Noah cut his palm and let the blood flow, revealing how it had turned a golden color.
"It's time for my cultivation level to advance further."
Getting up, he asked Li Rong to guide him to a volcano emanating yang energy.
"Master, what did we come here to do?"
"You just wait for me, I'll be back in a while."
Noah plunged into the lava and began to descend further and further into the bottom of the volcano until he reached a particular area.
Five hours later, he had hit a gigantic mine, plundering all the spirit crystals in the area.
The spirit crystals were crystals filled with qi and could be used for cultivation or as currency.
He was also lucky and managed to find ten holy crystals, which were spirit crystals of a much higher quality than the previous ones.
Returning to Li Rong, he went into his cultivation room and absorbed the conflagrated spirit seas that the ancient demonic clan had stored over the years along with two saint crystals and a large amount of spirit crystals.
A month later, his level advanced once again, reaching the third stage of the transcendent realm.
After leaving the cultivation room, Noah ordered Li Rong to gather all the superiors of the ancient demonic clan in the throne room for a meeting.
Sitting on his high throne, he looked at his subordinates before speaking.
"Due to the limitation of alchemical ingredients, I can't bring my alchemist skills up to saint rank.
I plan to go out into the outside world to improve my alchemy before I return to take them out of here."
"What?"
"The demon lord wants to leave?"
"He's planning to leave us here?"
"Quiet!"
Li Rong let out a roar that silenced everyone.
"I have no plans at all to leave you here.
In a few years a war will occur and you, the ancient demon clan, must fight alongside me in it."
"My lord, may I ask who we will have to fight against?"
Noah suddenly smiled at that question.
"The enemy? Our enemy will be the entire Tong Xuan kingdom!"
"What! We're going to take on the entire Tong Xuan kingdom by ourselves?"
"My lord...with all due respect, neither you nor us will be able to take on the various forces of the Tong Xuan kingdom together."
"Calm down everyone! By the time you guys go outside, the major powers of the various factions of the Tong Xuan realm will already be dead. Who you will have to face will be the remnants of those factions.
Your mission will be to conquer these remnant forces.
Inside this spatial ring is a large amount of spirit crystals and other cultivation resources, during the time I will be away, I want you to focus on improving your cultivation.
Li Rong, Han Fei, Hua Mo, because you are already of saint rank, your bodies are powerful enough to withstand a method I have to get you out of here."
Han Fei and Hua Mo were the other two saint rank elders who always accompanied Li Rong.
"During our absence, the other elders will be in charge of leading the clan."
Finished speaking, Noah took out two cryogenic capsules from his magic gourd and opened them.
A young man and woman staggered out of the capsule ten seconds later.
"Where am I?"
Magna looked around in confusion for a while before focusing on the man sitting on the high throne surrounded by what appeared to be horned humans.
"Master!"
"Brother!"
Magna and lena pulled themselves together before approaching Noah, somewhat surprised that the latter seemed to have become some sort of king to these strange people.
Noah nodded to them and motioned with his eyes for them to stand
beside him.
"The two of them will stay here for the time being. If they need manpower or anything else during their research, they have to provide it immediately."
The demon elders looked at the two young men curiously since in their eyes they were nothing more than mortals with nothing of cultivation.
"Okay, now the next step."
Noah brought out another ten cryogenic capsules with sorcerers sleeping inside.
"I want ten volunteers from the eighth or ninth immortal ascension realm to transfer their souls into these ten bodies. Once I return I will return their bodies to them and personally help them get to the transcendent realm."
"Umm, master, how are we going to possess their bodies? And what do we have to do once we possess their bodies?"
"How to possess their bodies you can leave it to me, as to what you will do..."
Noah pointed to Magna and Lena beside him and then pointed to the ten sleeping bodies.
"They can't cultivate due to the fact that they don't possess a meridian system or a dantian, instead, they have a different internal system.
The problem is that there is no cultivation method to train this new system.
You, who are already experienced in cultivation, will take it upon yourselves together with the two of them to develop a cultivation method to bring their energy system up to the equivalent of the transcendent realm.
I can guarantee that neither your bodies nor your souls will suffer any harm, instead, you could reap great benefits from exploring a completely different energy system."
After thinking for a while, Noah decided to demonstrate.
He pulled out two more cryogenic capsules.
In one, a six-foot white wolf lay sleeping.
To any ordinary mortal, such a beast would scare them to death, but to these demons it was nothing more than a fly.
In the second, the demonic wolf of the sixth order lay sleeping.
Noah extended his divine sense, forcibly attracting the souls of the two creatures.
Compared to the demonic wolf's soul, Sasrir's soul was like an ant standing in front of an elephant, trembling in fear of the other party's aura.
Noah opened the demonic eye of annihilation and destroyed the demonic wolf's soul before guiding Sasrir's soul to consume the soul essence slowly.
Half an hour later, Noah opened the cryogenic capsule and let the demonic wolf, now with Sasrir's soul, out.
Sasrir opened his eyes and felt his new body for a while before sniffing the air and charging at Lena.
Noah grabbed the wolf by the muzzle and stopped him from continuing.
"Silly wolf, don't you know that if you charge at her with your current body you could crush her to death?"
Sasrir stuck his tongue out awkwardly before Noah released him and let him go to Lena.
