213 Three Stages of Transcendence

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The space around the elder tree shook and rumbled at the force of its tree roots slamming into the ground. The sudden eruption of battle immediately startled Lilith, Zorbek, and the palace guards as they shot up abruptly from their resting spots in alarm.

The treants on the other hand, simply open their eyes for a brief moment before closing them and continued their hibernation. Since the 'birds' didn't cackle alarmingly, it meant there weren't any intruders. Evidently, they were used to the ant's persistent assaults on a regular basis.

However, it hadn't been a full 9 hours since the last battle between the elder tree and ants. Even if the ants attack frequently, it shouldn't be this frequent, right? Their kind would eventually be killed off at this rate, especially when the elder tree was slaughtering them like ants in both the metaphoric and literal sense.

"Do ants usually attack this frequent, elder?" Leon asked curiously.

"No. There is usually a day to three day's rest between their attacks. This is the first time they've attacked within the same day. Most likely it had something to do with your arrivals." Elder Evergreen responded, before inputting his assumption.

Leon smiled wryly when he heard this. "You won't blame me for this, right elder?"

"No, it doesn't matter. Whether those ants attack frequently or less frequently, the result will still be the same, that is to become nutrients for the elder tree."

Towards this opinion, Elder Evergreen displayed irrefutable confidence in the tree spirit. He had witnessed many battles and not once had the elder tree's defenses ever been breached. It was a one-sided massacre.

Leon nodded in agreement. The elder tree's strength was unimaginable. But then he remembered the figure of the humanoid ant. It's strength also couldn't be measured from that distance, but just based on the pressure and aura exuded, it was exceedingly dangerous and beyond any ordinary Transcendents, he had seen.

Catching a glimpse of Elder Evergreen's profile, Leon thought that the elder was also not ordinary among Transcendents, although it was sealed and vaguely sensed.

"Elder, I have a request to make."

Leon pondered for a moment before he stated.

Elder Evergreen gestured for him to continue, neither expressing his acceptance nor denial of the request and implied that the elder was willing to listen first before deciding after hearing his request.

"Can you explain to me about Transcendence and the different levels of the Transcendent Realm?"

The reason he asked was that he was sure that from the vague mentions in Arden's Diary, Celestial was an existence that could traverse among the stars, something only Divine Origin Realm practitioners were capable of.

He understood that the leap in power from breaking through to Divine State will generally be big, but he felt the leap from Transcendent to Celestial was far, far too big of a leap. If it was to compare awakening cultivation to divine cultivation, it was like a divine practitioner leaping from the Revolving Core Realm directly to Divine Origin Realm, skipping Heaven Ascension and Void Realm.

The gap was just that big. Which is why he suspected there were different levels or stages within the Transcendent Realm.

"So that was your request?" Elder Evergreen was surprised before shaking his head in a self-deprecating manner. "And here I thought it was going to be some difficult request. Sure, I'll explain it to you. But first, I want to hear why know. Such a thing should be considered general knowledge, no?"

Leon smiled bitterly when he heard this. If it was considered general knowledge, then humanity wouldn't have fallen to such dire straits.

He began to explain the power structures of the Human Domain and the strongest awakeners he was aware of, before proceeding to further explain the beast's side with his limited knowledge. The best person to explain this part would be Lilith, but that girl wasn't willing to divulge much information about the Wildlands.

After Leon finished his explanation, Elder Evergreen could not help but sigh. Because Leon didn't mention the current strength of humanity and only talked about their situation in their prior conversation, he had been under the false impression that the foundation of humanity's cultivation was still as strong.

Elder Evergreen could not be blamed for having this misunderstanding. He had lived underground his whole and had been told that the surface was too dangerous for humans to live.

With his limited and outdated understanding of the world, he had naturally assumed the animals on the surface had grown in the same proportions of the ants, which was around 2000 times.

2000 times was enough for any animals to become a colossal being among colossal beings. And when Elder Evergreen follows that train of thought, the fact that humans were still alive on the surface made him believe that the western frontier was like a constant battlefield between titans and gods.

Elder Evergreen was silent for a long time before he recovered with a wry smile of his own.

"Pardon me, Child. I didn't expect the cultivation heritage of humanity to have regressed to such point." The elder apologizes beginning his explanation on Transcendents.

