Chapter 37: Blood and Flames.

"Violent Nascent Profound Beasts Active Ahead, Those Below Elementary Profound Realm Level Ten Must Not Enter."

I looked at the sign, I looked at the kids, and I looked at Jasmine.

"This is not a good sign." I said it calmly.

"You don't say. So, what do you want to do? Turn away and return another time." I asked the eldest of my adopted children who didn't see themselves as my children, Jasmine.

"I would take that suggestion instantly if it wasn't for something that is literally making my body scream to go further." I replied.

"You mean…" Jasmine muttered, "You can feel the seed?"

"I think so; something is making my profound veins vibrate weirdly."

She turned back to look at the two children; they were looking back with a curious expression, having understood more or less the situation: "The decision is yours; we aren't in a rush to get it; we could return to a city and leave the kids there while we recover the seed."

"That could be a good idea, but it's so close." I muttered, every fiber in my body telling me to go and retrieve what was rightfully mine—a fundamental part of my own body.

Was this something common for cultivators? Their own bodies instincts flaring to life, telling them to do things?

I didn't like this one bit; I felt as if the moment I stopped controlling myself, my legs would begin to sprint without my command.

"Fuck it," I said, a plan rapidly forming in my mind. "Jasmine, can you stay far from me for some time?"

"Probably, but not for long, an hour at most if I don't have to do anything." She replied, probably having an inkling of what I was planning.

"Good," I muttered, turning back to the kids. "Hey, do you feel like staying with Jasmine for a while while I go check something out?"

"Isn't it dangerous?" The boy asked with a concerned expression on his face, which was fair.

"Jasmine is way stronger than I am, and you can ask her any question you want," I said, trying my best to hype her up so that they would annoy her. "She's my master, after all."

It was a perfect plan. Jasmine shot me an annoyed glance, which just meant that my plan had worked.

Xue's eyes widened as he glanced between me and Jasmine. "But she's small."

The sentence that brought me a lot of joy was unfortunately interrupted by Zhu, who gave her brother a well-placed smack to the head, bowing right after, "I'm sorry, Grand Master, my brother is dumb; please excuse his rudeness."

Grand Master? I turned to the grand master and saw her glaring daggers at the boy, only for her irritation to fade after the girl's words. She humped and looked away.

Huh, maybe that whole bowing thing did make sense, seeing as they were able to calm the arrogant girl.

I led the way a bit further away from the sign, walking until I found a good place to find a temporary camp for the children.

A good enough place, plenty of trees where I could slap my runes, illusory runes that I developed from the Star God's Broken Shadow to hide their presence, and a fair bit of sight and hearing obscuring runes

This place was as close to a fortress as I could make in a short time, nowhere close to my old clinic, but it was great work for half an hour of rune making.

"Okay, here's done." I sweated some imaginary sweat from my forehead because I was too used to sweating from making physical effort, even if my body was probably incapable of sweating anymore.

Was I even a considerable human at this point?

I brought out the heavenly concealing pills, or star concealing pills, or whatever Jasmine called them, the Hide-y pills, and passed them to the kids. "Take these immediately if Jasmine tells you to, alright?"

"Yes teacher." The two seemed slightly uncomfortable, so I just ruffled their hair and turned to my eldest. I was more than sure that Jasmine could take care of them, especially as I gave her full access to the detection runes that I placed around.

"Just go already, and be fast." She told me, and I took that as much assurance as I could have.

"I'll be back."

And I sprinted.

It was just a minute later when I saw a second sign: "High-Level Profound Beasts Active Ahead, Below Nascent Profound Realm Level Five, Please Leave With Haste."

I was above that, so no problem there. I hadn't even seen or felt any beast until now; it had been a long time since I saw any animal, either.

Huh.

Barely another minute later, I stopped again.

But it wasn't a sign this time.

What I saw in front of me was a scene of pure devastation; the land looked as if it were the aftermath of an aerial bombardment. What barely seconds earlier was a lush and beautiful forest was now a nightmarish hellscape—a sea of ash.

