The sealed creature

Eight gene locks. Bian stopped eating the fruits from the tree after his eight hundredth. There wasn't enough to open the next gene lock, so he left them alone.

Several days had passed since he started eating them. Hope Spirit had figured out the use of the pool and explored a large portion of the shelter.

Sacred-blood creatures couldn't see through the veil on the shelter. Super creatures could, but Bian believed that the sealed creature in the spirit hall kept them away.

The rainbow liquid in the pool could turn a Primitive geno seed into a mutant geno seed. It could elevate the rank of a geno seed, with the Sacred-blood tree using up nearly half of the liquid to grow its fruits.

The multicolored elemental seed he bought from Okka was briefly dipped in the pool. Using it on a seed took out less liquid than using it on a tree.

Hope Spirit told him that each of the fruits on the tree took a hundred years to mature. With there originally being 874 fruits, it meant that the tree had been alive for eighty-seven thousand four hundred years.

It was also the reason he didn't eat the leftover fruits, since the tree would wither and die once he did that. Instead, Bian placed a palm on the tree, and absorbed it's leftover life force.

Seventy-four fruits, with each fruit representing a hundred years. He didn't know where Luck Spirit got the tree, but true to her name, she must have been extremely lucky. The great tree, hundreds of meters tall, withered to dust in a couple of minutes.

"Over seven thousand drops." Bian licked his lips. This was enough water drops for all the geno trees they had brought with them. He even fed some water drops to the Strength Overlord, preparing it to evolve.

"Most of the geno trees will be ready after a month or two with the life drops alone. With my aid, they could ripen even quicker," Hope Spirit said.

"What about the rainbow liquid? Can we turn them into Sacred-blood trees?" Bian asked. If the pool were to be measured out of ten, then a sixth of it had already been used up, with the elemental seed absorbing one-tenth of the rainbow liquid.

"The pool can barely support four mutant trees and turn them sacred, without elongating their time. It truly is a miraculous gift," Hope Spirit said.

Bian had to think about resource management like never before. He missed Manager Bo, to whom he would have delegated his workload.

"I need to return to the alliance," Bian muttered as he looked at the spirit hall. With eight of his gene locks opened, he could leave the Empirical Aura active for up to two hours.

The indigo light of the Empirical Aura couldn't directly harm creatures, but it could sense everything in range and absorb the beast souls of creatures killed within its range, even without Bian killing them personally.

'If only it didn't shine like a beacon giving away the activation of my powers,' Bian complained a little bit. People were always greedy for more power.

Of the nine geno trees that survived, three gave fruits that increased mutant geno points.

Three had pets that would be useful in a fight, especially if the rainbow fluid made them Sacred-blood.

The last three gave rise to miscellaneous items, with one being long-range communication earrings, another growing chains that could restrain spirits and creatures alike, but only of the mutant class, and the last tree grew some compasses and pins.

The compass would point in the direction of the pins. It could be used to track five people, as only five fruits grew on it, and this tree couldn't be improved with the liquid.

"So many choices, so few resources," Bian groaned. Finding out where the liquid was from wasn't even possible, so he ruled out getting more.

"Stay back, let me check out the sealed creature." Bian brought out the atlatl and several porcupine quills. He slowly opened the door and walked into the spirit hall.

The spirit hall was massive; it was a hundred meters tall palace. The sealed beast was the size of a ten-story building. Its thirty-meter skinny body was wrapped in chains, which pierced its limbs and torso.

The other end of the chain stretched into the glorious hall, fixing itself at several joints. The creature turned its head to look at Bian as soon as he walked in.

Its face was bony and malnourished. The eye sockets were empty but burning with an eerie purple fire.

"Who goes there!" The voice echoed through the empty halls, bouncing off the walls and getting louder with each turn.

Bian was unphased as he stood still. The Dongxuan Aura could sense its life force more clearly; it was extremely weakened and couldn't even defeat an average Sacred-blood creature.

Sadly, it was also a spirit and not a creature, meaning he couldn't kill it permanently.

"Ken by name, who speaks?" Bian responded with some amusement. He was suddenly overwhelmed with a dreaded feeling of immense danger and jumped to the side, narrowly dodging two beams of purple fire.

'Those beams would have insta-killed me on impact. They were too fast for me to even see.' His eyes narrowed as he looked at the sealed spirit.

"Do not mock me! I am Zephirion Varkal, first general of the Ancient Devil. My judgment flames target all liars; you were lucky to speak a half-truth."

'A general of the Ancient Devil. Like Asura and Dragon King. I'm not ready for this,' Bian quickly backed out of the hall before the spirit could speak any further, closing the doors after he left.

"What was in there?"

"Trust me, you don't want to know. Its defenses are weak, but its attack power is very dangerous."

Bian didn't even want to imagine how difficult it would be to deal with such a foe if he were not bound.

Looking at the size of the shelter, the pool of rainbow liquid, and the spot where the tree was previously at, Bian realized this must be Varkal's Shelter.

That would explain the size, as Varkal was a thirty-meter-tall spirit. Of course, his shelter would be even more enormous.

"The teleporter is right behind him, but can I reach it without facing Varkal?" Bian felt his legs go soft as he thought of those purple beams. Although he had narrowly dodged them, he almost died from the beams.

"But Yaksha can already tell when someone lies. How can Varkal have the same powers? It would be a redundant decision the Ancient Devil probably wouldn't make."

After thinking about it for a while, Bian felt that Varkal might have tried to mislead him. What if the beams would have killed him if he told the complete truth?

"A general to deal with lies and one to deal with truth. That sounds more like the Ancient Devil." Even Hope Spirit agreed with what he said.

"Any super creature can land here, especially the flying kind. The worst-case scenario would be the Ink Sun Dragon bombing this place to smithereens. We need to claim the spirit hall," Bian spoke while dripping the life drops from his sea of soul.

The shelter was quite nice, with a large reservoir of clean water and beautiful scenery. It only lacked adequate creatures for hunting.

Hope Spirit had made hundreds of buckets out of nearby trees and resources from the numerous houses in the shelter.

It was still a shelter and thus had several houses. The shelter could house up to a million people with no issue; some houses even had teleporters, but they weren't working.

According to Hope Spirit, they were deactivated from the Spirit Hall and had to be activated from there.

"This is giving me a headache. If we used all the rainbow fluid on the Sacred-blood tree, would that make it super?" Bian asked Hope Spirit about the tree that grew fruits that could elevate her to the rank of royal spirits.

If she could become a Queen spirit, which was equivalent to a super creature, then a lot of their problems would be solved.

"There isn't enough liquid in the pool for that," she said mirthlessly.

With a groan, Bian decided to distribute the rest of the liquid to the three trees growing mutant fruits. Each tree had about ten fruits, and with the rainbow liquid, they would give Sacred-blood points.

The last portion of the rainbow liquid was used on a tree that was growing six pets called Bloodfang Sentinels. They were half-beast warriors akin to werewolves, stronger and faster than average mutant creatures.

Their only shortcoming was the lack of elemental powers, but in exchange for enhanced strength and speed, Bian found it well worth it.

It would still take two months for the trees to mature, though. Bian didn't dare climb down from the shelter to hunt for creatures lest the shelter wander off.

He could only spend his time practicing both the Dongxuan Sutra and Three Inner Cylinders, aiming to open more gene locks.