At first it had just been casual interest that brought Rahayu to the edge of the Everheart system. He wanted to see what the most infamous Ascension cultivator from Ceretos was up to now. He’d heard of the various treasures stored there, no doubt half truths meant to lure people into deadly traps. But by visiting himself, even without entering the system… he was hooked.

He could feel it. Just sitting there, tempting him. Rahayu grinned. He knew it had to be a trap, but how could he refuse something like that?

The planet itself was covered by lines of strangely banded atmosphere, ranging through many colors. It didn’t have the consistent gradient of a rainbow, but instead violet was the primary color. Then there were washed out bands of slate, intermingled with green and blue streaks.

Rahayu kept his sword within his grip as he approached. He knew never to underestimate Everheart. This trap was probably for the now-dead sword saint, or for Rahayu’s former apprentice, but it worked just as well on him. Actually, maybe it was for him. He couldn’t write that one off. Everheart had to know he’d ascended. Was there some remaining grudge between them worth killing Rahayu over?

No, actually, had they ever really resolved anything? Hardly.

But Rahayu wasn’t going to just leave a blade like that sitting there unused. Death was one thing, not making proper use of swords was far worse.

The warm side of the planet’s oceans were boiling, but the side away from the sun seemed to be just below that point. Quite unlivable for non-cultivators, but not too difficult to deal with on its own. The whole thing was likely toxic though. Actually, there were a surprising number of planets in this system full of rare toxins. Maybe that was why Everheart had chosen it. Or maybe he added some of those after the fact.

It wasn’t Rahayu’s job to know or care. He lined himself directly over the blade he wanted to liberate, slicing through the barriers and dropping down into what was almost certainly the real trap. Or possibly an additional layer of bait. He’d find out once he got there.

-----

A few years of lighter action was exactly what Tauno had wanted. There was only so much he could improve his cultivation in conflict with humans. And his equipment would fall behind too, if he let that happen.

The Dancing Slayer Sect was not meant to forever sit in isolation, meditating on their path or energy. It was fine from time to time, and preceding his breakthrough to Augmentation had been necessary for secrecy. But now that the war was shifting in the Scarlet Alliance’s favor, Tauno had some time to improve himself. He intended to take full advantage of it.

The Harmonious Citadel probably had its saints frantically growing stronger as much as they could, though Tauno was unsure if they could actually relevantly change in just a decade or five. They hadn’t been around as long as they claimed individually, but according to the Alliance’s information they relied upon devotion to train. No doubt they were still receiving some from their brainwashed masses, but even they couldn’t suppress all of the defeats… and the deaths of three saints. One or two they might have handled.

But ultimately, they were not the driving factor for Tauno. He wanted to grow for himself, and because of the pressure of his own allies.

There were more than a dozen folk from the lower realms that seriously believed they could break through to Augmentation in another half or full century, and if nothing else he was certain they could reach the peak of Integration. Going beyond that was not as simple. Even so, he took note.

Now that he finally had some freedom of movement, he took the opportunity to visit an untamed world. These were worlds teeming with beasts, either never having cultivator presences or having overrun whatever humans once lived upon them. Regardless, when a planet had a great amount of energy, so too did its inhabitants.

He wanted to fight some flyers, or at least he was bored of things crawling along the ground. The location he picked was up in the mountains around tall cliffs. Even as he descended, he was set upon by giant birds who had probably never seen a human before. And they wouldn’t get a second chance.

Sharp claws and beaks scraped upon the scales that made up Tauno’s armor, flecking off small bits of it. He countered with a blade made from bone, slicing apart their wings, displaying only the barest martial technique. He fell with the bodies, considering what he could do with the feathers and talons. Ultimately, they weren’t better than anything he had so he would store them for sale to an outside cultivator.

He needed something tougher, and he found it in a serpent. The creature was winding its way up between the rocks, and he wasn’t able to react in time to its strike. The creature was merely four meters long, hardly impressive on the scale of beasts with cultivation… but its fangs sunk right through his defensive energy and armor into his thigh. He felt the flash of movement and the sting, and the venom was injected before he could slash at the creature. His blade barely nicked the thing as it quickly pulled back, watching and waiting for him to fall.

Tauno took a deep and slow breath, forcing a blockage on the flow of blood through his leg. It only took an instant before his blood had jellified and it wouldn’t flow regardless. But that wasn’t all. Sparks of pain shot from within his leg, nearly incapacitating him. He knew most of them weren’t real, but good luck telling his brain that.

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He clenched his teeth, the muscles in his leg taut as he stepped forward. He had to swing his leg more like a peg, unable to bend it. The actual damage would have to be enumerated later.

The serpent reacted to Tauno’s sudden slash, dodging appropriately even though he appeared to be out of range. But he followed up, forcing it further back and off the edge of the cliff. He looked down, not expecting it to truly perish from the fall but interested in chasing after it.

