John stared at the ancient sword embedded into the tree. Despite giving off an ancient aura, there was no rust or damage to the sword, at least on the portion visible to John.
"Did you notice anything while inspecting it?" John asked Adam.
Adam had been intensively inspecting the sword while he had been fighting Mark. After everything John had seen regarding Adam so far, he was starting to trust his judgement more and more on things such as this.
"Nope. I didn't detect any formations or any danger coming from it," Adam replied confidently.
John nodded his head and stepped towards the sword. His hand reached out, and firmly grasped its hilt as he tried to pull it out of the tree.
"Gahhhhhhh!"
John cried out in pain and fell to his knees, desperately struggling against the sword.
"John!" Adam cried out in surprise. He had truly not detected any danger coming from the sword, although his realm was far below the person who used this sword. If whoever used this sword in the past wanted to hide a nasty formation in it, Adam most likely would not be able to detect it.
John continued to cry out in pain, and Adam panicked for a moment before rushing up to John and pulling him off the sword, not knowing if he would be affected by the formation as well or not.
John plopped to the ground and laid there motionlessly for a while.
"John, are you okay?" Adam asked in a panicked voice.
John continued to lie there in silence for a short while before laughter started to escape from his mouth.
"Hahahaha!"
John continued to laugh, and the worried expression on Adam's face quickly turned to anger. He kicked John in the ribs as hard as he could.
"You damn bastard! How was that funny?" Adam asked angrily.
Clearly John had been joking the whole time.
John slowly stood up, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. He took a moment to calm down before replying.
"I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist."
A formation disk suddenly appeared in Adam's hand, and a surge of power from it slammed into John, sending him flying backwards dozens of yards. He tumbled head over heels several times before finally coming to a stop.
"That's what you get for tricking me like that," Adam replied. His anger had faded after landing that blow on John.
John stood up from Adam's attack and walked back over to him. He draped his arm around Adam's shoulder as a happy smile appeared on his face.
"Part of it was a joke, and part of it was to test you. I wanted to see what you would do if I was in danger, and you didn't hesitate to risk your own safety to help me. I considered you as a follower before, but now I consider you as a brother."
Adam's fading anger became stunned for a moment, before his face changed to contain both happiness and pride. He puffed out his chest, as if such a thing was only natural.
"I knew you would see straight one of these days. I'll do you a favor and allow you this whole thing to slide...brother!" Adam replied, his prideful tone filled with elation.
John nodded his head with an approving smile, and patted Adam on the shoulders several times before turning once more to the sword. His hand reached out, and he gripped it tightly before pulling it out with all his might.
The sword resisted for a moment, before it slowly began to be pulled from the tree.
"Goddamn this sword is heavy," John grunted as he activated his Supreme Battle Art to increase his body strength.
With his increased strength, the sword slid out of the tree faster, until it was fully revealed. The sword's hilt was a foot long, with a four foot blade. The blade was a lustrous silver, with small formation runes carved into its surface to give it extra power.
Boom!
The blade slammed into the ground after having been removed from the tree. John gritted his teeth as he once again picked it up, barely managing to do so before it crashed to the ground once more.
"This sword must weigh at least five thousand pounds, if not more." John said as he sighed in fatigue. Just lifting that sword was a workout of its own, and only in his strongest state, using his Immortal Asura Transformation Art, would he be able to slightly wield it.
Even then, he would most likely only be able to swing it one or twice before running out of energy. His current scythe weighed close to eight hundred pounds, and it was the perfect weight for him. Going to five thousand pounds for a weapon was a leap too large for him to make right now.
He would need his body to be in the Core Formation Realm before he would think about using it, and even then it didn't suit him that well as it was a sword, and not a scythe.
'Oh well, at least I can use this as a final blow or something, if brute force is all I need.'
John let the sword sit on the ground, and both him and Adam began to closely inspect it for some time. They wanted to see if they could notice anything unique about it, but even after a lengthy inspection, neither noticed anything useful.
"Those runes on the sword act as an amplifier. When the user sends their sword Qi into the sword, it will amplify and make the attacks stronger. Unfortunately, neither of us know how to generate Sword Qi, so that feature is mostly worthless," Adam said after his careful study of the sword.
"I'm sure we'll find a use for it eventually. If not nothing else, I'm sure it will sell for a hefty sum of money," John replied as he put the sword away into his palace realm.
With the sword safely secured, John's anticipation for exploring these lands increased even further. If a Meridian Forging Grade weapon was just lying around like this, what else could exist deeper into its core?
John and Adam set up a campfire and roasted some meat, both making sure to eat their full and replenish their energy. After finishing their meals, the two stood up and brushed the dust off their robes, before walking deeper into the forest.
