novelraw Chapter 1712 - 1711 - Ice & Life
Chapter 1712 - 1711 - Ice & Life
"The Northern Continent is considered largely uninhabitable aside from races aligned to ice or Yin powers." Aristrossa started with the basics. Lind knew most of what she said as Karu had told him the Bastard raided the Northern Continent before the final days.
It was a treasure trove of life that had largely escaped the Fiend assault due to the nature of the land itself.
Even Fiends were impeded by the extreme conditions. Beast races that were cold blooded avoided it like the plague aside from the exceptions she gave.
The truth, however, changed drastically beneath the surface of the ice shelves. There was a gap in some place and the ice acted like an insulator but still allowed night and day cycles.
Gardens of life, while still in need of being hardy, could thrive and spread. Underground was also free of any issues but those races that needed to surface had long died out.
The hollow spaces were far from enough for them and the ice with Yin background powers were too strong to let them live either.
So even underground, ice festered like the surface. Darkness, however, ruled over ice in those areas.
Lind was somewhat fascinated but then Aristrossa told him of her home. It was the Starlit Refuge.
"No one remembers how it came to be but the space is unnatural for certain. It is just too perfect in size and variety to be naturally occurring. Further, races that should be wiped out by being exposed to ice and Yin survive just fine there alone." Lind perked up as he had heard of similar places.
The most recent that came to mind was the island he had reformed.
If a True Lord or someone with a lot of karmic restitution sacrificed it, such a place was possible. That it endured to the present from epochs ago spoke volumes of the power involved.
Yet, it was not so nice to last without a price.
The ice and Yin powers were invading more each year. Races that once enjoyed their time freely had to move inward but that came with a limit too. There was an open expanse of crystal clear water at the center of the Starlit Refuge.
It gave the name to the place as the water let crystal deposits shimmer with pure light to give it the appearance of stars.
Even those, once purely light and fire Qi, were being transformed. The Shen had gained True Lord status but Authority could not override the nature of the world.
A Divine Lord, however, could. Lind frowned, though, at such a solution. Imposing Divine Authority might work for a time, but it would at best simply reverse the trend at the expense of her vitality.
Was he really being sent to save the place on a whim? Karu did not recall any lifetime where she went there nor heard about it from him. So it was a version from before he met Karu?
Why would he retain that memory at all? How had it survived? Lind had so many questions as it seemed there were areas even Karu was totally ignorant of.
One thing was certain, the Northern Continent should never have been his ascension point ever. His Celestial Fields was incompatible with it.
Come to think of it, so was he. Thus, it was a mystery why some version of him, a dragon to boot, left such an instruction with Aristrossa.
Who was she to him? Did he only know of her reputation? Karu had never met her before she arrived on the ship. What was going on?!
He doubted he would ever know but the Western Lament and Southern Continent were now places he could not easily go. The Bastard's forces were being more harshly tied up by his own ascending allies, but the network was still spread across the Divine Lands.
It was just too massive to cut it off and he needed to grow to the Master Tier without as many distractions as possible.
His original timeline meant he was closing in on only 18 to 15 thousand years at most before all their luck runs out. He operated under less than 10 thousand years to be safe, yet that was an insane speed for a Divine Realm cultivator.
It was far more normal to take a full billion years to condense a single Mystery or layer entirely.
His current speed and his fellow ascenders was quite frankly insane but Karu assured him it was not just his people but all of the latest generation.
Heaven and Earth were fair. As the threat of the Bastard grew, so did the chances to condense Mysteries to give them the best chance. Sadly, the Bastard used that very system against it.
In that way, nutritious food was ready to fuel his ascension to the next major realm.
Lind now knew far more about what the Bastard was doing. Having faced his true self, the sheer power a glance impressed on him, showed the insane energy requirements he would need to shatter the final barrier.
Fiends did not face tribulation but were forced to consume exponentially more life to transform from one realm to the next.
The farms and wars were solely to give them that most precious resource.
Lind sighed but refocused. He had to see what else he could learn about the Northern Continent, himself.
He left the cabin and returned to the frigid top deck. The air was bitter but clear. The space above the clouds felt so free and now, as a Divine Lord, he could more clearly feel what was restricting others.
It was not an all encompassing force but powerful intent backed by power he did not fully understand. The purpose was actually to reinforce the powers of Heaven and Earth!
He could not understand more of that but he appreciated he could grasp that much. He then closed his eyes and let his aura expand via the ship beneath his feet.
The artifacts feeding the panels were able to be used by him as well. The burst of information was filtered eventually as he took in the world below the clouds.
The howling winds smoothed out the ice and snow. Mountain tops barely broke the surface and only if they reached to the clouds. Whole mountain ranges were buried under the ice!
Normally he would see flocks of all kinds of birds, flights of dragons or phoenix, and the interplay of life and death as they flew. Yet the skies were mostly clear.
A few faint traces of energy hiding something from the world was felt but he let them be. The tremble confirmed it was some kind of beast but he noticed another form of life made up of the icy winds.
He recognized it as a variation of an Elemental but due to the extreme nature of the Northern Continent, it had only formed of Ice, Darkness, and Yin.
Even he, now at the last layer of the Journeyman Tier, felt a chill down his soul. That creature was dangerous and hid in the storms to hunt the unwary. That old axiom never failed. Life found a way.
He moved on and felt the thick ice shelves. Just as Aristrossa had said, it was not dead as most would expect, but he found life far more quickly than she had said he would.
In places where there were pockets of life underneath the ice, he also found life moving in the ice!
Ice and Yin dragons without wings tunneled inside happily in numbers he had never heard of! Some were hibernating but those that were active hunted both above and below.
They exposed creatures living in the stone of the mountains as well. The pockets of life were mostly beasts but he did find human communities with massive arrays keeping them habitable for the most part.
It was a resource-hog way to survive but no sect or power could really interfere as it was far from worth it. Further, Lind did find small communities of physiques that allowed both demon and human to thrive without the need for arrays.
The conditions of the Northern Continent had allowed races that struggled to live to reach numbers impossible anywhere else.
It also finally affirmed why the Fiends were not bothered with it at all. The continent acted as a natural isolation barrier in both directions but had thus become a rich hunting ground if they ever needed it.
He saw areas that would likely be blank to other cultivators but his harmonic Qi ripped away the Fiend protections. He saw teleportation arrays and even some artifacts to store living beings.
The total lack of tunnels confirmed they were for a future operation but it would never come. The Bastard would come for it all.
Lind now had an inkling, though, of why a version of him wanted him to come. He sneered as his emerald eyes snapped open and streams of emerald light shot outward.
In various places across the Northern Continent, the Fiend arrays were wiped from the world! Somewhere across the Divine Lands, he had no doubt many thralls or other Fiend puppets were panicking as long set plans were derailed in a single moment.
It also told them where he was. The vast majority could no longer reach him and trying to use a normal teleportation path would be like offering themselves up to die. If he wiped out their secure facilities at an instant, just what could he do the moment a whiff of FIend Qi came into his range?
Lind enjoyed the ease of it at long last. No more digging it out or playing cat and mouse games. The fight had reached the level of which only those on the same level could withstand him at all.
All the Divine Fiends were tied up in the war of the Eastern Continent so far as most knew but Lind knew some were across the Divine Lands.
They could not move as they were severely outnumbered but conversely, Divine Realm cultivators did not work together easily. Thus, a stalemate was held and he broke it!
"Feel free to come. I will be waiting." Lind smiled and turned to go back below. He looked forward to the future with more hope. Only the Bastard was left in his way. Soon. It would be over soon one way or the other.