Punya made a signal with his hands. Suddenly his shadow bent and two cultivators covered in black came out. They were the shadow soldiers who had taken the Heavenly Oath to protect and obey the clan leader. Only supreme elders and clan leaders and one or two others in the clan knew about their existence. He told one of the shadows to deliver the message to Radha. Although the elders had approved the plans, he had to make sure they were executed to the end. Since the situation was delicate, he had to make sure it would be resolved peacefully. But resolving peacefully didn’t mean bowing down their heads, he had to show the clan’s stance so he had sent one of the shadows to deliver a message to Radha.
He had asked Radha to follow the instruction of the sixth elder and send half of the foundation building realm cultivators from the Battle hall to ease the search of perpetrators that trashed their restaurants and shops. Just because they were trying the peaceful ways doesn’t mean they were taking this lightly. There should always be consequences for taking the Rijal clan for granted. With more than ten foundation building cultivators, it would be easy to find those people in no time. Punya engraved his messages into the jade slip and threw it towards the shadow. The jade slip entered the shadow and disappeared. The shadow meanwhile flickered and moved towards the door at astonishing speed.
When the shadow disappeared from the clan hall, another shadow replaced it. Punya didn’t know much about these shadows in detail. When Punya had just assumed the position of clan leader, Keshab handed him a clan leader heirloom a simple tattered and unadorned ring. This ring was black in color and the only signifying feature was a faint outline of a crescent moon. Even the crescent moon was faded and could only be felt. Keshab told him that this ring was the identity of the Rijal clan, he got it from his father, the previous patriarch and it went all the way to the first ancestor Hemanta. When the beast tide occurred in the previous century, Keshab’s father handed him this ring before going to the battle.
It had saved his life quite a few times. This ring had few arrays engraved but the only functions Keshab had found out was that it consumed a small amount of spirit stones regularly and it worked as a storage ring. Moreover, when in an emergency it could block a full-on attack from half core formation realm cultivator. Well, that was what Keshab had encountered till now. But this ring consumed a lot of spirit stones when used for blocking an attack, the more powerful the attack, the more spirit stones consumed. Keshab didn’t know the grade of this treasure. Another important function of this ring was that whoever’s soul power was imprinted in this ring, the shadows would only obey their commands.
Punya didn’t know the identity of these shadows and inquired to Keshab but he also didn’t know. But from his experiments, Keshab told Punya that he could command five shadows at a time, and at that time there were what seemed like two shadows around him for protection. So maybe there were a total of seven shadows or maybe more they didn’t know about. They were sentient and behaved exactly like cultivators and Punya could even imprint the soul power of his successor. When the shadow left, Punya became alone in the clan hall. He began to think about the ways to prevent this war.
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From the reports sent by Radha, he knew about the large number of foundation building realm cultivators in the Battle hall as well as those on the verge of breaking through. Even more, was that those members were elites in their realm. They were almost undefeated in Lunaris city in their cultivation stages. The reason he was trying to avoid the war and settle this peacefully was because he saw how strong the Rijal clan would be in the next years. Given time they wouldn’t have to fear the war those bigshots would bring, although more than half of the Rijal clan members would probably die, he was confident that they would be able to pass down the bloodline and preserve some seeds.
It wasn’t just some seeds, he could select the most elite among them and send them away because they would be able to survive the wilderness by then. Remember when Rijal clan ancestors came to the Lunaris city four hundred years ago, they had barely started cultivating and now there are more than sixty foundation building cultivators. This type of thinking style was what made Punya reluctant to be the clan leader in the first place because you have to start thinking about the clans as a whole and even when it is about a mass extinction event, you are forced to think about preserving lives of few people in the clan so they can continue the bloodline.
Scrunching his nose Punya let out a sigh. He could only pray that Radha would heed his advice and follow the decision elders had arrived at. Punya looked outside and saw the sunlight turning golden and receding. He knew it was about to be evening and smiled. The evening was the most wonderful and relaxing time for him. He would get to eat food made by first grade peak tier chef and didn’t have to hear those elders from the clan clatter about minor things. He was grateful his son turned out to be a genius and chose the most suitable profession to placate girls. If Punya could, he wanted to make the clan powerful enough that his son could spend his entire life without worrying about anything but it was just a pipe dream.
No matter what with the food his son makes he will be able to make the girl he marries happy. Humming an old tune recorded in the clan library, Punya made his way towards the supreme elder’s place. When he reached the house, he could smell the delicious aroma of herbs and spices. He didn’t know what the smell contained but he could identify the smell of meat from the nine tailed spirit chicken. He smiled and opened the door. Inside Amrit was making chicken barbecue and other dishes. Punya didn’t care for other dishes and his eyes went straight to chicken barbecue. The worries he had in the clan hall were swept away by the view of the dishes in front of him. Feeling a cold chill Amrit looked around and saw his father. He knew why he felt like he was targeted.