PtM Book 17 - Chapter 12: Heartforge Spirit Flame

Cha Ming only had a fraction of his power remaining when he woke, his body broken, and his energy reserves depleted. Many-colored lightning fell around him, striking the earth in such great quantities that it pooled into liquid lightning rivers that trickled down the creviced lands of the mountain slope he’d landed on.

Perhaps it was dumb luck, or maybe his intuition had saved him at the last minute, but he noticed that the patch of earth he’d landed on was completely devoid of lightning. Despite the richness of the lightning, it did not dare invade this soil, much like evil did not dare tread hallowed ground.

The storm continued for many hours before receding. Cha Ming used the opportunity to collect his thoughts and his energy. It took three days for him to recover enough to send himself into the Clear Sky World, and even then, he did so by opening a portal and shouting for assistance from the Elder Spring.

Cha Ming spent a month convalescing. His injuries were severe; the righteous blood he’d cultivated had saved his life, but it great cost to his cultivation base.

His energy pool no longer contained four separate types of energy: gold, jade, eight-colored, and ten-colored. Each one was now contaminated by flecks of golden righteous blood that were not compatible with his cultivation methods. And after a month of arduous separation and purging, he was only able to retrieve most of the righteous blood. Tiny specks were left behind in all but his ten-colored energy pool. They would not separate no matter what he did.

Having recovered a good portion of his strength, Cha Ming paid a visit to the united sects. They had suffered heavy casualties in the battle with the Blood Demon Sect; a full third of those who had fought had perished in battle.

Fortunately, only the strongest of them had accompanied Cha Ming. They sacrificed the older generation but left their future generation undamaged. Geniuses would sprout from the remainder, and the pressure of establishing their sects would drive them to greater heights than otherwise possible.

Despite the casualties, their spirits were high. They had lost much but had gained something in exchange. That something was called hope, it and it was found in loss and grief. The present might be grim, but they would find a way to a better, brighter future.

This hope took the form of a three-colored fire. It was present in each of their hearts and had grown from the spark Cha Ming had lit up inside them.

The flame was not a steady flame. It cycled through three colors on a regular basis, exposing the rebels to a cycle of passionate enforcement, heartless suppression, and ponderous inspiration. And it was thanks to this cycle that they were able to push past their grief and transform it into tangible growth.

It urged them to move forward and never give up. It refined their negative emotions, burning away all doubts and uncertainties, tempering them in much the same way that the clashing jade and ochre lights of the Heartforge Realm tempered the thousand geniuses that had been invited.

Cha Ming had somehow created his own Heartforge.

And by observing others, he realized the benefits to himself. These three auras were polishing and mending his soul. If things continued as they were, it wouldn’t be long before he fully recovered his second pair of wings and started working on the third.

“This aura… is very useful,” Cha Ming decided, summoning the three-colored aura seed that had been growing inside his spiritual sea. “But this staff… does not suit me.”

He summoned the Savage Deity War Staff and pondered what to do with it. Though he had not been told directly, he could tell that if the Savage Deity Aura was present in the Savage Deity War Staff, it could not be used for Ninesky’s other reassure incarnations.

The Savage Deity War Staff had undoubtedly been useful for him, but its use was rapidly diminishing. Cha Ming had used fused the auras he used to execute Savage Deity Crush, and this fusion was interfering with the cultivation technique. That wasn’t even counting the fact that the Savage Deity Battle Arts required relentless pursuit and dedication to savagery.

But now, the staff was starting to show hints of iridescence and inspiration. He had unintentionally diluted its nature. “This staff… is not meant for me,” he decided. Since his auras were not suited for the staff, he would retrieve it and allocate it to another more suitable treasure.

Cha Ming summoned his Iridescent Grandmist Flame and pondered its two colors. The flame represented to incompatible natures, iridescent emotions and raw, emotionless power.

Like the Savage Deity War Staff, it had also become unstable. Just like the Savage Deity War Staff, it had been tainted by savagery and inspiration. Cold tongues of white flame flickered in and out of existence, suggesting what could be if the issue were resolved.

