29 Beginnings of an Army & A Former King (2/2)

With that, I exited the Shadow Realm with a thought and looked around the now body-free room. They truly had entered the Shadow Realm it seems, I looked over my shoulder at my shadow being cast on a corner of the room and grinned at the thought of an army climbing out behind me.

”Time to go collect some corpses…” I walked out of the room and headed towards the two guards I had killed earlier, hopefully, no one was good-natured enough to move the corpses.

…

”I know you gave up willingly, you've reached the next realm! I would've had no way to fight back and was prepared to sacrifice most of my troops… So why?” Nine was looking at the 'former' King who had willingly given up his throne when he had entered the Throne Room.

The King had taken the next step and transcended the Core Gathering Stage altogether, surprisingly he had given up willingly and passed the Kingdom over to Nine the moment he had stepped into the room, for the last day he had been troubled by this and finally decided to question the King on this point.

”You're still young…” The aged voice of the King replied, ”But you still don't know the gap between us and him, you wish to rebel and yet you have no clue about the true strength of your enemy.”

”You didn't answer my question.” Nine said with irritation in his voice, the former king simply smiled indifferently, ”I want to see you win.” He replied once more, this time an unmistakable fire burned in his eyes as he looked at Nine, ”I want you to win and free us from this hell.”

Nine looked down in silence for a few minutes, his head finally raised back to meet the former kings' stare, ”Can I do it?” He said with uncertainty ”

”Yes; however, you're still far too weak to challenge him – all of us are still far from a challenge for him to defeat and free ourselves of this world, we all had thought ourselves strong but even above him there exists people stronger. We're nothing more than ants struggling to survive, unimportant to the rest of the universe with no control over our own fate.” The former Kings' words resonated with Nines own doubts, ”You still have no idea how to progress to the next realm do you?”

Nine simply looked at him awkwardly, it had been a year since he had become stuck at the Pinnacle of the Core Gathering Realm and he didn't know how to progress from there – it wasn't as simple as following a technique because he had pioneered his own technique meaning no one could give him the direction to progress in.

”I can't give you much advise or put you at risk of limiting yourself or even worse killing yourself – however, to progress to the fourth realm is a type of rebirth, at the Core Gathering Realm we create the core inside of us like the molten lava at the core of the world. It is the foundation of our power, so if our cores are akin to the core of a world – what happens next?”

The former Kings' words seemed to give some sort of enlightenment to Nine as he nodded his head and gave a quick thanks before rushing off to enter seclusion at that moment, leaving the former king in the old throne room.

It was important to note that during that exchange no one had sat on the throne – they had spoken as equals despite the former king possessing more power than Nine could manage, but he had no intentions of harming the boy who had taken his kingdom and instead wanted to aid him in his path, why?

The only reason was that he knew his life would end soon, a bitter smile formed on the former king's face as he looked out of the throne room windows he was so familiar with, ”Do I really hold no hope of breaking-through?”

A look of determination on his face he sat down by the windows, overlooking the entire city and started to cultivation, a youthful vigour in his eyes that should've long since disappeared with his age burnt like a raging fire as he charged like a general into the midst of a battle, attacking the bottleneck with all his might.

”I BREAKTHROUGH OR DIE!” He roared, his voice imbued with his own energy sent out a shockwave that shook the entire palace violently and shattered the windows letting the cold icy breeze cut his aged cheeks…