Zhang Dong nodded to the old lady that had calmed down a bit after he entered the chamber they had locked themselves in. These people were still from the Soaring Dragon Sect, the information that he gave them was hard to swallow. It was understandable as finding out that their sect that was at the top of the whole world, had ceased to exist.

“Elder, this man has to be lying, how could our sect fall? This doesn’t make sense, we need to leave and get more information.”

One of the younger ladies here looked at him with anger in her eyes. It was clear that the juniors didn’t believe him but the nascent soul granny that was here did. When he opened up this vault he felt her spiritual sense bursting through it. She probably scanned the entire area outside and already knew that the whole place had been destroyed.

“Be quiet, what this man says is probably the truth…”

“But grandmother…”

The lady that was questioning his words referred to the granny quite closely. They were clearly related but not like he had time for pleasantries.

‘Bob, scan all the books in the area.’

With his increase in cultivation, some of Bob’s features were enhanced. Now he did not need to do it by hand or focus either, his Ai could just absorb all of the techniques that were in this room by himself. While there were various heaven grade texts here, they didn’t really add that much to his knowledge.

A few new pills here and there along with variations of preexisting battle arts. After already going through so many libraries with knowledge Zhang Dong noticed certain patterns in the skills. As long as a person was versed in the various elemental Dao’s they could add that knowledge to other techniques to get the same effects.

A palm that produced a smoldering inferno could now be easily altered to cause a frost nova instead. While it was easy to him, to a regular cultivator from this world it would be unfathomable. But as his knowledge grew so did his Dao’s of the elements in which he was now over 50% in all of them.

Even the Dao of dark energy was something that he could make his own, he just chose not to go into it too much as it clashed with his holy attribute. While he could freely study opposing elements like fire and water, this wasn’t quite the same for holy and dark. These elements were highly repulsed by each other.

If he had a small amount of dark energy in his body and activated his holy techniques. The light would feed away on the darkness until there was no Qi left. It was really hard to isolate these two energies and even keeping them close to each other could cause a massive backlash of untold proportions.

“I won’t stand in your way, you may leave and search for the remnants of your sect if you wish for but I’ll be taking these if you don’t mind…”

While he had already absorbed the knowledge from this place, there were still items that he could use to further his own cultivation level. There were some stones and weapons with lightning elemental energy imbued into them which he could still absorb along with some other goodies.

He waved his hand and the items in question started shining before rising up into the air and slowly floating towards him. The young lady that was previously looking at him with slanted eyebrows looked quite enraged by this fact. Luckily before she could say anything her grandmother waved her hand to force her mouth down.

It seemed that the younger generation was quite sheltered here. They didn’t know that they were in no place to make any demands with him. If any other powerful cultivator than him was here, they could easily kill them or do other dastardly things. From their standpoint, they should be happy that he was just taking some of the treasures and not even examining their spatial rings.

“I’ll take my leave then, the area should be safe now.”

He did not have time to take care of these survivors. They were together with a nascent soul elder which should be enough to guarantee their safety. Even though the main Soaring Dragon compound was no more, this didn’t mean that the entire sect was now gone. There were some remnants here and there, also some branch sects that could take them in.

‘This granny would be able to form a sect of her own in the lower regions so they should be fine.’

Before leaving he decided to fly around the destroyed city once more. He managed to find one vault which meant that there could be more buried treasures here. While searching for more loot he felt the old woman leaving the shelter with her juniors. They did remain in one spot though as they were probably quite shocked to see that not much had been left.

The previous monsters that roamed the area were mostly burned up but some of their bodies were still evaporating as he was scanning the area. His search revealed a couple of pockets of hidden away troves which he promptly flew towards.

Spirit stones, magical talismans, and more books with techniques were discovered by him. This time around though, there were no other survivors so he decided to just pocket everything he could get his hands on. While most of this would be useless to him, the juniors from his own sect could use the materials for themselves.

For Zhang Dong at his current level going through a huge sect like this didn’t prove much of a problem. After about twenty minutes he had scavenged everything that possessed a spiritual signature. Anything that could be absorbed was instantly devoured while everything else would be given to his sect members. It was finally time to leave but before he could there was a small commotion.

