"Are you crazy? Unless you want to kill yourself, then you simply must be dreaming!" Luna asked as if she heard the most foolish question.
"Eh?!" Damien felt like all his dreams of getting a powerful beast shattered. But then he realized he indeed was dreaming too big. The power gap between him and a Heaven Ethereal Realm beast was too much if he wanted to turn it into an undead slave.
"You had to sacrifice 40% of your soul essence to enslave a Peak Sky Ethereal Realm when you were just a Nascent Ethereal Realm cultivator. And your soul cultivation is only at the Middle Soul Transformation Stage. If it was at the Peak Soul Transformation Stage, you could have easily enslaved even a Peak Heaven Ethereal Realm beast since your soul is considerably stronger.
"For now, you should adjust with a Middle-Level Heaven Ethereal Realm beast, and even that would require you to sacrifice 20% of your soul essence. Right now, you barely have 70% of soul essence, so you are treading on a thin rope here."
Damien felt that he would be feeling muddled after enslaving a Middle-Level Heaven Ethereal Realm beast. But he thought that the price paid would be worth it.
All he could hope was that his intelligence doesn't lower after having only 50% of his soul essence left.
He still remembered how he even lost himself in the moment with Lily and confessed to her while momentarily forgetting about Valentina's situation.
He already decided that he would take complete rest for a day after enslaving a Heaven Ethereal Realm beast.
Although his life span would temporarily reduce by 50%, he wasn't worried since he already had 140 years of lifespan because of his cultivation, and he could gradually increase his soul cultivation as well.
Hugging the naked beauty in his arms, he dozed off while two of the top five families were brimming with chaos.
——
In the Altar of the Ocean, two middle-aged men were reverently bowing before two old men sitting on old-fashioned chairs.
One of them had a pale and shriveled look yet had a profound aura surrounding his whole body, making one feel as if they were standing before a huge mountain whose peak couldn't be seen.
The other old man looked aged as well and had a stout build. His eyes seemed as sharp as a wind blade, and both of these old men were dressed in dignified white robes.
The two men bowing before them were none other than Herwin Clive and Harvey Rivers. However, the reason these powerful patriarchs were showing such reverence to the two old men before them was because they were their ancestors!
Their cultivations were naturally at the Profound Ethereal Realm. They had long since retired to meditate in the temple they personally built near a silent ocean to discover the means to advance their stagnant cultivation.
They already handed over the family matters to their descendants since they no longer had much interest in the mundane matters.
To disturb two such supreme existences during the night meant that the patriarchs had approached them with a very grave matter after having no other choice. Otherwise, they wouldn't dare.
There were two burnt, horrendous-looking corpses placed before the two old men. Despite having lived for almost a millennia, they couldn't help but have their eyes twitch upon seeing the burnt corpses.
But their reactions were entirely natural. After all, how could they digest the fact that their most promising descendants were burned alive! They could even vaguely make out the charred muscles of the corpses twisted in horror and panic, showing that they did not die a quick death.
Most of all, someone dared to kill them in the first place! Who would have such a death wish?
Herwin and Harvey's expressions looked as if they had swallowed a plate full of vermins. They still couldn't believe that their children were already dead and burnt alive.
Their rage-filled eyes then moved on to the corpse of an old woman lying beside the burnt corpses.
Right now, even if they had no idea, they felt that this old woman was related to the death of their progeny.
After all, their subordinates had informed him that only the old woman's corpse was present in the building where Dennisa and Roy died.
However, no matter how suspicious the old woman seemed, they knew that the actual suspect behind this was someone else!
After all, their subordinates told them how they sensed someone fleeing towards the Ancient Boneyard Forest after seeing them.
They couldn't make out the identity of the two suspicious people who fled towards the forest, but they knew these two probably were the real killers!
They even lost two Heaven Ethereal Realm cultivators who tried to chase after them because of how deadly the forest was.