Having confirmed his suspicions, Cha Ming reached into the staff and pulled. As he did so, he communicated his intentions with Ninesky. This staff, the Savage Deity War Staff, was not what he wanted. He was no Sun Wukong. The grey-white aura drifted out from the Savage Deity War staff and was reabsorbed by his three-colored aura seed. The Savage Deity War Staff regained its previous form, the Clear Sky Staff.

The next step was fusion. Cha Ming pushed the three-colored aura seed into the flickering two-colored flame. The flame transformed and sprouted a third color.

At times, it was iridescent and passionate. At other times, it was cold, white, and heartless. And at its center was Grandmist, which he was pleased to discover was very suitable for his aura of inspiration. It flickered white and black and times to mediate its opposing elements.

The flame’s transformation was qualitative, and it caused Cha Ming’s consciousness to expand. He became aware of millions of tiny flame seeds that were somehow connected to this core flame.

Most of these flame seeds were close, as they currently resided in the Clear Sky World. A greater number of these flames were located in Soaring City, and all over the Azure Tempest Region.

These, he realized, were the people he’d inspired. He’d lit a flame in their hearts by defending and supporting them. And the stronger these flames became, the stronger his own flame would become. Hope was growing together. Hope was not an individual effort. This realization allowed him to break through a barrier; the fusions between his three auras directly increased from thirty to fifty percent.

Cha Ming held out his hand and called over this new flame. He pressed it to his own heart, where it immediately began wearing away at his imperfections. The process was painful, but he knew that if he bore with it, it would gradually work away at his imperfections.

“From now on, you’ll be called the Heartforge Spirit Flame,” Cha Ming said. “Patriarch Heartforge uses the opposites of good and evil to polish the hearts of his disciples. In my opinion, this is not optimal. With your help, I’ll prove that alternating passion and heartlessness make for a better Heartforge. There is no need for evil in this world.”

He then turned to the Clear Sky Staff, which had reverted to its original form. It was clear to him now that each of Ninesky’s incarnations had both a base form and a specialised form. Until he decided what to make of the Clear Sky Staff, it would remain unchanged.

Cha Ming had gained the Heartforge Spirit Flame, but he had also lost something in the exchange. By transferring the Savage Deity Aura to his spirit flames, he no longer had a medium he could use to execute his Savage Deity Battle Arts.

After some thought, however, he found a short-term solution. He picked up the Clear Sky Staff and let out a casual attack using divine power. He then summoned a second staff using eight-colored qi and a third using jade-colored spiritual energy.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The three-fold strike one and a half times more power than he could normally exert. Though this wasn’t great, he felt that it would be possible to generate two and half times his normal power output, roughly the same as he was able to using his three-fold auras.

Unfortunately, it shared the same problem as his auras. Energy fusion was not his friend. The more he fused his three energies, this Three-Fold Crush attack would become increasingly weak.

But for now, it was good enough. With luck, he would find three alternate energies sources to replace three divine, body, and spirit combination.

***

After six weeks of rest, Cha Ming was forced to accept a difficult fact: His energy was contaminated, and he had no way to recover his strength with the resources he had on hand. Given how far he was from the Azure Tempest Region, returning to the Heartforge Realm was impossible for the time being. His only hope for a solution lay in exploring the Puppet Lightning Region, where he had inadvertently landed.

The Puppet Lightning Region was very different from the Blood God Region and the Azure Tempest Region. For starters, the population wasn’t as spread out. This was due to the lightning storms that periodically ravaged the region. The storms could come as frequently as every three days and as seldom as every two weeks.

The lightning storms weren’t safe for anyone, be they mortals or transcendent cultivators. The lightning contained in these storms was greatly attracted to living creatures, regardless of their strength. As a result, a shelter was necessary for anyone inhabiting the Puppet Lightning Region. Farmers kept safehouses for their families and livestock, while towns and cities pooled together their resources to set up lightning rods and underground shelters for larger storms.

As devastating as the storms were, they did bring some advantages to the region. The main advantage was power: most shelters and lightning rods were equipped with devices that collected and stored lightning energy. This energy was then repurposed to operate lightning-based artifices.

