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Cultivation Realms – Elementary Profound Realm, Nascent Profound Realm, True Profound Realm, Spirit Profound Realm, Earth Profound Realm, Sky Profound Realm, Emperor Profound Realm, Tyrant Profound Realm, Sovereign Profound Realm, Saint Profound Realm and Divine Profound Realm.
World Spiritist Levels – White-Cloak, Gray-Cloak, Blue-Cloak, Purple-Cloak, Gold-Cloak.
With the wind blowing on his face, Issei was riding a profound beast as he made his way to the Stone Dagger City along with the rest of the Water Devil Alliance. His cyan-colored clothes fluttered in the wind, intertwining with his hair, giving this scene a picturesque feeling to it.
Behind him, seated on the same profound beast, was Xia Mei. Her delicate and jade-like arms were wrapped around Issei's waist as means of support. Her heavenly face had a hint of blush to it, being in such close proximity to the young boy.
By Issei's side, in another profound beast, were Issei's two other friends, Sa Ji and Sona. Both of them were seated on the same profound beast, with Sona leading, and, as such, Sa Ji had his arms wrapped around her lithe waist.
However, unlike Xia Mei, his face wasn't bashful in the slightest. In fact, if one were to look at his face alone, they would think he was being tortured. He had a look of despair, fear and cautiousness. After all, the one person in the world he was most afraid of was none other that Sona herself.
Of course, he wasn't willing to mount on the same mount as her, but he kinda had no choice. A couple of hours ago, when they were preparing to leave the mansion and head to the Stone Dagger City in order to enter the later expert's tomb, they held a meeting to decide who would ride with whom.
However, the meeting wasn't peaceful as almost all of the girls insisted on riding with Sa Ji, with the exception of Bennia, Tsubaki, Xia Mei and Sona. During the discussion, things took a turn for the worse as the atmosphere in the air started to get bloodthirsty. Because of that, Sona decided to end the discussion by having him ride with her.
Although the girls weren't really pleased with the results, they still felt satisfied that Sa Ji at least wasn't on the same mount as one of their rivals, so they didn't complain much. Also, even if they did complain, so what? Sona was the leader, and in the end, whatever she said had to be followed.
As for who Issei would ride with, the way it was decided was completely different from Sa Ji. After all, they all knew that Issei had personally brought Xia Mei over, so there was probably some history between them. As such, they were immediately picked to ride together. Both of them were pretty much fine with it, so in the end, all ended well.
In reality, after a while, Sona came to the decision that next time they went somewhere, she was definitely getting individual mounts for everyone. It wasn't the first time that such a competition happened to decide who would go with Sa Ji, and she was getting pretty full of it.
The mount she had gotten them was the Red Tiger Fierce Beast. The Red Tiger Fierce Beast name's was pretty much self-explanatory. In short, it was a tiger, long enough to fit two persons, that was also red. Aside from that, it's cultivation level was low, only in the middle stages of the first realm, the Elementary Profound Realm. Also, it's attack power left much to be desired, but, in the end, it was only a temporary mount and his speed was up to Sona's standards. Furthermore, they were pretty cheap.
With its speed, they should be able to be at Stone Dagger City in a day or two at most. After they were traveling for some time, they arrived at a random city that marked half of the trip to the Stone Dagger City. Since it was already dark, they decided to spend the night in of the inns there, the Azure Luck Inn.
Each room there wasn't really big, so they were divided in groups of two for each room. Sona, in order to avoid the discussion that happened earlier that day, decided to just get this matter done quickly by making the groups the same as the partners they had while on the mount.
So, with gloomy faces, most of the girls of the Water Devil Alliance were forced to watch as Sa Ji, who was almost in the state of crying, was carried to his room by Sona. Most of them were burning with jealousy, wishing that they would be the one sleeping with Sa Ji.
Issei, of course, was assigned to the same room as Xia Mei. The room, as mentioned previously, wasn't too big. It had two beds, and between them, a night stand. Aside from that, there was actually nothing else.
There two kinds of rooms in most inns. The one for common people and the ones for cultivators. The ones for common people would usually have a wardrobe or a drawer for them to place their baggage on, but cultivators had no need for that as they had their cosmos sacks, with their inner storage space.
Although most cultivators only had low-grade cosmos sacks, they still had a lot of space, about three cubic meters. Higher grades one had six, seven and even ten cubic meters. There were even some with a hundred of cubic meters, but their prices were astronomical, so not many people would be willing to buy them.
The concept behind cosmos sack was pretty simple. Normally, a World Spiritist, normally a White-cloak (Lowest ranking) or a Gray-cloak (One rank above white) would buy a normal bag made of cloth and place a Spirit Formation within them using their spirit power. That spirit formation would have space-bending abilities, being capable to expand the sack's inner space. After that, they would sell these bags to merchants, earning a considerable sum of money.
