64 Searching Inside

Before anyone could realize what was happening, the hovered woman's body flashed with blinding white light. This strange event was immediately followed by a scream. It was a lament full of anguish, more than anything that all the present had ever thought it living beings capable of. The painful wail cut open the air, like a burning blade passing through the tense string of a longbow.

As soon as he heard it, the black snake knew who was the owner of that voice full of agony. 'Green Leaf!'

Not far from him, almost as she was never there, the floating woman disappeared from her place. Contemporarily, a silver streak of light poured inside the opening of the strange ancient temple. It was so fast, that the present they only saw something looking like a shiny river dash inside the darkness that enveloped the space inside the entrance.

From the radiation left behind by the stream of silver light, it could be gathered that it was Ghost Energy, the purest form of it, even if it eluded an old and air.

Devassa and Winter Leaf were the firsts to recover from the shock. After a moment of hesitation and examining the entrance with various scans, the violet snake narrowed her eyes and mumbled another set of strange words. Her energy surged, enveloping her and her near ally. Then, she grabbed Winter Leaf her by her cuff and darted away towards the entrance, disappearing inside the temple.

On the contrary, Darkscale wasn't able to rapidly deal with the situation. It wasn't the surprise, nor it was the fact that the scream was clearly coming from Star Leaf. The thing that made him impossible to recuperate so quickly was the sheer quantity of pain that he was sensing coming from the green-haired woman.

Yes, he felt it.

Their cultivation bases had something that bonded them, the blue link left behind by that strange blue person. Normally, it was only like a thin thread that informed each other of the existence of the other at all times. There was no transmission of feeling or emotion at all.

Only when they used techniques of double cultivation that the thin string became a large and solid bridge, allowing both of them to probe the entirety of the other person being. It was even more intimate than a permitted or forced normal probe. With a normal probe, they could see inside the body but thanks to the link they could feel it. Be it.

The sensation was completely different. This only was possible when they were cultivating together, in the intimacy of dual cultivation.

However right at this moment, for who knows why, Darkscale was feeling that same feeling. He felt the young human as clearly as if she was cultivating right there with him.

It wasn't like normal, it wasn't a strange and deep sensation of pleasure that he secretly enjoyed but never showed it to not give her strange ideas. No, this time it hurt. It hurt very bad. It was like someone was scratching away her energy from her body, and at the same time they were pouring molten lava on the freed space, without caring about the damage or pain that process was causing.

It hurt a lot. Even knowing that it was only a mental pain, Darkscale almost started screaming himself. This sensation kept going for several minutes, making the black serpent remain immobile on the blue boat rocking right and left following the waves caused on the normally calm Yellow Lake by the cultivators previously departed from the boat.

After a while, the connection that he felt with Star Leaf become more and more vibrant. The pain was almost unbearable. The poison technique that the serpent had previously activated, dissipated when the concentration required to continue to maintain it was gone under this psychological torture.

Then it all stopped.

The change was incredibly abrupt, coming with something snapping inside of the snake Natural Heart. A few slivers of blue energy started emanating from his body, dispersing themselves on the yellowish ether that covered the lake.

The pain stopped with that, but, at the same time, Darkscale started feeling like if someone had hit him right in the head with a hammer.

No, it wasn't pain.

It wasn't fear, nor panic either.

It was a very strange feeling, something that he never experienced, not even in the most dangerous of the moment in his fight against the Fire Earth Chieftain in the Blood Forest. Not even after several clashes with that man he felt this sense of fatigue.

A way of describing it would be a strong exhaustion, but not from physical labor. It almost seemed coming from memories. Memories of the green haired human.

The snake stood there, a confused looked in those eyes that he trained for so long to be the calm and cold even if the most troubling tempest raged inside his mind.

Darkscale, still completely dazed, moved his eyes toward his side. His eyes run instinctively towards his left side, and found nothing. Not only she wasn't there. He couldn't feel her. He always had this feeling, right inside his Natural Heart that there was something linking him to her. However now he didn't feel it anymore.

It was weird not being able to feel her anymore. It wasn't sad, nor it was painful. It just was confusing. Like if after learning how to breathe underwater, he was now kicked on the surface again. He knew how to breathe there. However it didn't feel right.

Almost instinctively, he sent his perception to look at that bond that had haunted him for more than a year. His Energy probe, tried to find a trace of that blue link everywhere inside his body, but he couldn't find at all! He continued doing so, alone on the little blue boat left behind of Devassa.

Still nothing. The blue bond was long gone.

Yet, his obsessive research wasn't completely useless: between the Ghost and Blood energy flowing inside his body he also found a third trace of energy that was very similar to that he could feel coming from the temple and that he felt coming from the huge mountain-bones. It was even very similar to that energy present in the huge red screen that was absorbed by Carelia before!

This wasn't anything that he absorbed thanks to Heavenly Battleground Technique, so what was that? It didn't flow inside his Natural Heart, it flowed all around his body.

Fascinated, almost forgetting about what he was searching in the first place, the snake continued following this small traces that permeated every inch of his body. His tail had it, his belly also, his entrail? yes! His neck? Of course.

'...wait, what?'

The attention of the snake went back to the neck area of his body, looking at it with more attention: yes that third trace of energy was also present there, but so was another thing.

'What's that' he abruptly stopped his thought about the new energy that he located inside his body and focused on this new discovery: it was a trace, an energy scent of some sort.

It was... the energy trace of the Blue Cave!

Yes! That was the zone where the ring normally appeared like a small grey stripe, before he decided to gift it to Star Leaf. How come he never noted this scent that remained on his body? Now that he knew that it was there, it was incredibly obvious. Its presence alone occupied all his mind. He almost could feel it pulsing.

The snake concentrated on that scent, and he could immediately feel see the same scent all around the boat and flying through the sky. The lead ended inside the temple, keeping going down int that dark tomb.

The serpent's eyes narrowed. Yes, this was the way to follow!

The snake darted towards the tomb's entrance, following the energy scent of the Blue Ring. A very cold voice, roared in the darkness. "Nobody takes what is mine. I don't care who or what you are, but you will pay, bitch."

Nobody could tell if the serpent's treasure that was mentioned was a what or a who.