Inventors, tinkerers, and artificers were quite common in the Puppet Lightning Region. Both mortal and transcendent artificers were well-respected in the region. Most of their devices used various grades of artificial lightning gems as cores. Compared to the Azure Tempest Region and Blood God Region, mortals had a much better quality of life.

Ironically, it was cultivators who had it worst in the region. Lightning storms were attracted to stronger cultivators, and like tribulation lightning, the strength of the lightning attracted was proportional to a cultivator’s strength.

When a lightning storm came, cultivators had three options. The first was to find a patch of Sacred Earth, a type of hallowed land where lightning refused to strike. Such patches were rare and usually occupied by sects. It was by sheer dumb luck that Cha Ming had stumbled upon one in the mountains.

The second way was to resist the lightning directly. This could be done via lightning puppets, lightning shelter, and lightning cultivation arts. There were even some brave souls who, like Cha Ming could resist the storms using the strength their body.

“This lightning… is… therapeutic!” Cha Ming croaked as he absorbed the last bolt of lightning from a four-hour storm that had swept in unexpectedly. The land around him scorched. A good portion of the sand in the soil had vitrified.

His body was undamaged, however, and there were even benefits to getting punished by lightning. Tiny bolts of lightning were currently crawling around his tainted energy pool, cleaning up some of the residual blood contamination them and reducing his strength.

“Unfortunately, it’s just too little,” Cha Ming mutter. “I’ll need to try more concentrated lightning to force the rest of this blood out. And to do that, I’ll need to find a shelter.”

Shelters were the third option for cultivators. Every sect and clan had shelters for their members to cultivate in and tide over the region’s many storms.

Not every shelter was alike. They were divided into tiers that corresponded to how many they could accommodate. For a sect to advance its tier ranking, one of the region’s requirements was that the sect have a shelter of the appropriate rank.

Shelters were expensive and required a huge number of resources to build. As a result rogue cultivators had an especially difficult time in the Puppet Lightning Region. Sects and clans did not allow rogue cultivators to shelter unless they paid a huge price and gave up a degree of their independence.

This unfair situation had led to the formation of Sanctuaries, which were effectively unions led by more powerful rogue cultivators. To shelter in a sanctuary, one had to become a member of the sanctuary, but compared to sects and clans, the terms offered by a sanctuary were much more relaxed.

Cha Ming would not join any sect or clan, because the odds of him being recognized were quite large. Sanctuaries, however, were a different matter. Though he did not require a secluded space to cultivate, sanctuaries had access to resources that might help him recover his cultivation. More importantly, they collected and concentrated lightning during storms and redistributed it for their members to cultivate.

Unfortunately, lesser sanctuaries proved useless to Cha Ming’s recovery. Not only were their resources too lacking, the lightning they collected wasn’t powerful enough to affect his condition. He therefore spent less time within the sanctuaries and more time clearing missions for them.

Some of these involved finding and slaying criminals, while others involved destroying wandering fiends before they could cause too much damage. Thanks to his personal strength and mission clearing speed, it only took him two months of work and some heavy bribes to obtain membership for a higher level sanctuary.

A tall cliff stood before Cha Ming. The cliff face was slightly rough and fully vertical, and its surface betrayed no signs cultivator activity.

Cha Ming withdrew a piece of weathered parchment, reviewed the instructions on it, and located a discolored stone on the cliff face. He tapped the stone three times, then walked ten paces to the right before sitting down cross-legged, facing away from the cliff.

He waited for several hours with closed eyes before a few cultivators appeared around him. “Stop where you are,” said a cold voice. “Remove your storage rings and bags of holding and place them on the ground, and we’ll allow you to keep your life.”

Cha Ming raised his hands and stood up. A dozen people dressed as brigands had crawled out of the wilderness. He calmly took out a worn-out piece of metal and tossed it to the ground. “Apologies, but I am destitute. Another band of brigands caught me before you did, and this is the last of my belongings.”

