Chapter 24: New Neighbours

Diana was confused... but the pieces were coming together. Slowly but surely, the odd setup of Red Vine peak was beginning to make sense. Of course, the demonic spirit tree was the center of all this nonsense.

How had it grown so fast over two days? The runic formation clearly played a role—the ambient Qi surrounding the tree was absolutely ridiculous. It rivaled some of the secret realms she had visited in the past.

There was also a horrifying thought. What if the tree had eaten her cousin in only a single day. Diana had ventured out of the sect and into the wilderness numerous times. Out there, dead beast corpses sometimes caused the birth of a spirit tree.

Spirit trees were nothing special, considered barely sentient plants at best. However, some alchemists did grow them to use their fruit in concoctions far beyond Diana's understanding.

"Is Stella an alchemist? Is that why she is taking such care of a demonic tree?" Diana tapped her chin. It made some sense. But they could only help produce poisons, as the demonic tree's berries were quite potent, strong enough for Qi-empowered beasts to die within minutes.

Deciding that, in the end, it didn't matter, Diana shrugged and sat down on the bench below the demonic tree. The Qi here was very dense—not only would it aid in her cultivation, but the ambient Qi would also obscure her from wandering spiritual senses from people looking for her.

But with her father dead and her family mostly wiped out and scattered throughout the valley, she was free to do as she liked. But having a plan was always important.

'Either I stay here in the Blood Lotus sect, or I hitch a ride with the merchants and go somewhere else...' That idea terrified her—naturally, as the scion of house Ravenborne, she had never wandered too far from the sect, and the idea of traversing the wilderness with those crazy strong merchants, just to join another demonic sect that she knew nobody at seemed daunting.

'But how can I stay here in the Blood Lotus sect after my family's downfall?' There were a few options, but none were that great. 'Should I take the promotion exam to become a Grand Elder in a few years?'

A thin smile appeared on the girl's face. She had nothing left except the clothes on her back and the stuff in her two spatial rings. She was basically homeless—one of the spatial rings wasn't even hers and was just filled with Qi-dense fruit from god knows where.

It wasn't looking too good. Diana needed a place to quietly cultivate, heal from her injuries and prepare to become a Grand Elder of the Blood Lotus sect. With a sigh, Diana summoned a beast core from her spatial ring. The palm-sized item looked like a rotting heart but was actually odorless and felt like holding a pebble. Grimacing, Diana chucked the beast core into her mouth and began to cycle her cultivation technique.

There was an explosion of Qi throughout her body as a week's worth of Qi that she could achieve through breathing techniques filled her entire body—replenishing her weary Soul Core and revitalizing her flesh. However, she had to be careful; consuming too many beast cores led to rapid progression but had diminishing returns and caused heart demons to fester.

The line between man and beast was more blurred than many felt comfortable admitting. Moreover, her cultivation method of absorbing beast cores for rapid advancement would lead her to be called a monster and savage in the Celestial Empire, so trying to live there was also a no-go.

Closing her eyes, Diana entered a deep state of meditation.

***

As Diana stopped investigating him and focused back on her cultivation, Ashlock felt relieved—it seemed even with his ridiculous advancement and all the other peculiarities around him, Diana simply didn't care.

Ashlock was a little annoyed the girl was cultivating in his personal space, but the amount of Qi she absorbed from the surroundings was negligible compared to the total collected by the runic formation. That supernova had contained the accumulated and refined Qi of a Star Core cultivator. Even with the explosion happening so far away, Ashlock had never felt the air so heavy with the stuff. It was like smog, forever lingering around.

With nothing else to do, Ashlock decided to continue cultivating himself as he didn't know how long this Qi would last. Was it a temporary thing, or would the area be saturated in the stuff for hundreds of years to come?

Activating the {Transpiration of Heaven and Earth} Qi flowed through the leaves and down into the lake. While simultaneously, Qi was drawn up from the earth, up his roots and trunk, and finally breathed out through his leaves. It gave Ashlock a magical feeling as his body began to grow, and he could feel his cultivation advancing.

