I chewed on an arm as I made my way through the forest. What a crazy bunch that was. I finished off all eight of them, even the guy that got slapped into oblivion. I found him slouched against one of the trees there with his chest caved in. He was basically already dead, I just hastened his demise.

Sometime later I found Daren too and gave him some pills and ointments for his wound after setting back his shoulder. He asked if the others were dead and I just nodded my head. He didn’t say much and just kinda sadly sighed and shuffled back towards the Sect.

After butchering the corpses and storing them away for a snack, I absorbed the fresh Soul Essence.

I already regretted taking in all their memories, with the nasty things they did. Let's just say that cosplaying drug-addicted savages played a minor role in their messed-up lives. And all that stuff frying their brains gave birth to some really awful sexual preferences. More messed up than I knew possible, and that was saying something, coming from a guy that has seen things on the internet.

Those disgusting animals aside, I decided to never mess with any mind-altering substances. Multiple lifetimes of experiences left me well versed in their effects, and considering how few upsides they had, they were just not worth it.

I collected all the valuables they had, which was honestly not that much, and stored them in my storage ring. The orange powder they all took, Red Blaze they called it, was a powerful stimulant as well as an incredible painkiller, allowing them to fight even with grievous wounds. Didn’t help against my blazing beam though. I still hadn’t decided on a new name for it.

Anyway, I decided to keep the powder. Seemed like it might be useful in a fight. Or I could sell it to some poor bastard who liked snorting magic powders.

I also got some of the black pills the guy took. Darkfire Infusion Pill. A real nasty stuff. The effects were immediate, temporarily boosting a Cultivator’s physical power by about 20%, which was huge, but it did that by literally burning Essence and ramping up the metabolism of a person by 200-500%!

Its duration was limited to about 20 minutes, with the strongest effects right at the start, and then about 1% decline every minute. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, the effects could stack, meaning that the guy eating a handful of them probably boosted himself by 100% if not more.

It was also a nearly guaranteed death. Best case scenario, he would be just partially crippled, losing decades of Body Cultivation in a matter of minutes. But if that was not enough to avert anyone from trying, pissing out blood, or having your internal organs rot might do the trick. As I said, that stuff was nasty.

Of course, I took every single pill. Are you kidding me? This stuff was brilliant! Just force-feed it to your enemy and then run around for a few minutes until they burn out. Heck, coat the swords and arrows with this stuff, and as soon as the rumors start to spread, nobody will want to come anywhere near you.

That’s the right way to use the Darkfire Infusion Pill. Or maybe that’s just me. What did I know? I’ve been a Cultivator for less than two years. Anyway, it had potential.

Something else that was a little bit concerning, though, was the deal with my Cultivation. You would think that after so many deaths all around, I would be ready to advance to the Second Layer, but nope.

Well, maybe if I absorbed all those Souls of Drakes and Rogue Cultivators it could have worked, but they were all destroyed. That’s the only explanation I had for not passively absorbing any. I didn’t need to be conscious for them to get slurped up. I think.

Anyway, it didn’t happen, so it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was close. I could feel it. I was approaching the limit my Soul could take before being stuffed to the brim. It was such a nice sensation. Like a good pump in a gym, except for the Soul.

Maybe another five or six mature Souls at the peak of Golden Core and I could finally cross over that threshold.

The Myriad Beast Sect was still far away. I briefly considered delaying my return and then decided that a few more days wouldn’t make a difference. If I was already late, might as well extend my holidays a bit longer.

If I could advance before coming home that would be a great boon. But the unfortunate thing was that even after covering large distances, I hadn’t come across any powerful beasts. Oh, sure there were a few in the Golden Core Realm, but they were in the early Layers and were not worth fighting. I would need a hundred of those to advance if my estimations were correct.

Cultivation went exponentially after all.

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Between the beginning and the peak of Golden Core was a chasm more than half a century wide, and though the time required to advance up there was barely twice what it took to begin on the golden path, the difference in Qi cultivated was at least tenfold.

So, yeah… Hunting those beasts wasn’t worth it. At least not currently. Not to mention that such actions would be time-consuming, there weren’t even enough beasts to make for a consistent hunt. I have seen half a dozen maybe, and that was by scanning huge swaths of land while I traveled in a wavy pattern.

I recognized the terrain for what it was. A sanctuary for the weak. The small rolling hills were everywhere, slightly condensing the amount of Qi in the air, but the difference between little, and a little more, was depressing.

