Chapter 17
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The gaping maw of the sea serpent opened just before breaking the water's surface. The maw was full of teeth, and from it Meng Li could smell a foul stench of rotting meat, mixed with the smell of fish. There were pieces of meat in between the serpent's giant teeth. He could also see the giant tongue laying on the bottom of the serpent's maw - it was covered in tiny barbs, probably to help in snatching meat and swallowing it. Well, the barbs were tiny compared to the size of the creature - they were the size of Meng Li's little finger.
Those observations were all made in a split second as the sea serpent lunged at him. Without thinking much, Meng Li attacked first. Although the serpent was quite strong, it didn't have much in terms of attacks - it relied on its' speed and the strength of its' body to kill enemies. The monumental amount of Qi it possessed all went into strengthening its' body. This, combined with the serpent's innately strong body, made it a fearsome opponent. Meng Li wanted to test out his strength, so he didn't use all he had to deal with the beast - if he wanted to, he could kill it in a split second using merely a strand of Qi. First, he wanted to test out the strength of his body - the Reinforcement Stage, and the Pillar Building stage both increased the strength of a cultivator's body, so it should be at least at par with a beast with a cultivation level lower than him, right? This was what Meng Li was thinking as he hurled his fist towards the snout of the serpent.
As his fist connected, he got his answer. His body was thrown backwards practically as soon as he made contact with the serpent's snout, but he was without injury. The same couldn't be said about the serpent, however - its' scales were cracked at the point of impact, and Meng Li's fist made it all the way to the bone of the beast. Only the bone was strong enough to withstand the force of his fist, and ultimately, the huge mass of the sea serpent threw him backwards. Meng Li managed to stabilize himself after merely a hundred meters. His entire right hand was covered in blood and pieces of flesh - it was all from the sea serpent. When he hit it, Meng Li only felt a small itch on his knuckles, which stopped in seconds.
Frowning, Meng Li shook his hand slightly. All the blood and pieces of flesh fell off of his hand and into the ocean below him, leaving him clean. The simple white robes were also unstained - Meng Li knew for a long time that the robes he received weren't simple. For one, they never dirtied, never tore, but were extremely smooth and pleasing to wear. It was good - in all the novels he had read, the main character had to hold hundreds of robes in his spatial storage with how often they tore during battles.
Turning his attention to the serpent once more, he saw fear in the creature's eyes. It was scared? Meng Li was surprised. The hit, although deep, shouldn't have affected the creature much. In fact, it couldn't be considered as more than a scratch with how big the creature was. Still, due to the fear in the creature's gaze, he quickly scanned its' body with Spiritual Sense. If it was stronger than him, he wouldn't be able to do so, but it was too weak to prevent him from learning about its' body. What he saw was quite surprising - his fist had been stopped when it hit bone, and all of the strength was dispersed, leading to him being thrown away due to the sheer size of the serpent. However, the small hit managed to leave surprisingly huge injuries to the serpent. The snout, which he hit, was actually the hardest piece of bone in the creature's body. That's the only reason it didn't break - instead, it transferred the huge force of his fist towards the head of the creature. Right now, there was a huge crack in the serpent's skull, making the snout hang on solely due to the muscles of the creature. Such a huge injury could very easily be aggravated, basically crippling the serpent, which relied on brute force to hunt.
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After a few seconds of eye contact, during which the fear in the serpent's eyes only grew, it suddenly turned tail and sunk. It wanted to go somewhere and recuperate - if this injury wasn't treated properly, it would spell death for it. However, as it left, Meng Li had an idea.
"You think of leaving when you tried to eat me? Dream on." with a snort, he suddenly disappeared from the place he was standing. Before the serpent had a chance to register what was happening, he was already next to its' head, next to the huge crack in its' skull. Using Spiritual Sense, he could see that this piece of skin was above the crack, and if he hit there, the hit would directly impact the brain.
