Chapter 120 - The Harvest Festival!

Cale made several handsigns, his movements flowing with essence.

The array blinked once—a single moment of recognition before unleashing its true nature.

A colossal pillar of light erupted from his forehead, shooting skyward like a beacon. The light was a rainbow mixture of colors with reds and blues and golds and purples all swirling together in hypnotic patterns.

Then, gradually, the array began releasing faint golden fumes that spread across the entire 80,000-kilometer radius zone like an invisible tide.

Half an hour passed.

The entire land covered by the array’s reach was flooded with a fake influx of Yin and Yang energy carefully calibrated to trigger the response in cultivators. People from Vaeloria, who didn’t understand half of what was happening, decided not to enter. But the others...

The others felt something that awakened every instinct in their bodies.

It felt like they were at a bottleneck. Like they were on the verge of a breakthrough so massive it would fundamentally reshape their cultivation.

It felt like they just needed to step inside this array, engage with whatever power source was generating this aura, and they would achieve enlightenment.

"Did you find what inheritance it is?" someone asked desperately.

"Can’t say, but it is definitely a godly level," another replied, voice trembling with barely restrained excitement. "I haven’t seen such a treasure in tens of years!"

Hundreds of Emperor-stage cultivators entered the array.

Thousands of cultivators below that realm poured in after them, drawn like moths to an inferno.

They encountered barriers every few meters; shimmering walls of energy that blocked them.

Every cultivator immediately began attacking, pouring their reserves of qi into breaking through.

"Cant use artifacts," someone said to their junior. "What if someone from behind covets yours and attacks you while you’re distracted? Better to rely on your own power."

That kind of reasoning was what Cale needed them to have.

Each barrier they broke through required qi expending. Each one weakened them slowly, siphoning away the reserves they would need to resist when the true trap activated.

It was a gradual process, but definitely effective.

"Don’t hold back! Keep attacking!" cultivators screamed at each other.

"Break this damn barrier! This must be part of the test! If we clear this we can enter!"

Another half hour passed.

The Emperor-stage cultivators were the first to notice the pattern.

"These juniors, they’re dying!" one observed with something approaching horror. Below them, lower-realm cultivators were collapsing by the hundreds, their bodies giving out under the strain of maintaining their qi against the barriers.

"Hmph, maybe they’re too weak," another Emperor snorted dismissively. "We can easily go in."

But the scene of mass death was concerning, even to those convinced of their own superiority.

"Argh! Save me! Father save me!"

"We’re fucked! It’s a trap! I’m sure it’s a trap!"

One elder Emperor sighed, his voice filled with experience. "Their deaths, although pointless, is concerning. We should retreat."

But as they turned to flee, their hearts froze.

The barriers they’d painstakingly broken through—the ones they’d poured their qi into destroying—were standing in front of them again. Completely intact!

Many attempted to flee using artifacts, only to find that spatial manipulation was completely suppressed. Even teleportation arrays refused to function.

They were trapped.

True fear began to form in the cultivators’ chests.

Then one of the Emperor-stage cultivators, a man named Liushen who’d entered with Cale’s initial group suddenly took out an artifact, his face going pale as he sensed something.

"It’s-it’s the aura of the world fragment!" he gasped, his voice shaking with excitement. "The aura of a world fragment!"

The words spread like wildfire through the trapped cultivators.

"No way. A world fragment?! We definitely need to go inside!"

"I was having doubts, but I will go inside now!"

"We have to get it, even if half of us die!"

A world fragment. A literal piece of this world, a shard of reality itself captured and contained.

If someone obtained a world fragment, they would have a piece of the world residing within their dantian.

They could enter it and exit it at will. Unlike an inner sanctum which had strict limitations and rules, a world fragment could be lived in permanently. You could literally hide in it all your life, unless a space and void cultivator of transcendent realm finds you.

Its size was at least a third of the original world.

The owner would be a king unto themselves. They could kill anyone with a flick of their finger. Their lifespan? It would match the world fragment’s lifespan, meaning the owner would gain at least another 1000 to 5000 years of existence for free.