The direction they chose was still towards the center of the wastelands.
The forest was quite expansive, and the two of them walked through it for over a day without running into any other cultivators or beasts. Eventually, slight frustration washed over Adam as he had been expecting something more out of the forest.
"Fuck this, I'm done blindly walking," Adam said out loud as he sat on the ground.
John looked over to Adam in a confused manner, as this outburst had come from nowhere. He was about to ask what Adam was doing, when he noticed Adam began to set up a formation. He paused and walked over to the side, curious as to what Adam was up to.
"I don't know if this will work, but I'll give it a shot," Adam said as a formation disk appeared in his hands.
Formation disks were usually the core of formations, and formation experts had a wide variety of them suited for a wide variety of tasks. John had no idea how many Adam had, but he always seemed to pull out a different one every time. Curiosity got the best of him as he decided to ask about it.
"Adam, how many of those disks do you have? Aren't formation disks quite expensive?"
From what John knew, being a formations master was an expensive profession, and formations disks were incredibly expensive. Some formation masters didn't even have more than a handful of disks, but Adam seemed to pull them out like it was nothing.
A weird expression appeared on Adam's face for a moment before he replied.
"They are, and I have quite a few," Adam replied with vague details, clearly not wanting to talk about it.
John noticed this, and decided to drop it there as he watched Adam continue his work. He carved formation lines into the ground, and set up various items at various locations. After a long while, Adam finally wiped the sweat off his brow as he sat at the center of the formation and picked up the disk.
His Qi was channeled into the disk, which flowed through the recently made formation lines, and were amplified by the various items he put throughout the formation. A strange energy began to whirl around Adam, and Adam closed his eyes as he focused intently on whatever he was doing.
This process continued for several minutes, before his eyes opened and he stared in a certain direction. The formation died down, and Adam stood up as he pointed in the direction he was staring.
"There's a slightly increased density of Qi in that direction, and it had a strange property I couldn't identify. I'm sure we'll run into a treasure, or at least something worth checking out, if we continue that way," Adam said to John.
John's eyes lit up. "You can do such a thing with your formations? Haha, having you around truly is beneficial," John replied in a happy tone. Formations masters truly were amazing, not when it came to fighting, but when it came to many other things.
"It doesn't work every time, and will only work if I'm in range of something giving off a unique Qi signature. Also, this disk has limited uses before it runs out, so we can't just use it all the time," Adam replied.
After cleaning up the formation items, Adam and John set off in the identified direction. They continued on for many hours, before they saw a glow of red light leak through the foliage in front of them. They both looked at each other for a moment, realizing that this must be the source of what Adam detected, before proceeding carefully towards the light.
Eventually, the source of the light came into view several hundred yards away. Their eyes widened in surprise, before also becoming slightly grave.
In the dense forest before them, the source of the red glow was revealed to be a small plant, several feet tall. The plant had three blood red fruits on it, which gave off the vibrant red glow. The red fruit seemed to swirl from within, as if there was blood pulsating through it. While both of them were not sure what type of fruit it was, they could both tell it was amazing.
However, the thing that shocked them about this plant was beneath it, and before it. The plant grew out of a dead skull, which neither John nor Adam could identify. The skull seemed slightly humanoid, and at the same time was different enough to tell them it wasn't. Not only that, but it was three times larger than a normal human skull.
Despite being dead for who knows how many years, a dense aura of blood and death emanated from it. The deathly aura was not from the skull itself, but from the lingering death aura of all those it had slain while it was alive. Although the cultivation of the skull owner was unknown, John estimated that it was at least in the Meridian Forging Realm, if not the Heaven Tribulation Realm.
Neither John nor Adam had felt anything like it before, and Adam was scared stiff just by the aura alone. John on the other hand, felt a slight pull from both the fruit and the skull, as if he had a connection with it. While he couldn't pinpoint this feeling, he knew he needed to inspect it more closely.
However, a small problem existed when it came to approaching the skull and fruit. Before the skull and fruit, a beast slept.
"A Blood Tiger, and an early Core Formation one at that," Adam stated as he stared at the beast.
Blood Tigers were attracted to sources of blood, and this one seemed to be cultivating around the blood-like fruit.
John nodded his head, and inspected the surroundings to see if there was anything else of note. After confirming the coast was clear, John looked back towards the Blood Tiger. It was eight feet tall and twenty feet long from head to tail. Blood colored stripes covered its back, and sharp red claws extended from its paws.
"The fruits are quite enticing, but with that Blood Tiger, there's no way we can obtain it. We might as well get goin- Hey, what the fuck are you doing?"
Adams' words advising of their departure quickly turned to words of panic, as he noticed John had stood up and was walking directly towards the beast.