With a wave of his hand, a small strand of Qi shot out at the serpent's head. It directly penetrated through the scales as though a knife through butter, and reached the brain. It burrowed until it was in the middle of the brain, and it detonated, splitting into many smaller strands of Qi, which wreaked havock on the serpent's brain. In merely a second, the light in the serpent's eyes disappeared, its' huge body simply floating in the water, like a puppet with its' strings cut.
Happy, Meng Li dove into his consciousness, and summoned a spatial storage item. What he summoned was a small bag made out of a beast's leather. It was the size of a palm, but inside, it had at least a million cubic meters of storage space. No matter how many items were put into the bag, it would stay the same weight - this was an incredibly useful tool for cultivators.
Meng Li chose a bag for several reasons. For one, storage bags were much easier to make, because to create a spatial storage items, a huge amount of runes had to be inscribed onto the item. The less space, the harder that would be. Thus, a ring with the same amount of space as a bag was at least ten times more expensive than the bag. A small bag was also more inconspicuous than a ring. But the main reason was simply that Meng Li didn't like how rings felt on his finger.
Using the bag of holding was easy. He first sent in his Qi inside it and marked it as his own - other people wouldn't be able to open it with such a mark. Then, he sent his consciousness inside. A huge space appeared within his consciousness. It was a 100 meter cube. It was the smallest bag Meng Li could find that was able to fit the huge serpent. The time within the bag was also frozen - the corpse of the serpent wouldn't rot not matter how long it was kept inside. It was really handy.
Meng Li once again scanned the serpent's corpse for something else he remembered. The beasts cultivation was different from how humans cultivated - they had a crystallized core, which contained all their qi and their essence. It was helpful for humans - they were able to absorb it to speed up their cultivation. Of course, that applied to beasts too - with the added benefit of being able to absorb a bit of the strength of the beast's bloodline. Different from the human world, the world of beasts was naturally cruel, with the only way to grow being to absorb the cores of other beasts.
With a wave of his hand, a strand of Qi shot into the serpent's head once again to retrieve the core. Despite the huge size of the serpent, the core was only the size of a human's head. Compared to the size of its' body, it was small, but to a human it was quite large.
Meng Li didn't take it for himself, of course - he had no need for it. However, it might make a good gift for the reincarnated soul. And it was his first kill after all - it was a memoir in a sense. Thus, Meng Li stored both the core and the serpent itself into the bag. The serpent was at least 300 meters in length, so to fit it in, it had to curl up. In the end, it took up an extremely large portion of the space, but there was still some free space in the corners. Meng Li took out the Heavenly Yin Yang Shroud technique from his robe. It fortunately didn't fall out. He put it in the bag, in a corner near the serpent's core.
With that, he used the teleport function to go into the wilderness near the Qingshui Town. What he saw on the globe in his consciousness was surprising - although the Full Moon empire was quite developed in the past, it was nowhere near the level of what he saw now. When he started cultivating, there was only the capital city and a few smaller cities near important locations. However, what he saw now couldn't be compared to the previous level of development. There were nine major cities in the current Full Moon Empire, with many more smaller cities and uncountable number of smaller towns. the Qingshui Town was one of the smaller ones, with merely five thousand people. The majority of the people living in it were mortals without any cultivation whatsoever - a far cry from the time when everyone was at least at the second level of Qi Gathering. The strongest person residing within the town was actually a town mayor with a cultivation of the fourth level of Qi Gathering.
The situation surprised Meng Li. He quickly checked the globe in his consciousness, and what he found surprised him. The previous five colonies all developed and were all aware of each other's existence. In the end, there were a total of two empires, the Full Moon Empire and the Heavenly Dragon Empire. The Heavenly Dragon Empire was the empire which developed on the west continent, from the one colony which was placed there. On the east continent, there existed the Full Moon Empire, as well as the Nine Sun Kingdom. This kingdom was the one developed from the colony which initially was at odds with the Full Moon empire - after a bit of searching, Meng Li found that the old colony had been transformed into a sect. It was called the Heavenly Sword Sect, and it created the Nine Sun Kingdom in order to oppose the Full Moon Empire. The kingdom occupied a bit of land in the south of the continent, but the place he initially placed the colony was in the territory of the Full Moon Empire.
