Immortal Kingdoms

"What the…?"

As Leonardo dashed toward the inner regions of the sect, he felt the air pressure increase and his eyes followed the wind flow. In the distance, a sword that stretched 10km into the sky appeared in his line of sight, stunning the young man.

He could tell that this was Junior Brother making a move, but he didn't know that the kid was so ridiculously overpowered. First that arrow technique and now this sword strike.

Just from looking at the sword, Leonardo could sense the densely packed laws, it was akin to looking at a star in the sky, so close yet so far.

Then he saw eight massive claws descending from eight different mountains to smash into the sword.

Everything looked so slow but Leonardo knew that this was a misconception, an afterimage, an optical illusion. Then, a dense dome of blinding light expanded outwards from the epicenter of the clash, quickly approaching the stunned Leonardo.

It was so fast that It left Leonardo with no chance of turning around and running away, turning his expression pale with fright. In the past, he wouldn't be so reluctant to die as he had a false impression that his mother Maria was also going to die. Thus, it could be said that the Leonardo from the past who had that lifeless look in his eyes was someone who already gave up living.

Now things were different.

Technically, now he has a wife and a daughter.

His mother isn't going to die anytime soon, not to mention his disciple and adopted children.

Almost instinctively, a domain of destructive black lightning roiled around Leonardo before it compressed into a fist-sized sphere. Leonardo depleted all of his worldly energy into this condensed ball of black lightning without a second thought then smashed it below his feet.

BOOM!

Cracks webbed along the dusty ground as shattered rocks tossed about everywhere.

The ground collapsed like a gaping maw as Leonardo fell into the ditch, the dome of absolute destruction sweeping past his location barely a moment later.

The ground all around Leonardo almost compressed under the pressure as the collapse escalated, slabs of stone smashing into his back.

Pfft!

Leonardo spat blood and inhaled sharply, feeling his bones cracking. The underground structure of the sect seemed hollowed out in some locations, the residual force of the previous clash propelling Leonardo all the way into the depths.

Dense pure ether could be felt through these hollow channels, barely enough to keep Leonardo with a sliver of consciousness as he tossed some medicinal pills in his mouth.

With a muffled thud, Leonardo finally landed on hard ground, panting heavily as a puddle of blood seeped through his black clothes. He knew that it must have been the force of that clash to utterly destroy the underground tunnels and his attack was merely a bit of a helping hand.

"What kind of power is that?" Leonardo climbed up to his feet in a bit of a daze. The more he saw, the less confident he was with his own techniques.

He naively thought himself to be unrivaled and almost got himself killed on multiple occasions. He shivered a bit, shaking his head and following down the path of the pure ether.

Junior Brother mentioned something about cleansing ponds with dense ether energy, he had a feeling that these things must be underground. As he was walking, Leonardo felt yet another tremor in the underground tunnels, cracks accumulating on the walls as the ground beneath Leonardo's feet began to shake uncontrollably, causing him to wobble about on his way forward.

"Now what?!" Leonardo almost cursed, oblivious to the fact that this was the finishing blow that sealed the fate of an entire sect.

Still, even if he knew, he wouldn't care.

That's because a flood of pure ether rushed through the tunnels after the explosion. If no one knew better, they would think that Junior Brother was deliberately helping Leonardo find a path to the cleansing ponds.

It was only natural for these ponds to be in the inner regions of the sect because a divinity with cleansed worldly energy would have a better sub-dimension with a sturdy structure founded by ether.

As for cultivation resources after achieving divinity, raw ether fragments and pure ether fragments would do just fine.

Almost fifteen minutes later, Leonardo arrived at a crystalline pond of clear and transparent liquid. At the bottom of the pond, a surface area of glistening deep blue raw ether fragments were imbedded into the floor like an assortment of stars.

Since each raw ether fragment was the size of a fingernail, Leonardo estimated that tens of thousands of fragments should be inlaid beneath the water surface, and these fragments channel the energy from the ether veins beneath the mountain range to continually cleanse the pond.

Without even thinking about it, Leonardo dropped head-first into the water with a splash that sent water and blood splattering everywhere.

A cool sensation tickled Leonardo's skin as he began to circulate his energy based on the nameless technique passed down by the silhouette he met on Arcadia.

His pores opened up, and he almost groaned out in pleasure from the sensation as the pure energy rushed into his body indiscriminately. Of course, the majority of this energy rushed into Rosaline's embryo, quickly replenishing and rejuvenating her essence.

This was a familiar sensation to when he consumed the ether rejuvenation pill, making Leonardo wonder about the tier of that pill.

Very quickly though, he tossed these thoughts to the back of his head as he curled up in the bottom of the pond, dense ether washing his pores, flesh, meridians, blood, bones, and cells clean.

Three whirlpools appeared within the nebulas of Leonardo's desolate martial intent, thunderforce martial intent, and bloodthirsty martial intent, with the final whirlpool hosting Rosaline's embryo at its center.

These whirlpools sucked Leonardo's body dry from whatever worldly energy he had left after exhausting it with the lightning orb, stranding him like an empty shell without a pulse of energy. Then, dense ether that had been cleansed through the formation rushed into Leonardo's body and into these whirlpools, most of it nourishing Rosaline whilst the remnants were circulated back to Leonardo's cells.

As prior mentioned during Leonardo's cultivation session in the Sky Mountains Domain, when all of his cells collectively absorb enough energy to break past their natural capacity and reform anew, his cultivation would progress a level further.

After the mutation, it could be said that the multiple nebulas in his cells would draw in energy and then explode, causing the cells to explode in a chain reaction.

Muffled explosions echoed throughout Leonardo's body until he finally advanced to level 69…

An unknown amount of time later, these explosions sounded once more as he advanced to level 70…

His cells were now at the peak of their capacity, and the next step was to connect all of his cells and spiritual energy to connect with a spatial node between the corporeal and ethereal dimensions, refining a sub-dimension of his own.