After spending the last non-reserved points he had on a sumptuous meal and a pair of equally luxurious packed meals in the restaurant closest to the residence, Wu Guang went towards the latter.
Yuan Taotu was cultivating near the orb that until now he had carried in the container, intending to break through to the 4th level before they left, and so was better left alone.
The latter was sensible and so Wu Guang decided to spend all the time before sunset training the 'Counting steps towards Hell and Heaven' and accustoming himself to his new weapon. Actually, it was a named weapon, but Wu Guang did not like the 'Gravity Slasher' name and so simply called it his weapon.
Not liking a name could be described as childish or disrespectful towards the crafter, but in truth, Wu Guang's dislike came from his memories. And it wasn't uncalled for, after all, the 'Defying Gravity, Slashing the Planes' was a Heaven-level weapon owned by the South Forest Lord, one of the four that had ambushed and practically killed him. Plus the runes used were simple weight controlling ones, so calling this gravity was far from reality.
In any case, this dislike did not make Wu Guang's thoughts about the saber itself biased, as he found and accepted that indeed it was a great weapon for its level. Not only it the weight control could be used to speed the movements and increase the offensive or defensive output, but the material and craftmanship were extremely good, to the point that covering it with qi or using 'Shivering Disruption' actually used less qi than doing the same with the smaller medium quality saber he had been using until now.
***
After an early dinner, Wu Guang left the residence and arrived at the Arts hall right as the last rays of the sun dissipated.
Inside he found both Elder Mo and Elder Chen, so he greeted. He could not resist to sending a small jab towards the former though and referred to Elder Mo by his full title.
"I see Deng Zian could not resist to tell you. Well, it's the truth. But I trust that you don't expect any explanations about the reason behind hiding my status?"
"Obviously not, Head Core Elder Mo"
"Hah, just forget about it and refer to me as before. Now, I trust that you have guessed why you were called?"
"Then excuse me Elder Mo if it's incorrect, but my guess it's that for some reason I have been promoted from pawn far earlier than expected and so I will need to know more details as to be an effective piece"
"You may be right, but I still hope that you will do this of your own will, after all, we will provide anything we can to help and if it's succeeds, to reward you. And I trust that some headstart for after your leave is not a bad reason?"
"It may be so. But I would like to know first why it has to be me. I understand that I was involved in the incident by chance and so after Elder Chen saved me, he decided to check me for involvement. As the latter was not confirmed and I showed some kind of talent during the investigation, I was sent to the sect and after some checks and confirmations, it was decided for me to be involved further. And from this, the mission to the Coastal Hill City and the 'Inverted Tower' comes"
"You are right, but I feel that you haven't asked your question yet"
"Indeed. Even if I am involved in the incident and following investigation, it doesn't explain the attempt to assassinate me, neither it does explain the extreme worry and preferential treatment I have been getting. So if the Elder could answer me about these three matters; Is the incident so serious as to even ask new disciples to participate? Is the attempt on me because of the sect? Why do I seem to be so important?"
"..." Elder Mo did not answer anything, entering deep thought.
"We have called you to explain the three matters, but we did not expect you to ask about them so directly"
Elder Chen stepped forward, almost as if winning time for Elder Mo to prepare an acceptable answer.
"Well, like 'Wisdom' said, I have proposed and decided after consulting with the other involved people to reveal the truth. Initially, I thought about simply telling you part of it, but it seems that you are intelligent enough to guess the rest in any case, so let's skip that part" Seemingly Elder Mo reached some kind of internal decision as right after saying this, he proceeded to explain.
The explanation was long and after it finished, Wu Guang felt that the time was nearing midnight. It covered all three questions fully and even more, so after analyzing the gained information, Wu Guang could only conclude that the acting headmaster was absolutely sincere with him.
For the first one, he was absolutely right. The incident was not only far more serious than a simple mysterious organization trying to obtain secret knowledge or even such absolute poison as the 'Death Rain'. From the explanation, it could be surmised that it was no mysterious organization, but the black ops from the Eagle Kingdom preparing before a war.
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This preparation was enormous, including the incidents that Wu Guang was a participant in and a whole series of others, which included the assassinations of elders from the powers and officials from the cities. As for why nobody could really know, but the sect leadership came to the conclusion that the Eagle Kingdom was preparing to conquer the plane, as the Black Empire had tried to do 87 years ago.
The Kingdom did not want to repeat the mistakes of the Empire, and so in place of declaring war on all the islands, they decided to go after the weakest islands one after another. And by using their ally Flaming Sun Sect to block the Holy Light Monastery and as the Black Empire had closed itself after the war, even if the other island powers somehow banded together, they could not compare to the forces of the Kingdom.
Still, they even exercised caution against the latter case, by making it impossible for the powers to react in time by starting to assassinate, sow dissent and create dozens of incidents. Judging from the information that Elder Mo managed to gather, these incidents had also occurred on Fiery Island and Green Pastures on a lesser scale, so most probably the Eagle Kingdom planned to attack the Half Island first and before the other two could react, launch an attack on them as well.
And so the first question was answered, albeit nobody could really say for now how Wu Guang would be involved, but still, a war on the island where he was currently present and was part of one of the powers targeted, would involve him to a degree or another. But this at least explained why nobody else was considered to take part, only Wu Guang as a participant and Yuan Taotu as the person closest to him.
As for Xiao Feng, well, his involvement was only temporal and based on his own mission.
For the second question, Wu Guang was right as indeed the Sect was the provoker of the attempt, albeit unwillingly. It turned out that the 7 square miles of land called 'Earth's Cry Ridge' was considered part of his inheritance alongside the Wu family manor. His uncle Zhi Kang had told him that the manor was already occupied, and Elder Mo confirmed that it was so, and even more, there was officially a new owner. Normally such a small patch of practically barren land and a small manor were not valuable to warrant something as sending assassins, but the spirit crystal shards were found in a cave inside the territory did.
There were also talks of the cave possibly being an undiscovered mine of them, and such riches obviously would not be parted with by anyone. Initially, Elder Mo simply wanted to help Wu Guang take possession of his inheritance while visiting the city, but unknowingly provoked the new owner to resort to assassination to protect the mine.
The third question seemingly was far harder to explain, but somehow Elder Mo managed to do it in a way for anyone to understand. Actually, such was not needed as Wu Guang would have understood everything with a pair of phrases, but as he was playing the persona of an inexperienced youth, it was understandable. In short, the situation was that the founder had left an extremely important thing to the Sect - a fully functioning portal to a pocket realm. It was a simple barren and small realm, but with a far better qi concentration and the possibility to cultivate their own medicines and rear spirit beasts.
This gave the sect an enormous advantage over the rest and because of it, the sect could actually operate as it did. Having an outer and inner circle far bigger than similar level powers, the core of the Sect still was cultivating and growing at the best possible speed, as it only depended on the resources, qi, and training made possible by the pocket realm.
Still, something occurred four and half months ago while the Headmaster, all the 49 core elders except Elder Mo, and the 200 official core disciples entered the realm for special training, the key to open it disintegrated. Elder Mo was the only person left from the Core part of the sect and even pooling the knowledge and abilities of the highest echelon, they could not find the reason. Still, there was a way to save them, which was to create a new key.
It could sound simple, but in truth, the key would require an enormous amount of different and extremely rare resources. Thankfully some of them were already present in the treasure, while the others could be found out. Still, the instructions left by the founder had another part, which was that the key could be only used by a Soul realm cultivator younger than 20 years.