Ignoring Tiana’s unsatisfied expression due to their fight being interrupted, Alice jumped out of the platform and directly landed next to Aster before she hugged his right arm, putting an innocent front as she looked at her brother through the veil that was covering her upper face.
“She was the one that started it, I bought a little gift for you and she interfered”, said Alice in a feigned aggrieved voice.
Tiana which saw her family also approaching the platform and was walking towards them, nearly tripped after listening to Alice putting all the blame on her.
“Oi, how can you be so shameless, I paid a deposit for that… thing, Mom, Dad, lend me a hand here, it’s something that could help Erick with his body constitution”, she mumbled with a stubborn expression on her face.
Baron felt a headache coming his way, he inwardly sighed knowing his daughter won’t speak if were to be tortured, so instead he turned to see Aria and the others before saying.
“Excuse me young misses, could any of you please explain to me what happened?”.
Seeing Alice intensely glaring at them like saying “keep your mouths shut”, Aria giggled before she took the initiative to tell what happened.
Turns out, Tiana was wandering around the street stands, where the disciples and elders that don’t own a store offer the treasures and other valuable stuff they find on their adventures, when something caught her attention.
In one stand of an external disciple, she saw a claw bone the size of a hand, while the size is normal for large seized spirit beasts, this particular bone was completely black colored, and had no spirit energy left.
The bones of a spirit beast keep traces of the spirit energy of the beast to which they belonged, once the spirit energy is completely drained, they will age like normal bones, so you might ask why that bone caught Tiana’s attention then.
The reason is quite simple, she who is on par with a Star Axys cultivator in body cultivation, but with a physical strength which fairly surpasses that, nearly reaching the Carnal Disaster realm, couldn’t even leave a scratch on it.
So, she questioned herself, “How strong was the beast to which it belonged, if after losing every ounce of remaining spirit energy and be buried for who knows how many years on the dirt, it was still sturdy enough to resist her strength.
Of course, she wanted to buy it, unfortunately if anything, Tiana is bad hiding her expressions, so the seller immediately noticed she was quite interested on that bone he found on a random hole when he was looking for water in the desert, and decided to take this chance to get enough money to buy the resources he needed.
Setting a price of about 15 million spirit jades, he felt content with himself, Tiana gritted her teeth and offered to leave a deposit which was all the money she had with her right now, with the promise that she would return in a couple of hours with the rest of the payment.
The seller accepted, but stayed on the street thinking that today might be his lucky day and someone might give him even more money for some of the other items he brought back.
Then Alice and the other girls appeared and simply surfed through most of the things of the stands, they bought some things that thought were interesting, until Alice had a small reaction towards a hand sized black claw.
The rest of the story goes without saying, unlike Tiana, Alice had a pretty hefty amount of spirit jades as she also had her share form the Riga royal treasury, plus the part that Aster gave her from the mercenaries and the “guards” of the border station back at Rodia.
She offered 20 million of spirit jades, the seller accepted faster than what he could process the offer, but just as she was keeping the claw on her ring, Tiana arrived, the seller explained the situation and offered to return her the deposit.
Alice simply ignored them but as she and the girls were about t leave, Tiana took the bullet and offered thrice the price of the bone, just to be rejected by Alice, then somehow, they started discussing about who “deserved” the bone more, and that’s when things got heated up… because both of them argued to have the most outstanding younger brother, and that’s how they ended competing for the ownership of the little thing.
As Aria finished reconstructing the whole story based on what she saw and the parts told by the seller, which was now nowhere to be seen, both Aster and Erick couldn’t help but laugh at their respective sisters.
That being said, Erick still gave Aster and apologetic gaze.
“Brother, my sister is a bit overprotective sometimes, when she isn’t kicking my ass out of nowhere so don’t blame her, she is just irrational… ouch”, in the middle of their conversation, Tiana hit Erick on the shoulder making him fly a few dozens of meters landing in the middle of the crowd, then completely ignoring Erick, Tiana inspected Aster from head to toe.
“A Stellar Constellation energy path cultivator, that could completely negate the attack of my spear, it shouldn’t be possible… who are you?”, she asked with a curious filled pair of eyes.
“Sis, I was just joking, you nearly broke my shoulder you know?”, said Erick as he returned to where they were.
Aster saw Erick dusting off his shirt and he chuckled before saying.
“I don’t think this is a good place to speak, Erick how about you show us the place where we will be staying, then we can have a nice conversation”.
Before Erick could answer, Ritz immediately nodded, thanking to the heavens that Aster had some “common sense” unlike that problematic pair of siblings.
“Good idea, let’s go right now… don’t take it as an offense, but I would like the young generation of the sect to not lose their wishes to further improve”, said Ritz looking at some of the people which were dumbfounded after listening to Tiana’s careless declaration.
One must know that she is the strongest in the young generation, not only she has never been defeated in a challenge, she had even held her ground against mortal transcending cultivators in exhibition fights before.