The sect itself was located in the depths of a mountain range in the Nine Sun Kingdom. The mountain range was full of beasts, so it was quite hard to access. The sect itself was a mythical existence, and not many people in the Nine Sun Kingdom knew of its' existence.
The two other colonies were the ones located on the two archipelagos he created. The territory of the two colonies was not under control of any kingdom or empire, and they were, in fact, controlled by tribes. It seemed that because of the difficulty in crossing the gaps between the islands, tribes were created. The islands, although under control of tribes, did have cities to house the rogue cultivators who were not part of the tribes. The tribes of both archipelagos had enough power to contend with the Empires, so they were left alone.
The last thing Meng Li noticed was that the small island near the south pole was actually discovered by people, and there was a city created there. The city was not under control of a major power, and was in fact a team effort - the island was full of Qi, and was home to many powerful monsters.
Faced with such a huge amount of information, Meng Li had to ask the system.
<How long... Did I cultivate for...> He asked, hesitating.
[15 years and 3 months.] The system answered reliably.
Meng Li's face fell. Fifteen years? That was fifteen thousand years in the world! These empires stood for over ten thousand years! The lifespan of a cultivator grows the stronger they are, but no matter how they cultivated, cultivators in this world could at most live five hundred years, six hundred at most with heavenly resources. This meant that if an emperor ruled a kingdom for his entire lifespan, from birth till death, there would be 30 emperors from the beginning till the end. And of course, an emperor wouldn't be chosen the moment they're born, and would be replaced before their death to keep the empire stable, so an average emperor would rule for three hundred years at most, two hundred years on average. Just assuming that, there had to be at least seventy five emperors for these fifteen thousand years, and yet, somehow, the situation managed to stay stable - it was practically miraculous.
The news of such a gigantic change stunned Meng Li for a bit, but he managed to calm down quickly. As he did, he remembered what he was there for - the reincarnated soul. As such, he prepared his disguise. He didn't want to switch his robes since they were too comfy, and his long hair suited him too. The only thing he changed was his aura - previously, he restrained it so he seemed like a mortal, but he changed it to seem like a cultivator at the first level of Qi Gathering. He wanted to settle down near the family where the soul was reincarnating, so he needed to have some alibi, but he decided to worry about it later. With that in mind, he started walking towards Qingshui Town.
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The gaping maw of the sea serpent opened just before breaking the water's surface. The maw was full of teeth, and from it Meng Li could smell a foul stench of rotting meat, mixed with the smell of fish. There were pieces of meat in between the serpent's giant teeth. He could also see the giant tongue laying on the bottom of the serpent's maw - it was covered in tiny barbs, probably to help in snatching meat and swallowing it. Well, the barbs were tiny compared to the size of the creature - they were the size of Meng Li's little finger.
Those observations were all made in a split second as the sea serpent lunged at him. Without thinking much, Meng Li attacked first. Although the serpent was quite strong, it didn't have much in terms of attacks - it relied on its' speed and the strength of its' body to kill enemies. The monumental amount of Qi it possessed all went into strengthening its' body. This, combined with the serpent's innately strong body, made it a fearsome opponent. Meng Li wanted to test out his strength, so he didn't use all he had to deal with the beast - if he wanted to, he could kill it in a split second using merely a strand of Qi. First, he wanted to test out the strength of his body - the Reinforcement Stage, and the Pillar Building stage both increased the strength of a cultivator's body, so it should be at least at par with a beast with a cultivation level lower than him, right? This was what Meng Li was thinking as he hurled his fist towards the snout of the serpent.
