Immortal Kingdoms

Little Yue's heart jumped and she quickly said, "Little Yue will help! I can do it! Pick me! Pick me!"

Leonardo seemed to not see Little Yue as he spoke to the Tribe Elder, "Do you think the other tribes have a beautiful sister who can help me?"

"Ugh! Don't! I really can do it! Look!" Little Yue ran over to the stash of scrolls and began to read through them with a serious expression.

"Oh, not those scrolls, but these…" Leonardo waved his hand, his spatial ring dropping a large number of scrolls relating to formation principles, especially the Ode of the Elements.

Little Yue gasped. However, she grits her teeth and jumped right into reading diligently.

The Tribe Elder's face was already wet with tears and a smile, and she was about to kneel in kowtow to Leonardo when he hurriedly stopped her.

"We don't have time for that, please. The Patriarch's words actually helped me greatly, consider this my repayment for a lesson passed down through countless sacrifices of your hidden tribes," Leonardo sighed with emotion.

"You can simply give me a rough map of what you know. While I'm away with Wendy, you can pass the word to the other hidden tribes about this, the more people who can read and write, the better…"

Leonardo purposefully raised his voice near the end, "The smartest girl to help the most will have a very pretty gift from me!"

"Ah!" Little Yue jumped, her ears twitching from what she heard. However, her expression happened to be as serious as ever nonetheless.

Leonardo smiled, "The principles in those scrolls are too complicated for a child, I hope the Tribe Elder will cooperate with the peers to study them collectively while we're away on our quest,"

"You can leave it to this old lady," The Tribe Elder nodded heavily, her muddled eyes quite determined as she brought up a rough scroll from her personal stash. "This is the map you need, the hidden tribes gather every decade to exchange resources and play matchmaking, we also exchange new maps with one another. In this scroll lie the sweat and blood of many of our warriors, I hope it proves helpful…"

"It will!" Leonardo nodded at Wendy, and the two then left the hut together.

…

"Can you really do it?"

On the back of a massive black thunderbird, Wendy and Leonardo sat not that far from one another as the former directed the flight of the thunderbird.

This was a domesticated thunderbird that was incubated in the Divine Pool and raised since birth within the region of the stone forest. Typically, these creatures would be used to scout far away locations that are yet to be mapped out, but because Leonardo doesn't have the necessary physical fitness to cross the ring of thunderstorms separating the outer region from further inland, they had no other choice but to use it.

Leonardo sat in a lotus style while reading the map and arranging the specific locations for the formation nodes when Wendy couldn't help but ask.

Leonardo looked at this fit young lady with a head of sleek silver hair, black eyes, and attractive tan skin.

"Since I said I can do it, I naturally will follow through with my word. More importantly, this is also helping me."

Leonardo smiled, as he planned to use the eruption of worldly energy from the eye of the formation to make up for the lack of energy in the middle realms and charge past his bottleneck.

"How is this of any help to you?" Wendy was surprised, if this was also something Leonardo came up with to help himself, she was even more than willing to believe its validity.

"Once the nodes are connected, there will be a huge eruption of energy. I'm planning to use that energy to advance in my cultivation, temper my body, and prepare a little gift for you," Leonardo winked mysteriously.

Wendy gasped, "Is cultivation really that difficult?"

"Eh, not really… I'm just a special case…"

No kidding. Other than his immortal physique, each of his martial intents could be considered one of the absolute laws, their energy consumption is just that monstrous. Furthermore, now he had to worry about constantly nourishing his soul pearl, which in turn would nourish his spiritual strength, which in turn could allow him to eventually open the gate to his sea of consciousness.

Sigh, he didn't know whether he was a special case or a cursed case anymore.

Wendy raised her brows, "A special case? Does this have anything to do with the higher realms? Tell me more about that place, why did the Tribe Elder act that way?"

Facing the curiosity of this lioness, Leonardo smiled bitterly, "Trust me, the less you know the better your future would be. Unless you were aware of how vast the world is from a young age, this will only be a blow to your confidence and conviction to grow stronger."

Leonardo's eyes grew sharp, "Just know that having the will to survive isn't enough to cut it in a place like that, you need something more."

"Something more?" Wendy gulped, somewhat nervous but curious nonetheless.

Leonardo nodded heavily.

Wendy simply stared at him with eyes that said she could handle it.

Leonardo was silent for a moment before he looked far into the distance, his expression growing cold. "The will to abandon your humanity and embrace the darkness. Up there, there's always blood."

"Up there, it's a matter of whether you swim through the blood of others, or drown in your own."

As Leonardo spoke, a crimson glimmer that reflected oceans of blood and mountains of corpses flickered through his eyes. "I've been through these seas and mountains for as long as I can remember ever since I started my cultivation."

Leonardo sighed, "In my kingdom of death and despair, perhaps this place will be the sole utopia to keep me on the borders of sanity. Hence, to me, this is something I must see through to the end at any cost."

"Now, do you think I have any ulterior motives anymore?"

Wendy didn't respond. She turned her back as well, leaning gently against Leonardo's back as she silently directed the thunderbird. However, waves were tossing in her heart as a pair of cold, ruthless, and bloodthirsty crimson eyes seemed to have been engraved deep in her mind.

The will to abandon my humanity? She wondered, shaken.

As for Leonardo, he was reminiscing about a pair of elegant, crimson phoenix eyes. Those were the calm eyes of someone who grew indifferent to bloodshed.

There was no ruthlessness, no coldness, no bloodlust. There was only silent indifference to slaughter, as though it was something as natural as breathing, eating, and sleeping.

However, that's precisely what made it beautiful, especially in contrast with the petite figure riddled with wounds that foretold a curious past, present, and future.

Just how many people has she killed?

Leonardo believed that Nier's state of mind must be the pinnacle for the bloodthirsty martial intent, deluding him from the eyes of a certain silver fox.

He had yet to realize that the peak realm was a pair of eyes that could smile, laugh, and cry despite the rivers of blood and mountains of corpses.

A realm where people would remain oblivious to the horror and slaughter, mesmerized by the bit of beauty and life residing within.

A realm where those eyes that thirst for blood would mesmerize the people to willingly, happily, and even desperately seek refuge in that illusion of a utopia, and an eternal peaceful rest they shall have.

Just like that, the pair sank into the worlds of their own imaginations as they approached the borders of the thunderstorm region.

…

RUMBLE!

The thunderbird plunged into the region of the storms. Dark clouds shrouded its fleeting figure as it shuttered and weaved through the bolts of lightning, some of them striking its stiff black features, only to be magnetized toward its metallic claws crowning the base of its ferocious talons. Like that, the remaining bolts were thwarted by Wendy's bone saber without much effort.

There were dark clouds for as far as they could see, and if it weren't for the map, they might have crashed into high mountains or made their way into deep valleys with enough magnetic forces to dull their sense of direction.

Leonardo felt inwardly grateful because if he had to navigate this region all alone, it might've taken months to cross from one end to the other, and that much time wasted is something he couldn't afford with the war on the horizon.

"By the way, I've never seen you use your sword, but I have the feeling it can't be ordinary," Wendy suddenly spoke up after blocking a stray bolt of lightning, seemingly back to her curious self.

"Yeah, it's very powerful," Leonardo responded a moment later.

"Is that why you're not using it? To avoid drawing more attention?"

"Not really…"

"Oh, then why not?"

"I simply can't unsheathe it," Leonardo sighed…

Wendy: "…"