Aksai carefully considered his options.
Teleporting back to the Enchanted Everwood Farm would certainly be more convenient, but the potential risks of creating a detectable ripple in the spatial fabric made him hesitant.
Although his connection with the Myriad World Paintings was stable, the possibility that the creators of the Holy Land had set up traps against spatial tampering was too great to ignore.
Better to handle things directly from here, he decided.
Settling on his plan, Aksai prepared to cast his modified Brain Bonsai Formation on-site.
First, he disabled the array formation on the platform, then retrieved an Array Disk from his spatial storage ring, placing it securely on the ground.
From his ring, he summoned four gray, dense brains he’d stored earlier, each floating to an Array Eye positioned at cardinal points around the disk.
With a thought, he activated his meteor sword, directing it with a subtle twist of his hand. The sword moved with precision, hovering over the three demonic cultivators he’d just killed.
In swift, clean motions, the sword extracted the brains of each cultivator, each one then floating to a designated Array Eye that acted as the formation’s “input” nodes.
The altar beneath provided an ideal location; its unique properties allowed him to mask the Spirit Pulse emanating from his formation, cloaking his activity from any unexpected surveillance.
Although he knew that there was nobody in the vicinity, Aksai liked to act prudently at all times.
The Spirit farmer channeled his Spirit Essence into the formation, and it surged to life. Energy pulsed through the Array Disk and into the brains positioned around it.
A faint hum filled the air as the Brain Bonsai Formation began to activate, cycling through each memory stored within the cultivators’ minds.
The first two demonic cultivators hadn’t been handled gently, and their memories came through blurred and fragmented.
Brief flashes emerged in Aksai’s mind—a few images of dense forest paths, glimpses of other demonic cultivators moving in groups, snatches of whispered conversations. It was useful, but incomplete.
But the third memory stream was different. He had been meticulous with the last cultivator, and now it paid off. As Aksai sifted through this set of memories, the images were far more cohesive, painting a clearer picture of the demonic cultivators’ actions and intentions.
He saw their journey into the Holy Land, guided by ancient documents the demonic sects had salvaged.
He watched them as they discovered clues hinting at powerful relics and Spirit bloodline-enhancing formations hidden deep within. Aksai could see maps they had, which matched sections of his own spectral map, with certain marked locations glowing.
There were also snippets of whispered discussions among the demonic cultivators—talk of high-value targets, planned ambushes, and talks of demon beasts that were said to protect the innermost areas of the Holy Land. These creatures were key, they believed, to accessing the most powerful artifacts and other secrets of the holy land.
Pulling back from the vision, Aksai took a deep breath. The demonic cultivators were here for more than reconnaissance; they sought to claim the Holy Land’s power for themselves. Although they had discovered the holy land by accident, they had already started considering this place as a part of their territory.
The holy land would have been exploited by the three major demonic sects long ago if there was stable entry and exit methods available to them. The holy land’s resources were intact only because they were stuck inside once they got in.
Aksai deactivated the Brain Bonsai Formation, the memories now safely recorded in his neural link fabric. He glanced down at the altar’s platform, his mind racing. This place held more secrets than he’d realized, and it seemed that much of it was shielded by the fear of druid guardians and deadly traps.
“So Holy Land Torel is the reason why I took the actions that I took in the past,” Aksai thought to himself and sighed.
His mind spun with the connections he was unraveling. The demonic cultivators’ memories revealed that the recent seismic events across the Dadangar Subcontinent all traced back to one source—the emergence of the Holy Land Torel.
For the first time, Aksai saw the web linking his past and present, piecing together what had once seemed like unrelated opportunities and crises.
“No wonder the demonic cultivators weren’t interested in the 3rd-order cultivation cave in the Dadangar Seas or any other new site,” he muttered to himself. “They’ve been laser-focused on the Holy Land Torel all along.”
