The terror continued to overwhelm him, growing to greater and greater heights. Sage fell down to his knees and was seriously considering begging forgiveness when the strange aura suddenly disappeared.
“Wahaha, nicely done! You resisted pretty decently, but you need to work on that backbone of yours. Seems like you only recently formed it, eh? After I fed that fellow his teeth all those years ago he became my best friend for many lifetimes worth of adventures. Respect is something you earn, not something owed to you. As for your question? Well, those little punks were making a mockery of our name. Serves them right to get a little respect beat into them.”
“Thank you, Ancestor. I suppose that you didn’t want me trying to get revenge upon the Chong Clan?”
“Che. As if we care that much. The only reason you even got any help before was because Huang thinks it would be too shameful for our Clan to get wiped out completely. Those other guys would tease us, but who cares about that nonsense? Old as we are, our bloodline is spread all over the place, does it really matter if the names change? If they use other names then we won’t get implicated by their screw ups.”
Sage was knocked speechless by the blunt attitude of this ancestor. The others had been so enigmatic and mysterious, but not only had this ancestor answered his questions directly, he’d answered them without a filter. Of course, there were allusions to things that Sage knew nothing about, but it was pretty obvious they considered this information ‘above his pay grade’.
“Thank you for your guidance, Great Ancestor.”
“Che, showing respect already, eh? Alright, you’re not too bad, kid. Good luck.”
Sage was sent away and walked up to the fifth dais. After ascending the stairs he found a barrier blocking off the top platform and he gave a bow before heading to check out the last tomb. This one allowed him to approach and found it to be a beautiful woman, but of a different style. The second ancestor had beautiful features marred by the ferocious expression that her statute at rest still carried. This ancestor was a woman with only somewhat average features, but the warm and kind smile that included her whole face was enough to warm the heart. Even being carved into stone was not enough to hide the sheer vivaciousness of her features.
“Ahh, you’ve finally come to visit! Poor thing, you were all alone for so long. I’m so happy you were able to make it back to us. It’s so nice to see someone finally going against that silly taboo after all these years. I know you’ve had it rough in the past, but it’s so nice to see you having people all around you this time.”
Sage was surprised by the other ancestor’s bluntness, but he was even more surprised by this ancestor’s kindness. He hadn’t been expecting to receive such a warm welcome and he couldn’t help but to smile and give a deep bow before replying, “There are many with far worse conditions than mine. I had the gifts from my great ancestors, so I would be quite a failure indeed if I didn’t work hard to repay them.”
“Awww, you’re really cute when you try to use flattery. Alright, that should be enough. I don’t want to say anymore or I might end up breaking some rules. Okay, take this and be safe, dearie.”
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A Jade Tablet flew over Sage’s shoulder and then landed upon his hand. He wasn’t sure what kind of information this object contained, but given how cautious everyone was being he was sure it was bound to be filled with something important. He took the Jade Tablet and gave another bow to thank the ancestor before leaving. This time after climbing down the stairs from the dais he proceeded towards the exit to this lower chamber. He walked through the stone door and past the two large mantis statues, then up the ten flights of stairs to return to the rest of the Lang Clan tomb. Then he stopped to examine the two gifts he’d been given.
Surprisingly, the two female ancestors had both given him something. The second ancestor gave him a Storage Ring and he took this opportunity to send his consciousness inside. Things were nowhere near as organized as he was used to in his own storage treasures, but the small mountain of objects made for quite an impressive sight. He’d felt that he’d entered a dragon’s hoard, except someone had traded all the gold coins for Spirit Stones. After battling with Jinxi Po, Sage realized how great of an effect wealth could have on battle prowess. He was lucky enough to not have to face anyone with such an abundance of riches before and it was quite an eye opening experience. The only people from first rate powers he’d gone up against in the past were people from the Fu Clan and the Cult of the Woodlord. Lin Bao from the Cult of the Woodlord, as well as Fu Zedong were both young. Those big powers probably didn’t want their youngsters relying on precious treasures to fight, or perhaps they had too many members and only gave the most important ones the good stuff.
It was a very different story when taking on the leader of a first rate power that had many thousands of years of accumulated wealth. Sage was finally able to see just how much of a difference having so much money could make. Jinxi Po had a lot more time to accumulate wealth, but he also had a bunch of rival factions that prevented him from taking the majority of the Chong Clan’s resources. So, Sage could only expect that the leaders of the other first rate powers would have just as many expensive treasures as Jinxi Po, if not more. With that in mind, what sort of stuff would the Royal Family have?
The Inner World had Spirit Stones that he could collect, but he’d looked into that in the past and realized that there was a sort of fixed system in place. More Spirit Stones would only form on the Inner World when those already present were expended. In the outside world they seemed to form in places with great Qi density, and as long as the core of the mine wasn’t removed they would continue to grow and form there. Sage’s Inner World on the other hand seemed to have some sort of fixed supply. Any Spirit Stones he brought to the outside would reduce the total number on the Inner World, permanently.
He’d only learned this after doing a few experiments, at which point he learned that the total number seemed to coincide with the tiny motes of starlight out in the distance from his Inner World. Those little bits of Qi that were like the distant stars in a galaxy were the representation of his total Qi power. Over time, more of them were always coming into existence, but as he removed Spirit Stones from the Inner World, they were snuffed out. It was only then that he realized these Spirit Stones were sort of like the crystallization of his own Qi. Only, in the Inner World, just like time, the power was greatly magnified. The Inner World likely had billions if not trillions of Spirit Stones, and the amount of Qi contained within them all was exponentially larger than what Sage could exert in the outside world.
It’s no wonder that a World Core is known as a very legendary thing. It’s not just a world inside the body, but a compressed and magnified world.
Thankfully, this problem of limited resources didn’t seem to apply to the plants and animals of the Inner World. He hadn’t done enough tests to determine if minerals had the same limitation so he didn’t start bringing out mass quantities of metal ore or special types of stone. What if losing them started draining his life force or his health? He had brought out limited quantities to supply the Lang Clan with everything they needed to get fully established and was waiting to see if there were any adverse effects upon himself.