Heck, I tried to get one good Cultivation session in. It went well. I created a bunch of Soul Essence fairly quickly and almost completely drained my Qi reserves. But the problems came later. When I tried to regenerate the lost energy, especially after beginning to actively pull Base Qi into my body, I noticed the density around me quickly drop.

I perhaps regenerated 10% when I already had to move a hundred steps away to avoid the voids in ambient energy I created. They would smooth over with time, but Base Qi was just that, very basic and completely stable. It didn’t like to move much. It had little energy left, unlike Spirit Qi, for example, which just wanted to violently explode outward and run away.

The fascinating thing was how much the terrain and the geometry of the planet’s surface affected how Qi moved. I knew much more about various Formations that made use of that effect than I did months prior, but it was still fascinating to see such differences in the environment.

I stood above the forest, watching for any recognizable landmarks, but all I could see were more forests, a bunch of small hills, cliffs, a few small streams, and a tiny river. The place was as peaceful as it could be. Even the flying creatures were keeping their distance, not daring to attack me anymore.

Well, I wasn’t exactly hiding my power, but still…

That’s when I noticed a peculiar shape on one of the nearby hills. It was much too square for it to be natural, and as I zoomed in, I recognized the unmistakable shape of a building. The entire place was covered with greenery and new growth, but those straight stone walls told me there was something more there.

I didn’t bother walking and straight up flew there, and the landscape became clear as I neared the hill.

[Oh~ An abandoned village? Or maybe a Sect?]

I landed near the large stone hall I spotted. It was already covered with vines, and the roots of young trees found their way between the cornerstones, slowly pushing them apart. Another few decades and the building would most likely crumble, though the roof had long since caved in.

There wasn’t much to see. Lots of mossy stone ruins, some old rotted wood, and maybe a piece of scrap metal here and there. It was clear that whoever called that place their home had long since moved out. I was leaning towards a small sect. Some of the construction had the telltale signs of Cultivation construction.

And I wasn’t talking just about the three-meter-high doorway. I’ve seen many oddly shaped stones that served as solid locks holding the structures in place, but upon closer inspection, I realized that what appeared to be a one-piece once used to be three.

The power and ability of at least a Golden Core Cultivator was required to do such a thing. To merge stones. To reshape them at a will.

Whatever happened for the small Sect to perish was unclear. Maybe they just moved out and found a better place to call home. The things they left behind certainly wouldn’t be too hard to replace by a few dozen Golden Cores. Even if they were lazy and did minimal work, a year at most and they could rebuild.

What fascinated me, though, and what gave me pause, was the massive structure I spotted at the very top of the will. I expected a large palace for the Sect Master, or maybe a grand hall, but what stood before me, in all its massive stone glory, was a pyramid.

The base was covered in moss and vines, while small grasses found their way into the cracks of the gray rock, and even a bush or two found their way up higher, nestled neatly between rotting old sticks and dried leaves.

[A pyramid? Here?]

And not just any pyramid. That was the genuine Aztec construction I could recognize anywhere. It had to be a coincidence. There were, after all, only so many ways you could build a pyramid. The massive cut stones were stacked in layers, giving the structure large steps meters high, with a smaller staircase running along the middle of each of its four sides, with a stone chamber at the top.

But the thing was massive. Absolutely humongous, a small hill on top of a hill. I flew up there and immediately noticed a big chunk missing out of the side of the hill which clearly served as a quarry to construct this monstrosity.

The inside of the stone chamber had the unmistakable carvings of a Qi-Gathering Formation, and upon a closer look, it was still working! The density of Qi was nearly twice that of the outside world. That was, of course, not saying much, but it was impressive.

After scanning the ground, however, I recognized the problem. Despite the people’s best attempts to tame nature and boost the productivity of their home, the Spirit Vein beneath the ground was all but dead.

There was a tiny trickle where once a river must have run, slowly spitting out Qi.

That made me realize what happened. The Cultivators constructed a pyramid to extend the height of their home, allowing for natural forces to bring more Qi higher. Then, with the help of the Formation, they boosted that further still. But something must have happened, an accident of overuse, or something similar, that crippled the Spirit Vein.

Without it, the Cultivators lost their source of power and had no choice but to move or perish. I sat in the room and began to Cultivate. It went easy, but once more, when I began to drain, the Qi dried up fast.

I speculated it would take me no longer than a week of focused Cultivation to turn the hill into a wasteland devoid of Qi. The area replenishing its reserves was too small, and the Spirit Vein too weak to help. And I was just a single Cultivator. An entire Sect would be doomed if they remained. What a sad state of affairs.

I decided to spend the night, and then left early in the morning.