A Traveler's Plan

The group spent the next five hours going through every ring and bag that Daniel had taken out.

What they found was highly disappointing. Most of the good items had been taken out by the Clear Mage when he had killed the owners of these rings and bags.

What was left were the coins, and the martial and spiritual cultivation manuals.

"Having a lot of money is fine, but there isn't anything of real use here.. I think we should sell all this stuff in block at an high end auction house.. We could split the money, and use some of it to decorate the castle" Said Paule.

Daniel still hadn't gotten used to such a large sum of money. To him, who was used to live off of a few copper coins per day, millions of gold coins were an astronomical number.

Regarding the cultivation resources and useful objects, they had been long take by the Clear Mage, who used them as little rewards to attract cultivators into join the tournament.

An example of this, were the beast cores given in the cultivation talent tests, and the essence treasures rewarded at the completion of the essence comprehension test.

The first test was different. Daniel had thought about the possibility that those orbs he had used to increase his comprehension of lightning essence, could be somewhere within the castle, but unfortunately, after he had obtained full control over the formation, he had found none of them.

It didn't take long for him to formulate a guess regarding why.

What Daniel had seen weren't essence spheres, but essence orbs. These orbs were larger and different than the essence spheres he had encountered in the past. The use of these orbs was to showcase the type of essence they contained, and to be placed in the small carving on the table so that the essence contained in them could be displayed.

They didn't have a binding treasure that could separate, and keep the essence independent from the cultivator.

What he believed these essence orbs to be, were simply a demonstrative tool used by the Clear Mage to show off a specific essence he had a deep comprehension of.

Daniel wasn't sure if that was the real reason, but since all the training rooms aside from the weapon mastery training room had disappeared since the very moment the formation had been reset, he had good reasons to believe that was the case.

"It will take a while longer to get to the next city.." Said Daniel while looking at the map he had purchased in Cerulis "Do you guys have someplace you want to visit?.. I am flying blind here."

"About that, you've mentioned Karalis more than once.. If that kingdom is as far as you say it is.. How did you end up to Cerulis without even knowing it?" Asked a curious Imblen.

Without taking his eyes off the map, Daniel took a deep breath and said "I am the progenitor of a new path of cultivation. This new path allows you to practice both spiritual cultivator and martial cultivator. When I've entered the fourth rank, I caused a cultivation anomaly right in the middle of the city. The event was witnessed by all the most powerful cultivators in the city, including two spies who belonged to two different neighboring kingdoms. These spies reported what they saw back to their respective kingdoms, which sent people from their territories to kidnap me. A three way battle amongst three different kingdoms broke out in the city. My teachers were outnumbered and almost defeated, so they used what I assume was their 'backup plan'. They opened a portal which brought me to Cerulis's beach.. You know the rest."

The expressions on the faces of the six were beyond what someone could describe as shocked. They were so amazed that they dropped everything they were holding in their hands.

Alis looked at Daniel with shock and asked him "Why the hell would you say that?!"

Slightly annoyed, Daniel put the map down and looked at the rest of the group. He then said "Look, I don't want to spend all day avoiding grazing your arms because you would find out I have a body at the fourth rank of martial cultivation. If we have to travel together for awhile, I might as well tell you guys the truth."

What Daniel said made sense, but at the same time, it was the craziest thing they had ever heard in their lives.

Ligart looked at Daniel, and with a dubious tone, he said "Look, you don't have to tell us the real reason if you do-"

*Shwiing*

Before Ligart could finish, Daniel took his sword out of his spatial ring, and after injecting his ki into it, he slashed vertically, splitting a chair in half. He then looked back at the map and said "Now you believe me.."

Ligart's shock immediately turned into curiosity. He immediately stood up from his chair, got closer to Daniel and asked him "How did you do it?! How did you become a martial cultivator?!"

Alis threw a gelid look at him, as if he had asked the most personal question a human being could ask to another, but before she could add some words to her cold look, she heard Daniel's voice.

One again, without moving his eyes away from the map, Daniel casually responded "I have cultivated to the peak of the third rank of both paths, reached perfection of both body and connection at the same time, and then, when attempting to reach the fourth rank, I've enter a state of semi-unconsciousness which allowed me to breakthrough in both stages at the same time."

"What the hell is happening?!" Said the shocked Alis "Did you just give away one of the most important informations in history!? What is wrong with you?"

"Big deal, three kingdoms are already aware of the method.. And sooner or later the news will spread. The faster another cultivator capable to accomplish the double path of cultivation appears, the less people I'll have on my tail." Daniel said with a matter-of-fact tone.

The group was unsure of how to react at this point. They didn't know if they should feel happy about learning one of the most valuable informations in the entire history of cultivation, or if they should curse the fact that they hadn't heard it sooner.

