Just like that, another day passed silently…
**
Dyon sat in the Heaven's Wine private room, diligently packaging food for every child and demon general.
For the children, he created well rounded meal plans – strengthening their hibernating meridians, increasing their bodies' capacities, and making their souls more robust for future cultivation. For the demon generals, although he didn't know the extent of all of their powers just yet, he had still grasped their specialties.
He wasn't satisfied with his army having any weaknesses, so, he decreased the amount of food towards their strengths, and increased the food to buffer their weaknesses. After he had sent enough for an entire week and equipped the demon generals with cultivation methods for their weaknesses from the Celestial Deer Sect, he finally ate himself.
Although the dip in revenue would be obvious from the Elvin branch's perspective, the overall scale of Heaven's Wine was so large that Dyon's influence was minute. Again, what was feeding thousands for free, versus getting payment from millions? Even tens of millions?
From what Dyon could see, there were no overseers at any branch. There were no guards, no waiters, and this branch didn't even seem to have one of the owner's disciples. So, Dyon deduced that Heaven's Wine was most likely overseen together as a collective, rather than individually. As such, he used their resources freely.
But, at the back of Dyon's mind, he was fully aware that Iaachus could most likely see what was going on. And, by extension, his master could too. But, Dyon couldn't be bothered to care. Not right now. He had too many other things on his mind.
He knew that Ri was probably worried and pissed that she couldn't get out of the spatial world, but, he was in no mood to interact with anyone at the moment. Even his seemingly heartfelt task of diligently tailoring meal plans for each person, was done as though he was an emotionless robot. He calculated. He planned. He strategized. But, during the hours he spent doing this, not once did he feel.
Silently meditating and slowly absorbing his food, Dyon's essence integration slowly increased. Although the pace was much slower than before, it was much better than without the spiritual foods. His demon qilin and celestial deer blood was already approaching 11%, and his demon sage essence had finally firmly planted itself at 2%. With this, his body's strength could finally rival those at the lower meridian formation stage without the need for him to use his understand of wills or his soul. Although, that was only when they too didn't use their wills or souls.
This being said, Dyon felt a faint watershed at surpassing 10% of integration. It seemed every 10% mark would bring him another set of challenges and another level of trials. However, he could only push through.
In addition to his body, he also spent time on his soul. Although he had yet to investigate his manifestation, he could faintly feel his soul diligently approaching the middle tier of the Essence stage. However, Dyon felt like he needed to know more about the soul before he studied his manifestation. For example, he still had no idea what an 'innate soul strength' was. In fact, the first time he had even heard of such a concept was when Ri explained the requirements to enter Acacia Academy.
How could Dyon study the manifestation of a soul, without understanding the soul itself? He knew it was time to pour through his master's memories.
He had hoped he wouldn't meet any mental blocks on the information, but he could only grit his teeth when he realized that there were.
No wonder he hadn't stumbled upon the term 'innate soul strength' before, his master had never left it in her memories for him. Dyon could only resign himself to heading back to the Acacia Academy Library. Afterwards, he'd leave his marks on the guilds and slowly uncover the mystery of the Elvin Kingdom.
Despite Dyon's cold heart, his mind was clear as he realized something… if every mental block was in correlation to the destruction of the Celestial Deer Sect, wouldn't that mean that by a complex system of elimination and cross-referencing things Dyon's master should know versus what her memories didn't have, Dyon would be able to slowly piece together the story?
'It seems you've left me quite the puzzle game master…'
This was Dyon's first real human-like thought in days…
**
Within Dyon's spatial world, everything was peaceful.
The demon generals and children happily ate their food. Dyon had sent each set in separately, marked for each person, and divided by day. Since he didn't know how robust the appetites of everyone would be, he technically sent more than he needed too. In fact, many scratched their heads when reading the notes Dyon left behind.
One of the demon generals laughed. "This is a week's worth of food? I could go through a month and still not finish this."
A beautiful white-haired demon general giggled lightly. "It seems our leader has quite the appetite. Look at all of this, he's assumed we're all as gluttonous as he is. How adorable!"
The atmosphere was light and heartfelt. None of the generals were aware of how Dyon was feeling. Although some could vaguely sense that something had happened judging by the influx of children, they didn't mind too much. Their leader cared enough to send them food, tailor make their meals, and even send them cultivation methods to strengthen their weaknesses. What could they have to complain about?
To them, if the successor needed help, he would come to them. It wasn't like they could leave the world of their own free will anyway. That was simply how spatial worlds worked. As long as the user was able to force you in, you would have to be strong enough to match the creator of the ring to break free.
But, how could experts that peaked at the lower saint level break free of constraints set by a Spiritual Grade ring? At most, they could shake the world like they had before.
