Lindon once again marvelled at the scripting genius of Soulsmiths who made the Ancestor's Spear, once he had known every facet of it of course, he had made better versions of it for Little Blue and Orthos to use, but much like his knowledge of Sacred Arts after the threshold of Lord realm, that knowledge too is mostly foggy, he still has greater grasp of fundamentals of scripting than almost every other sacred artist, but the memories of specifics, he will probably only regain after Sage.
For all that Truegold is the limit of the use of the Ancestor's Spear, it is still a remarkable construct. The binding at the heart of the spearhead consumes everything, madra, blood essence, life essence, dream essence, will and even latent authority, much like Lindon's own Consume technique, but the clever scripts on the body of the spear act as filters, letting only the madra pass on to the user, if the power is consumed from a living entity, a little bit of will passes through, piggybacking on the madra, power consumed from remnants does not even have that small amount of will. And more interestingly, the script makes use of this leftover power for slow self repair.
While fascinating, Lindon needed the Ancestor's Spear to pass on every scrap it consumed, so Lindon modified it.
Lindon started off with Jade remnants, the Ancestor's Spear, replaced the role his remnant arm used to play, funnelling the power from his opponents into his madra system, and then his internal Enforcement technique powered by his Iron core bonded with Little Blue took up the duty of Cleansing the power into its useful aspects.
Due to the low level advancement of Little Blue and his Iron core, Lindon barely recouped the cost of madra for using the technique, in the beginning. Efficacy of the Cleansing property of his pure madra is pitiful, he gained perhaps a scales worth of pure madra for his core for every remnant, and since he is Consuming Jade level remnants, he gained nothing in blood and life essence for his body and lifeline, but a mote of dream essence joined his own. He did Forge a variety of Jade level scales with the remnant's leftover energy, that is something he supposes.
It is a good thing that his madra channels received an upgrade even if only one of his three cores reached Jade, they were able to handle the Jade grade madra from the remnants with relatively little strain. And more he used the technique faster and more proficient he became with it.
Lindon did not have any trouble contending with a remnant's will and their memories are less true memories and more abstract instincts, which are easy to discard. When he started on sacred beasts, increase in difficulty is so negligible that Lindon did not miss a step, at least those gave something for his body and lifeline.
It took roughly a hundred remnants, and fifty more mindless sacred beasts and twice as many hours of cycling Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel to finally push his main pure core to Jade, Little Blue followed with her own advancement to Jade only a little while later. And that finally is what allowed Lindon to start hunting down dreadbeasts.
Jai Long stared at his maps. It has been two months since the Transcendent Ruins have risen and Jai Long's quest to recover the Ancestor's Spear has seen set-back after set-back.
It took ten duels fought for honour and a week of bickering for the five 'powers' of the Desolate Wilds to agree on an alliance for the collective control of the area surrounding the Transcendent Ruins.
Purelakers, who had the prior claim to the area, negotiated a steep price for their services of providing clean water and majority of the grain needed by thousands of sacred artists gathering. Sandvipers negotiated for a slot of time inside the Ruins to produce scales from the scripted barrels in return for scouting the surrounding area and culling the dreadbeasts flooding towards the Ruins. Cloud Hammer sect and the Jai clan negotiated for their own slots in return for providing the majority of forces for the defense of the nascent settlement. And the Fishers too got a smaller time slot but they have the best soulsmiths and scripters around, and squeezed out their own share of profit via premium prices for their services.
All in all, nobody was truly satisfied with what they got, as typical of Sacred Artists world over, and they settled on the unimaginative name of Five Factions Alliance. And of course, every faction sent their own exploration teams in to the Ruins, which clashed with each other only a little less often than they battled with dreadbeasts and sacred beasts.
Then there are the bizarre rumours floating around the settlement, Purelakers who were present for the rise of the Transcendent Ruins spoke of seeing an enormous sacred beast rushing in to the Ruins the very moment the Ruins have fully risen. As though it knew when and where the Transcendent Ruins would rise before everyone else. And the exploration teams have seen some scorch marks, and heard sounds of battle and distant roars that gave them the shivers.
Jai Long himself had entered the Ruins, and seen the places with scorch marks and noticed a detail the exploration parties probably did not think was relevant, the scorch marks were pitted, as though something ate away at stone.
Once, Jai Long had been heir to the Jai clan, while the vast majority of his time in that role was spent on Sacred Arts, as the heir he was expected to have an impeccable education in everything else too, especially in politics, and no lesson in politics is complete without history. History of his clan, of the rival clans, of the four great servant families who are ever vigilant, waiting for just the right time, ready with designs to displace one of the great clans and ascend themselves, and the history of the Blackflame Empire and the family that founded it and had ruled it for nearly five centuries.
Blackflame, name of the Path, the family and the Empire. Blackflame madra is said to be harvested from equal parts fire aura and destruction aura, it is said that it was the combination of fire and destruction that gave Path of Blackflame its potency. During the founding days of the Empire, it is written a single Blackflame Truegold had been enough to bring entire sects to their knees. That rebellions died at just the word that a Blackflame is being sent to handle the situation. And they were supposed to be dead. Dead for at least half a century.
