Yan Wen let out a sigh of relief when he could no longer see Heaven’s peak.

Inside the carriage, Relic and Hana were sitting on one side and Yan Mu and Yan Wen sitting on the other.

Yan Wen loosened the chains around the two twin’s mouth, allowing them to speak.

“Give me back Jiro!” Hana immediately spoke.

“Ho, you seem quite attached to that spirit beast. Unfortunately he is just a minor thing. Although he is a divine spirit beast he is still broken, nothing more than a child’s pet at this point. ” He spoke in a gentle, easy going tone. It was almost as if it was a grandparent talking to their grandchildren.

However, Hana turned red in fury. “He’s not a pet! He’s family!” She retorted.

Yan Wen gave a hearty laugh at the fuming Hana.

Yan Mu was having a hard time understanding what his Uncle was doing. Why was he acting so politely and treating them as if they were guests? Weren’t they just hostages used as leverage in case the Mayor came after them? A swirl of questions popped into Yan Mu’s head but just as he was about to speak to his uncle, Yan Wen suddenly gave him a cold stare.

“Hahaha, perhaps when we return to our Yan clan, I will gift you a crystal apocalypse peacock. I understand they are quite popular with new female cultivators!” An overwhelming pressure suddenly befell on Relic and Hana. ”Now then, there are just a few questions I have for you two.” Yan Wen asked solemnly. “Who was it that taught you cultivation?”

When a supressing pressure from a powerful cultivator is used on someone significantly weaker, they were capable of tearing down weak minded individuals into doing anything they want. Such was the case of silencing an entire crowd of mortals or forcing them to tell you everything you want about them.

However, after waiting for a moment, Yan Wen realized something wrong. Hana continued to stare angrily at him as if she didn’t even notice the supressing pressure around her. As for Relic, a drop of sweat ran down, but other than that, he also had no changes either.

“Is there something disrupting my power?” He couldn’t help but question.

“Y-you better not do a-anything to her… she’s the only student of the Mayor!. ” Relic suddenly stuttered like a scared child. His genuine expression of fear made Yan Wen relax.

“Mn, I thought as much.” He nodded. “He must have paid an enormous price in order to get you to where you are now.”

He thought himself lucky he had not killed her at that time. The Mayor was wrapped in a shroud of mystery where even the mercenary guild, the shadow behemoths, would not touch him. Although he didn’t believe the mayor would do anything drastic once they reached the region of the Yan clan, he still would still prefer not to take any chances.

Yan Wen nodded and released the pressure surrounding the two children.

Relic also knew the reason why Yan Wen hadn’t already killed them yet. Yan Wen understood the disparity between strengths between him and the mayor, and would not try to do anything more to the children. Relic relaxed slightly, thinking nothing more was going to happen.

“Just one more thing” Yan Wen suddenly flashed his arm and held on to Hana. “Your sister has quite a bite to her. I wonder if there is something special about her that the mayor would choose to take her as his student.”

He immediately sent his qi forcefully into Hana’s body. The qi within her body was quickly pushed back by the foreign qi which caused severe damage to her meridians. This was a brutal method to forcefully scour another’s dantain space. Although Yan Wen would rather not provoke the Mayor any further than he already did, the fact that Hana was able to injure him was something he could not ignore. He needed to see if there were any irregularities to Hana’s cultivation.

“Ahhh!” Hana screamed. Her face writhed with pain.

“YOU….” Relic stood up but quickly felt a blade against his neck.

I suggest you sit down” Yan Mu said with murderous intend in his eyes.”

Relic had no choice but to grit his teeth.

….

Elsewhere, deep in the Divine Beast Forest, there was a running river which glowed in the night with an illuminant blue.

A giant serpent, half gold and half black, coiled next to the river.

For a while the giant serpent did not move and only continued to rest. As the night dragged on, some of her golden scales dimmed until they eventually turned black.

“In another month I will no longer have any connection to the ancestral bloodline.” Diana muttered to herself sorrowfully.

She gazed at her own reflection in the river before giving a sigh.

“A failure…”

She retrieved out a purple pill, which had a stench of poison and medicine, and placed it between her jaws.

She only needed to apply a little pressure in order to crush the pill. Once dissolved, she would only be a short moment away from death. She stared upwards at the large yellow moon and began to reminisce about the day she first opened her eyes in this world to the day she had awaken her blood line.

