Not long after Lu Feng’s departure, a figure flew past the woods and appeared right next to the pond.
“This should be it.” The warm morning sunlight kissed Ye Wei on his cheeks. He panted for air and stared at the small pool of water. A glimmer of joy shone from his eyes, as his heart raced.
‘If I train next to the Drakehead, my cultivating speed will increase ten times quicker!’ Ye Wei, still excited, remembered what he had read about the Supreme Dragon Ridge.
“More than ten times the speed, so,if I stay here to train and cultivate for the next two weeks… No, not even that! If I train here for the next ten days, I will surely breakthrough to a four-star condensed prime Warrior!” Ye Wei explained to himself.
He clenched his fists tightly. Although he knew there was no time to waste, he was, nonetheless, too excited to even move.
‘This will be the perfect proof! Under normal circumstances, with my talent, even with no shortage of resources, it would take me more than four months to breakthrough as of now. However, I will see very soon if this place really is what I think it is!’
The Progenitor saw all of it through Ye Wei’s eyes, confused, shocked, and a little angered Ye Wei was able to find the Drakehead so effortlessly. ‘It can’t be luck. There is no luck on earth that can lead a man to a Drakehead just in one night!’
‘What else is this kid hiding? He must have some secret methods. Secrets that could benefit even me!’ The Progenitor had no idea that the Supreme’s blood flowed in Ye Wei’s veins, and that Ye Wei subconsciously used the Supreme’s formula.
‘Kid, how did you find this place?’ The Progenitor was insatiably curious. He had never witnessed such effective detective work.
‘Go on, tell me. I will even reward you with a Sky stance. We can even do a heavenly oath; I promise. I will not cheat you in any way!’ The Black Scale Progenitor was one of the most powerful beings. It was a rarity something interested him at all. However, with Ye Wei, the Progenitor was willing to gift a powerful creation of his own in exchange of as many of the boy’s secrets he could discover.
‘I do not care for your stupid stances! The fact that you want to know means that I am not going to tell!’ Ye Wei replied coldly, unmoved.
Ye Wei was obliviously toying with the Progenitor. Although he was able to find the pond, he was far from knowledgeable enough to explain how his detection system’s intricate workings led him to where he was.
Ye Wei was just following the disturbance of Qi in the surrounding area and went to the direction where it felt the strongest. He did not know why and how the Drakehead’s Qi disturbance resonated with his own.
‘You disrespectful idiot! If you keep up with that attitude, I will tear you into pieces!’ The Progenitor became furious. ‘I am the origin of an entire demon clan! How dare you!’
‘Old dog, how many times have you told me that you were going to kill me? And, yet, I am still alive. Somehow I really doubt that you are capable of tearing me into pieces.’ Ye Wei rolled his eyes.
‘You.. you!’ The progenitor frustrated. It seemed luring clearly didn’t work, and he currently had no way of doing anything to his human host.
The Progenitor grunted angrily and went back to silence.
Ye Wei didn’t want to waste his time arguing either. He knew that cultivating was more important at that point, he needed to prove immediately that he was at the Drakehead and he would rather become stronger than to anger a consciousness in his Sentient by winning pointless arguments.
“Good luck finding this place. I will cultivate while your lot wastes the time on ordering people around aimlessly!” Ye Wei murmured to himself, feeling angry that the Lu’s decided to use the cultivators from Green Moon City as slave laborers. ‘I am now one of the strongest cultivators of my family but if we want to keep the Dragon ridge within the family, I have to get stronger, I will have to defend this very spot from the possible intruders…’
The memory of Lu Ren and Lu De, two ten-star condensed prime Warrior threatening the Ye family, was still fresh in Ye Wei’s mind. If he was strong enough to send the Lu’s out of the mansion, he would have.
‘If I was a returned prime Warrior, I could have driven the Lu’s out of Green Moon City all together…’ Ye Wei’s eyes shone a determined glow.
‘Be patient, I will become stronger, and I will do it quickly!’
‘Falling Star Form!’ Ye Wei bent his knees, sat next to the pond and adjusted his breathing. He cleared his mind and ran the Ye’s formula entering a zen state.
As Ye Wei’s Falling Star Formula accelerated to its full speed, dense surges of primal energy from the sky and the earth were drawn to him, absorbed into his body through the pores on his skin.
The raging primal energy circulated through Ye Wei’s meridians a few times, the surges then were purified, stored into Ye Wei’s dantian as pure and dense Qi. The three cracks on his dantian were pulsing, seemed to be excited to receive the condensed energy.
Ye Wei’s cultivation was improving at incredible rate, as his dantian absorbed Qi at the speed he never before experienced.
The intensity of the Supreme Dragon ridge is not good for weaker cultivators. They normally had to slow down the surges before their body could absorb them, but Supreme who died there used the exact same formula Ye Wei was now using. The formula synergized with the Supreme blood in Ye Wei’s veins, he was therefore able to absorb and convert the primal energy. Furthermore, Ye Wei’s Qi had the qualities similar to the Supreme’s, meaning that the energy was flowing smoothly inside his body.
Time flew without Ye Wei noticing, it was already the dead of night when he lifted his head and opened his eyes again. He was already seeing bright stars hung in the night sky. He took a deep breath, he could feel the atmosphere was heavier than usual because of the busy Qi flow around the area.
