energy similarly bloomed. His body was simply a chaotic space, which only Kaelen's circumstances could compare to. Though Thorin also had multiple energies coexisting within his body, they seemed to be from the same source, so there wasn't as much chaos.
Luckily for Raizel and Kaelen, their elemental bloodlines did not see their physical bloodlines as threats; the two could coexist thanks to this and the fact that they were equally matched.
Both Thorin and Raizel benefitted immensely from their breakthroughs, but neither stopped cultivating.
By Raizel's side, Xue Qing was absorbing two fourth-grade demonic cores. Her cultivation was also advancing. However, she was in a different situation from the others, as she was already at the Moon Spirit stage. Now, in order to break through, she had two choices: use sun spiritual energy to refine her own or break through to Intent Materialization. Naturally, she chose the former. Although the sun had gone down, it didn't mean it wasn't there. She focused her mental energy to feel her surroundings. Her spirit sensed the metaphysical world around her and grasped small patches of bright light. Inside her sea of consciousness, a hazy but present effigy began to form. It was an entirely spiritual form that looked somewhat like her. The spirit form absorbed the patches of light outside and gradually solidified. Her mental strength grew along with it.
The last one to check on was Tang Hao. His breakthrough was the simplest. Absorbing the energy in the demonic cores, when reaching saturation, he refined his spiritual energy to break through to the next stage.
Back to Kaelen. It wasn't long after his friends that Kaelen managed to break through. In fact, he advanced to the ninth stage within a few hours and to the tenth stage not long after. His left eye shone with a sun flame, while his right eye shone with a destructive crimson aura. Upon reaching the tenth extreme, he had refined his eyes into elemental eyes that could now see the path of elemental energy in the atmosphere. Thanks to his outrageous elemental powers, Kaelen could see the paths of most elements in the air, although not at equal efficiency for each element. Fire energies were the clearest, followed by light, then gold, wood, lightning, wind, water, etc. Seeing those energies doesn't mean he could use them, but at least he could predict their trajectory somewhat for most and totally for fire and light-attributed opponents.
It was now late into the night and heading towards morning. Within his body, Kaelen's two bloodlines awakened increasingly. His body trembled every now and then as countless colorless cells transformed into red or gold cells. His body was changing at the most minute levels. If the human body was made of thirty trillion cells, about a thousand of Kaelen's cells would be either a flaming gold color or eerie crimson. With each cell transforming into a crimson cell, his strength rose by five thousand pounds. While the golden cells only increased his strength by five hundred, they dramatically increased the power of his Infinite Sun's flame, which naturally improved his strength as well, though not physically. As such, with about five hundred draconic cells and five hundred solar cells, Kaelen's maximum physical output was about three million pounds, and that is only if he activated both bloodlines fully.
Two days later.
The group was roasting the rhino carcass along with other demonic beast bodies inside Kaelen's ring. A delicious smell permeated the area, making them all salivate in expectation. Over the past few days, Thorin had broken through to Innate Spirit, Raizel had reached the twelfth extreme, only a step away from Innate Spirit. Tang Hao broke through to the Gold Spirit stage, and Xue Qing managed to reach the Sun Spirit stage, which surprised her a lot since she expected it to take at least a month to break through, but for some reason, there was an overabundance of solar spiritual energy around.
Sun elemental energy and solar spiritual energy are not the same; one applies to spiritual forms, while the other affects physical ones. However, a place abundant in one usually has the other in equal abundance. All in all, the only person who hadn't broken through was Su Yao, but she was already at the Moon Spirit stage, so it made more sense. What was shocking is that Xue Qing had surpassed her in less than a month since they left the sect. The kids were becoming stronger with each day, preparing for the empire selection.
…
Western Wilderness, Upper Plateau.
The Western Wilderness was the second largest continent. It was about the size of three Southern Deserts, or half the size of Middle Heaven Continent, which was bigger than the other four territories combined albeit by a small amount. It was mostly forest to the south, and as you go north, you eventually reach the bottomless sea, a sea so deep and terrifying that not even the strongest powerhouses would dare venture too deep: folklore stipulates that there may be stellar creatures deep withing the sea.
When one reached the end of the forest side of the Western Wilderness, they arrived at the North Shore, and here begins the Upper Plateau. Although it has that name, it's not because you climb up as you traverse the wilderness; it is because there is no more land after the shore, you must fly above the sea to reach the hundreds of floating islands that encompass the Upper Plateau. Thankfully, the islands floated on the water and were not that high above sea level.
It was often a debate whether it was adequate to consider this area part of the Western Wilderness. Finally, the debate was settled as people realized there was only sea after the many islands. Since there were so many different islands, no one wanted to bother naming each. The hundreds of islands were all of varying height and size; half were civilized with a city on each island, and the other half were mostly forests or barren lands where minerals and precious ressources were extracted . At the heart of it all was the largest piece of land within the Upper Plateau. This one island was huge and surrounded by five other islands about half its size.
There were bridges connecting the five islands to each other, above the bottomless sea, and each of the five had a separate bridge that connected to the central island. The six islands were also known as the Heavenly Demon Territory, where the Earthly Demon Palace and the Heavenly Demon Palace resided. If one flew above the sea, they would notice the many weird yet beautiful structures that formed houses on the many islands. It seems that the culture here was very different.
Together, the two palaces were the main forces under the Heavenly Demon Clan—one of the most powerful factions of the whole True Martial Great World and the force that controlled the central land. It was also the most mysterious of all clans: ancient historical records mention that it may be the oldest surviving clan in the entire planet. Other records claim they came from another land and possess unfathomable power.
The Heavenly Demon Clan rested on the central land, while the two palaces took the five surrounding great islands and the many hundreds of small islands under their control. It was truly a massive force.
The area was large; equivalent to the entire southern desert and countless people lived within the Heavenly Demon Territory. It is said all that live within the Heavenly demon territory possess either the earthly fiend bloodline, the Heavenly fiend bloodline or in case of the royal branch- the Divine Demon bloodline. As such, people of this area are seen as members of the demon race. They were much taller and stronger than the average human, their hair was mostly dark grey if from the earthly demon faction, light grey for those of the Heavenly demon faction and pure white for the royal clan. However, it not uncommon to see all other types of hair.
With cities on almost half of the hundreds of islands, along with the two palaces under the one clan, there was naturally a constant flow of people everywhere. Merchants, schools, brothels, inns, all types of activities were happening everywhere, at all times. It was thus noisy. No noise, no matter how loud, could easily surpass all others in the lively scene—or so you'd think.
"Find her!!!!!!"
Suddenly, the ground shook, and the sky trembled. Like a god-king letting his wrath be known to his kingdom, all inhabitants of the territory were living their lives when a terrible shockwave, followed by an enraged voice, erupted from the mainland and shook the entire Heavenly Demon Territory. The clouds above parted with the powerful shout, while the sea rose, causing the formation of countless waves that crashed against surrounding island shores. The voice of the powerful person reverberated and was heard by everyone within a million miles of the entire Upper Plateau.