The reason for their conflicting feelings, was the fact that they would never be able to accomplish what Daniel described, as they had already reached the fourth stage of martial cultivation. The only one who still had a chance at doing that, was Roley.

Four hour passed before the group managed to finish going through every single spatial container. Heimart stood in front of the piles of coins and manuals and said "874 arts belonging to the martial path, and 167 arts belonging to the spiritual path, a few tens of thousands of decent weapons, and finally.. about five million of gold coins. I suggest we get half a million each, and the rest goes into renovating the castle. We can sell the rest of the items.."

Daniel looked at the rest and said "Hold on, we should keep the books. There is an enormous empty library in the west wing of the castle."

"Alright" Said Heimart "Selling other school's and sect's private arts is a risky business anyway."

"About a map.. What would you think about going to the Krehan empire's capital, and find a cartographer? I know that there is a group there that deals with mapping the territory around the empire." Said Alis to Daniel.

Daniel had heard about empires before, but from what he knew, the closest empire to Karalis was hundreds of thousand of kilometers away, and its name definitely wasn't Krehan. "I have no problems with your suggestion." he said with a slightly enthusiastic tone.

"Very well, they also have the biggest auction houses.. I am sure we will find one where we can sell all these weapons" Alis added.

The rest of the group rapidly agreed on visiting the Krehan empire. They all knew the directions of their hometowns, and at their stage of cultivation, a few more thousand kilometers weren't a big problem.

Ligart intervened in the discussion to say "Aren't you forgetting something?.. We are soaring the skies.. in a flying castle.."

A flying castle wasn't an overall impossible thing to see in this world, as it simply required a formation, and a spiritual cultivator with a profound comprehension of wind essence to be created.

Unfortunately, this area didn't house cultivators of such mastery. The Clear Mage was an exception, and that was one of the reasons for his fame.

Approaching an empire's capital with a flying castle would certainly be seen as a provocation to the emperor. So the group had no choice but to decided to leave the castle somewhere far away from the city, and come back for it after they finished with their businesses.

-----

The group spent the next two months practicing their martial arts, training their weapon wielding abilities in the training room, and cleaning the rest of the castle.

They couldn't get used to eating and living on items covered in dried blood, so they stopped more than once on their way to the Krehan empire to purchase furniture and redecorate the castle.

This was something that Alis was strangely good at, as being part of an ancient family, she was used to living in a refined and classy house. She had developed a good eye for high class furniture.

In this past two months, Daniel had practiced many times inside the weapon wielding training room, and had reached an astonishing level of proficiency in many different weapons. Amongst which were various types of swords, greatswords and polearms.

His cultivation had momentarily slowed down when he finished consuming the last of the rank 4 beast cores his teachers had given him.

He was currently sitting on an elegant chair inside his room, and observing the opened window within his mind.

-----

Dan Hiel - Karmic system's wielder.

Age - 15

Rank

- Late rank 5 of Martial cultivation (Perfect Body)

- Late rank 5 of Spiritual cultivation (Perfect Connection)

Karma - 87,790

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Weapons Masteries (Details)

Martial Arts (Details)

Skills (Details)

Spells (Details)

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Reap What You've Sown

Time Is Precious Lv.4

Reduced Cost Lv.4

Second Chance Lv.1

Karma X Luck

System Upgrades (Details)

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Daniel still couldn't believe how fast his karmic system helped him to grow in power. Less than four months had passed since he had activated it, and he had already reached a level of cultivation that only an ordinary middle aged man should possess.

Of course, he would never mention to anyone that he had only started to practice less than half a month ago, or people would become suspicious.

As he was now, he could still pass for a genius amongst geniuses, as his talent in cultivation would still be considered near impossible to see, but not as unrealistic as the truth.

The rest of the group was not far behind. Thanks to the significant amount of money they had obtained, they were able to purchase all the cultivation resources they needed.

Unfortunately for Daniel, none of the few cities they had stopped at, had rank 5 beast cores to sell. And even if they did, he would stop cultivating in order to avoid reaching a stage considered impossible for his age.

Roley had been the member of the group that had made the least amount of progress. He didn't have a special room for spiritual cultivators to learn and practice magic arts into, so he could only ask Daniel for help.

Daniel had helped him more than once in the past couple of weeks, and had even studied the method to create essence spheres so that Roley could increase his comprehension on the essences Daniel was best at. Specifically lightning, water and wind.

His help was much appreciated, but unfortunately, didn't bear much fruit. Roley wasn't talented in comprehending arts, and the process of making essence spheres required specific steps which Daniel was unaware of. The only progress Roley managed to make, was in his cultivation level.

In two months, he had gone from peak rank 3 to late rank 4. The rest, aside from Imblen who was at the peak of the fourth rank, had just entered the fifth rank.