Even cultivators who had suppressed their own power to Emperor-stage levels: hidden Sages and Great Sages who’d deliberately limited themselves to enter this realm—began stepping forward openly now, their true cultivation leaking out like radiation from a cracking reactor.

The first batch of ten broke through the final barrier simultaneously.

"We... we made it! Even though we lost many clan elders, we made it!"

"Hahaha! How fortunate! Let’s take everything inside!"

The ones still trapped outside heard this and felt fury mixed with desperation.

"Look! Someone got in!"

"Hurry! We should enter too!"

"Quickly! Just use artifacts! We won’t have enough qi for it later anyway!"

In the center of the array, Cale opened his eyes.

"You’ve done well," he said to the three women protecting him.

Emma sighed with visible relief. "Thank god you woke up first. Who knows how many of these monsters we could even hold off."

Fiora stared at him, her mind struggling to reconcile the person in front of her with the Cale she’d known. The boy she’d viewed as charming and pervy but was human. The one before her now was something else entirely.

’A devil,’ she thought, unable to find any other word that fit. ’Sigh.’

Cale’s voice was casual.

"Alright, you three. Go to the three sides of the first triangular barrier. There will be people there, but it’s fine."

The three women nodded and moved to their assigned positions.

The first group of cultivators approached Fiora’s position, unable to see through her disguised aura. They couldn’t sense her cultivation level, which made them assume she was either a high-level cultivator, an Apex-stage, Emperor, or perhaps even a Sage.

They even forgot they had seen her days ago, fighting against Wang Yunfeng’s soldiers.

"S-senior, we have no intention of fighting," one said respectfully, his voice trembling. "We just hope you let us enter this inheritance."

"Please, senior," another begged, and within moments, dozens of Emperor-stage cultivators had dropped to their knees in surrender.

Fiora was shocked. She has never experienced this kind of power before, the sensation of having others bow before her simply because they believed she was stronger.

It was intoxicating. She slipped into the role.

"You think I’d let you?" she said arrogantly.

One cultivator attempted negotiation. "Although weak, our clan’s and sect’s ancestors are Sages and Great Sages! Even if you survive here, they will surely get to know you’ve killed us here!"

Fiora raised an eyebrow, her eyes narrowing.

"Oh, threatening me now~"

’Is this how Cale felt?’ she wondered. ’No, rather... acted?’

One cultivator tried a different approach. "Why not join hands, senior? Our clan and you can definitely kill the rest of them—"

But before he could finish, a flying blade pierced his skull cleanly, killing him instantly.

Fiora recognized the technique immediately.

One by one, cultivators began attempting to rush through the barrier. And one by one, they died to invisible blades moving faster than perception could track. Their bodies fell, blood spraying across the ground in a grotesque pattern.

In the center of the array, Cale had begun his work.

The Frost Centipede with Four Wings had enlarged itself into a form as massive as an elephant, its crystalline body glowing with hunger. It moved slithering through the corpses accumulating at the barrier, consuming each one without care.

It was a creature blessed by Gluttony itself, one of the Primordial Seven Deadly Sins. It could consume anything and convert it into pure essence.

Flesh, bone, blood, even residual spiritual energy; everything was fuel.

And Cale, positioned at the array’s epicenter, was refining every soul that entered the formation. The Netherworld Prince’s Ring absorbed each one, storing them safely within its dimensional pocket while preventing any possibility of escape or resistance.

The newly obtained ring was essential for this. It negated any soul-attack techniques that remnant spirits might attempt, capturing them instead of allowing them to flee or cause damage.

Cultivators who’d practiced soul cultivation could theoretically survive death through their soul alone. But the ring prevented that possibility entirely.

As the power flowed into him, Cale laughed.

"Haha! This is so fun! It’s filling me up, hehehe..."

His voice carried an almost childlike glee; a kind of joy that transcended human experience.

The sensation of hundreds of lives flowing into his being, their talents and bloodlines and accumulated potential all merging with his own essence—it was beyond anything he’d experienced before.