Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Boom!

"W-what was that?!"

At the same time Xuan Hao had managed to kill off the tentacle cocoon in the mineshaft, the group of thieves had only managed to get a few hundred meters away from the mineshaft when the explosion suddenly occurred behind them. Catching all of them by surprise, as the thieves carrying the boxes filled with spiritual metals directly dropped them as they hid behind a few nearby rocks.

Following the large explosion, the thieves all glanced back towards the mineshaft they had been inside of just a few seconds ago.

Whoosh!

Seeing the explosion heading up into the sky with a tremendous force, the thieves all felt a shiver run down their spine.

If they were ever hit by such a terrifying explosion...

All the thieves could not help but shiver upon reaching this thought. The explosion was simply too terrifying and watching how the formation around the capital had needed at least a few seconds to deal with it, they knew that the strength of the explosion should have reached the Domain Lord Realm!

Realizing just how dangerous their current situation was, the leader of the thieves quickly woke up from the dazed state he and the rest of the thieves had found themselves in before anxiously yelling at the rest of the group to wake them up from their dazed state.

"We need to leave this place quickly!"

Along with their leader's loud voice, the rest of the thieves soon recovered from their dazed state as well before the entire group began running away from the now collapsed mineshaft at full speed.

Not daring to stay around and wait for the guards and possibly higher echelons of the Iron Sky Kingdom to show up to investigate just what had happened.

Even if they were curious about what had happened inside the mineshaft, their life was way more important than finding out the origin of the explosion! There was also the fact that they all still very clearly remembered the tentacle cocoon that they had seen inside the mineshaft... Who knew if that thing was still there?

...

Having finished off the tentacle cocoon and managed to get out of the way before it had exploded, Xuan Hao wasted no time waiting around before he managed to catch up with the thief group once again.

The formation that he could not feel back in the mineshaft had appeared around him once again, causing Xuan Hao to wonder if the tentacle cocoon really had an ability that could hide an area around itself from the formation that guarded the capital.

Thinking back, the space around the tentacle cocoon was completely cut off from the effect of the formation... Even when he had used his divine sense without restricting it, the formation had not registered anything!

"No use thinking about it, there is no way I can investigate it now that the tentacle cocoon is already dead..." Muttering this to himself, Xuan Hao turned his attention back onto the thieves running at a speed close to someone at the Nascent Soul Realm in front of him.

The group of thieves moved even faster compared to when they had been escaping the guards. Truly, they had been too scared by the earlier explosion...

Grinning a bit to himself upon realizing that he had ended up scaring the thieves that much with the earlier explosion, Xuan Hao decided to mess a bit more with them along the way.

...

Whoosh~

"Argh! W-who is it?!"

"Quiet! There is no one other than us out here!"

"But-"

"No buts! How many times is this now? There is no one out there, its just because you are on edge after the earlier encounter with that weird tentacle creature and the explosion!"

Watching the thieves quarrel once again, Xuan Hao chuckled quietly to himself as he prepared to throw a small pebble towards one of the thieves carrying one of the three boxes with spiritual metal.

Following the thieves, Xuan Hao had decided to scare them a bit by throwing a few pebbles at them every now and then. Using his domain to cloak the pebble and make it invisible, Xuan Hao made sure the thieves didn't notice anything.

This limited use of his domain was not enough to trigger the formation around the capital, so Xuan Hao had happily continued scaring the thieves for the last one hour.

Even if it took them a little longer to travel this way, at the very least it was entertaining for him...

"We are here!"

Just as the pebble in his hand was about to fly out towards the unlucky target he had chosen, Xuan Hao's hand came to a stop upon hearing what the leader of the thieves said before he turned his attention away from his lucky target and looked at the place that the leader of the thieves had stopped.

In front of a small rundown house leaning up against the large wall surrounding the entire capital, Xuan Hao watched as the thief leader began cautiously looking around the large empty space all around the small run-down building.

Well... Empty space would be an overstatement, it would be better to call the surrounding space the ruins of what had once been an active mineshaft that now laid abandoned after all the precious metals below had been mined out, or a bigger mineshaft opened up nearby...

The houses that had once been occupied by the miners laid completely empty, as the only house still standing, was the rundown house that the thief leader had come to a stop in front of.

Looking more closely, the rundown could only barely support itself due to the fact that it had been leaning up against the large city wall for support.

"Everyone, let's go!" Having surveyed his surroundings for a few minutes, the thief leader turned towards the rest of the thieves as he informed them before entering the rundown house.

Seeing this, Xuan Hao waited until all the thieves had entered before slowly following behind them into the rundown house himself.

"This is..." Entering the rundown house, Xuan Hao was surprised upon seeing the thieves orderly squeezing out through a small crack in the wall.

The crack was just barely enough for the thieves to get through and push the boxes out with them, but this was not what had surprised Xuan Hao.

Instead, it was the fact that there was a crack in the wall of the capital that the thieves could use to get in and out without going through any of the gates that were tightly guarded by the guards and soldiers of the Iron Sky Kingdom!

Not only that, but the wall of the capital was clearly part of the formation that engulfed and protected the entire capital...

For there to be a crack in the wall, meant that the foundation of the formation had been damaged! There was no way that the Domain Lord of the Iron Sky Kingdom would not notice something like this!

Looking more closely at the crack that the thieves were squeezing through, Xuan Hao noticed a small row of runes flowing alongside the crack of the wall.

"Hm... Looks like things are not that simple..." Taking a closer look, Xuan Hao realized that the runes flowing along the crack in the wall seemed to have isolated the crack and made it disappear in the eyes of the formation.

It was like the runes were falsely relaying information through the formation and ensuring that the person using the formation would not be able to discover that there was something wrong with it.

Before the formation was utilized to its full potential, the damage to the foundation would not show up...

Thinking this far, Xuan Hao could clearly see that something was very wrong inside the Iron Sky Kingdom.

Remembering how the border guard had warned him and the others, Xuan Hao could not help but realize that the warning likely had something to do with the damage to the formation around the capital.

Someone is preparing to attack the Iron Sky Kingdom...

This was the only thing that he could come up with after putting the few clues he had gathered so far together. Now the only question that remained, was who?

Not to mention that the ruler of the Iron Sky Kingdom was someone at the Peak of the Domain Lord Realm, who would be brave enough and have the power to attack one of the most important kingdoms inside the Sky Empire?

Other than having to deal with the powerful ruler of the Iron Sky Kingdom, they would still need to do it before the Sky Empire had time to respond and send people over.

Given the importance of the Iron Sky Kingdom, Xuan Hao did not doubt that an attack towards it might even cause one of the Soul Ascension Realm Experts to show up!

After all, losing a Peak Domain Lord along with one of the most important locations for the production of spiritual metal was not something any empire would want.

Even if they could take the area back, it would take years to restart production again and the loss of a Peak Domain Lord would not recover within just a few years...

"Hah... No use thinking about all of this..." Sighing to himself as he thought about all of this, Xuan Hao watched the last of the thieves leave the capital through the crack in the wall and quickly followed after them.

This time around, being more careful than he had been before...