Lee Chun Hua swiftly expelled her invading Qi from Seth's body as they left the cave and prepared to go their separate ways. They had both achieved a lot today. Seth had gotten a hundred mundane tier Qi shards for free without doing any work, and Chun Hua had gotten a new hobby, stalking Seth. Seeing the mysterious boy advance just like that was sort of exciting for her. She even secretly planned to come here tomorrow so she could watch him some more. Seth, meanwhile, stared at the sunset in the distance. The sky was painted in a reddish orange hue, and the scene was breathtakingly beautiful. On earth, he had never seen a sunset in his life. The giant skyscrapers and light smog always blocked his view, so this was literally his first time seeing the sun set.
'I thought it was supposed to be beautiful like in the movies.'
The sunset was honestly disappointing for him. Soon the sun disappeared over the horizon, and an eerie darkness covered the land. Come to think of it, he had nowhere to sleep.
"Damn it all..."
"If you don't have anywhere to go, then you can stay at the Blazing Valor sect."
Lee Chun Hua interrupted his train of thought with a cute smile on her face.
***
Seth ended up following Lee Chun Hua to the tall hill the Blazing Valor sect was located atop. It was high enough for him to properly view the entire city. On the eastern side of the city, everything was in absolute ruins. That must have been where the monster had rampaged through before coming to the southern middle belt areas and dying by Chun Hua's hand.
Lee Chun Hua secretly stole a glance at him, and opened the sect gates. It was late at night, and the gatekeepers would be busy in their cultivation.
"Welcome to the Valor Palace"
Seth nodded his head in silence as he took in the sight around him.
Tall pagodas were standing here and there like slumbering giants, and beautifully crafted statues were placed in strategic locations. The ordinary houses were breathtakingly well crafted and nothing in the entire enclosment was short of beautiful. Lee Chun Hua was inwardly proud, as she stole a glance at the jaw dropped Seth.
"It's impressive, right?"
Eventually, they arrived at a small building crafted out of a mysterious lusterless obsidian black material. It was so smoothly cut, that Seth could have sworn that it had been cut with a lazer beam. The material had a strange feeling to it too, almost like it was pulling him towards it. Curiously, Seth reached out to graze the surface of the wood with his finger. The wood was calling him touch it. To graze the surface. To hold it's lusterless, black edge.
"Don't!" Lee Chun Hua's voice rang in his ears, breaking him out of his pseudo trance. "That is from the branch of the ancient Qi devouring tree. Just being close to it sucks someone's Qi reserves almost dry."
Seth raised a brow in confusion. If something sac that dangerous, why would they use it to build a house?
"Why..." Before he could voice out his question, Lee Chun Hua interrupted him.
"I'm sure you want to ask why we used it to construct a building right? Well, its because it sucks the Qi out of someone. When you cultivate in a place within the influence of the Qi Devourer, you would have to work four times as hard as a person cultivating under ordinary circumstances. Now, if someone is already used to working four tines harder than an ordinary person under the Qi Devourer's influence, how quick do you think they would advance their tiers, were they to cultivate under normal circumstances?"
Seth silently nodded. Her explanation actually made a lot of sense. With their sect members forced to cultivate while their Qi was being drained by the Qi Devouring tree's branch, then their cultivation speed would skyrocket once they cultivated outside of its influence, as they were already used to cultivating extraction hard.
'It's genius ..'
Seth and Chun Hua soon arrived in front of a majestic pagoda made entirely of the black branch of the Qi Devouring tree. Its various floors of different sizes all had their roofs made of gold, and the dragon statues by its side made the whole thing have a reverend, even almost holy, mystical look.
Lee Chun Hua glanced at the floors of the building, letting her eyes linger on the first floor for a bit, before she sighed softly and turned two face Seth.
"This..." She eyed the top floor once again, as if checking to see if someone was there watching her. "This is the Throne of Valor."
***
To be honest, Seth was speechless about the whole thing. It was the kind of feeling one would get if they were invited to the white house, or went to visit the King of England. Chun Hua touched the surface of the door with her palm and channeled her Qi to it's surface, making it creak open and reveal a long passageway. The staircase must have been at least a hundred feet in height, because Seth could not see its end no matter how hard he peered into the long tunnel like entrance. Heck, merely looking at it alone gave his skin break out in goosebumps.
However, it seemed like Lee Chun Hua felt no such thing,... or at least she was already used to it and it no longer affected her, as she nonchalantly strolled into the dark passage like she was walking into her house. Well, she WAS walking into her house, but you know what I mean.
"Come in, let me introduce you to my father..." She added as a throwback.
Seth meanwhile, stood rooted to the floor.
"I'll have to meet her father so soon?!"
In all honesty, he would prefer to fight beasts, instead of meeting Chun Hua's dad and dealing with whatever they would inevitably have to discuss.
'The dad of the jade beauty in cultivation webnovels are always powerful and damn scary...'