Birth of the Demonic Sword

Noah left the quasi-living workshop in the sky after retracting the dark world. The item started spreading his influence immediately since he had already charged it with energy. It didn't take long before faint black lines appeared among the whiteness and stretched toward a distant area to find the weak white material.

Noah had to clear a large area to gain access to the energy required by the project, so the workshop didn't find anything. Its influence eventually stopped expanding, and the black lines vanished. The item fell into a dormant state while it waited for Heaven and Earth to restore the area to its normal state.

The workshop was barely noticeable in its dormant state. Noah could feel it clearly since it shared part of his power, but other worlds and the rulers would have a hard time finding it among that whiteness. Heaven and Earth might event rebuild the weak sky around it without paying attention to its power.

The results of the project satisfied Noah. He had found a loophole in his predicament, even if it didn't match his standards. The quality of the potential that he would pass to eventual heirs couldn't compare to what his ethereal blackness contained, but it was something that would allow his world to expand quickly. The process would even quicken after he placed thousands of those quasi-living workshops throughout the higher plane.

Noah could only leave the area at that point. Th quasi-living workshop didn't feel like a proper solution to his issues, but it was something that would allow him to remain put for a while. After all, everything was better than the dull and potentially endless exploration of that white environment.

The journey resumed, and Noah didn't take long to grow bored of it. He didn't know how many creatures had survived the arrival of the weak sky, but his meeting with the lizards made him guess that the area was far from empty. Still, that thought couldn't reassure him when he saw nothing but whiteness.

His mood improved whenever he placed a quasi-living workshop among the sky. Noah would watch it expand and bring slight benefits to his world before leaving the area and searching for another suitable spot.

Spreading his influence throughout the fake sky wasn't nearly enough to make him happy, but he knew that the real benefits would arrive once heirs appeared. Noah wanted that moment to come quickly, so he hurried away from areas already affected by the workshops to find spots where to place new ones.

Having a goal made Noah feel alive. He was fighting against the very sky in a battle that only he could join. Heaven and Earth would also remain unaware that he had started fighting for a while, and the inevitable discovery would only lead to a forceful dispersion of his influence.

Noah knew that his workshops would have a short life, but that was fine. He only needed to act faster than the rulers and gain a good number of heirs. Everything would be worth it as long as he increased the pace at which his world expanded.

Moreover, the fake cores weren't the final version of his creation, even after the quasi-living workshop added features that suited eventual heirs. Noah could still replace that weaker version of his potential with the real fuel inside his world after finding those who benefitted from his items.

The dull journey across the weak sky transformed into a series of sprints performed to reach areas outside the quasi-living workshops' range quickly. Noah was relentless in his solitary battle. He knew that his chances to gain heirs increased together with the numbers of items that he planted among the whiteness, so he never stopped.

The superior endurance of his body and his state as a rank 9 existence allowed him to press forward without ever stopping for entire decades. Noah could push his limits far past that, but he preferred to leave some room for regular training sessions.

His attacks had to improve past their simple smoothness and coordination. Caesar had shown Noah how battles between worlds happened on multiple realms that could ignore eventual superiority in power. The depths and influence of one existence had more value than the brutish display of mighty techniques and abilities.

Noah knew that his power could compensate for those differences. Dinia and many other rank 9 cultivators would have been immune to his attacks otherwise. Still, his superior abilities didn't seem to matter against Caesar.

Noah guessed that other cultivators would put him in front of similar problems. Caesar was famous even among the sky, but he wasn't the only privileged cultivator who had lived for entire eras. He wasn't even the only solid stage asset inside Heaven and Earth's system.

Caesar and the cultivators who could match his power probably were the strongest assets before the actual sky. Heaven and Earth's true level existed near the tenth rank, and Noah felt that even the hands seen during the apocalyptic event didn't reveal their might. There could also be different realms of superiority when it came to the rulers, but he didn't despair.

His current power gave him more than hope. Noah had been able to defeat liquid stage cultivators when he was nothing more than a rank 8 expert. His arrival to the solid stage would definitely put him close to the rulers. Every other guess had to wait for the actual clash since he didn't know how much Heaven and Earth had kept hidden.

Of course, Noah didn't want to rely on his breakthrough to affect stronger experts. There had to be a solution that exploited the remarkable properties of his potential, and he intended to find it during his training sessions.

The dull journey eventually revealed a change. Noah almost couldn't believe his eyes when he sensed a presence inside the range of his consciousness.

Needless to say, Noah shot at full speed toward those presences. He could feel that they were weaker than him, but he didn't care. He didn't even mind that they had started to escape as soon as they sensed him.

Noah was stronger and faster. The fact that the weak sky was on his path didn't hinder him in the slightest since his destruction took care of it before he could reach it.

In an instant, Noah pierced the tunnel that the auras were digging and found two orange apes freezing on their spots under the pressure of his pride. A simple inspection told him that those creatures belonged to the orange city.

"Did you lose yourselves?" Noah asked through a growl that carried no harmful intentions.

The apes were rank 9 magical beasts in the lower tier, but they seemed to have a hard time under Noah's influence. The event felt strange since he had tested his pressure with the lizards, so he expanded the dark world to check their bodies.

It turned out that their bodies were running out of energy that Noah couldn't identify. He could vaguely guess that it was an unknown form of higher energy after inspecting the organs involved with that fuel, but he couldn't study its features in that situation.

"We have remained separated from the orange city since the rulers filled the sky," One of the apes managed to say inside the safety of the dark world. "We can hear its call, but the whiteness always manages to tamper with its signal to make us lose our way."