As his fist connected, he got his answer. His body was thrown backwards practically as soon as he made contact with the serpent's snout, but he was without injury. The same couldn't be said about the serpent, however - its' scales were cracked at the point of impact, and Meng Li's fist made it all the way to the bone of the beast. Only the bone was strong enough to withstand the force of his fist, and ultimately, the huge mass of the sea serpent threw him backwards. Meng Li managed to stabilize himself after merely a hundred meters. His entire right hand was covered in blood and pieces of flesh - it was all from the sea serpent. When he hit it, Meng Li only felt a small itch on his knuckles, which stopped in seconds.
Frowning, Meng Li shook his hand slightly. All the blood and pieces of flesh fell off of his hand and into the ocean below him, leaving him clean. The simple white robes were also unstained - Meng Li knew for a long time that the robes he received weren't simple. For one, they never dirtied, never tore, but were extremely smooth and pleasing to wear. It was good - in all the novels he had read, the main character had to hold hundreds of robes in his spatial storage with how often they tore during battles.
Turning his attention to the serpent once more, he saw fear in the creature's eyes. It was scared? Meng Li was surprised. The hit, although deep, shouldn't have affected the creature much. In fact, it couldn't be considered as more than a scratch with how big the creature was. Still, due to the fear in the creature's gaze, he quickly scanned its' body with Spiritual Sense. If it was stronger than him, he wouldn't be able to do so, but it was too weak to prevent him from learning about its' body. What he saw was quite surprising - his fist had been stopped when it hit bone, and all of the strength was dispersed, leading to him being thrown away due to the sheer size of the serpent. However, the small hit managed to leave surprisingly huge injuries to the serpent. The snout, which he hit, was actually the hardest piece of bone in the creature's body. That's the only reason it didn't break - instead, it transferred the huge force of his fist towards the head of the creature. Right now, there was a huge crack in the serpent's skull, making the snout hang on solely due to the muscles of the creature. Such a huge injury could very easily be aggravated, basically crippling the serpent, which relied on brute force to hunt.
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After a few seconds of eye contact, during which the fear in the serpent's eyes only grew, it suddenly turned tail and sunk. It wanted to go somewhere and recuperate - if this injury wasn't treated properly, it would spell death for it. However, as it left, Meng Li had an idea.
"You think of leaving when you tried to eat me? Dream on." with a snort, he suddenly disappeared from the place he was standing. Before the serpent had a chance to register what was happening, he was already next to its' head, next to the huge crack in its' skull. Using Spiritual Sense, he could see that this piece of skin was above the crack, and if he hit there, the hit would directly impact the brain.
With a wave of his hand, a small strand of Qi shot out at the serpent's head. It directly penetrated through the scales as though a knife through butter, and reached the brain. It burrowed until it was in the middle of the brain, and it detonated, splitting into many smaller strands of Qi, which wreaked havock on the serpent's brain. In merely a second, the light in the serpent's eyes disappeared, its' huge body simply floating in the water, like a puppet with its' strings cut.
Happy, Meng Li dove into his consciousness, and summoned a spatial storage item. What he summoned was a small bag made out of a beast's leather. It was the size of a palm, but inside, it had at least a million cubic meters of storage space. No matter how many items were put into the bag, it would stay the same weight - this was an incredibly useful tool for cultivators.
Meng Li chose a bag for several reasons. For one, storage bags were much easier to make, because to create a spatial storage items, a huge amount of runes had to be inscribed onto the item. The less space, the harder that would be. Thus, a ring with the same amount of space as a bag was at least ten times more expensive than the bag. A small bag was also more inconspicuous than a ring. But the main reason was simply that Meng Li didn't like how rings felt on his finger.
Using the bag of holding was easy. He first sent in his Qi inside it and marked it as his own - other people wouldn't be able to open it with such a mark. Then, he sent his consciousness inside. A huge space appeared within his consciousness. It was a 100 meter cube. It was the smallest bag Meng Li could find that was able to fit the huge serpent. The time within the bag was also frozen - the corpse of the serpent wouldn't rot not matter how long it was kept inside. It was really handy.
