"Take me to the pagoda," Ren said looking at Wu Tao.
"Master, can we come?" Asked Tian excitedly.
He nodded with a little smile. "You can all come. This way, you won't keep asking me questions about the source."
Liu Ming's eyes widened. "Master, have you found a way of activating it?"
Ren nodded slightly. "Let's go."
Just as Ren had wished, the pagoda was built with seven floors, which would guide his disciples and control their cultivation according to their levels, with the seventh level being the weakest and the first being the strongest. The ground floors would be off limits until Ren approved of it, for the energy that would flow there was going to be chaotic.
They walked into the ground floor which was divided into eleven rooms surrounding an empty center. "Liu Ming, I want you to absorb the tremors that will arise. As for you two, lend him your qi," he instructed his senior disciples.
"Master, what about us? We want to do something," cried Tian with fiery determination.
"Then...stay there and protect me."
"Okay!" Tian answered firmly. While Ling gave a softer okay.
"Let us begin..."
His roots instantly appeared along with a black hole under his feet. Another black hole opened deep in the ground where the heart of this world was located. He knew that taking something away from the planet's core would send out powerful quakes that would, in turn, draw unwanted attention to the sect.
Ren wanted to keep everything as quiet as possible. His focus wasn't on these small cultivators but rather on the gods in the divine realm whom he believed were responsible for his miseries.
Gold and black energy wound itself around the roots, diving into the black holes, and a wind of energy gashed out at his disciples, sending fear into their souls from the mere feel of his breath.
"Now!" Liu Ming instructed feeling the first tremor about to hit.
Wu Tao and Liuyue placed their right palms on Liu Ming's back before they began channeling their qi into him.
'I can do this. This is just absorbing energy,' he comforted himself as he placed his hands on the floor and opened himself up to the energy fluctuations caused by whatever their master was provoking deep under.
The ground began shaking from the first tremor, but it was quickly consumed by Liu Ming, whose cultivation level had risen sharply to four thousand and eight hundred, providing him with enough qi to subdue these minor quakes.
Ren sent in more roots which were all fortified with his qi and a part of the void. They crawled all over the source like tendrils, promising to destroy it if it resisted.
He was certain that if he had tried this when his cultivation was lower, that source would have drained him, just like it had been draining the energy from the world's core, this hill, and the nearby mountains for years without count.
Embedded firmly on the world's core, the thing Ren wanted to pull out started resisting him. But this only made him infuse more of his qi into the roots, channeling it all down to grab it out forcefully if he had to.
More fluctuations came out in waves, shaking the building on the hill but did not go beyond that... Liu Ming widened his domain to cover even the valleys near their hill, making sure that the tremors did not go beyond there or let anyone else feel them.
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Liuyue and Wu Tao held on from their end, supplying Liu Ming with the qi to keep him absorbing the quakes and success in the task given to them by their master. They all wanted to make him proud and feel worthy of following him.
"Master is so strong," Ling whispered to her brother.
"Of course. Senior sister said he'll be even stronger in the future, and so will all of us. She said that he wanted to take all his disciples to the divine realm. How great that will be."
"Brother, cultivation is a journey that cannot be rushed. We have just met master today. Don't blabber these to him, or we will be kicked out."
Tian dropped his eyes, his head drooping. "Alright sister, I will control myself."
"H-m, good." She patted his head before they returned their attention to Ren and their seniors.
"Let. Go!" He growled spreading out his arms and releasing half his cultivation to pull out the source.
A second wave began, stronger than before. It made the ground shake vigorously, making the twins lose balance and thud on their rears.
"Ow, ow, ow!" Tian groaned rubbing his backside while his sister sat up in a lotus position.
"Let us help them, brother. Senior brother Liu doesn't look stable. Let us also channel our energy to him."
"But master told us to protect him."
Ling eyed his naive brother, wondering how he did not understand their master's intentions. He only wanted them away from the danger while trying to make them feel like they were also contributing to the event going on.
She perfectly understood why he would do this; their cultivation levels were the weakest of everyone in the sect.
Ling used a little of what she had learned about her ability, Order, to give Liu Ming's unstable energy some balance.
Tian only used his qi without his ability, Chaos, to help in the little way he could, pushing aside his eagerness to approach their Master at such a dangerous moment.
'It's finally loosening. Just a little...more..." Ren added even more qi into his roots to dig out the source. Its shape was almost spherical, smooth, and as big as his two palms.
He still couldn't tell what it was without laying his eyes on the object.
The major quake struck just as Ren's roots successfully pulled out the source from the world's core.
Its magnitude was hard to counter, giving Liu Ming a strong blow to his soul. He instantly coughed out a spat of blood, pain swirling inside his chest.
Ren quickly shot his qi into Liu Ming to protect his vital organs that had been smashed in an instant. This one second of distraction gave the source a chance to fight back again. It covered its surface with the purest of energy in the world, disintegrating Ren's roots.
"Gghh!" Ren breathed in pain turning his head to the black hole, feeling his grip around the object about to completely vanish. "I'm not that easy!" He hissed and used the strongest blow he could through his roots, trapping the source as tightly as he could. "Come out!" He groaned and initiated the retrieval process, pulling it up and through the black holes.
When it tried to cut off his roots once more, Ren covered them with his void wholly, protecting himself the only way he knew how.
To protect his disciples whose cultivation levels were weaker, Ren coated the object with a shield made from the void's mysterious energy. This barrier would serve as a veil to hide the object's immeasurable energy which was stronger than any vein Ren had felt. It would be even stronger than the nodes because it had been around the world's core, which was the source of life for this realm.
The quakes ceased and the three senior disciples crumbled on the floor, sweating and panting hard from the exhaustion. They couldn't even try to fathom what their master had had to experience while dealing with the source directly.
But it was over.
He had taken it out.
"Here." Liuyue pushed a pill into Liu Ming's mouth. "I'll help you stabilize your dantian." She sat in front of him, and both stretched their palms to touch each other. Energy began winding around their palms, unconsciously drawing some from the source Ren now held in his hands.
"Looks like a sphere. What is it?" he asked himself, his roots retreating fully from the black hole before disappearing.
"Master!" Tian called getting up. He started running towards him but a strong energy blast knocked him back, sending him flying straight for the wall.
"Tian!" Wu Tao yelled out, jumping to try and save him, but he was too far.
As Tian was about to hit the wall, a black hole appeared to receive him, and another one formed in front of Wu Tao.
He was still screaming even as he fell into Wu Tao's arms. "Mas-Mas-Mas..." He panted, fear turning his face pale as milk.
"It's okay now. Master saved you," Wu Tao said sitting up with Tian, who was visibly shaking, in his arms.
"Brother!" Ling knelt next to him, a terrified expression on her. She quickly placed her hand on his chest to let her energy flow into him, giving him, order.
Ren hadn't realized that even with the barrier around the source, it could still fight those weaker than himself.
He set up an invisible shield, dividing the floor at the stairs such that none of the disciples could gain entry here without reaching a certain level.
He opened a black hole, and with one last glance at the strange object, he dropped it inside. The second black hole appeared inside the ground, only deep enough to hide the source but close enough to have it release the energy inside it bit by bit.
Nobody had ever detected it because of how far it had been hidden. Over time, it had sucked out the weak energy from the hill while slowly sucking out the raw energy in the world's core.
Ren wondered what would happen if he had pulled out the core instead of this object. Would this realm collapse? Chances of that happening were high considering how much noise had been made from simply extracting a foreign object from it.