"There are three minor realms that exist within the Transcendent Realm, namely; the Preliminary Accession, Seeking Insight, and Acknowledged Paragon. Transcendence is the process of exceeding human boundaries and gaining the world's recognition for it."

"This recognition comes in the form of some authority over the worldly energies. With the energy of heaven and earth at your beck and call, it is very easy to begin training in other elements. However, it is also more important that you don't do that though."

"I've been told that all those who have chosen to train in dual-element, had never succeeded in their Celestial Tribulation... Ah, Celestial Tribulation is a test issued by the world when your strength and comprehension reach the peak of Transcendents if you also didn't."

Leon nodded. he did learn about this vaguely through the diary.

"If you pass it, the Celestial Tribulation will become part of your strength and grant you full authority over the worldly energy, becoming a venerated Celestial. If you don't, well… you will die. It's as simple as that. The Celestial Tribulation will destroy your body if you cannot bear it."

"Dual-element Transcendents will have to face a Celestial Tribulation twice as powerful as single-element Transcendents. Even Transcendents with a single element aren't guaranteed of overcoming their Celestial Tribulation, so you can imagine just how overwhelming it'll be for dual-element Transcendents."

When Elder Evergreen finished his explanation up to this point, Leon paled with a single thought on his mind. He was fucked.

He already has five elemental seed of lightning, fire, ice, metal, and earth revolving around his soul core. He was still expecting to collect the wood elemental seed to complete his cycle of five elements, albeit with an extra lightningseed.

Wouldn't that mean if he ended up reaching the peak stage of Acknowledge Paragon, he would have to face a Celestial Tribulation six times more powerful than the regular Celestial Tribulation!? His body might just be grinded down to the last atom!

"Very overwhelming," Leon said dryly.

"Don't worry. With your talents, you can still hope to become the most powerful Acknowledged Paragon within the Transcendent Realm." Elder Evergreen comforted.

Leon gave a forced smile at the elder's words. He still wasn't sure whether he would be able to achieve transcendence, but at least he still had divine cultivation to lean back on. In fact, he had never expected to have great success in awakening cultivation. It was only a tool to aid him in mastering the five-element stage of [Hegemon of Primal Chaos].

Elder Evergreen soon left and returned to his dwelling. Leon did not take this time to whip out Arden's Diary to study immediately, but when to check up on the others.

When he arrived at the designated accommodation allocated to their group. He found that apart from the palace guards being present, both Lilith and Zorbek had gone missing.

Asking around, he found that Lilith went to play with the 'bird-like' creatures while Zorbek went to check on the situation at the crown of the elder tree. Perhaps, the captain felt a hint of urgency to return to the surface due to the ant's repeated assault, but Leon was pleased that the captain remembered their objective for climbing up here.

After suggesting the palace guards follow after their captain and begin work on the top, he went to see Lilith. He had already received approval from Elder Evergreen to dig a hole to the surface from the top of their village.

Leon soon spotted the petite figure squatting by the grotesque bird-like creatures, poking and tickling them while laughing.

"What's are you doing?"

Leon snuck up and whispered behind her ears abruptly, making jump her in retreat.

"Whaa…? Oh, it's you, Leon. Don't sneak up on me like that again, or else you can't blame me if I accidentally swing a fist at your face next time, hmph!" Lilith pouted, before asking with adoration, "As you can see, I'm playing with these little birdies. Aren't they actually the cutest thing ever?"

Leon looked at the ugly thing briefly before giving his honest opinion without mincing his words to please her.

"Yeah… Nah… It's ugly as fuckkk."

Perhaps, Lilith found it cute because they both belong to bird species, but he did not find it remotely pleasing to the eye at all.

The ones shown to him were newborns, but they look like featherless and crude wooden puppet baby birds with big round eyes that look like they'll fall out of their sockets at any time.

After saying his piece, he fled the scene without waiting for Lilith's enrage response.

Leon returned to the inheritance building at the back of the village and found himself a nice and suitable spot to seat himself, before pulling out Arden's Diary and flipped to the first page.

As expected, there was something hidden in Arden's Diary that he had not noticed the first time he looked at it. Under his second but more focused scrutiny, he found that occasionally, there would be words with singular bold characters within them.

For a great artificer like Arden Gilardi, Leon highly doubted that the person would make such mistakes consistently with the high level of dexterity he would have gained from the profession. Also, the bold characters looked relatively newer than the rest like it was edited.

'There's a hidden message.' Leon concluded.