Spirit's Ascension-Chapter 118—Secret of the Settlement.
Cole looked at the surrounding darkness, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from, but he just couldn’t find anything.
Just as he began to Wonder, the surrounding area slowly became illuminated by an unknown source of light, allowing Cole to finally see something.
But what he saw in front of him made him wish he hadn’t seen such a thing ever in his life.
Sitting in a lotus position not far away from him was a dark-haired old man. The man’s face wasn’t scaring Cole so much.
Instead, he was scared of the man’s body that had warts growing all over it.
The warts oozed off pus and weird substances, causing the whole of the underground space to have a weird decaying smell.
Cole felt extremely irritated, and the same could be said about his teammates, judging by the look of disgust on his teammates’ faces.
"Hope you don’t mind my strange appearance," The man said.
"Not that you can do anything about it," He continued.
Cole tried his best to speak, but he couldn’t release any sounds at all; he could only stare forward in defeat.
"That bastard Marcus got me real good," the man muttered, but Cole still heard him.
"Let’s return to why I brought you three here. I have been noticing your infiltration into my domain, but I previously ignored you all, but now it seems something really is special about you all."
The old man began his strange soliloquy.
"I would have decided to open you all up and find out what exactly made you special, but I feel the aura of that special place on you three."
"So I won’t be doing anything,"
"Instead, I have decided to help you all and tell you some things about the Spiriters’ world."
"Aura of that special place? Help us? What the hell is this man ranting?" Cole thought.
"Firstly, don’t go around sniffing for information anytime you find anything unusual."
"You guys got into this kind of situation because you guys interfered in my attempt to heal my injuries," he started.
"This settlement had become my domain while I attempted to control the people’s emotions to comprehend my Innate spirit."
"Do you get it now? that’s why they were acting all weird. They are in my control."
"I just left some set of people out of this to act as variables."
Cole’s eyes widened as his scalp tingled while thinking of what the man just said.
"He is in control of such a large group of people; just to comprehend his Innate spirit."
"And what exactly is a domain he keeps speaking of?" Cole thought.
"But now I think I should have gotten enough; the climax of this sudden party was the final push I needed."
"Be happy, kid; you have been able to experience something some might never see in their lifetime."
As the man spoke, visible tendrils of purple energy began coming down from above in a swirling form and converging on the man in front of them.
"What is going on?" Cole thought as he observed that energy.
The energy looked extremely dangerous, as if any contact with it was enough to make someone crazy.
The more the number of energy tendrils that converged, the more invigorated the man looked.
All of the warts all around his body slowly shrunk and fell off his body. Leaving clear porcelain skin.
Cole and the rest stood there in shock as they experienced the changes going on in front of them.
"Time for the next advancement uhh, I better leave then before I attract those people," the man said as he slowly floated up.
"I come looking for you, kid; just make sure to stay strong," the man said with his eyes locked on Cole.
"Farewell now," he continued while his voice faded.
In no time, then, his body vanished totally from the space he currently was in.
The moment the man left the scene, Cole and his teammates slowly regained control over their body. In the next instant, the trio plopped straight on the ground.
They immediately felt sore all over their body from the sudden infiltration. Their muscles also felt extremely weak at the time.
Nobody had to tell them to before they got into a lotus position and immediately began cultivating.
They slowly attracted life energy from the surroundings into their bodies.
When the first round of life energy infiltrated their bodies, the trio opened their eyes in shock, as they hadn’t felt Life energy this pure in a long, long time.
"This is very nice," Cole said in joy.
The life energy that was currently surrounding them was so pure that its quality could be said to be superior to the one in the academy.
Like a ravenous wolf, Coles and his teammates chanted their Soul Mantras as best they could to get the best from such an opportunity.
Cole had previously been feeling that he had been approaching the early stages of the Awakened-Level and now he was so close.
He continued his ravenous absorption, and in no time he broke through that limit completely and entered the mid-stages.
That sub-stage advancement produced a little bit of change to the environment before rapidly vanishing, but that didn’t mean his teammates didn’t notice.
The other two opened their eyes to look at Cole that was still locked in and proceeded to close them again.
Despite breaking through a whole sub-stage, Cole didn’t attempt to stop his cultivation at all.
It wasn’t every day you saw such a free meal. Instead, he attempted to increase the speed further without disturbing his teammates.
The longer he cultivated, the farther Cole moved in the Awakened Level of his cultivation.
While the trio cultivated in the underground space, the members of the settlement were in an extremely frenzied and scared state.
They all looked around in confusion as they tried to make sense of their current situation.
None of them had any idea what brought them into such a situation and why they were doing such a thing at the moment.
"Why the hell are we partying at such a moment?" one person said in confusion.
"Let’s go ask the Settlement leader," someone pitched.
After that idea from one of them, the others quickly agreed and began approaching the settlement leader’s home.
In the underground spot of the settlement leader’s house, the trio were slowly going out of the cultivation mode as the quality Life energy had begun slowly returning to normal.
"That was extremely nice," Cole muttered as he stood on his feet.
He could feel that he went quite far in his journey through the mid-stage itself, producing a feeling of fulfillment in him.
"I wonder when we get such an opportunity again," Cole wondered.
While he thought about it all, he could feel his teammates stirring and also getting out of cultivation. Linda was the first to get out of the mood, followed by Bryan.
"How was it, fruitful, uhh?" Cole asked his teammates. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶
"Yes, extremely fruitful. I have made significant progress," Linda spoke up enthusiastically.
Bryan, who was on the side, also nodded his head in concurrence to her words.
"Now that we are done with all that and that person has left, it is time to go do what we came here for in the first instance," Cole said.
Linda’s face grew extremely excited as she heard Cole’s words.
"Yes, yes, let’s go do that now," Linda nodded.
Before she even responded, Cole had already begun heading back up the stairs back where they came through.
A step at a time, the trio climbed up the steps until they arrived at the top, where the settlement leader was nowhere to be found.
"I really thought I would find him here," Cole said to himself.
"He couldn’t have escaped, could he?" he said to his teammates.
"He better not," Linda said.
They began retracing their steps from what they said while they were heading towards that place. And approached the entrance.
From where they were, they began hearing the noise of a raging crowd from outside the building.
"They must have regained their senses and started demanding answers," Bryan said.
Since the settlement’s leader house wasn’t too complex, the trio finally found a way back out.
The instant they got out, the first thing they saw was the settlement leader who was currently trying to calm the crowd.
The crowd outside the building was shocked by the trio’s appearance, resulting in their diverted attention.
The settlement leader immediately noticed that and realized what was going on.
"Why didn’t that man take care of them," he thought in shock.
Without saying anything more, the settlement leader turned around and began preparing to escape as far as he could.
His leg moved extremely fast towards the dense crowd, hoping they would open up some space for him to escape, but the crowd didn’t move an inch.
Instead, they stood there not even moving an inch. The leader tried clawing his way through, but no one allowed him.
"It is over," Cole said in a cold voice just behind the man.