The leader of the brigands laughed. “You think that’s good enough to preserve your life?” she said, bending down and picking up the piece of metal.

“Unfortunately, I have nothing else,” Cha Ming said. “If you want this poor life, just take it.”

“So be it,” the leader said. She summoned a spear and thrust it towards his chest. Cha Ming did not move. The spear, which seemed so keen on taking his life, stopped just short of piercing his skin. “Who recommended you?”

“Daoist Clearwater from the Stone Soul Sanctuary,” Cha Ming said. “As well as Daoist Crimson Moore of the Crimson Cane Sanctuary and Demigod Wraithbite of the Fulsome Hoard Sanctuary.”

“Tokens?” she asked.

Cha Ming took out all three of them and floated them to her. She carefully inspected each one of the tokens and read the attached recommendation letters before handing them back. “Very well. Wear this and follow us.”

She tossed out a disguise talisman, which Cha Ming immediately pressed onto his chest. This was not standard operating procedure at other sanctuaries, but the Blighted Earth Sanctuary was not a normal Sanctuary. It was a Greater Sanctuary, and to enter it, one needed a good reputation, a high-level recommendations, and enough wealth to grease a few influential wheels.

The entrance to the sanctuary was not at ground level. The leader of the ‘bandit group’ led them up the cliff, using shallow protrusions on the cliff face to activate sub-formations as they approached what appeared to be a large rock jutting out of the cliff.

The brigand leader and Cha Ming hopped straight throughthe rock, revealing a hollow in the cliff and a heavily guarded blightsteel door. “In the future, disguise yourself with a talisman when you make your way here,” the patrol leader said, handing him an identity plate. “We received your recommendations and payment, and this plate is required for entry.

“Your identity plate is valid for twenty years. As a protector, you have no obligations but to defend the sanctuary if it is attacked.

“If you plan on leaving earlier, please show consideration for other and return your plate, and you will be given a partial refund. Welcome to the Blighted Earth Sanctuary, Dao God Shatterstorm.” With that, she and her patrol left, and the guards opened the door leading into the cliffside city.

The Blighted Earth Sanctuary was not large. At most, it could accommodate ten thousand cultivators. This was a hard limit, as only so many powerful cultivators could remain inside during a lightning storm. Any stowaways might accidentally increase the power of a lightning store past the shelter’s design limits.

The Blighted Earth Sanctuary was a Tier 2 Sanctuary, which meant that only three early law stitching cultivators, thirty initial law stitching cultivators, and three hundred peak rune gathering cultivators were allowed inside at any time. Cha Ming had competed with several other eligible candidates for a spot when it became available.

Cha Ming’s membership was protector-grade, and it included a cave residence appropriate for his cultivation level. But since he was a rogue cultivator, he received no other benefits. To obtain further benefits, he would either need to turn in resources or complete missions for the sanctuary.

Cha Ming had several immediate needs. Firstly, he needed high-level alchemical resources for experimentation, and lightning to speed up his recovery. The sanctuary’s lightning collection array would provide a steady supply of lightning, so he didn’t need to worry too much about that one.

Most importantly, he needed information. Huxian was feeding him general information about the overall situation on the Chasewind Plane, but his information lacked the details required for Cha Ming to make any concrete plans.

There was a wine house not far from the entrance to the shelter. Cha Ming decided that information was a great place to start. The wine house was small, but relatively crowded. There were no free tables, so Cha Ming took a seat at the bar.

The wine house did not have any staff, just the wine house owner himself. The man had a refined and kindly look about him, but the scars on his body and soul told a different story. “What do you drink, friend?” the bar owner asked.

“How strong is your strongest wine,” Cha Ming asked.

The owner looked him up and down. “For a powerful body cultivator like you, I recommend blighted thunder wine. It’s brewed with sorghum nourished with blighted earth for an entire sixty-year cycle. We then distilled it in the third level of the sanctuary’s lightning tower. I am told that the wine is a wonderful tonic for both one’s body and one’s spirit.”

“I’ll take a bottle,” Cha Ming said.