As for cosmos sacks with a hundred cubic meters, their stock was really limited. That was because they could only be made by Purple-cloak (Above Blue-cloak, which is above Gray-cloak) and Gold-cloak (Above Purple-cloak) World Spiritists, and the only country in the Sky Profound Continent that had such high levels world Spiritists was the Divine Phoenix Country, which was also the leader of the Sky Profound Alliance.
Such alliance encompassed all of the countries in the Sky Profound Continent with the exception of the Country Of The Nine Provinces, where Issei was at.
Anyways, what was important was that the rooms that cultivators used were normally less sumptuous than the ones non-cultivators used, which was why they were usually cheaper and also smaller.
Issei, who, although having a matured personality, was still oblivious to the Man and Woman relations, had no qualms about sleeping in the same room as a female, and was quick to fall asleep. Of course, even then, he still kept his senses on high-alert, in order to quickly react if an intruder were to break in.
Xia Mei, however, wasn't as oblivious as Issei, and was also flustered at the though of sleeping in the same room as him, but it was short-lived. After a moment of introspection, she managed to calm herself by convincing her heart that Issei was just like a little brother to her, or older brother, depending on the situation. The important was the fact that they had a family-like relationship, so with that thought, she was able to calm down her erratic heart.
On the following morning, all of them mounted on their profound beasts, which had spend the night at a stable, and headed out. This time, however, the mount's speed was lower compared to the day before, given that they had previously spent the entire time running non-stop. Even with resting for an entire night, it was still not enough for them to enter their peak condition.
In the end, although fast, they were only Normal-ranked Fierce profound beasts. Also, Profound Beasts, just like cultivators, were divided in rankings.
Firstly, there were to main types of profound beasts. They were the Fierce beasts and the Desolate Profound beasts. The main difference in them was the fact that Desolate Beasts were much stronger, faster and, the most important of all, were able to control spiritual power.
Fierce Beasts had spiritual power, but they were not able to control them out of their body, and weren't able to use them to damage other beings. In the end, all they could do was to use it to enhance their own speed and strength, so it was pretty much wasted on them.
As for Desolate Beasts, the situation was different. They were able to interface with their spiritual energy and manipulate it into various attacks. For example, Desolate beasts with ice affinity could create spears out of ice, ice-shields and many other things.
Aside from being raked in either Desolate beast or Fierce beast, there were still two more rankings. The first, and more important raking, was the raking of their cultivation. For example, Desolate or Fierce beasts with the power of an Elementary Profound Realm practitioner were called Elementary Desolate beasts and Elementary Fierce beasts. As for those with the power of practitioner in the third realm, the True Profound Realm, they were called True Desolate beasts and True Fierce beasts. This applied to all levels of cultivation.
Normally, even if a Fierce beast had the cultivation realm of the Spirit Profound Realm, the fourth realm, they would still be no match for the Desolate Beasts in the Elementary Profound Realm. That showed just how important controlling spiritual power was.
Furthermore, Fierce and Desolate beasts also had another type of rankings. They were, in the order from the weakest to the strongest, Normal-ranked, General-ranked, King-ranked, Primordial-ranked, Primal-ranked and Immortal-ranked.
These rankings were used to compare the battle prowess between Fierce and Desolate beasts of the same realm. For example, if both beasts were in the Earth Profound Realm (The fifth one), what would decide their strength would be their secondary raking. As such, if a Normal-ranked one were to fight, for example a King-ranked one, the Normal-ranked one was sure to die.
Of course, this only applied to those within the same realm. Even if a king-ranked profound beast of the True Profound Realm were to fight a Normal-ranked one from the Spirit Profound Realm, the King-ranked one would suffer a crushing defeat. The only type of beasts that could defeat beasts ranked in a higher realm than them were the Primordial-ranked ones onwards.
As for the Red Tiger Fierce Beast, it was a Normal-ranked Elementary Fierce beast, which means, in kind words, below average. In harsher words, they would be called pretty much trash and cannon-fodder when compared to other beasts.
But, in the end, it was all Sona could afford, since the prices would sky-rocket for the ones above the Normal-ranked beasts. And, since they were only using it for a short trip, sh wasn't willing to spend an absurd amount of money.
And, it was after a few more hours riding the relatively tired Fire Tiger Fierce Beast that they arrived in the Stone Dagger City. The city was big, and was surrounded by a big and imposing stone wall. On top of the wall, in regular intervals, there were daggers carved in the wall itself standing up, giving off a feeling of deterrence.
The city's entrance wasn't too flashy, but wasn't too shabby either. It consisted of two big doors that opened a whole on the seemingly impenetrable stone walls.
As they arrived, Sona pulled her mount over to Issei's own and said to the young boy, "Do you see that wall? It has much more defensive power than you can imagine. Surrounding it is a Spirit Formation barrier set up by a World Spiritist. It is extremely strong and sturdy, and it is the city's main line of defense."
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