Chapter 382

Adam looked down at the Weapon Sect Martial Saints forced to their knees and said coldly:

“Hand over the method you use to craft filters and convert vital energy, and I might…”

“Pah!” One Martial Saint lifted his head and spat thick phlegm viciously at Adam, cursing:

“The disciples of the Weapon Sect in the Sacred Realm and the Heavenly Realm will never forgive you! The God-Lord will annihilate your entire clan!”

“To think you can get the Weapon Sect’s secret techniques from us—wishful dreaming!”

“If you’ve got the guts, just kill us!”

The moment his words fell, terrifying gravity crushed down upon him. His body exploded into a bloody mist, and his dazzling martial core spun into Adam’s hand.

“You’re courting death!”

“You’re finished! No one can save you now!”

The remaining Martial Saints hurled curses, but Adam’s thunderous methods showed no mercy. He killed fourteen of them in succession before speaking again:

“Hand over the secrets.”

“Dream on!”

Bang!

“…Spare you not to die—”

The last two Martial Saints were truly afraid. To have cultivated this far, even as the most exalted disciples of the Weapon Sect in the Origin Realm, had cost them untold years. They had no wish to die so miserably. One of them, second to last, abruptly changed his tune and said:

“I’ll give it to you, but you must swear an oath—”

Bang!

Adam accepted no bargains. He turned directly to the final Martial Saint:

“Hand it over—or die.”

The Martial Saint trembled like a leaf, kowtowed frantically, and stammered:

“The Vital Energy Refining Array is built with—”

Bang!

Before he could finish, both Martial Saint and martial core exploded together. The erupting storm of vital energy carried strange properties and lashed toward Adam and his companions.

Such methods had no effect on the mages, but the significance was clear.

“A curse… or a contract?” Adam muttered, frowning.

A nearby mage replied:

“Likely both. It seems this is how they protect their critical inheritances. If someone reveals them without permission, the restriction they call a ban activates and kills them on the spot.”

Another added:

“This complicates things. If one branch of the Weapon Sect is bound like this, then the others across the Martial Realm must be the same. Worse still—if the Weapon Sect in the Sacred and Heavenly Realms share this restriction, then we—”

Adam waved for their slaves to carefully transport the artifacts to Central City, while he and the mages took to the air.

“It shouldn’t be. If the Weapon Sect truly stems from a direct inheritance of a god-realm being, then before it fell into slumber it would have ensured the inheritance could never be lost.

“The fact that it chose to devour vital energy in this way, rather than roam openly in the void, shows it knew it didn’t belong in the Fourth Era—it had to hide.

“If every time the strongest of the Weapon Sect was devoured, it had to awaken and reset its inheritance, the chances of exposure would be far too great.”

The others nodded, finding Adam’s reasoning sound. One mage asked:

“So, what now?”

“Continue as planned. Strip the Martial Realm of its resources. That should be enough to raise most of our mages to Martial Saint. Then, in the Sacred Realm, we’ll search for the Weapon Sect.”

Martial warriors were entirely selfish.

They had no method of regenerating resources. To advance, they had to risk their lives to seize limited supplies and measured amounts of vital energy. Upon reaching the Martial Realm, to ascend again required defeating countless rivals.

Thus, the number of Martial Saints the Sacred Realm could hold was fixed—an iron standard.

Which meant, once a warrior ascended, unless he was a fool, he would never willingly descend again.

The Martial Realm’s central cities never received reinforcement before destruction came. Under the combined assault of the mages, they were reduced to dust.

After regrouping, the mages compared their gains. Like Adam, none had gleaned useful information from the Weapon Sect’s strongholds or Martial Saints.

At this point, the Martial Realm held no further value. Garfield hastened across the four central cities, crudely connecting filter cores extracted from the Mortal Realm to the Martial Realm’s filters, vastly accelerating the gathering of vital energy.

The mages entrenched themselves across the realm, endlessly devouring every wisp of energy.

Three years later, the Martial Realm was barren. Still, the divine beings had not stirred. The mages prepared: one hundred sixty-six High Martial Saints charged straight into the Sacred Realm.

The next two decades brought a calamity the proud Martial Saints of the Sacred Realm had never imagined.

Just as Adam foresaw, the Sacred Realm’s vital energy, in potency, was nearly indistinguishable from mana. Unlike attribute-less mana, however, this vital energy bore strong properties, with greater destructive power. Only Martial Saints could safely absorb it; any being below that level would be torn apart instantly.

By mage reckoning, Sacred Realm Martial Saints equated to level six.

Through constant refinement, every one of their devouring cells had become formidable. When their original bodies could no longer withstand the repulsion between cells, their forms inevitably expanded. Each Martial Saint’s everyday body was no smaller than a mage’s fully manifested true form.

At this stage, even a mage could no longer stand alone against a hundred. The Martial Saints finally displayed power befitting their title.

But their numbers were pitiful—barely five times that of the mages. Distrustful and unwilling to cooperate, they became nothing more than a sumptuous feast for the mages, helpless against the steady erosion of their ranks.

In the Sacred Realm, the Weapon Sect no longer hid. Together with the Realm Alliance and the Racial Alliance, they stood among the greatest powers. The first controlled vital energy, the second the paths of ascension, and the last eked out survival between them.

Everywhere in the Sacred Realm, Weapon Sect constructs were seen—automatons no different from machines, performing all menial labor in realms devoid of ordinary beings.

The mages who had descended from the Seventh Alchemy Tower sneered at these constructs. Aside from the mysteries surrounding their use of vital energy, their design and technique were utter trash.

In the twentieth year, the remaining fifty strongest Martial Saints were herded into Sacred Realm Central City No. 1. With every other place slaughtered and occupied, they had nowhere to go. And with the Sacred Realm’s energy thinned to its lowest ebb in history, not one of them could ascend further.

The mages marched on Central City, ready to launch their final offensive and obliterate the Sacred Realm.

But then—something no mage had foreseen occurred.

“They’re fighting among themselves! At a time like this!”

Seeing the scene in the city, the mages could only laugh bitterly. That the Martial Saints, facing extinction, would turn to slaughtering each other instead of uniting for a last stand was beyond belief.