She is the champion of their star cluster, and yet they heard that same goddess saying that a Stellar Constellation youth, just blocked one of her attacks like it was nothing, their brains nearly shortcut.
Without saying anything else, Ritz flew away followed by everyone, the gravity in this star cluster and this specific planet was about ten six or seven times stronger than the Azure Sky planet, so unlike the Rodia star cluster, here a cultivation of at least the middle stage of the Stellar Constellation realm is needed to glide through the air, and that only for a couple of hundreds of meters before landing to take impulse again.
So, besides Kana who was being helped to float by Sarina, Tiana was surprised to see Aster worriless appearance as he flew with his own powers, he expected it from Alice as she was also a body cultivator, meaning her body was quite stronger than other people, but as far as she understood Aster was an energy/soul cultivator.
She stole a gaze at her brother which made Erick feel a chill running down his spine, feeling he was going to receive a beating from his irrational sister later, and that wasn’t all, Sofia also seemed to have something to discuss as she flew next to him with a somewhat contemplative expression.
Aster on the other hand was a bit interested in the bone that caught Alice’s interest, but it wouldn’t be too late to inspect it when they reach the place where they will be staying.
With Ritz opening a passage through the barrier of the sect, it didn’t take them long to reach the other side of the fourth level of the mountain, where the residences of the elders and honorable guests are.
Besides Ritz, Simon and Adrian, there are only other two Mortal Transcending realm cultivators that live at the fifth level of the mountain, all the other elders have their palaces here, of course even among the elders there are levels and so there is an inner circle of palaces which are bigger than the others.
Ritz landed at one of those which was next to the one where Erick’s parents lived, he handed Aster a token with the number “5” engraved on it before saying.
“This palace has never been occupied before, please use it as you wish, a little gift from the patriarch, if you need some maids just tell me and I will organize some people for you”.
“Thanks, we’ll manage, it will only for a couple of days anyway”, said Aster as he accepted the token.
Ritz excused himself and flew towards the peak of the mountain, Aster invited Erick’s family to enter the palace with them, since the design was similar to where they lived, they guided them to the dining room where a large table was already prepared.
It was a good opportunity for Sarina and Kana to try out the ingredients they bought earlier at the street stands; Felicia accompanied them to the kitchen to lend a hand as her family had… a big appetite due to they being body cultivators.
Alice then took out the claw bone that was the origin of her conflict with Tiana, Lilia frowned the very moment she saw that bone, as the princess of the Drage family she has seen a couple of materials from Heavenly Conqueror realm spirit beasts, and that haggard claw resulted to be one of them.
But after inspecting it, she shook her head.
“This is actually a fang which belonged to a formidable beast once, but it’s not usable as a material to forge or for alchemy anymore, the only thing that’s keeping it together are the remaining minerals that compose it, but they are contaminated, because this beast was poisonous, the kind to be odorless and of a slow effect”.
“Unless you want to die, I wouldn’t recommend it for long term cultivation”, concluded Lilia.
Tiana was terrified, she nearly harmed her brother due to a mistake, the guy who found it, said it was buried on a lifeless desert, and now it could be possible that the desert was created thanks to the remaining fang’s toxicity which spread through the area.
“Thanks, miss, for preventing me to harm my brother due to my lack of knowledge… still it’s a shame that it can’t be used, it would have been a great help for Erick at the place where we will be going”, said Tiana as she slightly bowed her head towards Lilia.
Erick noticed Aster’s interested expression and he realized that he hasn’t explained him, how his body constitution worked, he then extended his right hand and the image of a bear’s paw floated above it.
“This the ability of my Barbarian King constitution, I can refine certain parts of spirit beasts to use some of their traits, this is the paw of a crystal armored bear, that’s why my sister wanted me to have that fang, what a shame it’s useless”.
Aster now understood why his mother wasn’t against him bringing Erick with them, that ability had quite some potential, as it could keep growing as long as he kept advancing, still it didn’t seem right to waste a material which he could tell was on par with some of the herbs Rya asked him to find.
‘I wonder if…”, Aster’s eyes glowed, he grabbed the fang and blue flames covered his hand as he gave a try to his theory, Rigel’s flames are meant to purify after all.
And as he expected it seemed to work, but at the same time the fang was becoming smaller and its color was changing to a normal white tone, black smoke was also expelled from it, but Rigel’s flames destroyed it so it didn’t affect anyone, Aster immediately stopped before finishing.
“I can purify it, but since it’s naturally poisonous instead of being externally affected, it’s effectiveness will be reduced, that and since it doesn’t have any spirit energy left, at most the result will be a peak Genesis Manifestation material or with some luck a low ranked Void Manipulation…”.
Aster stopped speaking midway as he saw, the speechless expression in Baron’s face, and the slightly surprise Tiana was showing, as for Erick he was laughing as he softly hit the table.
“See, I told you, brother Aster is a man of miracles”.