“Elder Zixin, it has been a while. It is truly unfortunate what has happened to your Soaring Dragon Sect but don’t worry, we from the Heavenly Crane Sect will be glad to escort you out from here…”

In the distance, he spotted a large group of cultivators, some of them he recognized as the people that he met when entering this place. There were a lot more of them here now, they were also quick to intercept the women and children that were just looking for more survivors.

After going through here he was not feeling any other life energy. He was more than convinced that there weren’t any other survivors. The holy core that he had was very receptive to life signals and along with his system minimap, he was able to perform a thorough scan of the entire area. From the millions of people that lived here, the only survivors didn’t amount to a hundred.

“Elder Guanting, I will have to refuse your generous offer, we only wish to search for our sect members, there could be more survivors.”

“Elder Zixin… I’m afraid I will have to implore you to leave this to my sect brothers, we will perform the search instead then we will be glad to escort you out of this horrible area, our Heavenly Crane Sect will accept you with open arms…”

“...That won’t be needed, we will be fine there are some branch sects that we will stay at instead you don’t need to…”

The old man that was talking to the old woman seemed somewhat angered that he was getting talked back to. Before the old lady could finish talking he raised his aura which made her back off for the time being.

“I don’t think you understand the gravity of your situation… there is no Soaring Dragon Sect anymore, those branch families you speak off have no foot to stand on as they won’t be able to stand up against even the middle-sized sects, you will come with us!”

It didn’t seem that the old man from the Heavenly Crane Sect would take a no for an answer. He wasn’t sure what their intention was but this group of survivors was composed mostly of women and children. They might hold them hostage or have the urge to integrate them into their own forces.

They were all strong cultivators for their age, after signing a soul-binding contract they could become part of the Heavenly Crane Sect. They could also be sold off to their members as potential brides. It was quite the catch for that sect as they were getting free cultivators without having to invest any resources into them.

‘It doesn’t look good for them but should I really get involved…’

He had already wasted enough time here, the red trail of energy that he could follow now was there. But, he knew that if he left things like this it would bother him for the entire trip. Thus he decided to clear things up between these two parties as quickly as he could.

“Excuse me, is there a problem here?”

“Huh? What… where did you…”

The people only realized that Zhang Dong was here when he chose to. With some skills, it was possible to blend into the surrounding without radiating any spiritual energy. Now everyone was looking up at him while he was radiating a gentle light from above.

“Ah, the renowned Golden Dragon, my brothers have informed me about you fellow Daoist but whatever do you mean? I don’t see a problem anywhere.”

The leader replied while the core formation masters scattered to the sides while riding their flying swords. Only the nascent soul elders that were with him dared to stay, it was five against one but not as he cared.

“Oh really? Elder Zixin was it?”

“Ah yes.”

The old lady was a bit perplexed that Zhang Dong returned and appeared out of the blue. It was clear from how the Heavenly Crane Sect elders were acting, that he was not someone they could easily offend. In reality. he wasn’t that sure as his fame was quite recent so some of these cultivation nuts would probably still try to check him.

“Do you wish to return with these fine gentlemen to their sect, or would you rather just leave the city instead? I have taken care of the dark miasma so you shouldn’t have a problem getting out and about this protective formation… I don’t think it’s really needed anymore…”

He proclaimed while pointing his finger into the sky. There the dome-shaped barrier was still surrounding everything from all sides. This thing required a lot of spiritual energy and resources to create but it would be quite easy to turn off.

Before anyone could ask about the meaning behind his words a tiny orb of energy appeared in front of this index finger. This little dot quickly grew in size, bolts of golden energy and bright light surrounded it now as Zhang Dong charged up this attack.

“W-what is he doing… take cover!”

The nascent soul elders were quick to back away as they could feel an unreasonable amount of energy behind this finger attack. Even more, after a beam of bright light escaped from it and collided with part of the protective formation. As if it collided with glass this bright beam attack caused the barrier to break into many tiny pieces of spiritual filament that crumbled into dust soon after.

The resounding explosion caused a massive shockwave to hit the spot everyone was in. But while they had to brace themselves for it, the one performing the finger technique just floated there without a worry in his mind.

“There the way is clear, well then did you make a decision?”

He asked while smiling at the scared cultivators below him, the question was posed but the people here didn’t know if he would take no for an answer.