“Five hundred mid-grade transcendent crystals,” the owner said. Cha Ming placed five long crystals on the table without batting an eye. “You’re quick to spend your money, I see. That implies much more of where that came from. I don’t recommend showing off your wealth anywhere, much less a sanctuary.”

“Fighting is not allowed within five kilometers of the city,” Cha Ming said, quoting the rules that had come alongside his identity plate. “With the exception of the arena, but only if both participants agree to fighting.”

“So long as you know that all bets are off when you wander out of the sanctuary,” said the owner. “Excuse me while I dust off a bottle. Not many people drink this sort of thing.” He went to the back and came back with a blue bottle covered in a network of golden runes. It came a small blue cup covered in similar runes, and a tiny candle that lit up with a cold blue flame.

The man placed the small cup on the burner and unlocked the mechanical lid sealing the bottle. He poured a sizzling violet liquid into the cup. The contents tried to boil off, but the cooling provided by the candle was enough to prevent this from happening.

Cha Ming picked up the cup and shot it back under the watchful eyes of the bar owner. “Not bad,” Cha Ming said, placing the cup down and pouring himself another glass. “It tickles when it goes down. But I’m not sure if that’s because of lightning or the poison.”

“The poison is a necessary ingredient in the production of such a wine,” said the bar owner calmly. “How else would it affect someone with a fleshly body on part with that of a shell-marking cultivator? You know, I rarely offer this wine to protector-grade clients. Even elders are wary of drinking it.” Cha Ming’s eyes narrowed, but the bar owner smiled. “Worry not, this is not problem. Your absolute cultivation level determines the level of lightning you attract. Your membership level is appropriate and won’t cause any issues. Now would you like anything else?”

“Not for now,” Cha Ming said. “I’ll stay here and drink quietly if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” said the bar owner. “Call me if you need another bottle.”

A half day passed in the blink of an eye. Cha Ming kept his ears and his spiritual senses open and took in information like a sponge. At the same time, he spoke to Huxian and discussed current events on the Chasewind Plane.

Huxian was still fighting with Paper Tiger Clan and Dao Lord Blood Leech. Despite a year having passed, the fighting was still intense. Jadefall and Wu were naturally with him. Baleful Vision was located on the other side of the Paper Tiger Clan’s territory, but he mostly kept to himself. No one attacked him, and he attacked no one.

Xing Tianlong and Wei Longshen’s territories had seen some changes over the past year. They had taken over the territory of one of Cao Wenluan’s minions and were currently trying to break through Princess Gabriella’s Light and Glass Alliance. Princess Gabriella was from the Slovana Empire. As for Cao Wenluan’s follower, she had escaped from their deadly ambush and had retreated back to Cao Wenluan’s territory. Enraged at Xing Tianlong’s sneak attack, he and his three followers were now besieging two of Xing Tianlong’s allies. It was unknown how long they would be able to hold out.

The most surprising news came from Petros’s side. Somehow, his neighbor, a member Paper Tiger Clan, had decided that he was easy prey and had attempted to infiltrate the Hunter’s Guild. He sorely underestimated Petros’s powers of observation, and in the end, he was quickly discovered.

The Paper Tiger Clansman had tried to devour Petros, but unfortunately for him, Petros had had long seen this coming and had dispatched hunters to surround the promises. It didn’t take long for him to shoot up the unfortunate paper tiger full of arrows, claim his territory, then declared open season on the stripeless and their slaves. Then, with Huxian as an intermediary, it was relatively easy to divest himself of the leadership of the region and implement a demonic variant of the Hunter’s Guild.

The death of a warden served as a warning to everyone on the Chasewind Plane. It proved that this wasn’t just a friendly competition, but a death match. The next death came shortly after. Princess Gabriella took advantage of the strange atmosphere to surprise and kill a rogue Daoist from the devilish faction, thereby expanding her territory.

Fortunately, the Azure Tempest Region was relatively peaceful. Cha Ming’s infiltration of the Blood God Region had sparked much unrest. The destruction of several Tier 3 and 4 sects and the death of many high-ranking members of the Blood Demon Sect and the theft of their Tier 2 blood pool had greatly weakened the Blood God Sect.

