After Sandra left her Master’s courtyard, she went to the new courtyard assigned for her. It was also assigned on the Floating Dragon, like her Master’s. Her Master was a part of the Dao Reserve, so for conveniences sake, they were allowed to have their Disciples stay on Floating Dragon.

However, so that some people would not start abusing this and accept their whole Clan as Disciples, they were only allowed to have one Disciple at a time. The Disciples would leave their immediate tutelage after they died or advanced to the Origin Realm.

When the Disciple advances to the Origin Realm it doesn’t mean that the master-apprentice relationship will be annulled but rather that the Disciple has learned everything they could from the Master and are now also considered to be a part of the Dao Reserve.

Sandra looked around at the courtyard and saw that it was quite plainly decorated. She had a small house that held the storage room, cultivating area and a place to receive guests. Besides that there was a small backyard that had a pond and a tree.

Unless she died, this courtyard will forever remain hers, even after she advances to the Origin Realm. She was allowed to change the lay out of the courtyard and decorate it as she wanted.

After familiarizing herself with her courtyard, she locked her courtyard down, so that other people wouldn’t be able to disturb her.

This feature was on all of the courtyard on Floating Dragon. Sometimes Origin Realm experts spent decades if not centuries in secluded meditation and as not to disturb them, there was a rule that when a courtyard had the Formations activated, the courtyard was not to be intentionally disturbed. Sect wide emergencies were an exception of course.

Sandra entered the house and went into the storage room to take a full inventory of the things that her Master had given her as a gift for becoming her Disciple. When she opened the Storage Area, she was very surprised to discover that there were myriads of different body tempering or Qi purifying Pills. There were also many Arts on tempering the body.

As Sandra looked at it wide eyed, she heard a voice from behind her, “Don’t look so surprised, your contributions in helping us find Blood Immortal Conclaves Headquarters were enormous. These few things, we have mountain loads of them.”

Sandra immediately turned her head towards the voice and saw a young man dressed in a black shirt, pants and a vest hoodie standing at the doorway. Sandra immediately cupped her hands and said, “Island Master.” Zhi let out a smile and said, “No need to be so courteous. You are my wife’s apprentice after all, so we can be considered as family.”

Hearing that, Sandra timidly raised her head. It was true that Masters and Disciples relationship was the same as parent and child’s. Sandra could now be considered as Zhi’s family but she couldn’t be discourteous none the less. She bit her lip and asked, “Is Jack fine?” “Honestly, I have no idea.” Zhi immediately answered with a serious tone.

Sandra looked at him with wide eyes and seeing that Zhi gestured for her to sit down, she followed his advice. After Sandra had sat down, Zhi gave a summary of Jack’s situation, “Currently, Jack is accepting the Legacy of a very strong person. If he succeeds his path will be completely different from a cultivators, if he fails…. At best, his Soul will be severely damaged, any worse than that will result in his Soul shattering.”

Sandra’s mind blanked and she stared into the distance with glazed eyes. Seeing this, Zhi let out a sigh as he thought to himself, “It doesn’t matter how, Jack has become her pillar of support. When something happens to Jack, I fear that her mind won’t be able to take it….” As Zhi sighed to himself, he suddenly felt a gold gaze on himself. He hurriedly looked and saw that it was Sandra.

However, instead of the usual warm and gentle eyes, she currently had cold and desolate ones. Zhi’s eyes narrowed as he asked, “Is it Lust?”

Lust nodded her head and asked coldly, “What is that suicidal idiot doing this time?” Hearing the complete reversal in attitude, made Zhi want to chuckle but he suppressed that desire and said, “He is currently accepting the Legacy of someone that doesn’t belong to our Cosmos. His path doesn’t follow our Rules and doesn’t exist here, so it will be very difficult to say that whether he will succeed or not.”

Lust’s eyes excluded coldness as she asked, “Why is he doing that?” Zhi thought back to Jack’s condition and then sighed very deeply and also regretfully. He took a seat opposite of Lust and said, “His and your situation is different. Your cultivation was destroyed but his dantian was destroyed. It may seem as the same thing but is very different.”

He took a breath as he continued explaining, “Your dantian was only pierced, leaving a small hole from which your cultivation leaked out and was thus destroyed. Using Pills, we can fix that hole and you can practise cultivation again. However, his dantain was completely and utterly destroyed.” Zhi stopped his explanation after reaching the end.

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Lust thought about it for a second and then asked, “Is it not possible to rebuild a dantian?” Zhi shook his head and said, “We don’t have a Pill or method to do so. Outside our Cosmos there may be a way to rebuild a dantian from scratch but we do not possess such a method.”

After saying it like that, Lust finally sighed as well. A trace of gentleness flashed in her eyes as she said, “So the caring always end up with the short end of the stick huh?” Understanding the meaning behind Lust’s words, Zhi also nodded as he said, “Yes…. The kind always end up with the short end of the stick.”

