Birth of the Demonic Sword

The brightness of the library filled Noah's vision. The structure resembled an immense palace on the outside, but its insides appeared far bigger.

Something stretched the space inside the structure and made it far bigger than it could be. Bookshelves filled the hundreds of meters large main hall, and a large staircase circled the walls and led to the upper floors.

Noah could see more bookshelves from the few balconies on the upper floors. Cultivators browsed them while sitting on luxurious sofas, and the scenery wasn't much different in the main hall.

Multiple reading areas divided the many bookshelves. Some of them had specific purposes, and a few even held a series of cultivators discussing specific topics. Experts could even create groups there before venturing outside of Vagona city.

The areas that held discussions or groups of cultivators didn't let any sound escape from their edges. Complete silence filled the library, and some runes placed on its walls even absorbed the noise made by the turning of pages.

There were even catalogs that listed the services offered by the library. A series of waiters occupied every reading area and advised any cultivator in need.

Noah felt utterly lost in that environment, but a waiter quickly noticed his confusion and led him toward a white screen after exchanging a few polite lines.

The screen had an interactive list that reacted to the mental waves. Noah only needed to think about what he desired to read, and a series of names would appear on the device.

The waiter confirmed that Noah could read anything in the main hall of the library for free. That structure only featured an entrance fee and a payment to enter the upper floors.

Noah could also purchase wine and other goods to accompany his reading, but he wouldn't waste money before obtaining a general idea of how the Immortal Lands worked.

'This is even better than I expected,' Noah thought as more names appeared on the screen. 'Can I even read all of them in three months?'

Noah had seen thousands of names flashing in his vision as his mental waves interacted with the device. He had so many questions that the list on the screen never stopped changing.

'This will take too long if I don't do it properly,' Noah concluded before calling one of the waiters.

The waiter was a tall man in the gaseous stage. He wore a tight pale-blue robe just like the other cultivators working inside the structure, and he didn't hesitate to help Noah with his issue.

Of course, Noah had to pay for that service. Ten of his Soul Stones disappeared from his separate space as he questioned the waiter about his many doubts.

The library was simply too big, and it contained multiple versions of the same books. Experts would also create essays on some of those tomes, so Noah had no idea which one would be best for him.

Instead, the waiter advised him to read specific tomes and scrolls after hearing about his needs. Noah ended up with more than a hundred books even after that skimming process, but he couldn't reduce their number any more than that.

The waiter took care of bringing all the books to the reading area chosen by Noah, and he even carried some cheap wine to complete his service.

For Noah, that cheap wine was the best he had ever tasted. He could sense the divine materials used in its creation, and he felt strange when his mind calmed down.

That beverage could affect his divine mind, and it was the cheapest on the catalog! Noah couldn't even imagine what the most expensive would do to his sea of consciousness.

Noah dived into the books after the waiter completed his task. Many of them spoke about the layout of the Immortal Lands, while others told legends and pieces of history of that place.

The Immortal Lands were too vast to create complete maps. Noah could only learn about the general position of some important places. He would have to go to the upper floors to obtain detailed and updated descriptions of certain territories.

That study still helped him learn more about the Immortal Lands, but that place was so vast that it had any kind of region. Immense mountain chains, lakes as vast as seas, endless plains, the higher plane had everything.

Moreover, it was unclear whether the Immortal Lands had an end. Many experts had tried to understand how large the higher plane actually was, but they couldn't find an exact measure to describe it.

The Immortal Lands transformed often. They even enlarged through a process that no book in the main hall could describe. Noah could only guess that Heaven and Earth continued to expand their domain and annex more territories to the higher plane.

That process was the reason behind multiple unexplored regions. The constant expansion of the Immortal Lands made every map inexact and forced the cultivators to focus on many important areas rather than on the entirety of the plane.

The political situation of the Immortal Lands was even messier than their layout. Magical beasts and humans had precise borders that they never crossed due to agreements sealed among powerful existences. As for the hybrids, they were hard to track, and many suggested that their home was the unexplored part of the plane.

That division made it relatively easy for Noah. He could easily travel between one side and the other depending on his needs. His discovery made him quite pleased, but his mood soon turned sour after he studied more books.

The two sides had multiple leaders and even more underlings. The humans had also divided themselves into countless organizations, and the magical beasts had done something similar with their packs.

The library couldn't teach him about the various alliances among those forces. Noah would need to resort to specific services of the library to obtain those updates, but he didn't have enough money to purchase them.

'I guess I need to memorize the political alliances once I see them,' Noah concluded once he stopped studying the families and the various organizations that filled the human side.

Noah studied tomes that spoke about the cultivation journey in the divine ranks. Those teachings weren't detailed, and they were mostly guesses of cultivators that had managed to advance in the past. Their experience was enough to confirm the idea that had brewed in his mind after the events in the inscription hall.

He was already on the right path, according to those books. Divine cultivators needed to evolve through their individuality, and that involved affecting the world with their law.

Their true meaning had to suppress the rules of the world around them and turn it into their domain. It was similar to the effects of the dark world, but cultivators had to apply them without relying on techniques and spells.

'So, I need to use my ambition to force my cultivation level to improve,' Noah summarized in his mind, 'But I can avoid using my individuality if I train more on affecting the world around me. I guess this process changes depending on the true meaning.'

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Author's notes: I'll write the last one after I wake up. Sorry for the annoying routine.