The memories he’d scanned revealed that, while Aksai had still been a Spirit farmer on the Lakir Estate, the Wild Devil Lands had experienced a strange, powerful earthquake. This earthquake had gone unnoticed by most cultivators in Dadangar, yet it left a significant mark in the form of a peculiar Spirit essence pulse, which spread throughout the subcontinent.
That quake, it seemed, had been the first ripple of the Holy Land Torel forcing its way back into existence. As its mystical barriers stirred, they’d affected the surrounding areas, triggering the mysterious tremors that marked new opportunities all across Dadangar.
Aksai’s mind traced back to the ruins of the Lakir Clan, remembering how its downfall had begun with the appearance of a Foundation Building Expert’s hidden cultivation cave at the borders of two counties within the Rokur Kingdom. The Lakir clan had to fight an equally powerful cultivation clan because of the cave. It was then eventually destroyed by the Purple River Sect’s hidden schemes.
The demonic cultivators’ memories made it clear: this was one of the first instances of the Holy Land’s energy awakening hidden remnants from the past, stirring up both new Spirit-rich lands, hidden treasures, and the eventual deadly conflicts as a consequence because of them.
And the effects hadn’t stopped there. Aksai realized that even the Spirit Veins that had appeared on various islands in the Dadangar Archipelago had likely been caused by this latent Spirit Pulse from the Holy Land Torel.
It was like a delayed reaction—the land itself responding to that initial quake with new veins of power, long after the first tremor had settled. It means that the 2nd order Spirit Vein on Emerald Cove was also because of the Holy Land Torel.
Thinking about the 3rd-order cultivation cave that had set the Dadangar Alliance and Kalingoot at each other’s throats, Aksai nodded to himself. That, too, must have been another of Torel’s side effects.
This recent discovery had tempted both Dadangar Alliance representing the righteous faction and Kalingoot representing the demonic faction, sparking a brutal war over its Spirit-rich bounty. Yet, the Holy Land Torel’s presence loomed as the larger prize, the true source of these new spiritual wells.
Finally, Aksai realized that the demonic faction’s secrecy hadn’t gone unnoticed forever. The Haan Di Lord, one of the more powerful rulers in the subcontinent, had eventually connected the dots.
Seeing a pattern in the tremors and the waves of new opportunities popping up all across the subcontinent, the Haan Di Lord had identified the Holy Land Torel as their source.
In short, the Holy Land Torel was no ordinary site.
It was as if it had been waiting beneath the surface, altering the land to draw in not just cultivators but entire factions.
Aksai also found some more information related to the holy land itself.
It turned out that the demonic cultivators viewed this edge of the Holy Land Torel—the barren outskirts—as practically worthless, considering it unworthy of exploration.
This explained why he’d seen so few signs of life or activity, beyond the faint, dusty footprints left by the trio of demonic cultivators he’d recently encountered.
But what struck him even more was the revelation that these demonic cultivators had actually discovered a way to lift the land’s restrictive influence over their cultivation—a feat he had believed impossible.
They had found a way to trigger druidic transformations.
“Druids…” Aksai muttered, shaking his head in mild disbelief.
It was almost humorous to imagine these demonic cultivators, who normally practiced dark and ruthless techniques, taking on the spirit of the land itself, becoming one with nature in order to gain freedom from its oppressive rules.
And yet, the memories showed him that many of the demonic cultivators who’d pursued this method had not only gained greater freedom but had also survived longer here because of it.
It made sense now why he’d run into the trio—mere stragglers left behind by their main group because they were considered weak links.
However, in an ironic twist, these outcasts had discovered an unorthodox method to improve their power, and they’d converged at this very site because it provided them with the means to complete the transformation.
As ridiculous as it sounded, these three had come here to make one last effort at gaining druidic Spirit abilities, hoping to reclaim their place among their demonic peers by harnessing the holy land’s native powers.
Aksai could see at this point that being isolated and trapped within Torel for so long had forced these cultivators to experiment, learn, and adapt in ways that even he hadn’t considered.