Zhi opened his mouth again to say something else but he suddenly felt an extremely strong ripple of Fire Energy. He immediately stood up and turned his head towards his courtyard, the origin of the ripple. A smile crept onto his face as he murmured to himself, “That little son of a…. He managed to succeed.” Without explaining anything more, he suddenly disappeared from the room.

When Zhi reappeared, he was in the air overlooking his courtyard. He wasn’t the first one to arrive at the scene, the entire Dragon Cross City could feel the extremely strong wave of energy so everyone from the Origin Realm and up was now standing outside Zhi’s courtyard.

Seeing Zhi arrive, Tiger turned to him and asked, “Master, what is going on?” Zhi stared at courtyard and hearing Tiger’s question, he suddenly had a change of expression as he yelled, “Lock down the Island!” This startled everyone present but half a beat later, lights started flashing over the Island as Defensive Formation was formed.

Seeing this, Zhi shouted out another string of orders that echoed out over the entire Island, “Any Disciple that leaves his personal courtyard will be killed on the spot, no exceptions!” He then turned his head towards the Dao Reserve and said, “Form a Perimeter, no one is allowed half a step on the Island!” All these orders came out in one breath, so everyone from the Dao Reserve was stunned.

However, they had followed Zhi for a long time so they understood that for him to personally take command like this meant that the situation was quite special. In only a few breaths worth of time later, the entire Island was locked down and the entire Dao Reserve that was currently at Dragon Cross City was forming a defensive perimeter around the Island.

As they excluded their Origin Energy, they blocked out every Qi Sense or technique that tried to pry into the Island. The fluctuations of Fire Energy that came from inside the courtyard grew even more violent and it seemed as though all Fire Energy in the air was gathering at the courtyard.

If one inspected more closely, they would be able to see that all of the gathering Fire Energy was absorbed by the Mask on Jack’s head.

***

The previous dimly lit room was now full of light flames. What was an interesting sight so see was that all of the flames were contained inside the Magic Circle on the ground with not even as much as a spark or ember leaking out. The raging inferno that was inside the Magic Circle had a cross legged figure silently sitting in the centre of it. The person that was sitting in the middle was Jack and he currently looked as if he had been made of fire.

Outside the Magic Circle, Raelag that was still powering the Formation, was looking a lot more transparent. It was obvious that this required a lot of power from him and since he was only a Memory Fragment, he had limited amount of Energy. He could not replenish it on his own and if things went on like this, he would soon run out of Energy and cease to exist.

His mind was completely numb as he looked at the figure inside the Magic Circle with an agape jaw. He would not have expected in even his wildest dreams that things would come to this. Even he had no idea what the hell was going on but Jack was like a sponge that kept absorbing the Fire Energy.

When the Magic Formation was first activated, Jack had only furrowed his brows and following Raelags directions, he started absorbing the Fire Energy that was building up inside the Magic Formation. However, as time went on, Jack absorbed the Energy at an increasingly alarming rate, so Raelag started attracting more and more Fire Energy from the outside to feed Jack. Even in this state, Jack did not even as much let out a grunt as he kept absorbing the Fire Energy.

If it weren’t for the fact that Raelag could feel the subtle changes happening to Jack’s Soul, he would not even believe that Jack was there at all. In the beginning, he had thought that he would be able to stay behind and guide Jack after the transformation of the Soul but if things kept advancing at this rate, he would not even be able to complete the full transformation before he ran out of Energy.

Raelag thought about what he could do, his eyes flashed as he seemed to make up his mind. Suddenly, he let out a deep breath as five little red crystals appeared next to him. Raelag looked at these Crystals wit ha tinge of regret but soon he grit his teeth and the five crystals flew to the five corners of the pentagram.

As the crystals floated there, they started excluding extremely potent Fire Energy. With the addition of the extremely pure and potent Fire Energy from the crystals, the purity of all the Fire Energy inside the Magic Formation increased several fold. However, seeing Jack only slow down the absorption for few moments before it increased even more than before. Seeing this, Raelag couldn’t hold it in any more and subconsciously yelled at Jack, “You little son of a bitch! ARE YOU FUCKING MADE OF FIRE?!”

Jack however did not pay any heed to the yell as though he hadn’t heard it at all. In reality, he didn’t because he was currently absorbed in his own little world. When the Magic Formation was started, he felt a tinge of heat in the beginning but after he started following Raelags directions, he started feeling warm inside.

He could feel his Soul change on a fundamental level however it wasn’t painful at all. To him, it was actually comfortable as if something that was sleeping inside him for a long time was slowly awakening.

The more potent the Fire Energy was, the more comfortable he felt. He felt as though he had returned to his natural habitat.