Angelica and the two first ranked geniuses couldn't believe what they were feeling. This was a pressure they only sensed when facing their clan elders, and yet, here it was!
Madeleine couldn't use her divine sense to form will attacks at a distance like Clara could. It simply required too much soul talent… Madeleine had no idea how many decades it would take her to master such a technique, it might even take centuries!
However, what her divine sense could do was raise her senses to the utmost degree. Not a single thing on the battlefield was lost to her senses, even her own techniques became sharper as she saw through their flaws.
That said, Madeleine didn't reveal her divine sense simply to intimidate and perceive. No. She revealed her divine sense to do something almost no saint could dream of doing.
The process of cultivation is, at its core, about learning more about the universe, comprehending wills and energies to a deeper extent. When one reaches the celestial realm, their comprehension reaches such a level that they can even carve out a piece of this martial world to call their own. This celestial reserved technique is known as an Aura or a Pseudo-Domain.
In his fight against the Aumen King, it was this deployment of a Pseudo-Domain that King Belmont used to slightly alter the laws of the universe, allowing him to fuse his blue and red flames together.
By all conventional means, reaching this state should be impossible for a saint. Their energy reserves aren't powerful enough, nor is their comprehension of the universe deep enough. However, Madeleine was no normal saint.
At that moment, a blazing purple heat erupted from Madeleine's body, mixing with a blinding star light. Half and half, they formed a massive purple and star-like sphere that encompassed the hundred-meter radius around her.
When Angelica and the two first ranked geniuses saw this, they immediately paled. There was no time for exclamations, no time for remorse, or apologizing…
The first time Madeleine used her purple flames in battle was the first time they realized that Madeleine didn't only have a single 6th stage intent… The truth was she had a 7th stage intent… No, she had three of them…
The battle had no suspense.
**
Within the Valley of Geniuses, almost a month had passed now. Unfortunately, Dyon had felt the slow crawling seconds of every bit of that time even as he lay on the ground, gasping for breath.
He felt as though he had re-entered the trial grounds of the tower, bombarded by endless fights day in and day out. The difference was that instead of fighting beasts, he was fighting armies of humans. At least this gave him fighting experience the third trial world couldn't.
He had long since lost count of how many floors he had climbed. Somehow the tower that seemed to only have nine floors from the outside, managed to gain an infinite number on the inside. However, what really made him bitterly smile was that after he reached what seemed like the millionth floor to him, the spirit of the tower finally greeted him, only to inform him that he had finally unlocked the first of nine levels.
After Dyon tried to ask why the spirit hadn't shown up before, it snorted and said it disdained to talk to an owner so weak. It was clearly aggrieved that Dyon took 16 years to even attempt the trials.
However, when Dyon heard this, he could only chuckle bitterly. Judging by how difficult passing the first trial was even with his celestial body, if he had even stepped foot onto the first floor back when he had the body of a meridian formation expert, he would have been blasted to nothingness. Yet this treasure spirit still had the audacity to chastise him.
But, when Dyon learned of the uses of the tower, he couldn't be bothered to care about the spirit's rudeness anymore.
Firstly, there were the miscellaneous things. The tower could act as a training room, a transporter and a defense. The owner, while within the tower, would effectively become like a god, being to teleport others in and out at will while gaining small scale omnipotent abilities. However, those things weren't too attractive, it was restricted to levitating objects and being aware of what was happening in each and every room of the tower.
The tower also recorded everything it witnessed. This feature was actually meant for training purposes, so one could review their flaws and improve, but Dyon had already thought of many other uses for it as well. That aside, the spirit also let Dyon know that it had the recording of fights between experts that Dyon could use for enlightenment as well.
Dyon also learned that although this tower set its trials for body cultivators, that actually didn't have much to do with its origins. The spirit was just following the wishes of its last owner. In fact, the tower had little to do with body cultivation. It was simply meant to be the immortal home of a strong cultivator, which made its functions much more versatile than Dyon expected.
According to the spirit, the tower was a war machine. It didn't care what method of war you used, it just wanted to fight.
For example, the tower's first floor that Dyon unlocked, the tower had a room aptly named the Weapon Devouring Room.
This room contained a special formation that allowed weapons to eat each other and become stronger. Ten 1st level common weapons could be entered to produce a 2nd level common weapon. So on and so forth, with the price increasing as one went on.
Of course, Dyon didn't personally need such a feature, but when he was raising an army, this would become a massive help. The scariest part was that when Dyon's soul unsealed, making a common level weapon was as easy as breathing. He could make ten in the time it took to take a single breath.
It was just unfortunate that the higher-level weapon you wanted to create, the more energy the formation took, and the more astronomical the number of weapons needed reached. Also, it was impossible to cross a large barrier ranking – for example, master to grandmaster – unless the appropriately ranked raw materials were also added.
Although the first floor wasn't too useful to Dyon right at this moment, he was still content because the first floor came along with another prize: puppets!
How could a war machine be complete without a room filled with puppets? And, unlike Dyon's previous two puppets, they were all in mint condition. It turned out these puppets were actually self-repairing!
When Dyon fought his final battle after the end of the World Tournament, his puppet had been destroyed by Elder Daiyu. The good news was that another puppet still remained, but with his soul sealed, Dyon had no hope of controlling it. Because of that, it could only display the strength of a peak saint which was not too useful to Dyon right now.
According to the tower, the first floor gave him access to a million saints, ten thousand celestials, and ten dao formation puppets.
Before Dyon could even think about getting exciting about this, the spirit coldly sneered and told him he'd have to provide the power source for them because their energy reserves were depleted.
On the one hand, these puppets were of a far higher level than those that guarded the Elvin Tombs because they didn't need to be controlled to display their full power, but on the other hand Dyon had no idea where to even start looking for the energy sources for so many puppets.
What should have been a victory turned into a bitter chore in a mere moment.
That was when Dyon remembered something that made him laugh uproariously. Didn't he have the Energy Core sitting in his inner world right now?
Unfortunately, his excitement was shot down again. After he brought up the idea, his master told him that no puppet could withstand such energy and that he'd end up causing it to implode. But, the good news was that as long as Dyon found a few energy stone mines and allow the energy core to absorb them, his efficiency at powering the puppets would sky rocket.
Obviously, the saint puppets would need saint stones, the celestial puppets, celestial stones, and the dao formation puppets, either dao stones, transcendent stones, or enigmatic stones.