The Azure Tempest Sect used this weakness to reclaim much of the region’s lost territory. But to Cha Ming’s surprise, the True Blood Sect did not take advantage of this moment of weakness. As a result, the unrest did not lead to anything but uncertainty in the region. The Blood God Sect’s position remained unchallenged. For now.

Cha Ming did not have much information on the Puppet Lightning Region before his arrival. It was very different than the Blood God Region, but similar in some respects. Like the Blood God Region, the public was very interested in battling the fiends; the Puppet Lightning Sect had likewise taken on a leading role in the war and continued to be involved in the every-day lives of its citizens.

The relationship between the Puppet Lightning Sect and subsidiary sects was very different, however, and the social dynamic not at all oppressive. The Puppet Lightning Sect had a history of providing lightning sheltering and collection technologies and lightning towers to the mortal cities, sects, and sanctuaries in the region.

And seven years ago, coinciding with the descent of wardens onto the Chasewind Plane, their technology suddenly improved. The shelters in the region saw gradual improvement, and the resulting increase in lightning collection had led to a boom in artifice creation and cultivation resources for both mortal and transcendent cultivators.

Like in the Blood God Sect, the Puppet Lightning Sect was known as heroic and brave and bore the brunt of the resistance. The Sacred Earth Sect, the previous leader of the region, and the Blighted Heaven Sect, the third most powerful sect, were honorable enough. But they mostly kept to themselves due to matters of geography, and were therefore unable to affect public opinion.

There were blood sects in the Puppet Lightning Region, but not many. The geographical makeup of the region could not support too many of them. Instead, the region supported lightning cultivation, puppet crafting and artifices, as well as fleshly body cultivation. Wandering body cultivators like Cha Ming were actually quite common.

Cha Ming continued collecting information until the wine house emptied out. A wave of cultivators had just finished drinking and vacated the premises, and the owner, having already cleaned up their tables, was sitting behind the bar, meditating.

“Most cultivators find it difficult to cultivate outside a of a secluded environment,” Cha Ming said to the owner. “Don’t you find it difficult to concentrate here?”

The owner cracked and eyelid and smiled. “For most, this is indeed a terrible place to cultivate. But my Dao is different. I cultivate the silence of a storm, and just as there is silence at the center of a tempest. Between bolts of crashing lightning, there is silence to be found in arguments and interactions. Right now, the wine house is empty, so I am resting.”

The owner’s words were confirmed Cha Ming’s suspicions – he was not a normal cultivator. Cha Ming would normally avoid such cultivators, but since he’d already been discovered, there was no harm in continuing with the discussion.

“The wine house is empty, true, but I find this atmosphere a bit noisier, in a sense,” Cha Ming said. He took a drink of blighted lightning wine and shuddered as the lightning and the poison worked its way through his blood and his marrow. “When the bar is full, and the people are rowdy, it becomes a lot easier to ignore the smaller sounds in the other buildings. Now that they’re gone, it’s not difficult to hear lightning crackling through the walls, and people whispering in dark corners, thinking no one can hear them.”

A thoughtful expression appeared on the barkeep’s face. “That’s an interesting way to approach opposites. In the storm, the eye might seem like the quietest place, but a powerful cultivator might find the silence deafening.

“But I wonder – are you not being too narrow in your interpretation of silence?”

“Narrow how?” Cha Ming asked.

“When I mentioned silence, I was referring to the entire neighborhood,” the owner said. “A storm is raging outside, and as a result, the lightning energy in each cultivation chamber at its densest. The city is as empty as the wine house. There is no one to interrupt this silence.”

Cha Ming knew this to be true. Not much was happening across the shelter. Everyone in the city was a cultivator, so few people were like him, leisurely drinking during the best time to cultivate.

“I suppose it’s a matter of perspective,” Cha Ming said. “You are speaking of the storm of people, and I am speaking of the storm they are here to avoid. The walls are filled with lightning, and every time a bolt strikes, the earth shifts ever so slightly. The boards creak. The bottles shake. It is but a tiny thing to most, but people like us can hear these things quite clearly.”

