‘Did I do the right thing?’

Zhang Dong looked to his back where he saw the Shadow Phantom Sect’s protective barrier. He had already given them the advice to move out of here as more of the red monsters would be coming. There was not enough time for him to hang around this place and protect these people as more regions containing the power sources he wanted were still out there.

The monolith that attracted the angry souls of the dead was already working at a lower capacity. From what he could tell the people from that sect didn’t notice it and when they did it would be too late.

He did not like the way they lived but could he really judge them? Now they would have to find another way to survive, that is if they even made it past this round of the war. The red monsters seemed to be able to easily get through their barriers to attack them.

Now after the whole area had been mostly drained from soul energy they wouldn’t even be able to defend themselves from regular cultivators. The best way of surviving would be to run into the mainland yet he didn’t think that any sect would just abandon their lands unless they were truly positive that the end was coming.

But the more time passed the more information about the borders getting attacked would surface. He could only hope that they took the information to heart and acted accordingly.

‘I should probably stop worrying about others and think about my own problems…’

While he might have caused the future downfall of this Shadow Phantom Sect they would some years before the monolith of theirs stops working altogether. If he didn’t show up they would have been slaughtered so from a certain point of view he had the right to make some decisions concerning them but it was up to them to make the changes.

Thus after sharing with them some of the information that he had, he departed. The elders now knew of the potential danger from the breaches at the borders. It would be up to them and the others there to make a decision. He had spread his voice through the whole city and even the non-cultivators were able to hear the news.

Before they could get rowdy he left them, there was no time to answer more of their questions. They were probably arguing about their plans but going by what happened in these situations most of the time, they would probably bunker up.

Waiting it out when the enemy was too strong and attacking when victory was mostly assured was the motto of cultivators in this world. Unless they were mostly sure about having the greater forces they would bide their time. But when they were assured of their strength they would sometimes abandon all strategies.

‘Well then, I have managed to gather up quite a bit of soul energy from these vampires but I can probably get more…’

During this battle with the red beings, he planned to let a couple of them flee. Then he would follow this one member to their camp and clear it out. Regretfully all of these monsters were thrown into a berserked state after their leader had died. Probably they had a very clear policy about deserters in their midst so anyone fleeing would probably not return to their hiding place.

‘The passage is here but It would be unwise to go there alone now, their base will be built up by now, at most I could attack some of the smaller bases that they have…’

He could not only go back to his own system map. There he could see faint red blobs, with them having a faint energy signature; it was somewhat hard to distinguish where the exact location of their temporary encampments was.

There was also an annoying thought bothering him, they called him the golden one, it was as if they had seen him before. Perhaps after destroying their first base when they appeared out of the bridge had earned him a name among them. He was supposed to be the prey of their Emperor.

‘They were shouting some strange things about preys and hunts when they were dying… Is this some kind of sport for them?’

The mystery of this side of the empire was slowly unraveling before him. It seemed that they weren’t here for the resources but to perhaps hunt instead. Knowing the motivation of his enemies could aid him in the coming battles.

If they were just doing this for pleasure they would ignore any attempts of diplomacy. He would not be able to offer them treasures or lands, it would make them truly a difficult enemy to fight.

Normally conflicts started for resources or land, the invaders would not go out of their way to eradicate everything in their wake as it would leave the conquered lands in a devastated state. No one wanted to rule over a destroyed desert with no subjects to control there. But if these invaders just wanted to kill people they would not shy away from using drastic solutions if they started losing.

‘And they had to pop out at my side of the empire, my dear brother won’t help me with this either…’

Without the Long Clan’s aid, he was in a bit of a predicament. His forces were still in the process of being built up. Without a steady supply of spirit stones, he would not be able to create more nascent soul soldiers. Thus it was time to go for the next important location, one that looked to have been taken over by the enemies.

“What was it? Heavenly Forge Alliance?”

While this sect had a grandiose name, it was just a coalition of small clans that were proficient in creating treasures. After many millennia they had managed to form into a middle sized sect that wasn’t much different from others. They lived in a mountain range that was devoid of much greenery.

Instead of living on the land, they lived inside of it. This sect somewhat reminded him of a fantasy race of dwarves. They buried deep into the mountains where they mined various minerals and turned them into weapons. What it seems like they were doing was substituting low cultivation with powerful weapons.

This place shared its borders with the Shadow Phantom Sect here. It was the next on his list of areas to check as there were many mines with valuable resources. Some metals retained spiritual energy within them which allowed them to be turned into high quality weapons fit for masters.

Besides these, there were rumors of spirit stone mines in this small region. The sect was somewhat secretive about what they were doing as they surrounded themselves by high mountains and kept their cities underground. Their main area was in an active volcano that they had somewhat been able to harness.

A large-scale attack on them would be quite hard as the troops needed to go inside the earth. Due to the high concentration of metals and minerals, the tunnels were quite resistant to spiritual energy. Even a nascent soul master would have a hard time maneuvering the lava-filled chambers there.

The Heavenly Forge Alliance was another example of a defensive geared sect. They didn’t have the strength to attack others but they managed to entrench themselves inside the mountains. Where other cultivators abandoned these grounds they had survived while paving a path for themselves.

“Are there any survivors though?”

When going through the map Zhang Dong could see that the red vampires came from these lands. It made it look that they had finished clearing out the Heavenly Forge Alliance’s lands and moved on to the Shadow Phantom sect. Yet the troops that they sent didn’t seem like the main force which could mean that the people living in these lands could still be resisting.

“I guess I’ll know when I get there.”

With nothing else to do here, he activated his Qi and shot towards the mountains. The distances between these lands were quite large and even he would need a few days to arrive at the active volcano that was the capital city.

While going through the air Zhang Dong looked at his three cores. The soul core had increased in size but it was still smaller than the holy one. After his visit to the Long Clan, it had become quite bloated. This was bringing a slight imbalance to his cultivation as the two other cores were trailing behind.

The Dao seed that was in the middle of these cores had also increased in size but it could not extract more energy from the cores anymore. Only when all of the three had more to give would the seed activate and grow. He absorbed any lightning from storms that he passed through but this wasn’t enough.

Yet even though the seed wasn’t growing his power was still slowly going up. Even without being in the nascent soul stage, he was stronger than most great circle masters of that realm. He could not really consider himself a master at the core formation stage, this was something entirely different.

Following his visit to the secret ground, he had also become aware of the disappearance of cultivation realms. His predecessor stated that they were hidden for the sole purpose of hindering the regular people from attending the immortal realm. Now when his system was changed he might have to follow the old ways of cultivation.

“At least the system lets me change Qi into what I need for the cores but I’ll have to push through this stage on my own…”

This was not like when he attained the nascent soul realm, there was no information of the Dao Seed realm that he gave the name to this phenomenon. The system could only help him reach the apex of it but he would need to germinate this seed by himself.

It seemed that the key would be to combine his three Dao’s into this seed and then make it bloom. Would it create some kind of tree? Perhaps it would take the form of a lotus flower or something similar.

“Don’t think it will sprout into my soul beast again…”

While it was interesting to ponder what his new transformation would entail it also made him a bit sad. He would be probably entering into a new form of existence which would mean that he would no longer be getting a nascent soul.

“Maybe I can recreate him from the soul core later?”

His journey continued while his thoughts were taken towards his next level of ascension. While the war was supposed to take a hundred years he was unsure if he had that much time to train. Wang Long was there and so were the enemy emperors. But he would not give up until his last breath, many people depended on him and they trusted that he could get them through this bump in the road.