Unfathomable Senior

Chapter 364

“Whew…”

Zhang Dong gave out a sigh after looking at his cultivation realm. He managed to balance out his cores before achieving a breakthrough into the middle realm. Now after reinforcing it for an hour he could finally move on.

Going from one small realm into another wasn’t that hard, he only needed to gather enough energy for all the three cores. This would probably be the same for all the other small realms; the only thing that he needed to worry about would be what was after that.

His step into this new core formation realm was quite painful already. Would he need to go through another body-altering change? The first time he ascended into the nascent soul realm he did it himself with minimal help from the system.

This time around it would be much harder but would also put him on a stage of his own. This was due to how strong he was now and how much a breakthrough into a larger realm raised one’s power.

“Early stage nascent soul…”

Zhang Dong gathered some energy into his hand and the cave that he was occupying started to tremble. Bringing himself into the middle stage of core formation put him at around the early stage of his old nascent soul realm.

This could indicate that if he reached the great circle of core formation he would be back at his previous strength level. Then if he pushed himself even further beyond that he could very well shatter the limitations of this world.

“It would be nice if I knew the multiplier…”

He had asked Bob about it but his AI companion didn’t really know the answers. It was quite strange how useless he was in this original world while he could offer some precious insights into the other one.

His body refinement had also progressed into the core formation stage and even had a nice name change. While his old silver body had a plus sign next to it, this golden body was now an ascendent golden body.

With it now being in the golden body stage he could also use the old abilities that he once had. The acceleration of his brain function that it came with was quite nice as it allowed him to be even better during close fights. His senses would be enhanced during activation and everything would seem slower but in actuality, his brain would just be functioning much faster.

“This thing still isn’t showing anything, guess it’s time to leave. At least my crafting abode is back.”

Zhang Dong had access to his old crafting pocket dimension. There was a problem with it as Bob had burned through all of the upgrades that he made to it. Without any time on his hand, he could not waste it on getting it back up to the old condition.

With a thunderclap, he rocketed out of this cave. He had burned through all the weapons and spirit stones and was mostly left with useless junk. The occult items could be placed in the crafting abode for now. When he upgraded some of the features those items could be desynthesized into resources.

At least as a storage space, it was far better than the spatial rings he had. If he was ever searched by some other cultivators they would not find anything worthwhile in his possessions. The only thing he kept with him was the sword he got from the Thunderball Hall ancestor, his robes, and some spirit stones.

Back on the outside he looked at his minimap and flew forward to his next destination. He had mapped out a couple of dangerous spots that could have decrepit souls or some shadowy monsters. The stronger he got, the faster he would return home.

So he flew and time passed. The scenery unfolded before him and he could tell that this empire was not that much different than the one that he hailed from. There were pockets of people living everywhere and there were always a lot of them.

Villages with thousands of people and cities with hundreds of thousands. It was hard to find a settlement that did not have at least a thousand people living in it. The large size of this world was the only reason that it was not suffering from overpopulation.

The only big difference was that the sects in this empire didn’t create large territories that could be their own countries. They kept to their spots and let the lesser clans and smaller sects operate in the cities without getting involved that much.

They still possessed sites like spirit stone mines and large treasure troves with herbs and the like. Some of these places Zhang Dong was set on visiting, he would not feel bad about taking what he needed as he was choosing the evil sects as his victims.

Maybe in the future, the legend of a lone cultivator ravaging the lands would be told to the new generation. He didn’t care much as he was not intending to stay here for long. Luckily due to how the sects operated most of the treasures would be concentrated in a few areas. If he chose his targets wisely he would come up unscathed.

Two days after his travels he came to the first point of interest. When he looked into the distance he could see a thunderous mountain range filled with elements of the wind and lightning alike.

He was quick to dive into it, with his current cultivation level hurricanes and cyclones was nothing more than a summer breeze. The storm was promptly absorbed entirely into his lightning core. When he left he could see some people poking their eyes out from afar.

They were clearly cultivators coming over to see what was wrong. The moment they saw him up in the cloudless sky they bowed in fear. Not wanting to stick around to explain himself he moved on to the next area.

This area was another two days of flight away. This time it was a gloomy-looking forest covered with shadowy miasma and poisonous mists.

He could feel that right in the center of it there was some kind of soul-based creature. Before moving in though he spotted a group of people quickly walking out of the forests. They had pained expressions on their faces and some of them were constantly looking over their shoulders and back into the spooky forest.

Soon he would realize why they were doing this. After entering he was met with the usual rabble. Angry spirits that tried to possess his body and animated corpses that tried to devour it instead.

None of them could survive his soul core’s effect. Any type of undead creature had some kind of spiritual essence attached to it. Without it, they would not be able to move its reanimated body. What Zhang Only needed to do was to absorb this essence.

While moving towards the largest source of this energy he needed to take a lot of creatures out in the process. This felt like he was playing an old dungeon on an overleveled character. None of these creatures could do any damage to him and would dissolve after a flick of his finger.

“Ah, good old human sacrifice…”

He finally found why the people that were leaving had painful expressions on their faces. Before the evil creature, he spotted a young girl of about sixteen years of age. She was probably a virgin which these types of creatures loved to snack on.

She was bound to some kind of ritualistic altar and left for dead. The most powerful creature that took the shape of a large lich. It was wearing a golden crown and its body was adorned with a lot of golden trinkets with jewels. The being looked like some kind of old king, probably was one that was buried here before.

Now his vengeful spirit was snacking on the people in the area. The most probable cause of this sacrifice was to appease this menacing being. If the humans that were living outside continued to give sacrifices it left them to their own devices.

“Idiots, they don’t realize that feeding this thing people only makes it stronger, for now, it is contained to its own domain. When it grows strong enough it will be able to leave this forest and will devour them all.”

Zhang Dong shook his head as he knew how these evil creatures operated. It probably fooled the people into believing that this was their own option. It probably lent its power to one of the people living there that was doing its bidding and allowing it to grow stronger with time.

“Excuse me, I’m just passing through.”

Just at the moment when the monster was about to devour the poor girl’s soul, it felt something tugging it from behind. It found its very essence being sucked away by some kind of enemy.

When it turned around it saw a smiling Zhang Dong that was sucking away all of the phantom’s soul energy. There was a translucent sphere in the middle of his chest and the monster was slowly being absorbed into it. The monster screamed and used every ounce of its being to get away.

“Oh be quiet, the neighbors will hear you!”

It didn’t take long for the monster to vanish and with it the miasma that was accumulated in this place started to fade away. The lesser ghost started to fade away as they could not sustain themselves without their leader giving them parts of his power.“Hey there.”

“W-what…”

“Here, I think this one belongs to you.”

Zhang Dong flew back and easily caught up with the group of people. Since they heard the monsters scream and how the forest started to clear up they remained here.

“You should really stop making pacts with these kinds of beings, if you kept giving it people to feed it would only grow stronger and devour you all.”

When he handed them the young girl the group of adults started to cry and thank him. They clearly realized that he was a powerful cultivator that managed to slay the monster that was plaguing their village.

Just to have a clear conscience Zhang Dong took the group of people back to their village. There he found the man responsible twitching down on the ground. After the monster was slain the high priest had lost his connection to it. He would still be too strong for the mortals to handle so he took care of him before going on his merry way.

“Okay, on to the next one!”

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