He didn’t expect a tail to whip him in the face as it went over the edge, nor did he expect it to widen and begin to wriggle. Flaps of skin slowed its descent… and then they undulated and caused it to fly up into the sky.

Tauno wiped blood from his face where the sharp tip of the tail had cut his cheek. He felt a trace of numbness beginning there too. This would be a good one.

With only a slight application of energy it seemed the serpent could fly at least for a short distance, and its movements were rapid. Tauno did his best to keep up with it, even though he knew it was trying to get the poison to spread through his system faster. His blade cut through scales as it tried to land another bite, but without the element of surprise he was able to stay ahead of it, even with a useless leg.

Then he fell to the ground, and the snake thought it had a perfect opportunity. It didn’t realize its mistake until the sharpened bone blade Tauno carried was sticking out of the roof of its head, his arm in between its fangs.

Tauno couldn’t help but grin. This thing had good scales… and those fangs had to be useful for something. For him, they would be even greater. That was how the Dancing Slayer Sect made its way in the world.

-----

So far, Anton had been disappointed with the neighborhood surrounding In’istra. He had been expecting to find more cultivators, but perhaps he had expected too much. A few dozen systems wasn’t that much in the grand scheme of things, and he’d inspected several times more between the Trifold Alliance and Azun, with only four systems occupied. Two of those had been fairly obvious from neighboring systems, but two had been concealed.

Then he found it, an entire system filled with a haze of natural energy. The entire planetary plane was practically swimming in natural energy. As Anton approached, he expected to find a system occupied by powerful cultivators but as he drew closer he realized he was quite wrong.

The star he thought he’d seen was not a star at all. It was a good order of magnitude dimmer than even the smallest red dwarf, but Anton had simply thought that would be because of stellar dust in the way. But instead, he found merely a particularly large gas giant surrounded by other planets. A brown dwarf, by some names. Too small to sustain nuclear fusion.

Anton was disappointed in multiple ways. The system seemed to have so much potential, but it was just barely short. The brown dwarf could potentially provide minimal light and heat for a very close planet, but that greatly limited the options. On the other hand, the natural energy he thought was from overflowing planets actually was more of a trapped fog that the planets simply weren’t powerful enough to condense around them.

Only one planet had cleared out its ring, a small rocky planet that Anton surprisingly found life upon. Or rather, mostly inside. Beasts of various types living underground, both types similar to traditional burrowing creatures and novel ones. Many beasts had a small amount of cultivation, and there were plants that absorbed the natural energy and used it to grow. But being completely untouched by the presence of humans- as far as Anton could tell- he was rather unimpressed by the power level of the creatures dwelling there.

There were a few more traditional planets, doing little to generate or absorb natural energy. Anton continued his survey from outer to inner. He was still hoping to find humans, but he felt no intentionality about anything in the system.

But he continued inward, until he came to the innermost planet. It was compact, with a dense gassy atmosphere that made it nearly impossible to see the surface. Anton felt little hope, but he swept his senses across the planet trying to find cultivators. Nothing.

He almost left just there, but something told him to look closer. Descending below the clouds, he was surprised to find buildings. Towns and cities… and even people. He merely missed them because they didn’t display much natural energy- or only the barest traces of it.

On a close pass, he found several Body Tempering cultivators in a larger city, as well as one that he would have deemed around the level of a Spirit Building cultivator.

It was simple enough for him to determine that they had been long disconnected from interaction with the wider cultivators, simply by listening to their language. Yet there was a small portion that was similar as well, indicating they had a tenuous connection.

He could find no signs of destruction- at least not on a scale that would indicate this had happened in any of the previous two cycles due to the actions of the Trigold Cluster. If they had been previously invaded and purged, it was far beyond physical recognition. It was simply that they had little cultivation basis. It wasn’t that a few individuals or sects were hogging everything- he would have sensed them. Though Anton couldn’t entirely rule out a grand sect with a formation beyond his capabilities, he would have expected more higher ranking cultivators in general if that was the case.

So then, what should Anton do?

The easy answer was just to leave them. And Anton couldn’t say it was wrong. They were not in constant turmoil. From what Anton could tell over the course of a week, they lived much like he would expect for a place with few cultivators. Sadly, that didn’t mean it was all peaceful farming without danger and violence, only that the violence tended to come in the form of many mundane individuals.

Across the whole of the planet, he found several places that seemed to be at war. It was either a travesty, or normal daily life. That would depend on who was asked, probably.

So, it was not that they had no violence. In fact, they had plenty of their own. Would Anton improve anything by giving it to them, or would he cause more harm? He might even draw the attention of the upper realms. But… he also wanted to shout better farming techniques down from the heavens.

Before he could know for certain, he needed to know the people. That meant watching and listening, and learning their language. Hopefully he would be faster this time, with more experience with odd languages and it actually sharing some ties to the widespread language of cultivators.