However, from this, they understood that the two suspects should be dead as well since one of the other Heaven Ethereal Realm cultivators stood to watch outside the forest for a while before returning.
Since no one came out of the forest during his watch, the cultivator informed that the suspects must be dead. After all, it seemed as the suspects were weaker than them and were cornered into fleeing towards the Ancient Boneyard Forest.
If they were powerful, they would have fought back instead of trying to escape. So, from this, both the patriarchs understood that the cultivation of the cultivators was at most at the Peak Level Sky Ethereal Realm.
And even if they believed that the suspects died in the forest, their anger and hatred didn't diminish one bit.
Their fists were tightly clenched since they couldn't personally torture the suspects to death, just like how the suspects killed their heirs.
Ancestor Clive and Ancestor Rivers had a frown on their faces. But deep within their aged eyes, one could notice a faint yet sharp killing intent. Since someone dared to kill their descendants meant that they didn't even put their family in their eyes and were fearless enough to do it.
They had no idea how Dennisa and Roy even ended up in such an abandoned area without their notice. At first, they wondered if Dennisa and Roy pissed off some powerful rogue expert.
However, from the reports of how the suspects fled after seeing the Heaven Ethereal Realm cultivators, they deduced that the killers were not really that powerful.
And the more puzzling thing was how this dead old woman was related to all this as they had no idea who she was.
This was why Damien purposefully used the dead old woman to throw off their investigation and even delay them if possible, even if they learned that the killer was someone else.
Damien already knew that by now, the Clive and Rivers Family must have realized that they were suspecting someone other than the old woman. Still, he wasn't worried since his identity was still safe.
"Ancestors, which wicked demon would dare to do this to us?" Harvey asked with clenched teeth.
The ancestors already scanned the corpses with their spiritual perception dozens of times, but other than the fact that Dennisa and Roy were burnt alive, they weren't able to find other clues.
Even if they assumed that the suspects died in the forest, they still wanted to know their identities and punish anyone related to them. Only that way would they at least be able to exact out their revenge.
Since their spiritual perception failed to find anything, Ancestor Rivers looked at Ancestor Clive with an understanding look.
Ancestor Clive nodded, and he moved his hands in a mysterious manner while aiming at the corpses.
A thin orange-colored ethereal line started to form between the corpses of Dennisa and Roy and the old woman.
The sight seemed beautiful as the ethereal line only seemed to become thicker and thicker with a strange glow.
However, this sight made every single one of them shocked and baffled.
"This cannot be…" Ancestor Clive mumbled with a frown as he stopped moving his hands, making the ethereal line disappear.
They all knew what Ancestor Clive tried to do just now. He was using a special ethereal art to figure out the owner of the flames that burned Dennisa and Roy to death.
And apparently, the result was that the flames belonged to the old woman!
Didn't this mean that the old woman was indeed the killer?
At first, they thought that the ethereal line would point towards the direction of the Ancient Boneyard Forest and thus confirm that the people they suspected were indeed the killers and hopefully find their family members by cross-checking with the aura of the flames.
Both the Ancestors let out a frustrated yet helpless sigh. Ancestor Clive finally opened his mouth to speak in a deep tone, "No matter how things seem suspicious, our killer is none other than this old woman, and that I am 100% sure. I don't know who those people were that fled towards the forest, but wasting time on investigating their identities is futile when we already got our killer as a dead body, no less."
Ancestor Rivers chimed in, "For now, we will focus on finding out more about this old woman and her motive for killing them. And most importantly, who killed her and why. Maybe the ones who fled must be the ones who killed her."
His tone seemed emotionless. However, his eyes seemed as if he wouldn't be satisfied even if he shredded the old woman's corpse a million times. Now that he knew that the old woman was the killer, he was angry that she died before she even ended up in their hands.
But still, the question that puzzled all of them was how the people who fled towards the forest fit into all these events seeing that they were not the ones who killed Dennisa and Roy.
This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