Interesting!” Yuying said as she withdrew her hand from the forehead of one of the captured Golden Wing Army soldiers.
“The chant that all of these men have been endlessly repeating seem to be some sort of mind fortifying incantation. Which means if I try to forcefully read their minds it would shatter and not only would they go insane, we wouldn't be able to extract any information either.” Yuying explained.
In almost an instant later, Yuying had a sudden spark of inspiration and walked out of the cell that the soldiers were then headed toward a cage were one of the Golden Winged Eagles were being held.
Minutes later after extracting the information she needed from the eagle, Yuying withdrew her hand and a slight smile appeared on her face.
“Unlike the minds of the soldiers, the minds of this bird wasn't able to repel me.” Yuying said with a grin as she began to share the information she had extracted with the others.
Thus, Yuying began to interpret the carving that was in the eagle’s memories.
Much to the horror of the settlers, before they even tried to transport their newly found riches terrifying screeches echoed into the cavern causing them to quake in their boots. When it came time to investigate what was happening outside of the cavern, the settlers found that the skies were pitch black and filled with hundreds of thousands of birds.
Scrambling across a sea of gold and jewels the young man made his way toward the golden egg. The moment he made it to the top of the altar and touched the golden egg, the young man’s mind was flooded with dozen images and a message.
The young man was also gifted with a mark of fire on his hand from where he touched the egg. From the images that flooded into his mind, the young man knew that the mark of fire would allow him to work alongside the guardians of the mountain, the golden-winged eagles. He also knew that he and his descendants were destined to watch over and nourish the egg until the day it hatched. Thus marked the beginning of the Golden Peak Province.
“No wonder despite having such terrifying military capabilities, the lords of the Golden Peak Province never leave their borders.” Ling said.
“My lord, if we were somehow able to destroy that golden egg then wouldn’t the eagles stop working with the soldiers of the Golden Wing Army? Since they would no longer have a common objective to defend.” Guan Yu suggested.
“I forgot to mention but from what I could make out of the eagle’s memories, I think there is a saint level expert who resides in the Golden Peak Province.” Yuying said.
“There shouldn’t be any saints here in the Warring States Region…” Guan Yu said.
“Follow me.” Zhang said softly as he headed back toward the platform that took them to the lower levels of the fortress.
“Brother, what are we doing?” Ai asked curiously.
Soon after the platform brought them back to the base level of the Azure Tower and after they arrived in a room with a large table in the center, with a wave of his hand Zhang laid out a map weaved out of golden silk.
“Now that we have a fast mode of transportation, we can arrive at these veins before they disperse.” Zhang said with a smile as the map displayed a few active veins.
Soon after Zhang had a look at the golden map the sky fortress changed its course and headed toward the nearest active dragon’s vein. Which only took but a day’s travel by air to reach.
So after two days of absorbing the dragon’s vein, Zhang, and the beauties disembarked on the Sky Fortress once more toward another location on the golden map, then, of course, another and another.
Despite having been at different levels before due to the amount of essence needed to break into the tenth level Lingqi and Ai were able to catch up to Zhang, Yuying, and Ling.
Realizing that the higher level cultivators they had on their side the easier it would be for them to overcome their enemies, Zhang eventually allowed Little White, Silky and their horde of Wraith Spiders to also have an opportunity to absorb essence from the dragon’s vein. Soon enough Zhang’s generals and the elite guard were also included.
So as the days turned into weeks, and as a few dragon’s veins turned into a couple dozen, Zhang and the beauties managed to reach the tenth level of cultivation while Little White and Silky reached the nine. Zhang’s generals, many of the elite guard and all of the Wraith Spiders were all at the seventh and eighth level.
Although Zhang already had the ability to sense things in the area around him, upon reaching the tenth level he found that the area in which he could sense doubled, allowing him to scan an area with the radius of a few miles away from him. The beauties also developed the ability to sense their surroundings but not to the degree that could be compared to Zhang’s.
Sadly, before they could step into sainthood, the golden map stopped picking up dragon’s veins. Perhaps it was because they had been abusing the map’s ability a tad too much or perhaps it’s because there were no more veins within the area that could currently be picked up by the map, but Zhang and the beauties had exhausted all of the cultivable veins in the area.
“As we are now we won’t be able to last even a second in front of that saint that resides in the Golden Peak Province…” Zhang said with a sigh.
“I guess I’ll have to use it…” Zhang thought as he proceeded to head for his private chambers and bolt the door after giving out orders for no one to disturb him for the next few days.
As a mass of essence that was comprised out of thousands if not tens of thousands of souls swirled around Zhang, he slowly began to cultivate. While his mind purely focused on absorbing and refining this mass of essence Zhang slowly began to lose track of time as minutes turned into hours and hours turned into days.
It only after ten days did Zhang manage to absorb all of the that he had stored away in the Dragon Heart Necklace.
Zhang felt the crystalized essence that had formed in his body break apart and disperse throughout his body causing him unbelievable pain. It was as if his entire body was breaking down and being rebuilt at the same time.
Sensing an undescribed energy filling the room, Zhang tried to absorb as much as he could as he remembered Yuying’s words.
Unlike regular cultivators, saints no longer stored essence within their bodies and solely relied on essence in the air and apart of nature. So the more heavenly energy one managed to absorb and the more connected one is connected to the great flow of essence, the stronger one will be as a saint.
“No wonder! No wonder the difference between a saint and a level ten practitioner is so large.” Zhang laughed as he felt his body rebuilding itself and connecting with the great flow as he took in as much heavenly energy as he could.