540 Discovering the temple Part 1 (1/2)

Of course Saleen did not know that one of the most powerful figure from the Holy See had snuck into his own city, awaiting his return. Out of fear that people from the inquisition could determine their location based on the spots where the two adjudicators were killed, Saleen and Lex left that place as soon as possible, advancing towards the depths of the desert.

This time around, Lex would travel in the day and rest in the evenings. There were some horrifying creatures in the Purgatory Desert which were nocturnal. During the blazing day, these creatures would basically hide themselves in the sand and rest.

Without the protection of the mages, the swordmasters with the Spirit Snake Armor would also not be able to follow Lex into the desert. Without the patrols done by the swordmasters at night, battling all those magic beasts, the mages could hardly rest either. Just like that, the team lived in the desert for half a month. Finally, Saleen's team had arrived at the central region of the Purgatory Desert despite experiencing a few shocks along the way.

This route was actually not so long as to require half a month of travel. Saleen had witnessed the might of the imperial soldiers, he had also seen how these dozen of swordmasters and grand swordmasters spent their gold coins.

Indeed, the Spirit Snake Armor was worthy to be called the best armor on the plane. Under protection of the Spirit Snake Armor, none of the ten swordmasters sustained serious injuries. Out of hundreds of big and small battles, and thousands of slaughtered magic beasts, less than ten percent of the situations required intervention by the mages. Most of the time, the mages only blessed the swordmasters with defensive spells.

If he had not seen it with his own eyes, Saleen would never have believed that the ten swordmasters and two Black Metal Grand Swordmasters possessed such powerful offensive abilities.

At the same time, the Spirit Snake Armor had quite a high level of consumption. Each night, after the camp was set up, Lex would personally help the warriors repair their armor and change the magic nuclei. Saleen rendered some help and he had learned quite a bit about magic armor. Saleen himself had also crafted magic armor in the past, but it was nothing compared to the Spirit Snake Armor. If it was not for the sturdy materials used, Saleen would be too embarrassed to even display it.

Saleen did some simple calculations. After entering the core of the desert, the ten swordmasters, two Black Metal Grand Swordmasters, and Wild Bear would each consume about two-hundred gold coins worth of resources daily. This price was not even the market rate. As Lex had prepared all the materials herself, and she was repairing the armor on her own.

The total daily depletion was about three-thousand gold coins. During this last period of time, Lex had consumed tens of thousands of gold coins. If Lex had not brought along a large number of mages and instead recruited a team of people and horses, she would have spent at least ten times more according to the current market prices.

This day, the team came to a halt urgently, because a sandstorm was approaching. The mages swiftly constructed an underground fortress using earth magic. Everyone crawled inside, and only emerged after the sandstorm went past.

The magic compass had malfunctioned. In order to calculate the specific position of the temple, Lex would have to wait for the stars to appear at night before matching them with the star atlas. After the camp compound was rebuilt, Saleen had created a large quantity of ice cubes to lower the temperature. Given the over seventy degrees of sweltering temperature in the Purgatory Desert, the normal soldiers would have already died from the heat if there were no mages present. Only ice cubes created from intermediate level magic would not melt easily. Even though there was low level water magic which could be used to create many ice cubes, the mage casting it would become extremely exhausted.

Lex's team could only be described as extravagant. There was not even one sorcerer amongst them. In most circumstances, the aspect of logistics would have faced much difficulty, but coincidentally, Saleen possessed the Dimension Stone while Lex had the divine equipment; God's Ring.

At night, the mages measured wind speed and humidity. After confirming that there would not be any sandstorms in the near future, they began assembling a set of metal equipment. This appliance was actually very simple. Magic was utilized to create six stone foundation platforms in the ground, and after stabilizing a metal rack atop, a set of crystal wafers were laid on the rack.

These crystal wafers had been made by grinded discarded crystals. Its sole feature was a very high degree of transparency, there were no flaws. Such an item was of no use to a normal mage, only a mage with proficient alchemy skills would collect it. Its price was not considered cheap either.

Precise patterns, calibrations and axes had been etched into the crystals using magic. Once these crystals were put in place properly, the mages followed Saleen and Lex and sat beneath it. They then started proofreading the details.

After all the details had been adjusted, Lex then went to observe the stars through the crystals.

The elements and geomagnetism in the desert were experiencing disorder, while the magic compass had malfunctioned, but the sky was still pure. Their current position could be calculated using this expensive crystal star atlas. Following that, the coordinates sent over by Metatrin City could be used to determine the exact location of the temple.

Everything was still influenced by money. This crystal star atlas might be pricey, but the thousands of coordinates calculated by the mages could not be bought with money.

The night sky was unadulterated. The Qin Empire used to have the best astrologer. Other than mages, the high ranking leaders also had to be familiar with the knowledge of constellation. Lex had been learning about constellations systematically since she was young. Of course, it was not for her to predict the future, but for her to be well-versed in the elemental fluctuations occurring on the Myers mainland by matching them to the pattern of change in the constellations.

It was profound knowledge, it could not be mastered just by memorizing a few mantras.

Even though Saleen could control the depletion of magic chords very accurately, he was inferior to Lex in this aspect. Lex's allocation of her magic chords was basically in tandem with the natural changes taking place in this plane. She could enable a spell to unleash its greatest might while minimizing its depletion.

Jason might be a good teacher, but he did not teach Saleen knowledge about the constellations. At the moment, Saleen could only watch from a corner, as he wanted to learn this rare skill Lex possessed.