Ning felt some movement early morning. He got out of his cultivation and looked at what was happening.
Hijaka was up and at some point had started doing some dance-like maneuver. Ning looked at him and got a little nostalgic. Waking up before the sun rises, completing your morning routine of the body cultivation technique; it was very reminiscent of his time in Klavis.
He waited until Hijaka finished cultivating before asking, "You still follow that, huh?"
"Of course, it's one of the best body cultivation techniques out there," Hijaka said.
"Is it?" Ning asked. For him, the new technique he had right now was way better than anything he could expect from the Sun God's Morning Cleansing technique.
"Of course," Hijaka said. "It might not be the fastest and is location dependent, but if you manage to find the right spot where the sun never leaves, you can keep cultivating to great height for just 10 minutes a day. That is amazing when compared to how much time and suffering you have to put into the other techniques," Hijaka said.
"I see. That does make sense," Ning said. However, he still felt his new one was way better since it didn't slow down that much in terms of cultivation speed even at higher levels.
"Alright, let's go. We only have 6 hours together to get points before we separate again," Ning said.
"Yes," Hijaka said and they both left. They walked into another forest. The entire secret realm was nothing but a patch of the forest followed by a patch of grassland, followed by another patch of forest. It was almost like the entire land was nothing but a loop.
Along the way, they found multiple beasts that they were able to take care of very easily. Let alone, Ning, even Hijaka had no problem fighting any beasts even at the 9th Qi Condensation realm.
Ning just focused on fighting his own share of beasts and finding ingredients for himself. He would only interfere in Hijaka's fight when he was outnumbered or if the beast was in the Foundation realm.
Ning stabbed a scorpion beast right through the inside of its head and pushed the spear outwards, yet the spear stopped at the skin. The scorpion was dead, but it wouldn't have been if Ning hadn't pierced it through a soft spot.
"God, why do some of the beasts have such incredible defense? This one is only at the 2nd realm and I can't even scratch its skin," Ning said.
"Are you okay, Inikaka?" Hijaka asked.
"Oh yeah, I'm fine. It's just that I need a better spear technique. The one I currently have is getting weaker the stronger I get," Ning said.
The two moved on and fought more monsters as well as got more ingredients. Ning also asked about the new Klavis a little more.
Apparently, after Hyesi reached the peak of the foundation realm, he started looking for better land to live in. He used the map Ning had given him to traverse the lands. He was gone for nearly a decade when he found the perfect land for the Klavian people.
It was a desert with no mountains anywhere. But it also was very close to the sea and close to a massive city with access to forests and other cities.
All in all, it was the perfect place. Hyesi made friends with the mayor of the city and was allowed to move his people nearby. Soon, they formed a small city, which grew to a larger city, which soon grew enough to have the people transfer to multiple cities.
In less than a hundred years, Klavis was very well known amongst the western part of the Northern Continent.
Ning nodded as he heard those things. He was quite happy and honestly surprised to see Klavis develop to what it was now. And it was all thanks to the little guy he tried to swindle to get himself some energy.
Ning smiled as he thought of that.
Soon the two of them were out of the forests and into another patch of the grasslands. Ning looked to the sky behind the forest on the other side of the grassland.
He could still see the slightly purple barrier standing there. He looked to the left and right and saw that the barrier was equidistant on both sides of him.
"Could it be?" he said softly and immediately ran forward to look behind him. Once he was far enough, he could see that he was at the very center of the secret realm.
"Inikaka," Hijaka said. "Over there," he pointed to the distance. Ning turned around to see that there were a bunch of people gathered around something.
He walked forward and saw that it was a lake that they were all looking at. "I wonder what's going on," he said and walked to the lake.
He could see that there were about 12 people around the lake, but all of them seemed to be terrified. Their faces showed great fear, but they also showed great greed.
"What are they looking at?" Ning wondered as he walked a little forward and saw a small land in the middle of the lake. The land was barely a meter wide, so it wasn't that great. But what was growing on that land was.
In the middle of the land was a small, 2-meter tall tree with a single fruit in the middle. The fruit was pure white with not a speck of another color and looked like it was slightly glowing even in the intense sun of noon.
Ning's eyes turned wide when he saw it. "The Angel's Touch," he couldn't believe what he was seeing. There was an Angel's Touch in front of him right in the center of the lake.
Yet nobody was doing anything to reach it. "What's up with— " Suddenly, Ning stopped. Something moved in the waters. Ning slowly turned his head towards the water but the sunlight was making it hard to see, and his divine sense didn't reach that far.
However, from the slight undulation of the Qi in the air, he could tell that whatever the monster was, it was strong.