"What the hell happened in this place?" I muttered, horrified.

I might have mistaken it for a forest fire, or I would have if, the moment I went a bit further toward the seed, I started seeing bigger and bigger craters everywhere.

And corpses.

In a lot of corpses, the skin turned to ash, but the blackened bones remained, and only those bones

I counted them; I saw maybe a few tens of them, but the devastation was similar to what would remain after what I imagined a battle in World War II would look like.

Was this what happened when cultivators fought? I could see remnant energy traces of what were probably the attacks that these people used.

It was atrocious. Would I be able to do just as much damage if I tried?

No, of course I wouldn't be able to; that meant that these people had a better cultivation than I did, by a long shot at that.

But I had to reach the sovereign realm; Jasmine needed me to do that, and from what she said, that realm was the peak of what the people of this world could reach, which meant that these people were at or below that.

Which meant that if everything went right, I would be able to do as much damage as what was in front of my eyes.

I would be a damned walking, talking nuclear reactor.

Doctor Chernobyl, why did that sound so cool?

To this point, I had only seen cultivators punching each other, creating a bit of fire or other visually impressive techniques at most, but this was different; it was an entirely different level of destruction.

So powerful cultivators were this powerful...

I kept going; if these people died, then there might potentially be something more powerful, something capable of causing this much destruction.

Should I just go back? But I was so, so close. I could basically taste the seed already; that was worded awfully, but the point still stood.

"Fuck it." I took out a coin.

Heads.

I returned to running to the seed. I was sure the god that was probably looking at me wasn't going to send me to certain death after bothering to bring me here.

I hoped.

I slowed down and dialed up to eleven the illusionary aspect of my modified movement technique, trying to hide myself from my surroundings.

Eventually, I finally reached a cave, or what had remained of one. As the entrance had been blasted to smithereens, the seed was inside.

There was another corpse nearby; there was flesh, but the skin was incinerated together with any clothes the person might have had.

I inspected it for a moment; there was still energy flowing through the body, and it reached such an amount that it was mind-boggling compared to what I was used to. Forget about nuclear bombs; this was a whole fusion reactor.

I looked around; there was nobody anywhere to judge my next actions.

The body disappeared, and I moved on toward the cave with a heavy heart in my chest. I needed to study it, to study the energy inside of it, and to understand how and why this person reached such a level of power while everyone else hadn't.

It was for the good of the people. To further my research, which would help many, I convinced myself.

It felt awful. What if it didn't teach me anything and I was going to defile a corpse for no reason at all beyond my greed for knowledge?

But after what I saw—the devastation that these cultivators brought to the landscape—I honestly started seeing why they treated those without cultivation as inferior people not worthy of caring for.

I didn't agree with it, but I could see the reason. At this point, they were basically gods on earth; they could wipe out cities without a problem, and they could only be stopped by others with the same level of power.

Putting an army of common people in the face of a living nuclear bomb didn't do anything beyond adding to the death count.

As I descended further along the cave, the temperature rose and rose, reaching the level that you'd feel in a sauna, then beyond even that.

The walls of the cave were scratched, as if a beast were living here, using the walls as scratch posts like cats, but the claws were far bigger than any cat, or even a tiger, for that matter.

Melted rock and blood—a trail of blood

Either there were tens of people bleeding in the same direction or there was a very big thing with a lot of blood, letting it all out for the world to smell.

I slowed down completely, walking only at the speed that a normal human would walk at. I needed to be vigilant and rush away at the first sign of danger.

I didn't know why I was still going further, but that feeling, that hunger for the thing that was calling me, was overwhelming my rational thoughts.

That was until I saw the thing that had been bleeding profusely.

It was a dragon.

A fucking flame breathing, princess kidnapping, kingdom burning, eastern dragon

I ran away.

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wasn't very inspired, so short chapter, sorry.

Leave them stones tho.

Love from the horn.