Alice who was on a stall separated from Sarina and Kana, saw her brother returning ith a bright smiling expression on his face.
“Let me guess, you found something of that list?”.
Aster nodded.
“Yes, one of the rarest materials actually, so Rya is going to have a busy time tonight hahaha”.
Alice laughed, “well… it’s good for Rya to practice considering how big he is right now”, she thought.
Leaving aside that little exchange, they all reunited to decide where will they go now, Aster took out the map that the woman who found the sprout of the black water yin flower, gave him.
“I found something interesting, do you ladies want to do a little treasure hunting with me?”, he asked.
Sarina saw the location marked in the map and it was not too far from Hawthorn city, so she didn’t have any problem, Kana also wanted to play in the forest with Aster and Alice so it was a win-win situation.
“Sure, it’s not too deep in the forest so let’s do some little exploring, but what do you expect to find there?”.
Aster shrugged.
“To be honest I don’t know if there will something, let’s just say that I got an incredibly rare thing from that same place, and there is a possibility that other good things are hidden near that area”.
A treasure like the black water flower is bound to change its surroundings, due to the huge amount of yin element that is gathered for its formation, unlike men who are likely to suffer cold poisoning due to an excess of yin if they don’t have a way to refine it, women can directly benefit from it, specially those who had a constitution related to the yin element… like Aria.
They walked all the way to the east gate of the city, the guards recognized them so they were allowed to leave without any problems, the entrance to the ancient forest was less than one kilometer away from Hawthorn city, so it didn’t take them too much time to arrive.
Unlike the forest near Oak Heart city, Aster noticed that the trees that grew in this place had some thorns here and there, Sarina took the lead to guide them into the forest, they walked until a thick wall of thorn bushes blocked a big part of their path.
The cave on which the woman found the sprout was behind that wall, normally the good things that explorers find are deep within the forest and since the place wasn’t so far from the city, no one bothered to look at it, the woman just accidentally found the cave but besides a “rotten sprout”, there was nothing else.
Sarina used her spirit energy to protect everyone from the thorns, at the other side of that unusually large number of bushes there was a little cave of at most two meters tall and six meters deep.
Aster noticed the place where the sprout used to be, the woman didn’t bother to fill the hole in the ground, there was nothing else there anyway, instead of that Rigel’s flame covered the whole cave.
As always Kana played with them for a couple of minutes while Aster used dome of it to inspect the wall of the cave, until he finally found what he was looking for, in the roof of the cave at the same spot where the sprout was before, there was a small black crystal buried in the stone.
With a wave of his hand, a piece of stone was separated from the cave and Aster refined the stone until the only thing on his hand was a five centimeters black crystal.
“Mm?”, Kana curiously looked at the crystal because she felt the space within the cave was a bit more comfortable than before, it was hard for her to describe.
“Big brother, what is that crystal? I feel comfortable when I look at it”.
Aster patted Kana’s head a couple of times before answering.
“This crystal is an agglomeration of yin element, later I will prepare a spirit array which will use this crystal to help you all cultivate faster”.
While a five centimeters crystal might sound too little, the amount of yin that was concentrated inside was quite big, Aster could have taken even the stones from the cave since they contained small amounts of yin but the crystal was more than enough for the girls, also destroying a place which could in the future give birth to another spirit treasure was against the ethic of a cultivator that Lilia taught him.
They left the cave and once they went through the wall of thorns, they found themselves surrounded by a lot of the same vines which attacked Alice when they first arrived at Prasil.
Before they would not pay too much attention as the guardian vines patrolled the forest from time to time, but now they knew that the vines worked for the cosmos tree, so Sarina immediately stood in front of her daughter while Aster took a few steps ahead of them, his golden eyes glowed for a second but the confrontation they expected didn’t happen.
To everyone’s surprise the vines bowed and a letter fell from the body of the one that was in the middle, Aster took it and he smiled, apparently the cosmos tree knew that Aurelian passed away, the letter said that it wanted to cooperate with them to deal with the netherworld vine, Riga and the corrupted ones, in exchange once they are all sealed away or destroyed the wall that isolates the galaxy will disappear and everyone will be free to leave.
