Chapter 151: The day of the Expedition
Chapter 151: The day of the Expedition
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Zhu Rong, seeing the constant increase in his company’s daily earnings, was happy. The more it grew, the more he could reinvest everything into it and train more people.
Although in the last month he had interacted very little with any of the three production departments, he still kept track of everyone’s progress. By now, under the constant guidance of Han Tiezhang, the workers of the forging department had all reached the rank of Expert at one star, with some of the more talented ones already heading towards two and three stars.
At this pace, within just a few more months all of them would be able to reach the rank of three star Experts, and some might even manage to achieve the rank of Master.
That last rank was the least likely to be reached anytime soon, but given their steady progress and the extra help he planned to provide later on, it was almost certain that some of them would eventually reach it.
All these individuals, the first batch from each department, would be the ones to lead the departments in the future, just as he had taught the old Han, who had nearly reached the rank of two star Master.
In the same way, he was now teaching them, and they, later on, would teach the newcomers when the departments expanded even further.
For now, everything was going smoothly. The income was steady, the production was steady, and everyone’s progress was advancing at a fast enough pace.
Seeing this, he was finally satisfied. He had no time to deal with various problems at the moment, and the fact that none arose meant that Ye Ning had done her job very well.
It might be a small company, but she lacked nothing in business management skills. With the crash course he had given her in the first days after the company’s foundation, she was now more than capable of running a company of this size.
It might still be a little smaller than the others, but its profits were steadily pushing it higher and higher in the rankings of the various organizations of Qiyan City. And since Qiyan was a capital city of the province, it was naturally full of such big sharks.
For now, he was under the protection of the Pavilion, so he hadn’t faced any problems from those sharks. But later, things might change a little.
That, however, was a problem for the future. For now, there was no use thinking about it.
And so, after checking the progress of his business, he rented a high level cultivation room at the Pavilion and immediately began cultivating.
With the low grade ice crystal he had, today he would be able to finish forming the first layer of the golden core of his ice core.
After that, he intended to continue cultivating normally.
Since he was still in the fourth stage, creating more cores would not be a problematic task. He could still advance a little more, possibly even reaching the peak of the fourth stage with all his cores. After that, he would think about how to create the lightning one.
Doing it with ordinary methods now would be far too costly, both in time and money.
He had no intention of doing so, especially since he had better options.
There were places with high concentrations of the lightning spiritual energy that he knew of.
Just two months ago, those places had been too dangerous for him, but with his current strength, some of them were definitely more accessible. And after the expedition, it was precisely to one of those places that he intended to go.
And so, while he cultivated, the others were preparing for the expedition that would take place on the seventh day.
Time passed in a flash, and before he realized it, the day of the expedition had already arrived.
It was early morning, and the sun was still rising in the sky, while the first sounds of morning creatures began to resound.
Here, in a forest near the academy, eleven people were present,
five students, five instructors, and the last one being the headmaster himself.
Seeing that they were all there, he nodded before speaking,
"The opening of the secret realm is almost at its end. By the time we arrive, it will most likely be on the verge of opening.
For some of you, this might be your first time entering a secret realm, but your instructors here are experienced in such matters. Once inside, try not to separate from them and follow their directives," he said, giving a brief explanation of how things would proceed.
And it was exactly as he said. Practically none of the students had ever set foot in a secret realm, and thus what they could expect inside was based only on what they had read in books about other realms.
But although those gave a basic idea, they couldn’t really be used as a true reference.
Every secret realm shared some basic similarities, and this was because most of them were inheritances left behind by people of the past who had either ascended or died, powerful individuals who had almost certainly reached the spiritual realm.
There were also naturally formed secret realms, and these were the rarest ones, often also the richest in natural tresures or usesful resources.
The headmaster gave a few more explanations before finally departing.
Zhu Rong wondered whether they would use a transportation artifact to travel.
They were useful for long distance journeys, and considering the status of the one leading them, it was possible he had one.
But with his strength, such a thing was unnecessary.
And indeed, that wasn’t what happened. Instead, he simply waved his hand, and all of them were wrapped in a layer of spiritual energy and lifted into the air.
Before some of them could even say a word, the headmaster snapped his fingers, and soon the spiritual energy turned into a reddish orange hue, taking on the attribute of fire as the outline of a beast began to form beneath them, growing larger and larger.
"What a fancy way to travel," Zhu Rong thought to himself as he looked at the enormous fiery eagle like creature, as large as a house, appear beneath them, on which they were set.
Its entire body was made of condensed fire Qi, but despite that, none of them felt anything from touching it.
Once they were all on top, the headmaster sat cross legged on the beast’s head, and with a sudden motion it launched into the air, soaring at high speed toward their destination.
***
To the North of the mountain where the entrance to the secret realm lay, beyond the great mountain range separating the three empires from the frozen lands, a solitary female figure floated, suspended in the air.
Her expression was calm as still water, in stark contrast to the scene before her, where a massive creature, nearly ten meters tall and covered in thick white fur, stood struggling to remain upright, its body covered in wounds and bleeding cuts.
Behind it, several bodies of similar creatures and other monstrous beasts lay sprawled on the ground, some mutilated, others riddled with wounds, all now lifeless, while the slowly falling snow began to cover their carcasses. The red of blood mingled with the white, painting the frozen landscape in scarlet.
In that chaotic scene, only the beast and the woman remained standing. The gigantic creature, exhausted and stripped of any trace of its former aura, fixed its eyes on the woman before it, where anger and fear intertwined.
The woman, however, did not move.
She remained still, arms crossed over her chest, gaze unwavering. Her long, dark flowing robe seemed to reflect a starry night sky, a fabric that clung to her graceful figure without concealing it completely.
Her face was delicate, with fine, perfect features, and her deep blue eyes stood out against the whiteness of the snow. Her pupils, shaped like golden crosses, shone with a brilliance that made her gaze both piercing and distant.
That calm, unshakable beauty, suspended between divine and unreal, gave the impression that nothing in the world could disturb her.
There was silence. No beast roared, no creature growled, none were left alive to do so. Only the muffled whistle of the frozen land’s icy wind blew through the air.
But soon, another sound joined it,
a heavy thud, so strong it made the ground tremble.
It was the beast collapsing to its knees, clinging to the last shreds of strength within its body, desperately trying not to fall.
But its effort was in vain.
Its body gave out, its spirit surrendered, and like it had been pushed by a gust of wind, it fell forward, crashing into the snow, joining the pile of monster corpses, alike and not alike, that had preceded it into death.
The female figure, completely still, suspended in midair, did not seem to care.
Her gaze, growing ever more intense, seemed to pierce into the void. Her golden cross shaped pupils glowed brighter and brighter, revealing to her another side of the reality around her,
a reality without color, dark, filled only with golden threads scattered everywhere, some entwined, others solitary, all coming from an unknown place and heading toward another just as unknown.
Some of them converged toward her, others stretched downward, pointing to the bodies of the beasts that had perished by her hand, their light dimming little by little. Yet she didn’t seem to care in the slightest.
Her eyes were fixed on a single, thin thread, tied at one visible end facing her, from where it stretched into a distant place.
That thread pulsed with an ever stronger radiance, while faint red traces, imperceptible to a normal eye, began to appear, traces that she caught.
In that instant, the unshakable calm that had always surrounded her began to crack.
A subtle curve formed at the corner of her lips, slowly becoming a thin smile.
For the first time, an emotion appeared on her perfect face, weak, yet unmistakable.
Her eyes shimmered with an even brighter light, as the thread continued to vibrate before her.
"Finally, I’ve found you."