Ascension of the Immortal Asura

As soon as the ship entered the Great Desert, a look of slight surprise appeared on John's face.

"The Qi!" He exclaimed. "There's almost no natural Qi here!"

Lilian nodded her head at John's words. "There is almost no natural Qi within this desert, making it truly a barren wasteland. In fact, the Qi only thins further as one approaches the center of the desert. This is one of the reasons why crossing the desert is so challenging," Lilian replied. "You cannot rely on the natural Qi of this world to replenish your energy, and can only do so through pills and other physical means."

John glanced down at the desert below, which was rapidly speeding by. He finally understood why crossing this desert was such a challenge.

A cultivator couldn't easily fly over it, as they would quickly run out of Qi, and would only be able to replenish that Qi through the use of Qi replenishing pills, or spirit crystals. However, unless one was in the Heaven Tribulation Realm or above, directly extracting the wild Qi from spirit crystals directly was too dangerous to do..

As such, the journey would need to be an arduous and slow journey on foot. The only exception was if someone had a flying ship, but there were only a handful of them on the entire Yuan Continent, and such a method could not be relied on regularly.

"Wait a minute," John replied. "If there is no Qi, then how can powerful beasts exist here?" John asked. He had heard stories that powerful beasts roamed these lands, adding to the difficulty further.

"You see that hole over there?" his master pointed in a certain direction. John strained his eyes, and noticed a hole roughly ten yards wide far off in the distance.

"Yes," John replied. "What is that hole?"

"That is hole linking the land above with the tunnels below of the Great Desert. Most of the creatures of this land are ground-dwelling creatures, who only surface when there is a disturbance. Down there are special materials in which these powerful creatures can absorb Qi from. Its similar to spirit crystals, but much less valuable. However it is enough for them," Lilian replied.

John studied the desert below and noticed many other holes scattered around at varying locations. 

"Doesn't that mean that as long as we're in the sky, there's no danger at all?" John asked.

Lilian smirked as she heard this, and his gaze shifted to the side, looking through the translucent flying ship. 

Schreee!

A loud screech rocked the area near the ship, shaking it violently, followed by a bang that shook the ship even more.

"Wha-" John yelled out, but his words quickly cut off as he saw what had caused the commotion.

"A heaven tribulation flying beast?" John exclaimed as he saw a creature flying next to the ship.

"Yes. A Profound Desert Wasp to be exact," Lilian replied as she paused the ship's forward momentum. She walked to one of the ship's exits, and quickly opened the formation door. Her figure flashed outside, and instantly appeared before the wasp. 

The wasp immediately noticed her arrival, and struck its stinger out at her with the intent on claiming her life. Lilian looked at the wasp with calm eyes as she pointed out her finger.

Bang!

A thin but powerful beam of Qi exploded out of her outstretched finger, and slammed on the body of the wasp. It pierced through the wasp with no resistance at all, killing it almost instantly. Her body flashed forward once more as she gathered the wasp and cut it in half. The top half containing the head was mounted to the front of the flying ship, while the bottom half was collected in her spatial ring. After doing that,  she quickly returned to the ship.

The ship began to fly forward once again, while John stared at his master with a weird expression on his face. She could instantly tell what he was thinking.

"The flying beasts of this land hunt exclusively in the sky, and mostly ignore the land below. The mounted wasp head will alert any other flying creatures of the danger of assaulting this ship. I don't want to stop even thirty minutes to fight these lowly creatures," Lilian explained.

"Oh," John replied as he understood her actions. "I guess that makes sense."

The ship continued forward at an incredible pace, while John studied the land below closely. The speed they were moving at was unreal, instilling a sense of desire in John to obtain one.

"How much does a flying ship like this cost?" John looked at his master and asked. 

"Oh? Thinking of obtaining a ship like mine. Not a bad idea, but you'll have to save up at least one hundred million spirit crystals to obtain one," Lilian replied. 

"One hundred million!" John exclaimed. 

He had a significant sum of money due to fortunate endeavors, but even then his total sum was only just over ten million spirit crystals. One hundred million was a sum he couldn't even fathom at this moment.

"And that's just for the lowest quality ship," Lilian replied with a smirk on her face. "Also, you can really only get these ships on the Divine Martial Continent, so there's that as well."

John remained silent after hearing that, as such a thing was too far off in the future. Like this, the two sped forward in silence for half a day as they traversed the Great Desert. As his master had said, no other creatures assaulted the ship.

"Hmm?" John's mind suddenly focused as he felt something incredibly faint wash over him.. He focused his mind and soul on what he felt, but couldn't pinpoint any one sensation. It was as if something was calling out to him, but he was too far away to hear anything. 

No matter how much he focused on the feeling, he still couldn't pinpoint anything. His eyes narrowed as he eventually felt this sensation growing more and more faint.

'I don't know what it is, but there's something in this desert...calling out to me!'