Eternal Emerald Dragon

Chapter 1568 - 1567 - Harvest Rivals

Lind thought he could blend in again but Haro gave him a harsh wakeup call. While he had begun to incorporate the Mystery energy into his various abilities, he had hardly mastered it.

Unlike before, when he was essentially too weak to be worried about, he now put out a solid signature of an Apprentice Tier. A complete Life Layer would leave him exposed.

Lind had tested it and confirmed the beasts local to the island still fled from him. He could not blend in like he had before!

He tried a new tack as the 2 vessels slowed off the northern beach.

He used one of the older trees to resonate with his Qi and rather than blend into the background of the island, he used the massive flow of energy to cover his own. He did not harm nor manipulate it, but only shifted his own energy to hide.

It was very difficult but he finished just in time for the 2 vessels to float well past the shoreline and land in 2 different clearings.

The dark cylinder turned on its end while the more rectangular platform only tilted itself. Both went well out of their way to not disturb the trees and plants on the island.

He wondered why? The first time he had overlooked that the invaders did setup a base camp but again, they made sure not to touch a single tree or brush. It was only grass and a few smaller plants they crushed.

He wanted to ask Haro but he dared not as it took all his concentration to hold his current frequency. He estimated he could sustain it for days but only if he held perfectly still. The other issue was he was up in the tree boughs.

If anyone looked up or had a visual sensory skill, they would definitely find him.

The same procedure as the last cylindrical ship proceeded but with more caution it seemed. He also was confused as they only focused on the Void Ocean rather than looking for an attacker.

The group was a similar mix of humans and demons but the numbers were identical to before. There were 2 Divine Realms and the rest were Immortals.

The newcomers were far more confident in comparison. They emerged from the various stairwells into the artifact ship and were all human.

He was uncertain about their origin but Haro suddenly spoke in his mind.

[Master, I know that emblem.] Unlike the dark armored party, the humans had a symbol emblazoned on their robes. Lind could not quite make it out with his naked eyes. [It is an orb with a star rising out of it made in gold. It is the Unbending Fate Faction.]

Lind almost moved. He had not heard of such a faction but the fact it included fate and was composed of only humans gave him a premonition he would not like them much.

As if reading his mind, Haro revealed the oh so wonderful truth about them.

[They are an alliance of human supremacists powers, Master. The lower level powers are sometimes reasonable and simply join to stay relatively safe, but the core powers are unyielding fanatics. They only join with non-human powers when Fiends are involved but have used such connections to further their own agenda and betray several powers that thought they would follow through on their promises.]

Lind felt a headache coming on. Demons and other races could be full to the brim on pride, ambition, and spirits knew what else, but they were always pragmatic for the most part.

If something was not achieving their goal, they would discard it and adapt. Even the vicious Blood Empire had only wanted to conquer, not act in some belief they were superior.

Evil, absolutely, but honest.

Only humans, for reasons Lind could not fathom, were so supremely stupid to deny reality no matter how many times the race was hit in the head with the consequences of their actions.

Cultivation was about power, advancement, and expertise. No race got an advantage over the others and none were favored.

While 6 elementals were once considered a human only problem, Lind knew the one thing humanity did have was adaptability. Their race could adapt to conditions others would either find very difficult or simply gave up as impractical.

Pragmatism could work against the other races whereas humans could be damned stubborn and reap unexpected benefits from it.

The Rakathi Wastes was a good example of that. Such a devastated place was not fit for habitation but humans refused to give up.

Sadly, that same stubbornness created the idiots currently setting up camp on the island.

So the dark armored party had Wild Demons that were known to likely ally or at least tolerate Fiends while the white robed humans were intolerant of all other races aside from likely extracting benefits from them.

While both were his likely enemies, it still left him with a mystery. They risked almost certain death to come to the Wild Sea for an island that had only the red stone core in the mountain as a prize.

It was powerful, he granted, but even with his Life Layer, he did not glean any benefit from it.

What did they know, that he did not? Thankfully, his keen hearing picked up the humans speaking. The odd fact that he and Haro could speak mind to mind but others refrained was also a mystery he wanted to solve.

Why would that give them away but audible voices did not?

"Those damned cultists lost a party already but sent another? How did they get her ahead of us?" A young man with dark hair and scrunched up features was talking as he helped haul some dark stone beams that had been piled from a storage treasure by the ship.

His companion was a brawny man with no hair at all from what Lind could see.

"They always send 2 and one waits at the edge of the Wild Sea. The damned island was so far away we were able to catch up even though they headed out first." His voice was damned deep that Lind did not even have to try and strain his hearing to catch the words.

"Enough yapping! Focus on our defenses and prepare for contact. If anyone attacks first, you will not know how you were dispersed!" The young woman in charge was powerful. She was likely a Journeyman Tier but she was not slacking off giving just orders.

She was laying out metal plates the size of her forearm at equal intervals. He thought they were formation plates but the cultists, as they had called them, only shrunk their vessel inside a dish like before. The disappearance of the cylinder did not seem to surprise the humans.

If anything, it made them move faster. Once she was done laying out the plates, she wiped some sweat from her brow before carefully applying it to the plate in front of her!

He was confused until a gentle wave of energy flowed into the encirclement and they vanished from his senses!

[A common tactic but limited in scope. It is far more effective on this island and they must have modified it to accept Dao infused perspiration to prevent blood being used. Any blood and the leviathans or krakens would know.]

He made it sound so simple but normally blood was the only activation source outside of infusing Qi from the cultivator! The reason being was the blood moved everywhere and was exposed to all aspects of cultivation at any given time.

Even simple cultivation was moved through the meridians which often moved with blood vessels throughout the body.

Thus, blood became the most condensed form of Qi, Laws, and even Dao as time went on. Lind suddenly wondered something but he could not ask.

The mortal realms, all the way up to the Heaven Realm, death was relatively the same. Once the body died, the soul went with it save in several special circumstances.

Immortals were, in a very real sense, separate from their bodies once the sliver was formed at the first tier of the Immortal Realm. His crystal was gone and he was now incorporating the energy called Mystery that seemed to flow throughout his body without exception.

His harmony usually flickered at the center of his dantian but no longer. It was everywhere so far as he could gather.

The Divine Realm was the fusion of the soul to the now perfectly molded body! Death was both far more difficult and far more certain in the Divine Realm.

The woman had called it dispersal.

Yet, he had met living fragments of Divine Realm cultivators. It seemed there were many things he had to grasp about his new journey in cultivation!

A trio of the humans appeared suddenly in his sight. It was farther out than the formation plates so the barrier was projected outward from them as well.

He also noticed the cultists were sending out only a trio of Immortals. The human party had an Apprentice Tier leading them. The result seemed a foregone conclusion but he had no desire to tempt fate as both made a beeline for the mountain.

[Master, I feel I should warn you. While the other realms were relatively the same in the same Tier in power, that is not the case in the Divine Realm. I cannot gauge your current strength but that human has a complete Life and Death layer. It is entirely possible they can kill you with ease.]

The grim warning from Haro was enough to change his plans slightly. Warning the kraken again would not be enough as Haro had confirmed the reach of their bodies was large enough but if they were protecting the island, they would restrict themselves to the beach and near its border.

The 2 arriving parties seemed to know that and had landed in safe zones.

Lind was the only hope left even if he did not understand what they got out of the red stone.