17th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

  Newt was at ease. On the first day, his team had collected a tenth of their quota. They could complete their mission in nine days, assuming their luck held up, then spend ten more hunting for spirit beasts and resources the sect had approved for collection. The forbidden ones were missions for other disciples, or plants significant in some other manner to keep the environmental spiritual energy harmonious.

  “Another six eldenroots, and not a single raptor so far.” Obi had a tendency for saying the dumbest things.

  “Bite your tongue, you kidney stone.” Right on cue, bushes rustled a hundred feet away, the cracking of branches rushing towards them.

  “Obi!” Jasmine squeezed between her teeth, her glare promising her little brother pain and misery.

  The first raptor, a mere second realm fire-attributed spirit beast, jumped out of the bush, right into the path of Obsidian’s stego mace. The dog-sized critter exploded, showering the bushes with gore, but three others jumped onto Obsidian. They bit and clawed at his rocky hide, failing to leave a scratch.

  Obsidian hugged one, squeezing it until it fell next to his feet, where it remained limp on the ground. Jasmine glanced at her brother, and instead of helping him with the minor nuisances, stepped in front and swatted another two velociraptors who were pouncing towards them.

  An arrow whistled, flying so fast, Newt caught the sound only as the arrow smashed into a jumping velociraptor. As suddenly as it started, the attack ended.

  “What? Is this it?” Obsidian seemed offended.

  “Obi! Come here, you little kidney stone. I’ve got some things I need to explain to you.” Jasmine smashed her fists together, sending off a shower of sparks, as her defensive technique still covered her body. “Hard way.”

  The siblings’ games were entertaining, partly because Obi’s comments really made Newt want to beat him up, partly because Jasmine genuinely wanted to beat up her little brother because of all his intentional jinxing.

  “This could be a problem,” voice of reason, disguised as Roselilly said. “Raptors are social creatures and have firm hierarchies. It’s quite possible the leader of this pack retreated to cry to its parents, superiors, or someone else. We might face a more challenging attack in the near future.”

  She was right, and Newt knew it. The thing was, he could swat away third realm velociraptors just as easily as Obsidian and Jasmine swatted the second realmers, and the sect’s administration claimed there were no known fourth realm spirit beasts inhabiting the mountain. Known was a bad word. Inhabit was another. The Explorer’s Gate could not guarantee that a fourth or fifth realm spirit beast would not pass by, wreaking havoc and slaughtering the disciples and their guardian.

  The outer elder was a contingency measure to maximize disciple safety, but the Explorer’s Gate lacked dozens of available fifth realm elders just to watch over the younger generation. And then, there was the unease in Newt’s gut whenever he looked towards the top of the mountain. He could probably handle whatever came for them. As long as it was in the initial layers of the fourth realm. He hoped.

  “You’re frowning.” Rose naturally noticed Newt’s grimace.

  “Something up there is making me uneasy.” Newt decided to be honest. He would keep his danger sense a secret, but he had the right to say he had a bad feeling about an unseen threat. “It would be best if we kept to the lower half of the mountain.”

  The others exchanged glances and reached a decision without uttering a single word.

  “All right,” Rose said, and the other two nodded. “We’ll stick closer to the base of the mountain. Can you tell us anything else?”

  Newt shrugged. He wanted to tell the truth, but the disciplinary venerable claimed such knowledge might hurt the future path of those who heard the details before awakening the sense themselves. So, he twisted the truth.

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  “Just a bad feeling.”

  Thankfully, the others chose not to pry, and instead they focused on gathering eldenroot.

  By the end of the third day, they had twenty-seven tubers in their bags. The night was falling, and Newt caught a faint, but familiar scent of eggs left to boil for way too long.

  “Is there lava around here?” he asked.

  “There could be.” Obi said. “The whole mountain is an ancient volcano, this region is dotted with them.”

  Newt frowned. The information sounded important, like something he should know, but why it was important slipped through his metaphorical fingers.

  “Can we go check it out?” His notion met no objections, and the group continued forward for five minutes until they reached a steaming pond.

  Newt observed the formation, utterly failing to understand it. Lava glowed without bubbling or flowing down the mountain, while a giant cauldron made of volcanic rock touched its surface, the water inside somehow stopping the rock from melting.

  “How is this even possible?”

  “It’s quite simple actually, a spring either existed here before the eruption or formed after it, cooling some lava into igneous rock. Then it washed a hole in the middle of it, or possibly the rock formed that way from the start until the whole system reached a point where lava won’t melt the rock, and the water is evaporating fast enough that the pool of water can’t expand further, essentially becoming one natural hot bath.”

  Newt stared at Obsidian, his mouth cracked open.

  “What? Do I have something on my face?” Obi asked.

  “How do you know that?” Newt asked, and Obsidian made a hurt face.

  “I’m not stupid. I’m seventy years old, and I’ve read my fair share of books. A lot of missions around this part of the Savage Forest are around volcanoes, so I naturally read about the subject, to gain an extra advantage when it comes to finding good spots rich in resources and spiritual energy.”

  Newt nodded. Slowly. His realm was a giant volcano, and he never considered reading a book or two about volcanoes. An incredibly dumb decision in hindsight. Especially considering he had read books about rocks and fire.

  “And how is the lava still hot, volcanic scholar Deeproot?” Newt did not know the word, nor whether one existed for experts on volcanic subjects, but that did not stop him from making fun of Obsidian.

  “The lava remains hot because this is a side vent, also known as a fissure vent. They aren’t exactly common, but they aren’t all that rare either. Every other volcano has some. Lava can also erupt from here, just like it does from the main, also known as central vent. Naturally, the flow here is much weaker than the main one.”

  Newt blinked, his head spinning from the implications of Obsidian’s words. “You mean to say volcanoes may have these, and they behave just like the real volcano? They spew lava and all that?”

  Obsidian cringed at Newt’s questions. “This whole thing is one volcano. There’s no true or false parts of it.”

  Obsidian faltered, faced with Newt’s unimpressed expression. “But side vents erupt with lava just like the central one. The volume is different, but—”

  Newt cut off his friend’s words, not hearing them as he considered his realm, Dandelion’s blueprint, and volcano side vents as a new avenue to pursue.

  Digging a hole to connect to the main source of my realm’s lava will be a waste of time. It might take months just to get to the lava. I’ll definitely have to buy a bunch of the best pills I can find that can help me cultivate my realm, just imagining spending months inside a hole makes me want to shudder.

  He then focused on the more positive aspects of the idea. At least it won’t be like the ever-burning flames I first considered, sure they would tap into the main source of lava.

  Wait.

  Newt grinned, staring at the glowing pool of lava.

  Does it have to connect with the main line? You can, in theory, make the engine with which you draw ambient spiritual energy as large as you want. It can cover a single layer, half a realm, or two realms.

  Such realm layout is suboptimal, since you lose the space which you should have invested into your combat ability, but you can certainly make things huge if you want to and don’t mind the drawback.

  Newt’s mind raced. Suddenly, his aspirations shifted. From standing in the middle of the Savage Forest, looking forward to clearing the third realm Magmin had left behind, he wanted nothing more than to close himself into a cultivation chamber for two to three months to test his hypothesis.

  He knew his gains per side vent would be minor, but he could make a lot of side vents. Instead of forking his lava streams, he could make new flows, further aiding his realm’s growth. Then he realized something else and slapped his forehead, making his friends jump.

  Heavens blast my dumb head! I could’ve done this back in the second realm! I can’t believe I wasted such opportunities. How much of my third realm will I have to redo to improve it?

  Newt almost groaned. He would have to redo his work. Again.

  Cultivation is so frustrating!