Chapter 1422 Blacksmithing and Alchemy Competetion (1)
Arriving at the competition ground shortly after passing through the teleportation formation, Xuan Hao slowly took his seat among a few of the elders in charge of overseeing the competition. Taking the most honorable position to indicate his status to anyone who might be observing, while at the same time making sure to act properly like a senior figure of an ancient sect.
Luckily, using his divine sense to scan the area around the competition, he quickly discovered that the strongest person around had only reached the Dao Seed Realm. No one in the Celestial Immortal Realm or above had shown up to observe the competition and possibly gauge the strength of the Star Shattering Sect. Meaning that the worst-case scenario of having to try and potentially fool a Celestial Immortal Realm Ancestor from the Blue Sea empire didn't end up happening.
Of course, even with this, Xuan Hao didn't dare to relax, as he would still have to do his best to present himself as a senior figure faced with someone in the Dao Seed Realm.
The main difference compared to if he had to fool someone in the Celestial Immortal Realm was the fact that he could easily make them believe his strength to have reached the Celestial Immortal Realm or Profound Immortal Realm by using his Dao of Space at the Large Success Realm.
After all, from what he had seen during his encounter with the Celestial Immortal Realm Ancestor from the Blue Sea Empire in the past, even having reached the Peak of the Small Success Realm in the Dao of Space was considered an impressive feat for someone in the Celestial Immortal Realm, let alone someone with the ability to comprehend the Dao of Space to the Large Success Realm.
As long as information of his mastery over the Dao of Space reached the ears of the higher ups of the Blue Sea Empire, they would undoubtedly believe that the elder who had come to oversee the competition of the younger generation was someone who had at least reached the Celestial Immortal Realm, someone who would be qualified to be considered a true elder of an ancient hidden sect.
Thinking about this to himself, a slight smile could not stop itself from making its way onto his face as he looked out over the massive platform that had already been full prepared for the upcoming competition with all sorts of spiritual herbs and metals, along with furnaces and cauldrons.
Although the sect would lose a bit from providing all of these things for the competition considering that a large portion of the people participating were not from the sect, it was all to keep up the image of an ancient hidden sect.
Even though, I do wonder if it was necessary to include those few transcendent grade spiritual herbs...
The sheer number of spiritual herbs and spiritual metals, along with the quality of them far surpassed what the Star Shattering Sect could use on a normal competition.
Only because the sect had recently managed to gain a lot of new resources through expanding the territory of the sect into the chaotic region that had developed at the fall of the Sky Empire, did it manage to gather enough high-quality resources to host one such competition without affecting the daily consumption and flow of resources throughout the sect itself.
With that in mind, it would be impossible to hold another such competition in the near future. Especially if the transcendent grade spiritual herbs hidden inside the pile spiritual herbs ended up being used, as the sect didn't really have a reliable way to gather spiritual herbs of that grade at the moment. Most of the ones the sect had having come from Xuan Hao's recent information trade with the ancestor from the Blue Sea Empire.
As for the reason why ancient hidden sects had so many resources even though they were closed off to the world and seemingly didn't expand their influence outside the small area that the sect itself was located inside? There wasn't really much information on the matter, though... Xuan Hao guessed that these ancient hidden sects were in control of several large secret realm and possible even entire mystic realm. Allowing them a steady flow of resources even without them expanding their territory outside of their sect itself.
In the future, Xuan Hao also wanted the Star Shattering Sect to create a few secret realms that could be solely used to cultivate things like spiritual herbs or become training grounds for the younger disciples, like the Mirage Sect had done with the mystic realm, but... The current Star Shattering Sect was still far from being able to do something like that.
Although it had the resources to create a secret realm, it wouldn't be that large and wouldn't really have much use compared to the resources that it would cost to create.
Even in an empire like the Sky Empire, the secret realms created by their peak forces weren't more than a few miles in size and only barely held the core of their training ground or the place where their ancestor resided.
A truly large secret realm required far more strength and resources to create and was simply not something that could be created by someone in the Domain Lord Realm or Soul Ascension Realm.
Even with his strength in the Late Stage of the Dao Domain Lord Realm along with his comprehension of the Dao of Space, Xuan Hao felt uncertain that he would even be capable of creating a secret realm the size of the first one he entered after crossing over to this world.
Then again, outside of creating a large secret realm at the start, it could also grow naturally in size over time, which was how some secret realms created by weaker cultivators could end up growing far beyond the size of secret realms created by far stronger cultivators...