On this particular day in the city of dawn, the governor of the town was pacing back and forth on the entrance of the town hall. A great area around the hall had been cleared. The governor was naturally an elf. He also had decent cultivation - perfect realm. But, right now he looked as jittery as a candidate going to take the tower exam!

Naturally, there were not many things that could bring such an expert to his current condition. But, it was just that today, there was a multi-kingdom conference happening in his city, the guests to which were all in immortal realm. A few days ago, he had received summon from Lord Astang who personally told him about the matter. As immortal experts from various races were coming over, all things naturally had to be the best. If there was any mistake, he would just take his own life. Who knows what might happen to him if invited the ire of so many immortal experts.

Announcements had been made throughout the city that revered immortals were going to visit the city today to have a meeting. It was known that the immortals were coming. This very rarely happened. Immortals were like phantoms, rarely appearing before the crowd except for special occasions. While he was not in the know about why so many immortals came out, he knew that it was going to be huge. Thus, the entire city had been decorated as if in a festival. The citizens were all out on the roads hoping to catch a glimpse of these immortal experts.

In the midst of festivity and tension, Lord Astang came out from inside the auction house with another few people. All of them were experts. Even the weakest ones were in saint realm. They had brutal and oppressive auras. Lord Astang's cultivation presence was on full display! When an immortal expert showed their full presence, the air itself would turn viscous! The presence would be so suffocating that an emperor realm expert standing 5 meters away would neither be able to move nor be able to breathe! Just their presence was sufficient to kill! Immortal experts generally kept their auras in check and controlled their strength greatly in their day to day activities. Or else, even a simple pat would shatter mountains!

If an immortal realm expert was to punch with full power, it would be like a small scale natural disaster. Blowing away entire palaces and forts with the shockwave was also possible. Thus, the immortal realm experts naturally had rules and regulations placed on them by other immortal realm experts. Or else, the concept of military and war would simply vanish from the plane. A single immortal expert could flatten an entire kingdom if there was no immortal expert on the other side! They were true powerhouses. The peak of the plane. It could be seen why even a single immortal expert would make the race one of the middle stratum races in the plane. The peak races had several immortal experts but there too, immortals were revered beyond kings and ancestors. If not for the fact that these immortals could also die and could not do everything, they would have been deified!

With Lord Astang, there was another person whose aura was not weaker than Lord Astang himself! It was a beautiful expert in green a green dress. Her presence was not brutal like Astang's but was overwhelming in a different sense. She was like a goddess. Naturally, as these two emerged on the roads with their entourage, the entire town went abuzz. While the people knew that Lord Astang lived in the city, very few had hardly ever seen him. A crowd of people surged from different sides to look at the couple. The woman was indeed Lord Astang's Daoist partner. Dragons were known to be a promiscuous race. They revelled in sexual pleasure much more than any other race. This held true for both males and females. But Astang was different. He loved his wife too much to cheat on her. Fate had been kind on them that they both could step into the immortal realm. There were many tragic love stories broken as such, to be separated forever on the path to cultivation.

Astang was always happy that he and his wife could be together forever. Countless years later, his wife got pregnant with his daughter! Astang had never been afraid in his life. But, he was afraid for the child. Their daughter grew healthy and was talented in cultivation as well. She reached the perfect realm in just a hundred years. It was just that due to the calamity from several years ago, she still fell short of the requirement to step into the immortal realm. Astang had used his entire strength and influence to seal his daughter's life. He was waiting for the day when fate would hear his prayers and his family would be reunited. When he received Michael's news, he immediately set things into motion. He even called his wife from the Pheonix tribe as they were going to wake up their daughter. No one could stand in his way.

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After Lord Astang's procession reached the city hall, the other experts gathered outside while Astang and his wife went inside to wait for others. Initially, Astang did not want to make a big deal out of it. But, he realized that the forest was elaborate and to explore inside to find the ruins would take time. Also, several immortal experts would perhaps be needed to fight the beast. Michael had repeatedly iterated to him that the beast was extremely fearsome and could kill immortals. Inexperienced people would perhaps be provoked and decide to fight the beast. But, Astang was an ancient existence. He had seen things that made him feel like an ant! He had lived through the ancient calamity. Thus, he practised prudence and called for support from other kingdoms. As immortals were very valuable, none of the races wanted to take chances and had decided to work together.