Meng Li once again scanned the serpent's corpse for something else he remembered. The beasts cultivation was different from how humans cultivated - they had a crystallized core, which contained all their qi and their essence. It was helpful for humans - they were able to absorb it to speed up their cultivation. Of course, that applied to beasts too - with the added benefit of being able to absorb a bit of the strength of the beast's bloodline. Different from the human world, the world of beasts was naturally cruel, with the only way to grow being to absorb the cores of other beasts.
With a wave of his hand, a strand of Qi shot into the serpent's head once again to retrieve the core. Despite the huge size of the serpent, the core was only the size of a human's head. Compared to the size of its' body, it was small, but to a human it was quite large.
Meng Li didn't take it for himself, of course - he had no need for it. However, it might make a good gift for the reincarnated soul. And it was his first kill after all - it was a memoir in a sense. Thus, Meng Li stored both the core and the serpent itself into the bag. The serpent was at least 300 meters in length, so to fit it in, it had to curl up. In the end, it took up an extremely large portion of the space, but there was still some free space in the corners. Meng Li took out the Heavenly Yin Yang Shroud technique from his robe. It fortunately didn't fall out. He put it in the bag, in a corner near the serpent's core.
With that, he used the teleport function to go into the wilderness near the Qingshui Town. What he saw on the globe in his consciousness was surprising - although the Full Moon empire was quite developed in the past, it was nowhere near the level of what he saw now. When he started cultivating, there was only the capital city and a few smaller cities near important locations. However, what he saw now couldn't be compared to the previous level of development. There were nine major cities in the current Full Moon Empire, with many more smaller cities and uncountable number of smaller towns. the Qingshui Town was one of the smaller ones, with merely five thousand people. The majority of the people living in it were mortals without any cultivation whatsoever - a far cry from the time when everyone was at least at the second level of Qi Gathering. The strongest person residing within the town was actually a town mayor with a cultivation of the fourth level of Qi Gathering.
The situation surprised Meng Li. He quickly checked the globe in his consciousness, and what he found surprised him. The previous five colonies all developed and were all aware of each other's existence. In the end, there were a total of two empires, the Full Moon Empire and the Heavenly Dragon Empire. The Heavenly Dragon Empire was the empire which developed on the west continent, from the one colony which was placed there. On the east continent, there existed the Full Moon Empire, as well as the Nine Sun Kingdom. This kingdom was the one developed from the colony which initially was at odds with the Full Moon empire - after a bit of searching, Meng Li found that the old colony had been transformed into a sect. It was called the Heavenly Sword Sect, and it created the Nine Sun Kingdom in order to oppose the Full Moon Empire. The kingdom occupied a bit of land in the south of the continent, but the place he initially placed the colony was in the territory of the Full Moon Empire.
The sect itself was located in the depths of a mountain range in the Nine Sun Kingdom. The mountain range was full of beasts, so it was quite hard to access. The sect itself was a mythical existence, and not many people in the Nine Sun Kingdom knew of its' existence.
The two other colonies were the ones located on the two archipelagos he created. The territory of the two colonies was not under control of any kingdom or empire, and they were, in fact, controlled by tribes. It seemed that because of the difficulty in crossing the gaps between the islands, tribes were created. The islands, although under control of tribes, did have cities to house the rogue cultivators who were not part of the tribes. The tribes of both archipelagos had enough power to contend with the Empires, so they were left alone.
The last thing Meng Li noticed was that the small island near the south pole was actually discovered by people, and there was a city created there. The city was not under control of a major power, and was in fact a team effort - the island was full of Qi, and was home to many powerful monsters.
Faced with such a huge amount of information, Meng Li had to ask the system.
<How long... Did I cultivate for...> He asked, hesitating.
[15 years and 3 months.] The system answered reliably.
