Victor ignored the wind that assaulted his face and tried to hinder his progress, not that it actually managed to do anything to him as he ran towards the Clan's home base. With his cultivation he could have easily flown there but he had never really gotten as comfortable flying as he was with simply running while using his movement technique, although he couldn't deny that he had never really put much time in training his flying skills.

As he ran he couldn't stop himself from pondering about their discovery. The flame was undoubtedly what had lured the different creatures to the area. Not that they knew what was there as the barrier over the workshop had distorted the Qi signature but the Qi purity was still very much felt and beasts tended to have a close too precognitive instinct to find treasures. But this issue was now solved with the barrier he had made. And the previous barrier should have been enough to distort the Qi enough to stop the Cult from realizing that a Heavenly flame had appeared if not then it had hopefully at least blocked their divination attempts to locate it. So this issue could be put on a hold for now.

The true issue lied in the unknown dimension treasure. The assailants were good enough to cover any traces from even his divine sense. While dimensional treasures were rare enough that simply their rarity was enough to make them interesting. But this rarity was followed with the few uses for them. The most common use being creating a secret world but with how secretive they were this was almost certainly not what they were going to use it for.

While the flame containers had been broken in a way that would make it appear as if it had been damaged as a consequence from the fighting rather than intentionally but was that really the truth? It was awfully convenient for the unknown people as this diverted the attention from them to the flame and all the issues stemming from it.

Victor participation in the founding war had made him grow up but it had also given him some unhealthy habits, and they came back in full force now as he started seeing conspiracies everywhere while thinking about the worst case scenarios. A sigh came from Victor as he resolved himself while whispering to himself

"I should speak with the old mountain monster after the journey. I should also increase the clan training."

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Rigel was currently meditating, something William also wanted to do but was stopped because of a intense itching that William tried to ignore as scratching his arms would only stop the itching for the moment until it came back worse than before. This was one of the possible side effects of healing with magic, the worse the wound the more it itched and healing bones was the second worst, only beaten by the healing of organs. Something he also had, but fortunately his organs had only needed minimum healing and so they didn't itch that bad. But all in all the side effect of itching was one of the better ones so he was happy, or so he tried to tell himself as he ignored the temptation to scratch himself.

William finally managed to meditate after the itching subsided a little. His cultivation had made a surprising increase for the little time he had actually cultivated since coming into this forest. He was now firmly in the first stage of the Dantian expansion realm.

His opinion was that this realm was simply a extension of the meridian expansion realm. In the meridian expansion realm one needed to lightly overfill their meridians with their own Qi to expand and very lightly damage them to make it so that when they healed they would be slightly larger and sturdier. The dantian expansion was the same were you had to overfill it with Qi. But this also made it necessary for the Dantian to already be full with the persons Qi. Which made it impossible for William to cultivation as he was almost out of Qi from the fight.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

So William was now manually absorbing and purifying the surrounding Qi to speed up his Qi recovery. This was a very boring activity, which made sense as cultivation itself tended to be a boring process, only being worth it because you grew stronger something manually trying to recover your Qi did not.

This was also why William had tried to automate the process, something he knew was possible as certain cultivation and auxiliary techniques did. He hadn't succeeded yet but he had high hopes for it to be possible in the future, maybe he could even take it a step further and automate the cultivation process itself.

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Being in a forest helped William recover his Qi faster as it cut down on the time needed to purify the Qi as it was already of the forest attribute, only needing to be made his own. But recovering from an almost empty Qi reserve was still time consuming.

The voice of Rigel came over as William was stretching and taking a small break.

"Do you have any goal in mind for the future?"

William was a little shocked at the sudden topic but answered as he thought of his own future.

"Not really. Try to become a divine celestial I guess?"

"That's not really a true goal so much as a thing that helps you achieve what you want."

"... So I assume you have a goal teacher."

"Yes, my goal was to join a good clan, something I have already reached."

William became a little curious as he wondered if that was a goal.

"Is that truly a goal? That also seems like something that only help you achieve your objective."

"Maybe it appears like that but joining a good faction is a goal for many adventures."

"Is that so? Don't adventurers like their freedom?"

"Yes but it's also just a path many people who never managed to join a force takes as they don't have anywhere else to go. Being an adventurer isn't as glorious as you might think. You are always in danger as you go on Quests as even low ranking quests can have unforeseen circumstances. And trying to grow stronger is hard as you have to rely on yourself to get a decent cultivation technique, not to speak of all the other techniques and their advanced versions you will need."

A sigh escaped Rigel as he opened his eyes while looking into the distance with a aura of melancholy.

"While the guild tries to take care of its adventures they can't be everywhere so if you manage to anger some member from a strong faction... Well no one will look for you as you will simply be another adventurer that 'failed' in your quest. So many adventurers have the goal of joining a decent force and retiring from being an adventurer"

This was definitely different from the freedom loving, loud and fearless adventurers that William had in his mind. He also wondered if the Aurora clan was a good choice as it was in the north-east most corner of the country with a danger zone next to the territory's capital and to the north was the northern expanse. So while it had a lot of natural resources it was also filled with danger, it wasn't even wrong to call the territory a shield territory, built to protect the rest of the country.

"So do you regret joining the Aurora clan?"

Rigel was a bit shocked before speaking.

"Not at all, joining the Aurora clan is one of the best option around and it's my pride that I got invited, you might not know this but it was your father who invited me."

There was obvious pride in Rigels voice as he spoke, William wasn't quite sure why being invited by a job obsessed old man was something to be proud over but was still happy and proud of the respect that people had for the clan.

"Is that so? Why?"

"It's a relatively new force with fewer than normal members so it doesn't have any true internal faction rivalry. The previous leader was a war hero who's on good terms with the royal family. Not to mention how famous his legendary hunts after the war are with adventurers. It's also widely known that the clan takes great care of its members and are generous with their rewards and techniques. They also don't discriminate against outsiders and will happily invite talents that catch their eye"

William was happy with the answer as his pride grew even more.

Night soon fell as the conversation continued in a similar manner with the subjects switching between the clan and adventurers.