Free Web NovelChapter 160: Chapter 160: Stealing Clothes?
Chapter 160: Stealing Clothes?
Rhain pushed open the gates of his new courtyard and stepped inside.
Immediately, a wave of pure, concentrated essence hit his face.
"This... is ridiculously dense!"
Back in Mirravele City, even the most essence-rich locations he had cultivated in the Silvercrest estate, and Alchemy Guild’s private chambers, paled in comparison.
A rough calculation told him that cultivating here for a single day would yield results equivalent to ten full days in Mirravele City.
"So this is the Inner Province," Rhain murmured, "No wonder the prodigies here are so far ahead."
He walked deeper into the courtyard until he reached the center of his private cultivation chamber.
His room was spacious and elegantly furnished.
Rhain didn’t bother with the furnishings. He sat cross-legged on the polished floor.
He flipped his palm, and with a flash of spatial light, the Spirit Gathering Profound Banner materialized in his hand.
Rhain looked at the banner, then glanced around the pristine courtyard.
If he planted it right on the surface, it would create a massive, visible vortex of essence.
Every single disciple, Preceptor, and Domain Master in the academy would feel the disturbance. They’d be swarming his courtyard in minutes.
That was unacceptable.
He didn’t want to draw that kind of chaotic attention on his very first day.
"There has to be a smarter way to do this."
Rhain activated his Eyes of Truth.
A brilliant golden hue flashed deep within his dark grey pupils.
He could now see straight through the walls and stone tiles beneath him.
What he saw made a satisfied smirk brush past his lips.
Far below the surface, stretching for what must have been dozens of miles in every direction, was an enormous network of luminous energy channels.
A colossal Spiritual Vein.
It was branching out like glowing golden roots to feed the various pavilions and training halls of the Inner Palace.
"So that is the true source," Rhain realized. "The entire Academy is built directly on top of this Spiritual Vein. That is why the essence density here is so absurdly high."
His golden eyes traced the vein’s channels, and found that the Core Palace’s floating island sat directly above the densest concentration points.
Inner Palace recieved secondary channels, and the Outer Palace got the thinnest streams.
The hierarchy of the Academy was built into its geology.
Rhain pressed his palm flat against the floor.
Dark essence surged from his fingers, boring through the stone tiles in a perfectly controlled, needle-thin channel.
With his eyes of truth, Rhain easily avoided every array formation surrounding the spritual vein.
Thirty feet down. Fifty feet. One hundred feet.
With a final, decisive push, Rhain drove the Spirit Gathering Profound Banner into the vein itself
Rhain then finally deactivated his Eyes of Truth, his dark grey irises returning to normal.
The artifact activated instantly, its arrays blooming outward like invisible roots, latching onto the vein’s energy channels and beginning to draw.
Buzz!
The banner activated silently. Instead of aggressively sucking the essence above the ground, it drew an incomprehensibly large amount of essence directly from the subterranean vein.
The effect was immediate.
Within his cultivation chamber, the already-dense essence began to thicken exponentially. It compressed, purified, and rushed upward through the channel he had created, flooding the room with a concentration of spiritual energy so rich that it could be visibly seen through the bare eyes.
"This amount of essence... it’s more than perfect for my gluttonous physique.’
Rhain was completely satisfied with his handiwork.
The density in his private chamber now rivaled — no, exceeded — what even the Core Palace’s floating islands could provide.
And because the draw was happening deep underground, dispersed across the vastness of the Spiritual Vein, the surface-level essence distribution across the Academy remained entirely undisturbed.
Rhain sat cross-legged on the floor and closed his eyes.
He circulated the Abyssal Sovereign Technique, and his dantian began to refine and compress the massive influx of energy.
He had decided to break through to Spirit Manifestation Realm as soon as possible.
____________
Night passed in the blink of an eye.
[Ding!]
The mechanical voice of the system echoed in his mind.
A heavy, oppressive wave of dark essence rolled off Rhain’s body, visibly distorting the air in the room for a brief second as he opened his eyes.
[Daily Sign-In available. Would you like to sign in?]
’Sign in.’
[Sign-In successful!]
[Congratulations! You have received the Epic-Grade Herb: Thousand-Year Old Ginseng.]
[Item automatically sent to System Inventory.]
Rhain’s eyes lit up brilliantly.
Epic-Grade!
His theory was completely confirmed. The tier of the Daily Sign-In rewards was fundamentally bound to essence density and the location. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
By stepping into the Inner Province and establishing himself in the heart of the Stormveil Academy, his daily baseline had leaped from Rare to Epic.
He was literally sitting on a goldmine.
Rhain stood up from the floor.
Fabian had outlined the Academy’s division structure — Battle Arts, Alchemy, Arrays, and Forging.
Before committing to any of them, Rhain intended to visit each one personally, observe their teaching methods, and assess their value for him.
He changed into the deep black Inner Palace robes trimmed with gold thread that the registration elder had issued him. freewёbnoνel.com
The gleaming golden badge of the Gold Badge disciples was pinned prominently to his chest.
Since Fabian had heavily advised him to check out the Battle Arts Division, Rhain decided that would be his first stop.
He pushed open the doors of his courtyard and stepped out into the pathways of the Inner Palace.
After a short, leisurely walk, Rhain arrived before a grand, imposing pavilion.
Battle Arts Division.
It occupied an entire wing of Inner Palace, including training halls, lecture chambers, and open-air arenas.
Rhain followed the signs toward the Gold Badge lecture hall.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
It was a spacious room with tiered seating arranged in a semicircle around a raised central platform.
Currently, there were a total of ten disciples sitting scattered across the room.
The moment Rhain crossed the threshold, ten pairs of eyes instantly snapped toward him.
They were all Gold Badge disciples. They represented the apex of the Inner Palace, the top thirty geniuses out of hundreds.
Naturally, they all knew each other’s faces intimately.
Seeing a completely unknown youth walk through the door was startling enough, for they rarely ever saw new faces in their exclusive ranks.
But what truly baffled them was the timing.
Top thirty positions were fiercely contested and only reshuffled once a year during the annual Inner Palace Tournament.
That tournament was still two months away.
How could a new Gold Badge appear out of nowhere?
Driven by their instincts, a few of the disciples immediately swept their Spiritual Senses over Rhain to probe his strength.
The results made their brows furrow into ugly frowns.
Peak of the Essence Condensation Realm.
Not Spirit Manifestation. Not even the first level. Essence Condensation.
The discovery was entirely absurd.
In the Stormveil Academy, it was a universally accepted law that it was absolutely impossible for an Essence Condensation Realm cultivator to even step foot in the Inner Palace, let alone wear the exalted Gold Badge!
A young man sitting near the front row couldn’t hold back his suspicion.
He stood up, his eyes narrowing as he glared at Rhain.
"Hey, you," the disciple called out, his voice laced with a mix of disdain and warning. "Did you steal a Gold Badge disciple’s robes to sneak in here?"