Life wasn’t too bad as a princess in a beast kingdom. She was surrounded by many admirers and had ample amount of friends. As the 22nd princess, there wasn’t much expectation of her to succeed the throne and no one put any pressure on her to do anything. Thus, her favourite pass time was to explore the outer regions and meet new spirit beasts.

One day, as she was exploring the outer regions with her friends, something miraculous happened. She suddenly felt a calling to her past and her blood boiled with intense fervor. It was the awakening of her ancestral blood line! It had come so suddenly and without warning that she didn’t dare believe it at first.

As she calmed down, she knew it was definitely the ancestral bloodline of the golden eyed serpent which was calling to her. With her best friends by her side, she asked them to act as guardians as she underwent the awakening process in a nearby cave.

However, she would never have imagined at the most crucial stage; the people she most trusted would betray her!

Her so called friends interrupted her awakening and immediately attacked her. The awakening process drains away almost all of the beasts’ strength, so when her friends attacked her, she had no choice but to flee.

The bloodline awakening process only happens once in a life time. If you fail the awakening, the ancestral bloodline will burn out and the spirit beast will never be able to awaken it again. It was the absolute goal of every spirit beasts to achieve their awakening of the ancestral bloodline. They valued it so much that even more powerful spirit beasts would bow their heads to those weaker than them and who had awaken their bloodline before they had.

Failures could only watch as their only goal in life slowly slipped them by. Before the ancestral blood disappears, many spirit beasts who failed their awakening would choose an alternative route. A road of death… That was just how much their primordial blood line meant to them.

Diana was ready to bite done on this pill when she suddenly heard the scream of a little girl.

“Ahhhh!” the scream echoed throughout the forest

Diana, immediately paused and peered through the forest trees. There she could see a flying carriage pulled by several spirit horse beasts. Her keen vision saw through the tainted glass to see Hana and Relic tied up. An old man was grasping Hana violently which she was contorting in pain.

“Hana!”

….

Yan Wen created a spirit body within Hana’s dantian space. The spectacles in front of him caused his eyes to pop out and his jaw to drop in amazement.

He saw the spirit tree which guarded her dantian, the 12 fully lit meridian orbs, and the immaculate white bridge which extended limitlessly upwards.

“Wh-what is she?!” He couldn’t help but speak outwards.

He was planning to scour around, but the white bridge happened to catch his eye. He decided to look on it first. As soon as he stepped the bridge, a crushing pressure immediately forced him to his knees. “What the…”

He felt like the pressure of the world had descended on him and he was incapable of even getting up.

“Wait, what is this?” Suddenly, within his own dantian space he could feel some movements.

He closed his eyes and went into the lotus position before peering inside his own dantian space.

…

Within the carriage, both Hana and Yan Wen had their eyes closed. Hana was pale, as if she had been deprived of sleep for several days.

Yan Wen, on the other hand, was perspiring heavily.

After a half hour, Yan Wen opened his eyes and a large grin stretched across his face. “I can’t believe it, I’ve finally done it! I’ve broken through the spirit realm and have stepped into the golden world realm!” he cheered.

“Uncle?” Yan Mu stared at the frantic old man dancing around.

Yan Wen did not even pay attention to his nephew and laughed, “After 20 long years, I, Yan Wen, have finally broken through the cusp of the Spirit Realm!”

After a couple more minutes of celebrating, he looked down at the tiny girl who fell onto her brothers shoulders, exhausted.

“I see, I see now why the mayor treasures you so! He can forget about taking you back. Now that I’m a golden world realm cultivator, I will use everything I have to bring you back to the Yan clan. You will be a goddess among the clan and you shall receive anything your heart desires. That’s not a bad deal, right?” Yan Wen smiled.

However, Hana slowly opened her eyes and only stared coldly at Yan Wen.

“Heh, no matter, whether you want to or not, you won’t have any choice.”

HiSSSSSS!

Suddenly, the roar of a serpent rang through everyone’s ears and the carriage came to an abrupt stop.

“Elder, we require your assistance!” a panicked voice from the outside.

Yan Wen frowned but did not dawdle. He placed the chains back around the two children’s mouth once more before proceeding outside where he saw a gold and black serpent in front of them.

“A divine spirit beast?” he was astonished. “What’s it doing so far from the central regions?”

“Release those kids!” Diana bellowed.

“Beast, what are you doing here? Why have you come to stop our carriage? Are you here to fight?!” he spoke arrogantly.

“Don’t try to deny it! I know you have two kids in that carriage. Release them and I will not impede your travels.”

