"How do you leave?"

  "We have tried everything. The mechanism doesn't make any sense. I might have to live out the rest of my life in this crappy forest."

  Anos then laughed to everyone's confusion.

  "Why are you laughing?"

  Anos didn't hide it at all.

  "You're telling me I'm in an isolated space?"

  "Yes...?"

  "You're also telling me this space is hard to enter and impossible to leave, right?"

  "Ok?"

  Anos smiled.

  "The spiritual energy here is acceptable. This is a perfect place to meditate!"

  Zaphiela looked at Anos. She said:

  "You want to become a martial artist here? That won't help you escape!"

  Edrea inwardly thought that he knew something they didn't!

  "Do you guys have food?" Edrea looked at the campfire and swallowed. He was incredibly hungry.

  "We have hunted most beast in this forest to extinction over these years. Food is precious. You aren't part of our party. So we can't share... this matter involves our life and death."

  "The longer we survive. The greater the hope of escaping!"

  Anos patted Edrea on the shoulder.

  "Join them. I have something to do." Anos started to walk away. Edrea yelled at him asking where he was going? Anos looked back him and said:

  "I'm going to find the relic!"

  "It seems I truly don't need to eat..."

  Anos had been in the familiar cave for three months now. He felt as if he was losing something. He no longer dreamed when he slept. Even that crazy dream with the seals faded into nothing.

  He didn't spend all his time meditating.

  He broke through to the fourth level of qi condensation a month ago and had stabilized his realm.

  "They spent over eight years searching for this relic. But they didn't find it..."

  "A normal person can only search with their eyes."

  "If it is underground. It is like sifting through sand to find treasure. Incredibly unlikely."

  "But I am a cultivator!"

  "If I can reach foundation establishment. I can use my spiritual sense to look underground!"

  Anos had felt a gradual change in the last few months. If before, he would cultivate for 8 hours a day and sleep for six. Now he would cultivate for 16 hours a day.

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  He went from sleeping 6 hours a day to five. Then four. Then three.

  Now he didn't sleep at all! He had completely replaced sleep with practice.

  "The odds of breaking through to foundation establishment decrease drastically after the age of 60. I am now 15 years old. So I need to attack the next realm in the next 45 years."

  The real question Anos had was if he could reach the perfection of qi condensation before this age.

  Under very special circumstances, some cultivators can reach beyond the tenth level of qi condensation. They are said to be invincible in their realm.

  But Anos was the only cultivator in this world as far as he knew. So he didn't care to establish a perfect foundation. He knew before coming to this world that his talent was weak.

  He had what most considered the worst type of spiritual roots. He also didn't comprehend anything in the secret realm. If it wasn't for him dying and being splattered on the 'Axiom' pillar.

  He would've just been a mediocre waste among cultivators. He knew virtually nothing about talismans or formations. He regretted deeply that he didn't study during those five years he was in the sect.

  He had already surpassed his past self in terms of cultivation.

  "If I try to breakthrough and fail. My lifespan will drop dramatically. I'd be lucky to live till 80. If I don't attack the next realm, I can live for 150 years."

  Anos didn't lie when he told the others he was going to find the relic. He just didn't plan to do so for years.

  "To cultivate is to be on a lonely path. But you can't spend all your time in seclusion. Insights from others can help quite a bit."

  Anos decided to take a break and find that group. He wanted to see how Edrea was doing. So, he left his cave and leapt into the air. His control over the god step was getting better and better.

  He stood in the sky and kept transitioning from place to place as if he was hoping back and forth. He looked for signs of others from his high vantage point.

  But he saw no signs. Perhaps he just chose a bad time. There was no smoke this time, so they were probably exploring to find an exit to this forest.

  Anos stepped back down to the ground.

  He walked back into the cave and began to cultivate.

  A man sat in his study and slammed his fist on the desk shattering it into chunks.

  "What do you mean you can't find her!?"

  The servant swallowed and quickly told him everything he knew.

  "We escorted her to the entrance of the forest. But the moment she entered. A mist covered the forest and all traces of her disappeared! Even her guards and the carriages left no traces. It is as if they were wiped off the face of earth..."

  Zeraph Xervist was the one that sent his daughter to look for the relic. He knew that such a relic was basically impossible to find. They had failed countless times in the past and weren't even sure if it actually existed...

  He really just wanted to humble his daughter so that she would give up her desire for power and marry the one destined to her for the benefit of the family.

  The forest was an old legend. But in the last century. It had done nothing mysterious at all! So why did it change its behavior? It had only been a few days.

  Unknown to Zeraph. A few days was already over eight years in 'dream valley'. To him, his daughter had recently vanished. But to those inside the forest. Years were going by.

  It was like a dream!

  This is but one reason it had such a name.

  Anos was still at the fourth level of qi condensation. The higher you go, the harder cultivation becomes. Some people are trapped at a stage for their entire lives.

  With his talent. He wasn't doing bad at all.

  His soul had been warped from the inheritance of Axiom. But the spiritual energy was thin in this dream valley. This slowed his cultivation. But even a stone will be eroded by drops of water over time.

  It wasn't just the spiritual energy in this valley. This entire world wasn't very dense in terms of energy. He could tell the difference between here and the sect. The outer-sect was on a spiritual vein. So the energy was a bit better. But he made up for this difference with consistency.

  Anos left his cave and looked into a pond. In his reflection, he saw that his right eye was glowing.

  'Eyes of God'

  This was a technique part of the God-Eye sutra. Those in Axiom's sect didn't simply cultivate standard techniques. They not only improved their realm. They also cultivated one of their eyes into a 'god eye'.

  Some geniuses even cultivated both eyes!

  This could dispel illusions or create them. There were even legends that it could allow one to look into the future!

  Previously. Anos had used such a thing to pull those bandits into an illusion.

  But he recently had an epiphany.

  What if he pulled himself into an illusion? The strength of the illusion is pretty weak. It depends on a lot of factors like how strong the person is in terms of mental strength, whether or not they resist, etc.

  Anos didn't resist at all and put himself in a suggestible state.

  "Eternal Incarnation!"

  Anos made eye contact with himself as his surroundings started to shift.