"The process would be the same as you just saw.
So, who wants to join this project."
...
The demons looked at each other for a while before they all started clamoring for a spot.
They were not fools and knew that great benefits would await them if they collaborated in this experiment.
Noah scanned the crowd of demons with his eyes before picking out six rank nine and four rank eight, doing the same procedure to them as he did to Sasrir.
Storing the demons' bodies in the cryogenic pods, Noah ordered them to wait a while as he took Magna and Lena to a secluded spot to talk.
"Master, what is this place?"
"We are in another universe.
The people of this world have a systematic path to power similar to what I theorized about the mana core.
Their mission now is to develop a cultivation path for the mana core. They can take the cultivation path of this world as a reference since it is also based on training an energy source, unlike the path of the gods, which is based on the soul.
They can use those ten demons as test subjects, if any of them die, just ask the elders to preserve their soul."
"Brother, those people..."
"Don't worry, you can consider them as my new strength within this world, you don't have to doubt their loyalty."
"But they are..."
"That's right, they are demons, but they are different from the demons of our world, they are just another race of this world."
"That's right."
"Well, since there's nothing left to say, I'll take my leave."
Reuniting with Li Rong and the other two elders, Noah pulled them inside his magic gourd.
Due to their cultivation level, they could remain inside the gourd without any protection.
A spatial passage opened up in the sky and Noah entered it, finding himself inside an icy cave on the other side.
Ignoring the old coffin slave who rested with his eyes closed, Noah exited the cave, encountering a snowstorm.
Several days later, he arrived in Boulder City, a town on the edge of the snow-capped mountains, where he asked which direction the High Heaven Sect was located before shooting off in that direction.
"If I hurry, I'll be able to get into that cave before it's discovered by the High Heaven Sect people."
Several days later, Noah arrived near the periphery of the High Heaven Sect and concealed his aura before spreading his divine sense around the area before sitting down to wait.
A couple of weeks later, a disciple dressed in High Heaven Sect clothing noticed something strange on the ground he had just passed through and retraced his steps to check.
A few moments later, he realized it was a protective matrix guarding some kind of entrance.
After hitting the protective matrix with all his might and seeing that it wouldn't open, the young man gave up and decided to run and tell the cult about his discovery.
As he turned around, fantasizing about the treasures of the hidden place, suddenly his head separated from his body.
Noah stowed the body in his magical gourd before focusing on the protective matrix and beginning to destroy it.
Five minutes later, the matrix was destroyed and Noah entered through the hole revealed in the ground.
"I must hurry before the High Heaven Sect master detects me."
Noah passed through a corridor filled with seemingly weak black insects.
"Soul eating insects, I'm going to put them away for now."
The insects wanted to attack Noah but Noah deployed his divine sense and dragged them into his spirit sea.
Normally, doing so would have been suicide since these insects fed on souls but since he had a sea of conflagrated knowledge, he used the yang flames he generated to create a cocoon that sealed the soul-eating insects.
After collecting all the soul-devouring insects, he went to the back of the corridor and opened a stone door, revealing a cave full of treasures on the other side.
Although the treasures had formed a large pile, most of them were no longer useful.
Noah didn't waste time checking them one by one, instead, he stuffed them all directly into his magic gourd.
Suddenly, a very powerful divine sense locked upon him.
Giving the other party a smile, Noah opened a portal and teleported to the distant city bold and unrestricted.
In a cultivation room at the highest peak of the ascending sky sect, an old man suddenly opened his eyes.
"That young man... I sensed the aura of the demon sealing chain on his body."
The elder deployed his sense to the limit, covering the 500km radius, without finding his target.
Shaking his head, the old man closed his eyes and continued his cultivation.
On the other hand, Noah sat cross-legged in a room in the free and unrestricted city before starting to pull out the loot he obtained from inside the cave.
He tossed aside all the items that had become useless over the years and left only a few cultivation manuals, a couple of offensive and defensive weapons and a mysterious black stone with a cross in the center.
"This will serve me well for my future plans."
Putting away the stone and the other items, Noah teleported back to Boulder City, where he signed up for the alchemy guild and started to improve his alchemy level.
For now he didn't want to continue cultivating as he had something planned before he reached saint rank.
For the next three months, he devoted himself to learning alchemy.
Due to the inheritance he obtained in the pocket space of the myriad medicine pond and the books he read in the ancient demonic clan, his theoretical foundation was very deep, so it was very easy for him to advance in his practice.
During that time, his alchemy skills reached the low grade saint rank.
Finishing his refinement for the day, he left the city and headed for a distant city.
The next event was due in two months and if he delayed any longer it would be more difficult for him to reach the place.
Even though he had three masters from the holy realm with him, he was now in human territory and if he went around with three demons from the holy realm he would attract too much attention and that was not his style.
Several days later, he arrived at the floating cloud city, a city that acted as a neutral territory and was administered by the three great races jointly.
In the Tong Xuan realm, besides the human race, the other two dominant races were the beast race and the demon race.
Since the beginning of time, the three races fought endless battles against each other to proclaim themselves as rulers of the whole world.
This city was the only place where the three races could interact with each other in a more peaceful manner.
Noah rented a courtyard and began refining a large amount of holy grade pills.
Half a month later, he had refined twenty pills.