*Tap* *Tap* *Tap*

The sound of light boots thumping against the ground was heard as a tall man with long raven black hair, deep blue eyes, and a face that would make even the gods envy him was walking slowly as he approached a large hill in the distance with a beautiful woman wrapped around his back.

A woman who has been sleeping for 4 days straight... A fact that made Azmond's already broken heart shatter even more.

'I need more strength...' Azmond thought to himself with a somber expression as he walked up the hill he saw far in the distance not even a second ago, and yet... the hill was now right in front of him.

Azmond was moving at insane speeds that his sluggish-looking posture would not indicate.

Azmond reached the top of the hill not long after as he saw a view that left him stunned.

A dazzling array of lights appeared in front of Azmond as a large arrangement of glowing stones the size of houses were lined up at the front of a tree that was larger than most skyscrapers...

"What is this place...?" Azmond asked himself with a puzzled look as he entered what appeared to be the gate to this large assortment of huge glowing stones.

"Is this some sort of garden...? But, it looks naturally formed... How unusual." Confusion filled Azmond's heart as he started to look around the large naturally formed garden with Crystalline still snuggled up into his back.

Her tears had already dried up a while back, but they abruptly started coming down again a day ago while Crystalline was still dreaming. 'She must've had a terrible nightmare about what we were talking about a few days ago...' Azmond's heart crumbled even further when he thought about what Crystalline was going through while he was walking around aimlessly trying to find something more.

Every tear that Crystalline shed only further strengthened Azmond's resolve to acquire more power at speeds that would not even be categorized as humanly possible.

Azmond wanted to touch one of the Giant glowing stones, but he was afraid of there being a serious negative reaction that would end up hurting his Little Ice Ball, so he took out a large blanket from his storage ring and laid it flat on the ground before gently laying the curvy body of Crystalline's down on it.

He tenderly kissed her on the lips before beginning to perform another set of actions.

Azmond proceeded to lay down dozens of protective barriers around Crystalline's defenseless body.

He loved going overboard...

After Azmond finished laying down the protective barriers, he walked over to the closest giant glowing stone and touched it. He expected there to be some huge reaction, but surprisingly...

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The Giant glowing stone's blue shade of light just grew a little darker before returning to its original color...

'Hmm...? This huge stone is so odd...' Azmond thought to himself with an emotionless expression as he traced his hand around the rest of the large stone, but... nothing else happened, besides the shade of light being emitted from it getting a little dark sometimes.

"This huge stone must do something special, right...? Are they really just pretty decorations to some extremely large tree?" A puzzled look formed on Azmond's face as he thought to himself before walking over to a different large glowing stone to see if a different stone would do something other than glow slightly brighter...

Azmond was about to touch another one of the large glowing stones, but before he fully stretched out his hand... he looked back at Crystalline to make sure she was okay.

Crystalline was still sleeping peacefully with a sad look of longing on her pretty face as tear stains were present on her countenance.

Azmond was just a worry wart... A worry wart who took even more emotional damage when he saw that same sorrowful look on his Little Ice Flowers beautiful face...

"..."

*Sigh* "Let's just continue touching these glowing stones... One of them better do something to make up for wasting my time and keeping me away from My Love like this..." Azmond spoke in an emotionless tone as he glared at the rest of the Large Glowing stones.

'Brother Mountain told us about this crazy madman... And he is even crazier in person!!' The Glowing stones were crying tears of blood at the way this insane man was talking to inanimate objects like they had some sort of control over their actions.

Azmond ignored the woes of the rocks and finished extending his hand toward the glowing stone he was at.

"...."

Nothing happened, there was no significant reaction from this one either...

"You guys must really want to die, Huh?..." A chilling voice came out of Azmond's mouth as he thought about destroying these stones and just getting it over with, but he quickly scratched that idea...

'These stones are sorta pretty... maybe Crystalline would like one of them carved up and given to her as a gift...' Azmond started having dangerous thoughts again.

The large glowing stones would be crying about how unfair life was... if they were conscious beings, that is...

"Hmm..." A thought unexpectedly appeared in Azmond's mind right when he was about to infuse some qi in the air to make a sword so he could slice up these rocks...

'What if I try circulating my Qi inside of the glowing stone...? They are some sort of cultivation world bullcrap, right? They must need some type of magical stimulus to fully get a reaction out of them.'

The glowing stones began sweating buckets of relief when Azmond put away that sharp qi blade he had in his hands...

"I guess I should just try and see if my theory is plausible..." Azmond spoke to himself with an indifferent expression as he tried circulating his qi inside the large house-sized stone.

*Whoosh*

The sound of qi flowing out of the large stone in massive quantities was heard as extremely thick qi began to be absorbed by Azmond's dantian.

"Oh...? So it does have a use... And it seems to be a pretty substantial use." Azmond started to speak to himself with an impassive expression as he felt large amounts of high-quality qi enter inside his body. "This Qi is dozens of times greater in quality than the Qi I absorbed at the waterfall on a daily basis."

"It looks like I found one of the things I was searching for... one of the things that will allow me to acquire power at a rate that would make my previous cultivation speed look like I was advancing at a turtle's pace..." For the first time in days, A small smile formed on Azmond's handsome face as he held onto the key that was the solution to his current need for more power.