Meng Li's face fell. Fifteen years? That was fifteen thousand years in the world! These empires stood for over ten thousand years! The lifespan of a cultivator grows the stronger they are, but no matter how they cultivated, cultivators in this world could at most live five hundred years, six hundred at most with heavenly resources. This meant that if an emperor ruled a kingdom for his entire lifespan, from birth till death, there would be 30 emperors from the beginning till the end. And of course, an emperor wouldn't be chosen the moment they're born, and would be replaced before their death to keep the empire stable, so an average emperor would rule for three hundred years at most, two hundred years on average. Just assuming that, there had to be at least seventy five emperors for these fifteen thousand years, and yet, somehow, the situation managed to stay stable - it was practically miraculous.
The news of such a gigantic change stunned Meng Li for a bit, but he managed to calm down quickly. As he did, he remembered what he was there for - the reincarnated soul. As such, he prepared his disguise. He didn't want to switch his robes since they were too comfy, and his long hair suited him too. The only thing he changed was his aura - previously, he restrained it so he seemed like a mortal, but he changed it to seem like a cultivator at the first level of Qi Gathering. He wanted to settle down near the family where the soul was reincarnating, so he needed to have some alibi, but he decided to worry about it later. With that in mind, he started walking towards Qingshui Town.
The gaping maw of the sea serpent opened just before breaking the water's surface. The maw was full of teeth, and from it Meng Li could smell a foul stench of rotting meat, mixed with the smell of fish. There were pieces of meat in between the serpent's giant teeth. He could also see the giant tongue laying on the bottom of the serpent's maw - it was covered in tiny barbs, probably to help in snatching meat and swallowing it. Well, the barbs were tiny compared to the size of the creature - they were the size of Meng Li's little finger.Those observations were all made in a split second as the sea serpent lunged at him. Without thinking much, Meng Li attacked first. Although the serpent was quite strong, it didn't have much in terms of attacks - it relied on its' speed and the strength of its' body to kill enemies. The monumental amount of Qi it possessed all went into strengthening its' body. This, combined with the serpent's innately strong body, made it a fearsome opponent. Meng Li wanted to test out his strength, so he didn't use all he had to deal with the beast - if he wanted to, he could kill it in a split second using merely a strand of Qi. First, he wanted to test out the strength of his body - the Reinforcement Stage, and the Pillar Building stage both increased the strength of a cultivator's body, so it should be at least at par with a beast with a cultivation level lower than him, right? This was what Meng Li was thinking as he hurled his fist towards the snout of the serpent.As his fist connected, he got his answer. His body was thrown backwards practically as soon as he made contact with the serpent's snout, but he was without injury. The same couldn't be said about the serpent, however - its' scales were cracked at the point of impact, and Meng Li's fist made it all the way to the bone of the beast. Only the bone was strong enough to withstand the force of his fist, and ultimately, the huge mass of the sea serpent threw him backwards. Meng Li managed to stabilize himself after merely a hundred meters. His entire right hand was covered in blood and pieces of flesh - it was all from the sea serpent. When he hit it, Meng Li only felt a small itch on his knuckles, which stopped in seconds.Frowning, Meng Li shook his hand slightly. All the blood and pieces of flesh fell off of his hand and into the ocean below him, leaving him clean. The simple white robes were also unstained - Meng Li knew for a long time that the robes he received weren't simple. For one, they never dirtied, never tore, but were extremely smooth and pleasing to wear. It was good - in all the novels he had read, the main character had to hold hundreds of robes in his spatial storage with how often they tore during battles.Turning his attention to the serpent once more, he saw fear in the creature's eyes. It was scared? Meng Li was surprised. The hit, although deep, shouldn't have affected the creature much. In fact, it couldn't be considered as more than a scratch with how big the creature was. Still, due to the fear in the creature's gaze, he quickly scanned its' body with Spiritual Sense. If it was stronger than him, he wouldn't be able to do so, but it was too weak to prevent him from learning about its' body. What