“Hmph, you don’t quite understand who you are talking to.” He sneered. He released the power of his cultivation around Diana which caused her to sink down from the sky.

“A-a golden world cultivator….” She murmured to herself.

“Give it up, I could kill you without moving from this spot. Go on, I’m feeling pretty good today. If you leave now, I won’t chase, beast!”

“You dare address one of the princesses of the Divine Beast Forest as a mere beast?” Diana snarled.

Yan Wen raised an eye brow. “Ah, I see so you are related to the primordial beast king which rules over this forest region. Perhaps if you had told me that as a regular red eyed serpent I would be a little nervous around you. However, to speak to me like that while as a half awakened trash, you truly must be tired of living! ”

Yan Wen waved his sleeve where seven black chains appeared with black weights on the end of each chain. The weighted chains had a weight of 10,000kg each, though impractical for most, in the hands of Yan Wen; they were like swinging hammers of death.

The chains shot towards Diana with incredible speed. She quickly dived into the dirt and disappeared beneath the ground surface.

“Want to hide? Too late!” He waived his arm and the seven chains shot at the forest floor following the small trail left by Diana’s burrowing.

BOOM BOOM BOOM

Every strike ruptured the ground and anything else with in the vicinity of the strike. The force of the weights caused dirt to flail several meters into the air, leaving craters in the ground.

BOOM BOOM BOOM

Hisssssss!

Finally, one of the consecutive attacks hit their target and Diana was flung out of the dirt and crashed several meters through the forest. She squirmed slightly in pain while also coughing up blood.

“Tsk, Tsk, it really is how they say. A spirit beast who fails to awaken their ancestral blood line really is no more than trash. You are over a 100m in size which means you are the equivalent of a peak spirit realm cultivator maybe even a golden world realm cultivator. However, having failed your awakening, you now probably don’t have even 30% of your original strength.” He shook his head helplessly. “What a shame, I didn’t get to try out my new power on a more powerful beast.”

The black chains wrapped around Diana tightly; making it so that she could not even move.

“You…you really don’t put the beast kingdom in your eye? Not only do you dare to attack royalty, you also dare to encroach on the treaty? ” she spoke coldly.

Yan Wen smirked. “The inner workings of your beast kingdoms are very simple. Those who awaken their blood line are at the top while everyone else is on the bottom. For trash who fails their awakening, well, they are even disdained from the weakest of spirit beasts. Even your status as a princess is nothing now that you have become a failure. You believe your subjects would still treat you with any ounce of respect if you were to head back there now?” He laughed as he held his stomach.

Diana could only hang her head low. She knew what he said was the truth. If she went back to her kingdom, how would everyone treat her? Would it still be the same as the old days where they treated her with respect and kindness? Even Diana wasn’t optimistic of thinking that would happen.

“As for the treaty, it’s true that now that I’m a golden world cultivator, I’m prohibited by the treaty to kill any spirit beasts while inside their desolate regions. Yet, will I really cause a commotion if I were to kill just one spirit beast who had failed their awakening? You beasts are nothing compared to the full might of us cultivators! I doubt the beast kings would dare to start a war over something so insignificant. Then again, maybe it is time for a war to begin. After all, the only thing you beasts are good for is serving us humans.

With that said, he snapped his fingers. The chains around Diana slowly constricted around her body. The scales on her body began to break like glass under the immense pressure and blood was leaking out.

“What a waste, I would have preferred to have captured you but I happen to have wasted my last beast disk on that other useless piece of trash. Oh well, at least your body will serve as some good material.”

As the chains continued to tighten, Diana happened to catch a glimpse of Hana and Relic staring out of the tainted window towards her. Hana’s tears wouldn’t stop flowing seeing Diana in the state she was in.

To see a human girl cry for her in such a way made Diana heart soften. “I’m glad I was able to see the kinder side of humans before I go…”

The chains continued to tighten and she spat another mouth full of blood.

The light in her eye slowly began to dim as her body turned numb to the pain. As she inched closer to her death, a single memory suddenly began to play through her head.

It was the day Cornelius had appeared and saved her from the group who attacked her. At first she didn’t trust him, thinking he was only trying to trick for some other purpose she didn’t realize at the time. However, as she got better, she realized Cornelius never thought about anything other than the betterment of her health.

It was a completely indescribable feeling to her at the time and now, at her last moments, she felt like she could feel it once more.

“Good Bye, Cornelius, and thank you…” Her eyelids slowly closed for the last time.