A few days passed.

Ashlock could not sleep with someone cultivating so close beside him, but he could enter a meditative trance—in this state, time flowed exceptionally fast, but not instantly. In a way, he preferred this, as he was somewhat aware of his surroundings.

And exciting things were occurring—not within the courtyard of Red Vine peak as Diana had remained motionless, but rather in the wasteland that was once the town. On this particular day, Ashlock decided to do some spying around as he had seen more activity than in the last few days.

{Eye of the Tree God} brought Ashlock high into the sky, away from his home, and allowed him to venture forth as nothing but an observer. If not for this skill, Ashlock feared he may have gone mad and thought of the courtyard and the pavilion as his prison. Or would he? His mindset had certainly changed on many things along with his biology.

Due to his skills view range, and speed, he soared past his mountain peak faster than any bird or plane, yet it still took him a few minutes. It was hard to describe how enormous Red Vine peak and the old Ravenborne mountain truly were. Ashlock had never seen Mount Everest in person, but he wouldn't be surprised if they were similar sizes.

It made sense that the cultivators rarely left their mountain peaks to interact with the mortals in the towns down below. And on the flip side, it made sense why the mortals never ventured up to the mountain peaks—Ashlock doubted an average human could even get to the top without the help of a cultivator.

On the neighboring mountain peak, Ashlock could see how the top had been shaved flat. It was certainly not natural, almost as if a cultivator had taken their sword a sliced the tip clean off. Which was likely what had actually happened.

The flat space was huge, easily enough to fit a few football stadiums or an entire airport with room to spare. However, Ashlock found it hard to picture how this flat bit of rock had once been the Ravenborne family pavilion which was big enough to house thousands of people.

And now it was all gone. Even the rubble and corpses had been cleared. Instead, the mountain peak was alive with activity. Green and white flame cultivators mingled in groups and seemed to be constructing a new palace in the skies. Ashlock could practically see the Qi in the air—it was that dense.

The cultivators appeared to be bickering over the best way to build the new pavilion but up here wasn't the true hub of activity. No, for that, Ashlock had to go to the site of the old town.

It had only been around a week since the Grand Elder went supernova and turned the town into a molten wasteland—yet it was already unrecognizable. Nature was in full overdrive, likely due to the dense Qi in the air, and the charred miserable land of a few days ago was gone and replaced with a beautiful meadow teeming with life.

"Now I see why this entire world isn't a wasteland." After witnessing the might of the cultivators, Ashlock had wondered why the entire world wasn't a place of split mountains, burned-down forests, and rivers of corpses. "But if nature recovers this quickly, and the cultivators and mortals with a little Qi live for so long, then it's no wonder life hasn't gone extinct yet."

On the old town's lands, which has now become an overgrown meadow, Ashlock could see thousands of mortals excitedly hauling logs and stones from god knows where and building a brand new town. None of them seemed distraught about the fact they were building upon the vaporized remains of hundreds, if not thousands, of people that had called this land home.

A few cultivators stood to the side and told people where they could build while pocketing some coins from the people. Honestly, it was so hilariously corrupt that Ashlock couldn't take it seriously. The cultivators simply didn't give a single fuck except for themselves.

Ashlock spent a few more hours watching the people before deciding to call it for the day—he still got tired when the sun dipped down, but luckily he could keep cultivating at night time now. As he sat there in a groggy state with the cool summer night breeze rustling his leaves, Ashlock looked forward to the future. If he had to guess based on absolutely no information other than his gut feeling, he would be forming his Soul Core within a few weeks.

And Stella would return in less than a year.

So, assuming nothing went wrong with the Winterwrath and Evergreen folk moving in next door, life looked rather pleasant for the foreseeable future.

Now, if only Diana could stop being a useless squatter and get him some snacks...