Then a memory tugged at Jai Long, a story of an attack on the Arelius family, nearly ten years ago now, a story of a sacred beast, a descendent of dragons, that is close to the Arelius family, that dragonspwan had descended out of a cave system in Mount Shiryu and burnt nearly twenty Highgolds and five Truegolds alongside a rogue Blackflame to ash.
If this sacred beast is the same one close to the Arelius family, did they send it here? Did they already have agents in the Desolate Wilds? For how long? And why wait? If they knew when and where the Transcendent Ruins will rise, and wanted it, why haven't they come and claimed it already?
It would take an Underlord to stop Arelius, and only Underlord who had any connection to Desolate Wilds is Jai Daishou, Underlord of the Jai Clan, and Daishou would not move for the Transcendent Ruins, it is beneath his 'dignity', he already had virtually exiled clan members who displeased and disappointed him in the Desolate Wilds, it is those virtual exiles job to extract as much value as they can out of Desolate Wilds and feed that to the main clan back in the Empire proper.
Putting the mystery of a possible Blackflame sacred beast and the question of Arelius involvement aside, another serious setback for Jai Long's endeavours in the Ruins is how every prospective route to the heart of the Ruins Jai Long found is locked down, scripts that made no sense to anyone in the Desolate Wilds barred the way.
Jai Long was getting desperate, from the records of the Jai clan, Jai Long knew there is a time limit on just how long the Ruins will remain above the ground before sinking back down. From the biography of the Jai Matriarch, who reached Lord realm with the help of the Ancestor's Spear, the Ruins had remained above ground for around six months in the past. If that still holds true, Jai Long had already wasted a third of the time he had.
Lindon drained hundreds of dreadbeasts of every last drop of their madra with the Ancestor's Spear to fill his last Iron core with hunger madra and then push it to Jade.
And the burdens of having not two, but three cores are becoming increasingly clear. If the time he had spent on filling and pushing his hunger core to Jade, had instead been used on his blackflame core, Lindon would have reached Lowgold in it.
Time was running out, there is no way that Lindon could escape the Ruins as a Jade, Orthos at the peak of Truegold will give them pause and if any of them knew of Path of Blackflame, that might make them step lightly, but a Jade is too weak, too much of a vulnerability. If factions of Desolate Wilds see a Truegold lugging around a Jade, especially a Truegold they had no hope of defeating, their next thought would be to use the Jade against the Truegold.
Lindon did not particularly blame them for being so ruthless, it is hard and cruel life that taught them that ruthlessness, none of them set out to become bad people, and in a way they truly weren't, even the people who had everything, every advantage, ended up behaving the same way. So had Lindon, a time or two.
So, Lindon and Orthos came to a decision. Orthos started to slowly pump power to Lindon through their bond and Lindon started to cycle Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel, and they just kept going.
As though boulder rolling down a hill, blackflame madra flowed from Orthos to Lindon and Lindon ground it and packed it down in his core. After every three hours of this, they took a small break during which Little Blue cleansed Lindon and Orthos's madra channels and soothed their spirits with her touch. And Lindon forged and fed her pure madra scales, and saw to their own necessities.
Eight days of this relentless, implacable effort saw Lindon reach Lowgold in his blackflame core. The moment he felt his eyes faintly warm, Lindon knew, from now on every time he drew upon his blackflame core his eyes would match Orthos's own, black sclera with red irises.
And finally Lindon decided to take a break, no cycling, no worrying, he took up the Ancestor's Spear and went to hunt some dreadbeasts with Orthos and Little Blue. He is still going make an effort to increase his power, but every hunt before this had been only about gathering power, almost mechanical, now, Lindon just wants to move, to fight.
More and more Jai Long found signs of the blackflame sacred beast in his every expedition into the Ruins, bodies of burnt dreadbeasts and sacred beasts, pockmarked walls, and faintly echoing roars of an enormous beast. And strangely deeper one went into the Ruins, scarcer the remnants became, Jai Long almost feared that someone already claimed the Ancestor's Spear and are using it, but that too made no sense, knowing the limitations of Ancestor's Spear, all using it on incompatible remnants would do is corrupt the users own madra, and no sacred artist is a fool enough to continue to do that.
Deadlocked script doors continued to frustrate Jai Long's attempts to penetrate deeper in to the Ruins. And increasingly Jai Long is becoming certain someone is on the other side of those deadlocked doors and they have a way to open and close them.
Three months since the Transcendent Ruins have risen, Jai Long received yet another unwelcome news, Cloud Hammer sect spotted a Skysworn cloudship, with their signature green cloud construct, making it's way towards the Transcendent Ruins, they have already entered the Desolate Wilds. And would be here in a week.
The arrival of Skysworn is better than any other faction of the Empire coming, but not by much, if it was any other faction, they might have tried employing delaying tactics against them, but obstructing much less fighting Skysworn is tantamount to rebellion, however much of dregs of the Empire those of the Desolate wilds are, they are still of the Empire, they fear acutely the wrath of the Empire.
It is possible, even probable that the Skysworn would let the Five Faction Alliance keep most of what they find in the Ruins, most probably the Skysworn's interest in the Ruins would be entirely academic, they might even honour the Jai clan's claim on the Ancestor's Spear. But possible and probable are not sure.
The Five Faction Alliance needs to make their push into the Ruins immediately, together and with every scrap of strength they have. Jai Long would make it so.