Birth of the Demonic Sword

Torturing Bertha brought multiple advantages to Noah. His body improved by leaps and bounds due to her dantian and body. Still, his greatest gains came from her knowledge.

Noah learnt a lot from her. Those pieces of information didn't involve only the layout of the Immortal Lands. He also understood how far the influence of the Crystal City spread.

According to Bertha, the higher plane was a messy place filled with organizations. Most regions in the Immortal Lands were lawless regions filled with various magical beasts and simple groups of cultivators. Yet, some of them were under the control of forces that weaker beings had to respect.

The Crystal City was one of those forces. Madame Canson was a rank 8 cultivator, and that gave her the power to build an organization around her.

The population of the Immortal Lands valued existences in the eighth rank a lot. Bertha spoke of them as a privileged class in the higher plane. It seemed that rank 8 beings were celebrities in that world, and any organization would treat them with the respect they deserved.

Even the Crystal City treated the Twelve-legged Queen with respect. It didn't matter if that existence was a magical beast. As long as a being reached the eighth rank, it would become an esteemed guest in any organization of the Immortal Lands.

Noah had obviously asked about rank 9 beings when he questioned Bertha, but she couldn't give him any valuable information. According to her, there were rank 9 existences in the Immortal Lands, but they never involved themselves with the rest of the world.

The reports that involved rank 9 existences were mostly vague or unrealistic. Even cultivators in the eighth rank couldn't be sure about the power wielded by beings on a higher level, so they never dared to confirm those rumors.

The information that involved the Immortal Lands' layout gave Noah an idea of how he had to move to avoid troubles. The area of influence of the Crystal City was only a small part of the higher plane, and it even bordered the lands belonging to intelligent magical beasts.

Noah had many possibilities at hand. Most divine beings would avoid organizations anyway, so he could easily live without remaining stuck in any of them.

'The Crystal City marks the end of the human area,' Noah thought as he sorted the knowledge obtained from Bertha. 'I should meet more human settlements as I march past these danger zones. Finding useful items shouldn't be a problem at that point.'

Noah's interrogation had focused on the inscribed items after he learnt about the general layout of the Immortal Lands. According to Bertha, storage items were a valuable resource in the higher plane, and most rank 7 cultivators had to rely on external organizations to take care of their materials.

It wasn't a surprise that cultivators couldn't gain access to divine items. The inscription methods of the lower plane often relied on imitating Heaven and Earth's laws, but that process had clear limits. Wills also had a hard time affecting the matter in the higher world, so those capable of performing inscriptions were an elite class in that place.

Noah had yet to test how his Elemental Forging method would perform in the Immortal Lands, but he expected the matter of the higher world to resist his wills when they tried to alter its fabric.

The creation of storage items was also a niche of the inscription field, so it wasn't a surprise that only a few masters could perform it in the Immortal Lands. Noah was an exception due to the dark world, but most cultivators would have to swear specific oaths to obtain those tools.

Cultivators like Bertha were an exception due to their backing. Still, that didn't apply to every organization in the Immortal Lands. Noah knew that his next destination would give him a clearer idea of the situation in that world.

'I wonder if I can turn the separate space into a sellable divine item,' Noah thought as he left his cave to resume his journey. 'Now that I think about it, I don't even know which currency they use here.'

The matter concerning the storage items was the reason why Noah couldn't seize anything valuable from Bertha. She couldn't give her resources to him due to the restrictions applied by Madame Canson.

Noah couldn't obtain the item that fended off the radiations of the white sky nor anything that could stop Gil's individuality. He was back a square one with a stronger body and a vaster knowledge about his new world.

The forest, the large sea, and that mountain chain were still peripheral areas of the human domain, and Noah had no interest in reaching smaller cities. Moreover, he wanted to get far away from the Crystal City, so he picked a famous town in the Immortal Lands as his next destination.

'Vagona City is one of the biggest human settlements in the entire higher plane,' Noah thought as he reviewed the pieces of information obtained from Bertha. 'I should find something valuable there.'

Noah had picked a destination, but the journey was long. Bertha didn't dare to be vague during her explanation, and she described the many lands that he had to cross to reach that place.

Rich cultivators had access to sophisticated transports, but Noah didn't even know how to summon them. He would have to make the journey on foot, but he didn't dislike the idea too much since it allowed him to learn more about the Immortal Lands.

There was a limit to how much an organization made of pure humans could understand the regions inhabited by magical beasts. Noah felt strange that creatures could rule over entire lands in an area under the control of cultivators, but he suspected that stronger beings had taken secret agreements to settle those matters.

Still, he wanted to see those lands with his own eyes and memorize all the emotions that the environment sent to him. He wanted to see how being an existence that surpassed the hybrid realm affected his understanding of the whole higher plane.

Noah set off and traveled through the mountain chain. His destination lain after many regions, which translated into multiple years of march in the complete wilderness.

It would take him an entire decade spent traveling to reach the first small settlement, but Noah planned to avoid it. That city was a branch of the Crystal City, so he preferred the wilderness over certain problems.

Of course, Noah wouldn't spend entire decades focused only on traveling. His priority was to reach the stars beyond the sky, and he had to increase his cultivation level to do that.

Noah had already planned that he would spend many years cultivating inside improvised training areas and hunting every potential prey he found.

His current cultivation level almost represented the bare minimum of the Immortal Lands, and Noah had no intention to remain at that stage for long. The fact that his actual power didn't reflect the average might of a rank 7 cultivator in the gaseous stage wasn't enough to make him satisfied with his current battle prowess.

Improving was the key to gaining access to more opportunities, and Noah planned to solidify his divine foundation before reaching Vagona City. He wanted to be the best newly ascended cultivator by the time he reached his destination.