The owner nodded slowly. “You are new here. And you are injured. No need to admit it, because while your disguise is perfect, I can see it in the silence in your actions. The way you carry yourself. The way you don’t move. The way you pause and hesitate and spend extended periods of time deep in thought.”

“Is that be a problem?” Cha Ming asked.

“Not at all,” the owner said. “And rest assured that I would never divulge a client’s secrets. But there are others who might start trouble with a wounded cultivator. It would be best if you recovered quickly and made few public appearances.”

“I came to this sanctuary to cultivate in silence,” said Cha Ming. “Nothing else.”

“Of course,” the owner said, clearly not convinced by his words. “But since you spent so liberally in my establishment, let me offer you some basic information. For example, every Tuesday, there is a gambling event that many choose to participate in. There are contests of ability and battles of all kinds. Some are staged, and some are not. It would be wise to inquire as to which are which before participating.

“If you are looking for techniques of any kind, the only way to secure them is to contribute to the sanctuary. The three sanctuary leaders jointly control who has access, and you must approach one of the three if you wish to exchange contribution points for them.”

“And what can one do to obtain contribution points in the Blighted Earth Sanctuary?” Cha Ming asked.

“Many things,” the owner said. “Patrols are the most common way. Others gain points by competing against other sanctuaries or harvesting local resources. Eliminating the fiends plaguing the area is a great way to achieve contribution points, especially if one can eliminate those pesky rank 11 fiends.

“The best way by far, however, is to gather powerful corpses. There is a… demand for high quality bodies in the region.”

Cha Ming’s brow tightened. “I’ll keep an eye open for such things, then.”

“There are many other ways to earn points, but for you, the easiest way would be to become an elder,” the owner said. “The sanctuary is short three elders, and is not in a position to be picky.”

The owner’s words were filled with unsaid information, the first of it being that he recognized Cha Ming’s true strength. The second was that only a sanctuary leader would be able to discover this, which meant that the owner was one of the three he had just mentioned.

The third piece of information concerned the buying of powerful bodies. Typically, people meant demon corpses when they mentioned bodies. But taking into account the owner’s several pointed remarks at his physical strength, Cha Ming suspected that humans corpses would be fine as well.

The fourth piece of information, the fourth silence in their conversation, was that he, one of the three leaders of the Blighted Earth Sanctuary, did not dare say these things out loud.

Cha Ming shot down another glass of lightning wine and organized his thoughts before speaking again. “I’m looking for rare cultivation resources. Where would be the best place to look for such things?”

“Shops wouldn’t have what you’re looking for,” said the owner. “The monthly auction might have some things. Very few of the three hundred protectors would miss this auction, and most elders usually attend as well.

“The auction naturally doubles up as a social event. People get together to exchange thoughts and resources. Some are open-faced events, where cultivators interact using their own identities. Others… are attended by the kind of people who like wearing deep cloaks and straw hats.”

Cha Ming shot the man a wry smile. “I believe my definition of rare may differ from that of the local populace. The things I need aren’t easily obtained with money.”

The barkeep gave him a long, searching look before averting his eyes. “Are you sure?” Cha Ming nodded. The owner reached under the bar and retrieved a what appeared to be a piece of high-grade transcendent crystal.

Cha Ming inspected the crystal. It was worth more than all his drinks put together. Moreover, it was covered in a series of characters that were difficult to make out. They spelled out the name of a famous establishment in the sanctuary.

“I heard a few customers mention the Sky Blight Restaurant,” Cha Ming said, pocketing the crystal. “Some say it’s the best restaurant in the city, but others say that’s was only because it’s owned by one of the sanctuary’s leaders. I also heard that the sanctuary’s elders and some of its stronger protectors are frequent customers.”

“Once a month, or so I’m told,” the barkeep said, returning to his cushion. “Their next gathering is in ten days. Of course, many people simply go there for the show. Not many are worthy of a seat at that table, and those who aren’t end up embarrassing themselves.”