he saw was quite surprising - his fist had been stopped when it hit bone, and all of the strength was dispersed, leading to him being thrown away due to the sheer size of the serpent. However, the small hit managed to leave surprisingly huge injuries to the serpent. The snout, which he hit, was actually the hardest piece of bone in the creature's body. That's the only reason it didn't break - instead, it transferred the huge force of his fist towards the head of the creature. Right now, there was a huge crack in the serpent's skull, making the snout hang on solely due to the muscles of the creature. Such a huge injury could very easily be aggravated, basically crippling the serpent, which relied on brute force to hunt. Find authorized novels in Webnovelfaster updates, better experiencePlease click www.webnovel.com for visiting. After a few seconds of eye contact, during which the fear in the serpent's eyes only grew, it suddenly turned tail and sunk. It wanted to go somewhere and recuperate - if this injury wasn't treated properly, it would spell death for it. However, as it left, Meng Li had an idea."You think of leaving when you tried to eat me? Dream on." with a snort, he suddenly disappeared from the place he was standing. Before the serpent had a chance to register what was happening, he was already next to its' head, next to the huge crack in its' skull. Using Spiritual Sense, he could see that this piece of skin was above the crack, and if he hit there, the hit would directly impact the brain.With a wave of his hand, a small strand of Qi shot out at the serpent's head. It directly penetrated through the scales as though a knife through butter, and reached the brain. It burrowed until it was in the middle of the brain, and it detonated, splitting into many smaller strands of Qi, which wreaked havock on the serpent's brain. In merely a second, the light in the serpent's eyes disappeared, its' huge body simply floating in the water, like a puppet with its' strings cut.Happy, Meng Li dove into his consciousness, and summoned a spatial storage item. What he summoned was a small bag made out of a beast's leather. It was the size of a palm, but inside, it had at least a million cubic meters of storage space. No matter how many items were put into the bag, it would stay the same weight - this was an incredibly useful tool for cultivators.Meng Li chose a bag for several reasons. For one, storage bags were much easier to make, because to create a spatial storage items, a huge amount of runes had to be inscribed onto the item. The less space, the harder that would be. Thus, a ring with the same amount of space as a bag was at least ten times more expensive than the bag. A small bag was also more inconspicuous than a ring. But the main reason was simply that Meng Li didn't like how rings felt on his finger.Using the bag of holding was easy. He first sent in his Qi inside it and marked it as his own - other people wouldn't be able to open it with such a mark. Then, he sent his consciousness inside. A huge space appeared within his consciousness. It was a 100 meter cube. It was the smallest bag Meng Li could find that was able to fit the huge serpent. The time within the bag was also frozen - the corpse of the serpent wouldn't rot not matter how long it was kept inside. It was really handy.Meng Li once again scanned the serpent's corpse for something else he remembered. The beasts cultivation was different from how humans cultivated - they had a crystallized core, which contained all their qi and their essence. It was helpful for humans - they were able to absorb it to speed up their cultivation. Of course, that applied to beasts too - with the added benefit of being able to absorb a bit of the strength of the beast's bloodline. Different from the human world, the world of beasts was naturally cruel, with the only way to grow being to absorb the cores of other beasts.With a wave of his hand, a strand of Qi shot into the serpent's head once again to retrieve the core. Despite the huge size of the serpent, the core was only the size of a human's head. Compared to the size of its' body, it was small, but to a human it was quite large.Meng Li didn't take it for himself, of course - he had no need for it. However, it might make a good gift for the reincarnated soul. And it was his first kill after all - it was a memoir in a sense. Thus, Meng Li stored both the core and the serpent itself into the bag. The serpent was at least 300 meters in length, so to fit it in, it had to curl up. In the end, it took up an extremely large portion of the space, but there was still some free space in the corners. Meng Li took out the Heavenly Yin Yang Shroud technique from his robe. It fortunately didn't fall out. He put it in the bag, in a corner near the serpent's core.With that, he