The Rise of the Black Plain

Clang!

Suddenly, in a specific place on the Black Plain, sounds of metallic objects hitting each other could be heard.

In this place, almost 50 people were working while holding axes and other tools used to break stones.

It was a little dark in the place, with a few scattered lighting arrays, and from time to time, someone passed by pushing a pile of resources that had been mined, leading out of this cave.

This place was a little warm due to being underground, and many of the workers were breathing quickly while their clothes were completely soaked with sweat.

At that moment, a loud voice rang out in the middle of the metallic beats of this place. "Huuh, Dyso, did you notice that the amount of crystals is increasing every day?" A short man, but with protruding muscles, spoke to his shiftmate, standing next to him.

Upon hearing this, Dyso continued hammering the crystal wall in front of him and said. "Yes, huh, I think the production of crystals must have doubled in the past two years, huh."

Clang!

Banging sounds continued in that place, and soon another pile of spiritual crystals was formed there and again carried out of this cave.

That was one of the few low-grade crystal mines on the Black Plain, only a few kilometers from the Dry City.

And as for what these two miners were talking about, this was due to the spiritual concentration of the Black Plain, which had been increasing since the spiritual root of this place was healed by the young Stuart.

That was a complicated effect, but to summarize, the local spiritual root was not concentrating energy in this region and was also stealing free energy from the surrounding areas.

So, by solving the problem of this spiritual root, Minos caused the cure of it. Gradually, the spiritual concentration of the region began to increase, and the free energy of these areas stopped being stolen by that root!

Even though the spiritual root of this place needed time to absorb the Divine-grade medicine's energy, the spiritual concentration of the region was gradually increasing.

And with that, the quantity of low-grade spiritual crystals produced in the region has increased since Minos arrived in these areas.

Spiritual crystals were unique ores, which could store spiritual energy and developed underground naturally. But make no mistake, this was a completely renewable resource.

As long as living beings did not explore beyond a specific limit, from time to time, new crystals would form in places that had been mined before. Therefore, the production of crystals was not a problem in the Spiritual World.

Of course, if the region suffered problems like what happened in the Black Plain, then production would decrease, but the ore would still exist. It just would not have completed its transformation to become a spiritual crystal due to the low amount of energy for them to be formed.

And currently, the Black Plain's crystal mines could produce about 48 thousand crystals per year, which employed about 100 people in the Dry City.

That was still small, primarily because the region was still far from an area with medium energy density, like the capital of the Cromwell Kingdom, the Red Valley, the capital of Stone Island, and so on.

...

While the miners of the Dry City did their daily work in one of the mines of the Black Plain, in the northeast of the Brown Kingdom, a young woman and a middle-aged woman were leaving a large city.

If Minos saw this place, he would certainly understand that this was a prosperous region, probably dominated by a prominent noble family.

There was a vast population, many alchemy shops, array shops, and other services related to different professions of the Spiritual World.

Finally, the two women left this great city behind when the older woman asked. "Ms. Abby, where are we going?"

The one she had asked was Abby's protector, who Minos had met during his trip to the Spiritual Tournament, Eda. She wore blue armor, which looked almost like a dress, which valued her mature body.

Finally, Abby watched the landscape beside Eda while enjoying the journey over a spiritual beast, which looked like a huge tiger. She then said. "We are going to visit my friend, Minos, in the Black Plain."

"Oh? Do you speak of that young man who was in the final of the Spiritual Tournament?"

"Hmm."

"I thought you were angry at him..." Eda teased her young lady.

She was a subordinate of the Miller family for many years, and since Abby started at the Spiritual Academy, she had been given the role of Minos' friend bodyguard.

But both were not treated as a subordinate and a young lady. Instead, Abby saw Eda as her older sister, with whom she could talk and ask for advice, while Eda looked at Abby as if she were her little sister.

So, Eda knew about the indecent offer that Minos had made to Abby when they were in the capital of the Cromwell Kingdom.

"Hmm, I already left that behind. Minos has been a friend of mine for a long time, and after Mona went to the Flaming Empire, I don't have much to do around here..."

Abby and Mona could be considered best friends, so she had lost a fun companion, which she had in her spare time. And after returning to the Miller family territories, Abby had only focused on training and was now at level 42.

Her advance might not be as fast as Minos'. However, she was still very well, considering that she had a Black talent and was a young woman from a prominent noble family. For this reason, she could undoubtedly reach the 6th stage of cultivation before the age of 26.

But this was quite normal in the north of the Central Continent. The cultivation problem in this region started when someone reached that stage of cultivation.

That is because, in this stage of cultivation, the amount of spiritual energy that someone needs to rise from each level was many times greater than in the previous steps.

To give you an idea, just the difference in spiritual energy that a cultivator had from level 50 to 51 was equivalent to all the power of someone at level 43!

As a result, unless a cultivator used medium-grade crystals, leveling up would take a long time, using only low-grade crystals, or worse, cultivating without these items...

And there were not many medium-grade crystals in this region of the Central Continent...

Because of this, when they reached this stage of cultivation, the inhabitants of this region faced a tremendous decrease in their cultivation speed, which made the stronger Spiritual Kings, people with their 500, 600 years of age...

And to make matters worse, there were not many pills in this region that could help these people since the demand was dozens of times greater than the supply. Moreover, there were also not many fights between cultivators at this level, which could boost the speed of cultivation of these people.

In the north of the Central Continent, getting to the Spiritual King stage was not so difficult if someone had a Black talent, supported with many resources, and at least had a Black-grade cultivation technique.

But after that, the situation was challenging. There were not many resources, and they had to be divided into many parts...

And as for those subordinates of noble families, who have Black talent, like Albert, they received minimal resources from these families. As a result, their cultivation speed was immensely slower than that of members of these noble families, as in the example of the young Abby.

Albert had taken almost 80 years to reach level 50, while Abby could do that before she was 30...

That was a reflection of the reality of this region!

"I want to see what that place can have, to make him give up to going to the Flaming Empire..." Eda said with a curious expression on her face. She didn't know how anyone could do something as crazy as what Minos had done...

Abby laughed for a moment and said. "I don't know if that place needs to have something important for him, but I'm also curious..."

She knew that Minos did not get along with his mother, but that only meant that he would not go to her sect. He could still go to one of the other seven sects of the Flaming Empire, so Abby didn't fully understand what he was doing.

There was also the doubt that Abby had about Minos' absurd strength. 'Does he have some absurd innate ability?' She wondered that every time she remembered his performances.

She had witnessed Minos' physical test at the time of the Spiritual Academy. So, she thought that he had a King-grade Physique. Consequently, she suspected that only this could explain the young Stuart's strength!

After all, she couldn't feel how efficient a technique was, before reaching level 70, when a cultivator could probe the soul.

And knowing the efficiency of the technique was the only way to distinguish quality without much uncertainty.

Anyway, it didn't take long, and the two women on top of that spiritual beast disappeared on the horizon, following towards the west of the Brown Kingdom.