Chapter 864: Upper Limit: Pain
An Open Secret in Regards to Wandering Ruins: Power Limit
Hidden in corners all over Valresta, one can find doorways to planes of reality that are collectively known as [Wandering Ruins].
These hidden planes of reality vary in size, ecology and even general rules of physics, but do share a single commonality. That commonality being that every wandering ruin is chock full of resources and treasures that were usually beneficial to aether warriors from all walks of life.
Even if they weren’t, they could still be sold for a pretty penny…and the bank that issued that penny.
As such, it would be safe to assume that powerful warriors and sects would make it their top priority to secure the location of wandering ruins and explore them thoroughly before anybody else had a chance to do so. Especially since, as the name implied, many wandering ruins had a tendency to randomly disappear either before or after they’ve been explored.
However, despite the fact that it sound sensical for powerful warriors and sects to try and monopolize such places as hard as they could, there was precisely one reason why not many sects and warriors would undergo such a task: the power limit.
In the same way carnival rides had a minimum height that they would allow someone to be in order to make use of them, the gates of wandering ruins had a maximum aether cultivation stage they would allow to pass through.
These restrictions could be incredibly granular, down to the last ring, or incredibly broad with their restrictions, allowing anyone below the level of Aether Lord to pass through.
Whether this limit was implemented by the universe itself or an ascended aether warrior who managed to reach the level of Deity, this strange max limit entry wasn’t considered a bad thing for the wide community of aether warriors. If anything, it allowed them to gauge how dangerous a particular set of wandering ruins were.
For example, if a particular set of wandering ruins only allowed anyone that was at the Aether Master stage and below, that usually meant that the aforementioned ruins were relatively safe for most people to enter and peruse through. On the flip side, if a set of wandering ruins only restricted those above the Aether King level, they would be considered the type of places that only the most experienced and powerful aether warriors dared to explore.
Now, it would normally be safe to assume that the higher the maximum aether cultivation allowed in a particular set of ruins would have equally valuable treasures.
However, that was not the case.
Many historical documents recorded throughout history, detailed how sects would find a set of wandering ruins that could be entered by their elite warriors, sometimes even their sect leaders, only to become thoroughly disappointed when they found only Bronze to Silver tiered aether treasures.
Evidently, it was due to this sheer randomness and limit, that practically every organization in the world would send groups of Acolytes or Novices first, in order to get a general idea of whether or not it was the worth the effort to explore.
Taking all of this account though, most organizations prefer it if the entrance to a set of wandering ruins were highly restrictive.
After all, there’s nothing more terrifying to warriors in training than finding out that not even the elders could handle whatever was on the other side…
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“The fuck you mean, grandfather isn’t the limit?”
“Xiao Liu, language.”
“Sorry, rephrasing. The fuck you mean, the patriarch isn’t the entry limit.”
“I was referring to the swearing, but that works too.”
Shortly after Zhen Liu secured his latest batch of spies/recruits/unwilling lackeys, he and his mother decided to return to the Zhen Clan estate to return to business as usual.
For the latter case, Daria Nerissa-Zhen had to take care of things such as child rearing and spying on basically everyone.
In the case of the ormer, as a member of the younger generation, he had to learn about the latest bit of possible cultivation news as soon as to had occurred.
As such, he went to go find his father, Seventh Elder Zhen Yan,to see what was going on.
For context, today was the day that Patriarch Zhen Shi and the clan elders were going to go see what the upper limit for the wandering ruins, tentatively titled as [The Monkey’s Temple], was exactly.
Granted their method of testing this was highly unsophisticated.
They literally just had one of the elders at the Aether Master stage, another at the Aether Grandmaster stage and Patriarch Zhen Shi stick their arms through the gate one after the other to determine whether or not they were able to.
When all three were able to do so with great ease, they had gotten understandably nervous.
“Wait…based on what you just told me, we should be under the assumption that the patriarch should be the upper limit for accessing the [Monkey’s Temple]. How’d you figure he wasn’t?”
“Your fiancee’s tutor/bodyguard.”
“Ah…”
Apparently, while the Zhen Clan’s patriarch and elders were testing the limits to the entrance to the [Monkey’s Temple], Zhong Wei had appeared out of nowhere to test his own luck too.
The hermit bodyguard/tutor for Princess Jinju Zhen had been rather quiet for the past few days since he had joined the Zhen Clan in Stone Claw City.
For most of his time here, the hermit old man hadn’t been doing much other than walking about town and providing guidance to Princess Jinju Ren when she needed it for her own cultivation practice.
Which made sense, as he was technically more affiliated with the Pearl Scale Empire’s Imperial Dynasty than he was associated with the Zhen Clan.
Needless to say, the fact that this enigmatic hermit had also come to test his luck with the entrance to the ruins was simultaneously reassuring and deeply harrowing. Especially when after he stuck his arm through with little to no problem, he retracted it while giving off what he assumed to be the absolute upper limit to the gate.
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To put this “oh shit” moment into perspective, the strongest person that the Zhen Clan members knew personally was none other than the matriarch, Matriarch Zhen Xun Tian, who was at the Aether Emperor stage. Additionally, the Pearl Scale Emperor, the strongest person Zhong Wei knew, was known to be at the Aether Saint stage.
In other words, whatever powerful secret was located inside of the [Monkey’s Temple], was possibly strong enough to insta-kill someone that carried the title of the Inked War Goddess, with pride.
Needless to say, Zhen Liu was a bit taken aback by this revelation.
“Okay, so I guess it’s safe way to that we won’t be exploring the place incredibly thoroughly then. Well, not until the Matriarch gets here via that teleportation array. When is that getting established by the way?,” Zhen Liu innocently asked.
The last he heard anything about it, it was when Princess Jinju Ren mentioned it as a conversational topic over breakfast. Zhen Liu himself had honestly forgotten about it, because he hadn’t heard a whisper or yell in regards to that array in the slightest.
The moment Zhen Liu made this comment though, his father proceeded to give him the flattest expression in the history of flat expressions.
“Why do I get the feeling that’s not actually the case?,” Zhen Liu asked his father, feeling that he was about to given the “best” news ever.
“Well…Master Zhong Wei had indeed brought over the materials necessary to establish the teleportation array that would’ve connect us directly to the main clan in Roaring Tide, but there was an unexpected complication when he tried to set-up.”
“What kind of complication?”
“Turns out the cave we were going to use as the main hub point had a slightly lower density of Aquarii aether than anticipated, so when the array was established, the coordinates were way off,” Zhen Yan explained to his son.
“Teleported into a different city?”
“Teleported into a completely different country. We had apparently connected to the destroyed capital of a place called the Tidal Prawn Principality.”
“Destroyed?”
“They had apparently awoken a hibernating Aether King Beast after kidnapping it’s child.”
“Oh.”
“So short of flooding the cave with ocean water, or establishing a branch by the coast, we’re gonna have to find something to reinforce the Aquarii aether density in the cave.,” Zhen Yan stated.
“And that something can be found inside of the [Monkey’s Temple]?”
“One of four possibilities actually.”
“Oh. Neat.”
“Which is why we’re going to go in one large group and spread out appropriately in order to secure them all at once.”
“Ey yo what?”
“And we’re gonna need you to provide a puppet for everybody so that we can stay in constant communication to everyone.”
“Ey yo what??”
Evidently, there were plans within plans that nobody told Zhen Liu about until this exact moment.
“Actually, I think I skipped over some things…which is fine actually, because we have a meeting to attend. to. Come on, my boy!”