used the teleport function to go into the wilderness near the Qingshui Town. What he saw on the globe in his consciousness was surprising - although the Full Moon empire was quite developed in the past, it was nowhere near the level of what he saw now. When he started cultivating, there was only the capital city and a few smaller cities near important locations. However, what he saw now couldn't be compared to the previous level of development. There were nine major cities in the current Full Moon Empire, with many more smaller cities and uncountable number of smaller towns. the Qingshui Town was one of the smaller ones, with merely five thousand people. The majority of the people living in it were mortals without any cultivation whatsoever - a far cry from the time when everyone was at least at the second level of Qi Gathering. The strongest person residing within the town was actually a town mayor with a cultivation of the fourth level of Qi Gathering.The situation surprised Meng Li. He quickly checked the globe in his consciousness, and what he found surprised him. The previous five colonies all developed and were all aware of each other's existence. In the end, there were a total of two empires, the Full Moon Empire and the Heavenly Dragon Empire. The Heavenly Dragon Empire was the empire which developed on the west continent, from the one colony which was placed there. On the east continent, there existed the Full Moon Empire, as well as the Nine Sun Kingdom. This kingdom was the one developed from the colony which initially was at odds with the Full Moon empire - after a bit of searching, Meng Li found that the old colony had been transformed into a sect. It was called the Heavenly Sword Sect, and it created the Nine Sun Kingdom in order to oppose the Full Moon Empire. The kingdom occupied a bit of land in the south of the continent, but the place he initially placed the colony was in the territory of the Full Moon Empire.The sect itself was located in the depths of a mountain range in the Nine Sun Kingdom. The mountain range was full of beasts, so it was quite hard to access. The sect itself was a mythical existence, and not many people in the Nine Sun Kingdom knew of its' existence.The two other colonies were the ones located on the two archipelagos he created. The territory of the two colonies was not under control of any kingdom or empire, and they were, in fact, controlled by tribes. It seemed that because of the difficulty in crossing the gaps between the islands, tribes were created. The islands, although under control of tribes, did have cities to house the rogue cultivators who were not part of the tribes. The tribes of both archipelagos had enough power to contend with the Empires, so they were left alone.The last thing Meng Li noticed was that the small island near the south pole was actually discovered by people, and there was a city created there. The city was not under control of a major power, and was in fact a team effort - the island was full of Qi, and was home to many powerful monsters.Faced with such a huge amount of information, Meng Li had to ask the system.How long... Did I cultivate for... He asked, hesitating.15 years and 3 months. The system answered reliably.Meng Li's face fell. Fifteen years? That was fifteen thousand years in the world! These empires stood for over ten thousand years! The lifespan of a cultivator grows the stronger they are, but no matter how they cultivated, cultivators in this world could at most live five hundred years, six hundred at most with heavenly resources. This meant that if an emperor ruled a kingdom for his entire lifespan, from birth till death, there would be 30 emperors from the beginning till the end. And of course, an emperor wouldn't be chosen the moment they're born, and would be replaced before their death to keep the empire stable, so an average emperor would rule for three hundred years at most, two hundred years on average. Just assuming that, there had to be at least seventy five emperors for these fifteen thousand years, and yet, somehow, the situation managed to stay stable - it was practically miraculous.The news of such a gigantic change stunned Meng Li for a bit, but he managed to calm down quickly. As he did, he remembered what he was there for - the reincarnated soul. As such, he prepared his disguise. He didn't want to switch his robes since they were too comfy, and his long hair suited him too. The only thing he changed was his aura - previously, he restrained it so he seemed like a mortal, but he changed it to seem like a cultivator at the first level of Qi Gathering. He wanted to settle down near the family where the soul was reincarnating, so he needed to have some alibi, but he decided to worry about it later. With that in mind, he started walking towards Qingshui Town.
