The Dawn of the New World

Hao Xuan opened his eyes and returned to back the Beast world.

"I feel like the Mind palace is getting smaller by the day. At this rate, it will be full within a few weeks. I'll have to make some new ones as soon as possible," he mumbled thinking about the two giant 18-feet guys camping in his palace.

From the Elementary Realm to the Origin Realm, the physical body was refined bit by bit. And in the Spirit Realm, the soul was refined and cultivators would be able to increase the power of their souls and strengthen it much more.

Each stage of the Spirit realm would allow the cultivators to open another Mind palace, but their requirements were too stringent and most people would not be able to open more than three or four throughout the entire spirit realm.

One needed a heaven-defyingly powerful soul to be able to support all of the Mind Palaces.

The more powerful the soul, the more Palaces they could open. The minimum requirement to reach the Profound Realm was to create at least one Mind Palace.

That's why each Profound Realm expert was different. A cultivator of Profound Realm with Six Mind palaces would be able to go much further in the world than someone with Three palaces. Not to mention they would be much stronger than their peers as well.

The number of Mind palaces also affected the number of techniques a person could cultivate. And the more Mind palaces one had the more powerful techniques they would be able to use.

This was the one aspect that Hao Xuan could claim to be ahead of everyone else in.

Any person with a constitution similar to him had a powerful soul. But because of the "uniqueness" oh his abilities, he was a tier higher even by those standards.

The Soul Severing Heavenly constitution allowed him to sever the connection of other's souls to the heavens and control their lives and deaths. So obviously he needed a strong soul to support all the others.

This meant that opening Six palaces would not be a problem for him. And if he was lucky, then maybe even Seven was possible.

Eight palaces required a genius-level talent that would only be found in 1 out of 5,000 cultivators.

But one had to be a Supreme genius, someone that could look down on the Nine Realms and Ten Heavens with disdain, someone that was 'born' to be better than everyone else, to be able to open Nine Palaces.

Every single person that was capable of opening Nine palaces had gone on to become a legendary existence in this world as long as they were able to mature enough, which didn't always happen.

There were legends, whispers of people with Ten Palaces but no one knew if they were true. If such individuals existed, they would belong to the core of the highest tier of powers in every world.

What were the requirements to open Ten Palaces, if at all possible? Perhaps only the hegemons would know.

Hao Xuan sighed thinking about the long journey ahead.

After taking a little more time straightening out his thoughts, he picked up a snoring Zhurong and left. He walked back to the Mad Saints quarters and was met with Luke near the entrance.

"Captain!" Luke gave a deep bow and went on his way. Ever since Hao Xuan became their captain, even though they showed 'respect', it was only due to the difference in rank.

But after watching Hao Xuan fight and seeing the things he did, every single member of Mad Saint that had any doubt about his ability was gone. They respected him from the bottom of their hearts and knew that he had great potential.

Their attitude towards him changed completely.

Every single Mad Saint bowed respectfully in front of him when they saw him, like how a junior would in front of a senior.

He went to his room and summoned Aria.

"Captain!" with a slight bow, she was the only one that didn't treat him any differently because from the start she never looked down on him.

He smiled and nodded, "How's the investigation going? What did you find?"

"Its finished captain. I tried to reach out to you before but didn't get a response," she looked up at him, "Yes, I was a little busy with some other matters. Go on, how are they doing?"

"Yes. The family still lives on the same farm they were given at the start, but it seems someone powerful is looking after them. All the children except the oldest were admitted into the National Academy on scholarships and while the oldest one is in the military. He joined normally and went through all the tests. He is actually not bad at all and was picked for an elite unit."

Hao Xuan frowned, "Someone powerful? Who?"

"I'm not sure, captain. I tried to find out but even as a Red Legion member I didn't have the clearance to get that information. All I know is that its someone from the Royal family."

"Royal family? Why would anyone fro-" he stopped mid-sentence as an image popped into his head. Yue Fei!

"Looks like he's not that dumb after all," Hao Xuan mumbled with a smile as his mood took a turn for the worse. Aria felt a cold chill go down her spine looking at his smile. That face, she had seen it before. It was like a beast hunting its prey.

"Does he not see eye-to-eye with the royals?" she thought inwardly.

"Anything else?" Hao Xuan spoke up after regaining his composure.

"No sir. The farm has a high-grade Earth level protective formation around it in case of another sudden beast horde attack. It's extremely powerful and would even hold against some Spiritual level beasts. The only thing is..." she stopped and looked up at Hao Xuan once again.

He frowned looking at her behavior, "Speak, don't worry, I won't lose my temper against something this simple," he said casually waving his hand.

"Yes. It seems the children are being somewhat mistreated at the academy. Since they come from poor backgrounds while all the other students have powerful backings, they are looked down upon and being bullied. But they are keeping it all a secret from their parents and enduring it by themselves."

Even her who was normally kind and collected had her expression turned worse talking about this. She continued: "Especially the twins. There is a son of a government official who has taken a 'liking' to them and torments them on a daily bas-"

*BOOOOOOM*

The entire room collapsed as an aura akin to a God of Death erupted forth from Hao Xuan's body.

Aria was blown away along with the room.

"What happened?!"

"Are we under attack?!"

Voices came from all around after hearing the explosion as people gathered one after another.

Kuo, Hash, and Maddy that were cultivating behind closed doors suddenly appeared.

"What happened?" Kuo asked looking at Aria who had blood coming out from the side of her mouth.

"I....the captai-" she tried to explain but a thundering voice interjected.

"WHO?! Who is it? What is his name? Who is his father?" the voice came from the cloud of dust where a room once used to be.

The dust finally settled and everyone could see Hao Xuan standing there with his hair flying without any wind and two massive 18-feet tall men behind him.

They seemed to be even angrier than him and were releasing an aura that made everyone present tremble.

Kuo's eyes constricted when he saw him, "Why did no one tell me the captain was here?!!" he shouted inwardly.

Hao Xuan took a step and appeared in front of Aria. He ignored everyone else and looked down, "What is his name? What is his father's name?" he asked calmly.

"M-Mu Taio," she stuttered, scared out of her mind.

"Captain, what's going o-" Kuo walked towards him with a smile trying to calm him down but the two men appeared in front of him. They blotted out the sun, standing there like an impregnable wall.

Kuo, who was already a 5th stage Spirit realm expert, knew the men in front of him were weaker than him but he got a feeling that he still would not be able to defeat them with ease. It was a gut feeling but his gut was rarely wrong.

"Captain!" Kuo imbued Qi into his voice and shouted, trying to wake Hao Xuan up, and it worked.

Hao Xuan looked over at him with a nonchalant expression that terrified him more than the two men.

"What?" Hao Xuan asked gently.