The truth was that the three youths with him hadn't been able to see the battle situation like he had. His Mental Realm was far beyond theirs and he was an expert at controlling it. It may have seemed like he was close to the valley, but the truth was that he was several mountain peaks away and over a hundred kilometers from Ryu.
Those three young Necromancers thought he was going closer to check out the situation, they had no idea that he already had a firm grasp of where the treasure was and that it was already all but his now.
Zulfiqar smiled to himself, seemingly content.
'… A Divine Vessel Realm boy managed to teleport so far away…? How is that possible?'
[Warp] had a very short range. Within a hundred meters was the best one can do, and most would be even worse. But, Ryu had managed to not only leave the range of the valley, but had also exited the entire range of the conflict. That was several kilometers at the very least.
'How could a Spiritual Endowment expert have so much Spiritual Qi…'
At this point, Zulfiqar was even happier that Ryu was dead. Having such an anomaly as an enemy would make it difficult for him to even sleep at night. But, he felt that this was only right. If this boy wasn't at least this heaven defying, how could he dare to enter this place and even steal a treasure beneath the eyes of so many experts?
If it wasn't for him noticing the fluctuations of Ryu's Northern Heavenly Wind Mortal Endowment, Ryu would have actually gotten away cleanly. The other beasts and experts ultimately ignored it because it was just of the Impose Realm. So, they didn't analyze it too deeply and just assumed it was just more rabble fighting amongst each other.
However, Zulfiqar had had a literal bird's eye view of the entire matter. He knew well that that was no normal Impose Realm Inheritance.
"… Huh?"
Zulfiqar froze.
He had reached the place Ryu should have come to, but he didn't find the corpse he was looking for. In fact, there wasn't a single drop of blood, nor was there even the slightest energy fluctuation.
"That's impossible, I completely destroyed his heart…" Zulfiqar's frown deepened.
Could he be wrong about the location? But that was impossible too. He had perfectly mapped it all to this very place. His fine control of his Spiritual Sense was exactly why he was of the greatest Necromancers of his generation. He wouldn't make such a rudimentary mistake.
Opening up his palm, several spiders barely two inches long appeared. However, if one looked closely, they were entirely exoskeleton.
They shot off in all directions, looking for even the tiniest of clues.
If Matheus were here, he would be in absolute awe.
Compared to bone, exoskeletons of deceased beasts were incredibly fragile. This was doubly so considering the extraordinarily small size of the corpse puppets Zulfiqar was controlling.
Forget about being precise, even implementing the slightest bit of uncontrolled Spiritual Qi would cause these corpse puppets to break, crumbling to dust. The amount of fine motor control needed to be the master of just one was completely outside the bounds of reason. Yet, Zulfiqar was controlling hundreds!
To say that this seemingly young man was a genius was the understatement of understatements.
However, even with his genius, he was completely unable to find Ryu.
A daunting shadow was cast over his heart. Just how was any of this possible?
"…" Zulfiqar stood without a word for a long time.
"… Don't let me find you before you grow."
Without another word, he turned and left, not knowing that Ryu was just ten meters beneath his feet.
**
Ryu knew quite well that Zulfiqar was standing above him. Or rather, he would have known had he had the wherewithal to care. In his present state, he was completely reliant on Ailsa to operate the cloak. The issue was that Ailsa still couldn't stay in her true form for very long.
The good news was that she had lasted long enough for Zulfiqar to leave. The bad news was that it was impossible for them to tell whether or not he had left any of his corpse puppets behind. With his level of control, and their small size, Ryu wasn't confident in dealing with them.
Plus… He had a fist size hole in his chest. Had he not fused with the Realm Heart, he would be a dead man already. This was too close of a call. He hadn't even been here a week, yet he had almost died twice. Well, three times if he counted Zulfiqar's arrow and his search for two.
Well… He got what he had asked for. He wanted to live with his life on the line, and the Moon World delivered.
This said, the potential lingering corpse puppets may not be too much of a problem because Ryu and Ailsa were already on the move, tunneling through the ground.
Ryu lay in his Death Worm Immortal Cave beneath the Immortal Qi Source Ailsa had evolved, paled faced and wheezing. However, despite his ghastly wound, he knew that his life wasn't on the line. Half of his heart existed on the Ethereal Plane, so as long as an attack didn't exist across both Planes, he could recover.
Unfortunately, though, in order to recover he would need to swallow his precious Crown Grade Spiritual Herbs.
"The stronger a body, the more difficult it is to heal. You may be a Divine Vessel Realm expert, but your body is already as stronger as an Immortal Ring Expert. You'll have to swallow all of them."
Not all of the five remaining Crown Grade Herbs Ryu had were good for healing. He had given one of them to Guiot, so he only had two left. However, Ryu had the Incubator and his own knowledge as an Herbologist.
Those two healing herbs could be absorbed normally, but for the final three, he would have to make some modifications. It's just that it's extremely difficult to think when there was a hole in your chest.
Ryu had no choice but to absorb the first two Spiritual Herbs first, hoping it would alleviate his pain.
The Incubator did what it was meant to do. The tyrannical energies became as docile as a baby. Ryu could almost instantaneously feel his flesh and bone begin to reform and color slowly returned to his face.
It took several days of nursing the energies he absorbed and calculating how to efficiently use the remaining three herbs to maximize their small healing abilities, but Ryu's situation finally stabilized, countless liters of blood later.
For the first time in what felt like forever, Ryu slowly sat up. It would take some time for his lost blood to be recuperated. It was only right, his blood was worth more on average than others and he needed a lot of fuel to sustain it. Unfortunately, he hadn't been doing much eating in the recent days for obvious reasons.
Ryu's gaze still held a biting cold. He had analyzed the energy fluctuations that pierced him so many times that he could recognize them even if he was burnt to dust.
He had really almost died.
'… A good lesson indeed..' The cold glint in his eyes was so fierce that his silver irises seemed blue for a moment.