Now, an expedition consisting entirely of immortals was all well and good except for a single problem. There was no one among the immortals of the empire who could break the illusion array. Karslon would have been perfect but he was in secluded meditation and thus, people decided not to disturb him. The only solution was to get soul cultivators to go. They had asked from soul cultivators from several kingdoms including notable ones like Mubal. But, there was another problem - the soul cultivators could not work endlessly as they did not have a law body. This then required people for cooking and catching prey. Then, it increased to entertainers. Before they knew it, the number of people required grew to become a carnival!

Thus, the races decided to make this expedition a public affair. They would vanquish the forbidden forest. This would create more resources and space in the empire. Thus, they were having a grand conference after which they would declare the advent of the forest expedition.

A few minutes after Astang went inside, a huge bird became visible in the sky. The bird was humongous with a wingspan of 25 metres! Standing on top were some people, two of whom had a suppressive aura evident even when the bird was some kilometres in the sky! The bird landed in the city martial stadium. The experts descended among the excited crowd and made their way to the city hall. They were the elf convoy.

Similar scenes kept happening as beasts and others cam. In total, 9 immortal realm experts came to the conference. This was a humongous number. The entire light empire had only 40 something immortal experts. A fourth of the entire empire's power was now in the city hall. This realization caused the governor to shiver uncontrollably.

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Ignoring the din outside, 9 immortals experts were sitting around a table headed by Astang. They were all experts in their own right and many shared rivalry among themselves. They looked at each other for a bit and exchanged pleasantries. Then, all turned to Astang.

Astang began telling them about the information keeping Michael's name a secret. After explaining the entire thing, he let the experts digest the news.

One of them said

While it seems plausible and the forest may very well have life essence, we have not addressed the main question. How will we divide the resources?

Yes, this is an important question as well.

Yes...

Astang smiled and said

According to our information, there are at least 30 life essence crystals. Of these, 3 will belong to the informer. This point is non-negotiable as they already have a pact with God's Hand. As for our share, we will take 12 of them. The remaining, you can decide among yourselves. If there are extra, we will not ask for more.

They all agreed on this split. 40% was a reasonable share considering that God's Hand was the medium and that Astang and his wife were extremely powerful. While the 10% share of informers was a bit much, since they had a signed pact, it was a gone case. The different experts then started arguing about the shares of the remaining 15 crystals.

Elf representative : The forbidden forest in our territory. We have been handling the monsters coming out of that place for years. Thus, we should naturally get a higher share. I will take 5 crystals for my race.

Beast representative : So according to you, we should give 5 crystals to humans and dwarves as well? Why don't you go fuck yourself!

Barbarian representative : Eh! Such treasures are wasted on humans! At least, the dwarves make some things useful to us. The humans however are just leaches! Mere weeds!

Astang thought about how the barbarian would react if he were to know that the humans were getting 3 of those crystals.

It took a few minutes of discussion to finally divide the treasures. After the division was completed, the minor matters were dealt with and the plan was finalized.

That day, the immortal experts stood out on the roof of city hall and spoke about the upcoming expedition. Astang's voice easily covered the entire city. This led to great excitement among the people. It was said that all saints were free to join the expedition for gaining experience. And several hunters, cooks and musicians would also be welcome. The expedition was to set off in two months. Thus, all who wanted to participate and were qualified were to come to the city of Dawn before the deadline.

After this announcement, the immortals returned from the city but the excitement refused to die down.

Several saints from different parts of the empire came to the city of Dawn. Musicians, bards, cooks, hunters and a whole lot of people flooded in the city. It was as if the entire city was having a two-month long festival.

The king of humans - Desborn Atrexia also came to know about the expedition. But, how was he to know that this was the beginning of Michael Rageberg's rise to power? And even if he were to know, there was hardly anything he could do.