Aster gave the letter to the girls, to be honest he didn’t trust the cosmos tree, and there was no need for him to be afraid of it, the fact that it used the vines to communicate was a clear sign that it considered him a threat.
Alice shook her head after reading the contents of the letter.
“We aren’t its peons, if it wants to cooperate with us, then tell that tree to come here and speak with us face to face, I don’t believe that something that was able to make a contract with a heavenly transformation cultivator doesn’t have a way to speak to us directly”.
The vines reacted by violently moving themselves like snakes, but Aster’s spirit pressure made them return to their previous stance.
Sarina agreed with Alice.
“Alice is right, why should we trust it, after all the things the first king told us, to be honest both the vine and the tree haven’t done any good to the people of Prasil”.
Aster nodded, although it felt weird to speak to the vines, he knew the cosmos tree would get the message from them.
“You heard them, the first condition is a face-to-face meeting, the designated place and time will be the royal castle tomorrow… we will wait at the entrance thirty minutes after midday, then we will decide whether we want to team up with you or not”.
The vines stood still for a moment before the one that handed Aster the letter nodded, all the vines turned around and returned to the depths of the forest.
Kana was still processing what happened, although the guardian vines were known for attacking those who were considered bad and help those who fought against the corrupted, there hasn’t ever been a case where the vines literally held a “conversation” with someone.
“As expected of big brother Aster… things that others might think impossible tend to happen around him”, she thought.
Being in the forest right now didn’t seem like a good idea so they returned to the city, on the way Aster felt a gaze focusing on him but he couldn’t find the origin of it, Alice noticed her brother was looking at their surroundings from time to time.
“Is everything okay?”.
Aster shook his head.
“Don’t worry I just felt as if someone was observing me, but I can’t find the source… so whoever it was, it’s really far from this place”.
Aster had confidence on his spirit sense, even his mother had troubles to hide from him, the only flaw was that he had a limited range due to his current realm.
Alice frowned her eyebrows; unlike her brother she didn’t feel anything so that gaze was directed only at Aster.
“It’s probably the cosmos tree… let’s stay on the city lord’s mansion for the rest of the day, mom should be arriving at night and I bet she will be here in less than an hour hahaha”.
Aster smiled, being separated from Lilia wasn’t something he enjoyed, Sarina heard what Alice said and she felt nervous, at this point she understood that Aster’s mother had a big authority in their family, so she wanted to leave a good first impression, besides she will also get to know the other “sisters”, with whom she will be living.
While her brother was lost in his thoughts, Alice did notice Sarina troubled expression and she mentally laughed.
“Even on your wildest imaginative scenarios, you would not guess who are the other girls, a pair of twins which were sealed in a book, the spirit form of giant sword, the ice princess… and his own mother and sister hahaha”.
There were no surprises on the way to the city, but when they arrived at the east gate… there was blood and corpses all over the place, the very same guards which were in duty a couple of hours earlier, were now death with their internal organs spilled on the ground.
Sarina tried to cover her daughter’s eyes, but Kana stopped her from doing so, although she was a bit shocked for the gory scene, she calmed down immediately.
“I’m also a cultivator mom… although I don’t like to see bloody scenes like this, I won’t ever be afraid of bad people again!!!”.
Sarina smiled, “this girl has grown up so much in just a couple of days”, she thought.
Kana turned to see Aster like saying “I’m bold, compliment me”, which earned her some pats on her head from him, then everyone’s expressions turned serious.
Aster used the paragon body to cover everyone, besides the blood there were some traces of corruption left in the ground, so this was done by a corrupted, the problem was that if the situation was taken care of, then there should new guards supervising the area but there wasn’t.
They slowly entered the city and the first they saw was a ton of corrupted fighting with the guards of the city, the smell of blood filled the air, the sounds of people screaming on every direction, in just a couple of hours Hawthorn city turned into a bloody battlefield.