Ye Wei only spent one day cultivating at the place, what he thought was a Drakehead, and his dantian was already filled up.
As his dantian became full, there was little point to absorb any more energy before the Qi in his dantian had been consolidated.
‘This is certainly the Drakehead! It was only one day of cultivating and my dantian felt as full as if I have been cultivating continuously for half a month!’ Ye Wei’s excited eyes stared at the moon’s reflection on the pond’s calm surface. He slowly stretched his back and limbs.
“The ancestral graveyard is close by. My ancestors must have established this area as the family’s resting place after the Supreme’s death!” After muttering to himself, Ye Wei’s figure became a blur, ghostly under the pale moonlight. He leaped onto the tip of a tree erected next to the Drakehead pond and overlooked the terrain, the mountain range he knew like the back of his hand.
‘No Lu will take charge of this if I live. None of you will even get to know about this place under my watch, I swear. I, the kin of a Supreme has now officially rediscovered my ancestor’s treasure! It has been forgotten but it was nonetheless left here by a Ye and now it belongs to one!’ Ye Wei was infuriated just thinking about the Lu’s plots. ‘There is no time to waste…’ His foot pressed against the tree’s tip, rode the rebound of the tough tree truck. Ye Wei launched his body back to Green Moon City’s direction, ready to return to the Ye mansion and plan the defence to detail.
Ye Wei was not going to interfere with the Lu’s search but now that he knew what was at stake and where the Drakehead was, he was not going to stand on the side while the Lu’s men wandered into North Hill Bay. Although it was unlikely for them to find the pond, he was still ready to take precautions in order to avoid it from happening.
Ye Wei finally left the pond. Few hours passed before a dark figure slowly and carefully approached. The person hidden under the black robe was Lu Feng. Once again he came back to his favourite spot to cultivate, to become stronger, to get a little bit closer to his dream of avenging his mother.
Lu Feng was only twenty two years old and he already achieved more than any ordinary cultivator could even hope for. A two-star Runemaster, a four-star condensed prime Warrior, he was far ahead of everyone his age because of the exceptional effort he put into cultivating.
Cultivator’s Qi is very limited and Lu Feng spent most of his Qi on learning more runes and more stances which contributed to his early rise as a Runemaster. This was without any doubts benefit of having discovered such powerful cultivation spot.
The fact that training efficiency was higher at the Drakehead meant that Lu Feng’s great efforts were multiplied, which resulted in his cultivation level being more advanced than most of the cultivators his own age.
Lu Feng discovered the Drakehead out of pure coincidence, Ye Wei was guided here by his ancestors’ blood, both of them found the point of interest but neither of them were aware the other’s knowledge of the pond’s power.
Next morning, one hundred and fifty men gathered at the Ye mansion. All of them Warriors, foundation of the Ye family.
The forests and mountains around Green Moon City were very dangerous. Often packs of wild beasts would attack and kill wanders who weren’t careful enough to get away. In order to ensure his people’s safety, Ye Zhengqing had his grandson, Ye Zhong, leading the force.
Ye Zhong was the strongest young cultivator in Green Moon City. At only twenty five, he was already a condensed prime Warrior.
Together with Ye Wei, he was one of the youngest people to achieve condensed prime level in his family in the last century.
Since Ye Zhong achieved condensed prime level, his cultivation rate had slowed down a bit as cultivating would become harder the further one went. Taking into account his excellent talent, Ye Zhong was still far from breaking through to the two-star level. Even now that the Ye’s were not short of resources, nobody expected him to become a two-star condensed prime Warrior in less than two years.
In the end, when it came to cultivating, resources were not everything. Sentient strength’s importance accounted for more as it was directly proportional to how fast one could absorb, purify and consolidate primal energy.
Ironically the only way to strengthen one’s Sentient was to cultivate.
“Zhong, these men are the family’s elite, the family’s foundation. Whatever happens in the wild, you are still these men’s leader, you have to stay strong and consider their safety even under stress!” Ye Zhengqing patted his grandson on the shoulder and advised solemnly.
“Grandpa, please don’t worry, I will not let our men put their lives at risk for the Lu’s at any point of the expedition!” Ye Zhong nodded determinedly. His eyes lingered on the hundred and fifty cultivators and made sure everyone heard his words.
“Grandpa, I would like to go with cousin Zhong!” Ye Wei stepped forward and said out of the blue.
“You should stay here and keep cultivating,” Ye Zhengqing hesitated, then shook his head, ‘I am sorry Wei, but I can’t have you both risking your lives…’
Ye Wei understood the patriarch’s intentions, softened and did not bother arguing.
“Be safe!” Ye Zhengqing gave Ye Zhong a hug, then waved as the group headed off, ‘The beasts in the woods are just ordinary beasts.You have a condensed prime Warrior as a leader, and it’s not just any condensed prime Warrior, it’s me little Zhong, you should be fine…’
“Let’s go!”
Ye Zhong waved and turned around, leading one hundred and fifty strong men towards the city’s gate.
“Just as I thought the Ye family is becoming stronger and more respectable in the high society, the Lu’s show up… I hope the kids don’t blame me for making this hard decision…” It was difficult for Ye Zhengqing to see them leave. He signed and slowly looked away.