52 More Sand Blades (1/2)
As she expected, the Sand Hawk turned out to be yellow level creature. Shin Sumi waited patiently in the crater's shadow for the little nut to refine the sand colored core and read all the magical book had to say about the creature.
Refining cores and spirit stones was definitely the primary advantage of having the little nut around.
Nevertheless the informations about the creature whose core was refined was something Shin Sumi was always passionate about. Besides it often revealed the weak points of the beast, which would be very useful if she encountered a stronger one of the same kind.
It was precisely that little bit of information that had allowed Shin Sumi to run around the Rising Star Tournament mostly without danger. Whenever she came across a creature she knew of, she always managed to strike its weak points first, giving her a better chance.
”Senior Sister Xiao, are you safe? The fourth ring sucks up all the Yin Shinsoo of a cultivator, do you have enough energy to progress?”
Now that she reached an open area and with the improvements to her cultivation base, Shin Sumi could send divine sense messages way further than before. She knew that Xiao Yue had received it when her identification jade vibrated with a message back.
”I know. The creatures here are weak to Yin Shinsoo though. But I'm sure you're fine if you have the time to worry about me.”
Shin Sumi's jaw fell on the floor. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the sharp response.
”Aaaah... Would it kill you to be nice to someone else once in a while, Yue?” Shin Sumi thought in a low voice.
After cultivating with the aid of plenty of red and orange refined cores, Shin Sumi was soon back at full strength. The bleeding of her arm had stopped. Like always she marvelled about the fantastical abilities that came with being a cultivator.
Compared to the underground maze of the third ring, crossing the vast yellow expanse of sand of the fourth ring was a piece of cake to someone like Shin Sumi.
With the Copper Bell and the insane amount of spirit beast cores she had in her bag of holding, it was relatively easy to maintain the Shinsoo signature of a male cultivator all the time. This way she reduced the drainage of her energy.
Only when a sub-trial or a spirit beast crossed her path did Shin Sumi switch her use of Shinsoo to that of Yin type.
She was becoming more and more efficient with it and soon with enough practice, Shin Sumi could go from one type to the other in less than a single breath of time.
”I have had many encounters with red level beasts recently, but since the Sand Hawk I haven't found another yellow one... Could it be that the Vein of Hell Fire was all the way back at the start of the fourth ring??!”
Shin Sumi felt that she was getting close to the inner ring. In fact she could almost see the mountain range in the distance. That was the delimitation between this one and the final ring of the floating continent.
She was starting to get anxious at the fact that the Vein of Hell Fire was nowhere to be seen. Because each domain was a ring, she was starting to feel that maybe the Vein was on some other side.
”That or I have gone too far already...”
Completely lost as to where she should go, Shin Sumi started walking in a circle. She was set on finding the source of Shinsoo, not having any other choice with regards to her cultivation.
She had previously opened fifty eight of the total sixty four Shinsoo Doors. It would be a pity to stop there even if that was already unprecedented in history.
”I am so close to completing the great circle of the Shinsoo Gathering Realm, I can't finish the tournament before I open all sixty four.”
According to her calculations though, the amount of Shinsoo necessary to surpass all the consecutive bottlenecks of each door was so high that finding the remaining two Veins of Hell Fire was the only option.
She would have to spend years in the training dimension in order to gather enough cores to break open the eight doors left, whereas the purity of the high quality Shinsoo from the Veins could burst effortlessly through many at a time.
Shin Sumi had almost completed half of a circle around the mountain range in a few weeks. For a tournament like this spanning many months it wasn't a long time, but the anxiousness in her heart started to grow with each passing day.
”Still no trace of the Vein...” she was thinking. And the scarcity of the spirit beasts even made it so she was draining her stock of resources faster than she was replenishing it, simply by maintaining her energy levels high enough.
On her path, she made sure to check each and every dark red rock formation that split open the yellow sand, in search of a tunnel or a crevice leading to the underground.
As far as she knew, all the Veins of Hell Fire were located in the center of the floating continent, but once again she seemed to have ran out of luck.
”Somebody, please help!! Anyone! We are trapped by a real monster!! Please somebody save our lives!”
Shin Sumi froze in place, almost letting go of the vibrating piece of jade in her hand.
Normally in order to send a divine sense message, one would target exclusively one jade medallion. This was the reason why people would exchange identification jade imprints, to communicate privately without worries of somebody intercepting the message.
But Shin Sumi knew that this particular broadcast had been sent at large to whoever it could reach.
She did not know who originated the message, but she knew it had to be from not too far away.
Shin Sumi considered not responding to the call for help but dismissed the idea almost immediately.
”Maybe this is the thing I have been looking for. At this point in the trial, the message has to come from at least an orange robed disciple.”
She picked up speed, following the fluctuations of Shinsoo that allowed the source of the signal to be found.
”A real monster? What could that be?” she was intrigued. This whole time she had been looking for strong beasts, following the idea that being close to a Vein of Hell Fire nurtured better and stronger beasts.
Her theory had even definitely been proven by the low level blood wolf that had chased her to the source, eventually even mutating into a Silver Blood Wolf strong enough to possibly contend with her.
Shin Sumi's red dress blurred across the desert with incredible speed. As it turned out, the divine sense message had come from a location roughly halfway between mountain range bordering the fourth domain.
She felt that she was getting closer and closer when she spotted an array of gigantic pillars of stone in the distance.
From an angle, they looked like any other rock formation. Same tone, same size, same strange silhouette shaped by the sandy wind.
A bird's eye view from the area would have revealed that the dozen rocks formed a perfect spirit formation, the dunes in between tracing lines from pillar to pillar.
Shin Sumi was about the step over the first line when her wrist hurt with a familiar feeling.
”Ouch!”
The little nut bit her. It was something she hadn't felt for quite a while. As her strength grew, the warnings from the nut became more and more scarce. But that also indicated that what was going on there was a real danger.
Upon closer inspection, Shin Sumi realized that a faint glow was visible above the dunes she was about to cross, going from rock to rock.
This was an illusory barrier purely made of Shinsoo. Although Shin Sumi's divine sense could still go further beyond, her sight was slightly affected by it.
Only because she had been warned did she spread out her divine sense in a straight line ahead.
Her eyes were only seeing an immovable desert but her Immortal sense was picking up movement, faster and faster the further she went.
”This is a giant whirlpool of some sort. The sand dunes turn all around the center point. I can't quite pick up what's going there but my guess is that the message came from someone trapped in it!”
From where she was, at the border where the sand's movements were the slowest, she felt that she could at least go a bit further. Even entire dunes couldn't keep her from turning back with that speed.
Ignoring the nut, her intuition telling her that she was about to find clues as to where the Vein was located, Shin Sumi stepped across the almost invisible line.
The first sensation that assailed her was a brutal increase in Shinsoo pressure. From where she had been standing, half a step behind, to where she was now, the difference was so strong she couldn't put it into words.
”The Vein has to be here somewhere!” she knew it. But a stronger sense of danger kept her from becoming too overjoyous.
A simple look ahead was all it took to understand the danger. In a circle ten kilometers across was the biggest whirlpool Shin Sumi had ever seen.