Immortal Kingdoms

Three days of preparations later.

In the most secure place of the vampire clan's hidden dimension underground, a lake of blood covered a vast surface area inside a hollow cave structure.

The scene of 108 rivers of blood pouring into the lake from the ceiling like high waterfalls greatly impacted Leonardo who stood at the edge of this lake together with the Blood Warlord Siegfried.

"I used to isolate the last three blood essence pools from recycling through the bloodline lake as it had been contaminated as well, hence the limited amount of blood essence in the only pools that could be considered pure— at least when compared with the remaining blood essence pools," Siegfried spoke in a calm tone, but anyone could see the helplessness in his eyes as reflected through his clenched fists and hoarse voice.

He sighed, "The underground energy veins function like natural meridians to the body of this hidden dimension, recycling the blood through these walls and pumping them into the 108 mountain peaks outside where a blood essence pool is stationed in an ancient castle. Just by looking at the blood, you can tell the difference in purity between most of them."

He then looked at Leonardo, continuing, "We've erected a platform at the center of the lake— deep in the bottom where the polluted blood would congregate the moment we run the formation. We have also constructed ether fragment pillars for your convenience, absorb as much as you can— as long as you can cleanse our blood essence lake."

"Ether fragments pillars?" Leonardo was shocked, each ether fragment is the size of a fingernail be it the raw or pure fragments, that's their size as commodities.

An ether fragments pillar is a construct at least fifteen meters tall covering a surface area of twenty square meters— one can imagine the number of ether fragments compressed together in order to shape something like that.

Should be in the hundreds of thousands and yet, more than one of these awaited Leonardo at the bottom of the lake to cultivate.

"What is there to be surprised about? This is the fortune left behind in the wake of one clan lord perishing after the next— they can't take their wealth with them to the grave after all." Siegfried spoke calmly, as though explaining both to Leonardo and himself.

Leonardo went silent for a while, he understood that the clan lord was basically informing him that there were 108 ether fragments pillars below, but this was all the accumulated fortune of their vampire clan over the years.

"You can leave it to me," Leonardo spoke heavily, but he knew deep down that cleansing these pools was a done deal already, the only question in his mind was about how to efficiently burn away this energy while operating his innate martial intent, whether it was worth it to derive and fix the laws of his sub-dimension or continue to derive the rest of the Ninth Inception Arrow technique.

'Wait a minute— I should probably just do it that way…' Leonardo's eyes glowed as he almost turned a blind eye to a fascinating idea. Although the bloodthirsty armament had the bloodthirsty martial intent as a base foundation, he almost forgot that it had already been integrated into his former immortal scripture that was now revised into a new cultivation method, meaning he could focus on both tasks of mending the laws of the sub-dimension while reconstructing the bloodthirsty armament.

'I need to find the time to work on my priorities productively, I can't keep biting more than I can chew…' Leonardo realized that at this pace, he would enter the rebirth realm without a concrete foundation or an arsenal of skills he could truly call his own.

Most people had one martial intent while he had four— although this allowed him more flexibility and versatility, it also burdened him with so many unexplored paths and possibilities that he didn't have the time to browse through.

Since his current cultivation method was devised on the foundation of the Fourth Dimension Immortal Scripture, and that had in turn been inexplicably ingrained into the bloodthirsty armament, he might as well return to that point in his cultivation.

In a sense, both his eternal night marital intent and the bloodthirsty armament constructed a delicate balance between the four comprehensive intents, one in the form of a planetary system and the other in the form of battle armor.

If he had to choose, he would rather isolate the soul pearl and utilize it to construct the core of his sub-dimension while he brought up the bloodthirsty armament to the outside, especially since he recalled a specific detail— his bloodthirsty armament already deviated from the original and could sustain itself by consuming blood essence energy among other things.

"Are you alright?" Siegfried saw Leonardo's eyes glazing over as though unfocused, he couldn't help but ring a question next to the young man's ears.

"Mhm? Oh yeah… I'll get going," Leonardo left behind his clothes and the storage ring as his body flashed, reaching the center of the lake's surface in a few movements before he directly splashed in, blood swirling around his body as the bloodthirsty martial intent began growing restless.

Feeling the change, Leonardo smiled faintly and accelerated to the pinnacle of his speed— yet it barely caused ripples to the dense concentration of blood all around.

If he wasn't already a divinity, he doubted whether or not he would ever reach the bottom of this lake. Luckily, with a bit of help from Rosaline, the pressure around his body lessened considerably and within three hours he reached the bottom.

A massive formation with the ether fragments pillars as the nodes greeted Leonardo as he landed on a huge, circular platform.

The moment he stepped foot on it, the platform and the altar connected to it shook, the stagnant blood starting to slowly circulate around, and the pressure instantly grew many folds.

Feeling as though his body was about to twist apart, Leonardo immediately focused his mind as the mind's eye appeared on his forehead and split open, ejecting a round soul pearl similar yet different to Juvia's original soul seed.

This small pearl contained the essence of Leonardo's laws in terms of bloodthirsty, desperate, heavenly retribution, and eternal night.

The dense swirling nebula of blood within the pearl grew restless for a moment as a thread of soul was ejected all the while dense blood essence congregated around it— Leonardo could feel the presence of Rosaline's soul within this pulse of blood essence.

The remnant soul engulfed drifted to the center of the platform as the pressure around Leonardo dropped considerably— seemingly drawn by a mysterious force as a powerful spiritual sense spread out to manually operate the bloodthirsty martial intent, giving Leonardo the illusion that something had subtly changed even though he couldn't tell exactly what it was.

Nonetheless, Leonardo couldn't be distracted at this point as he made consecutive hand seals.

A rumbling echoed at the bottom of the lake as the ether fragments' pillars glittered with illuminating blue light, flooding into the soul pearl like crazy.

A faint sutra in the infernal tongue echoed as Leonardo pointed at the soul pear with his hands…