The rank 4 cultivators saw the five figures returning to them before receiving a series of orders.
The leaders had stabilized the area, but that place still needed some improvements before they felt confident in abandoning it to proceed with the exploration. Defensive and cloaking formations were a must in those situations, and some cultivators would have to clear the surrounding territories before their factions felt safe in sending more assets in the new world.
However, the rank 4 cultivators didn't immediately begin to work on those improvements. Their gazes were fixed on Noah, who was casually floating in silence with his mind clearly elsewhere.
They had just witnessed a cultivator in their rank winning a brawl against a magical beast in the fifth rank!
The outcome of that battle showed that he was capable of a rank 5 battle prowess and that it wasn't even the full extent of his power.
Noah appeared completely fine, with only a few bruises on his knuckles and exposed chest due to the countless clashes with the snake. His robe had been torn during the battle, which left him in his usual half-naked state.
The power showed before, and his current appearance was a magnet for the assets in the fourth rank that inspected him with stares that carried various emotions.
There was fear, worship, envy, and some of the younger women in the group even felt sexual drive filling their bodies.
Noah didn't fail to notice those emotions. After all, rank 4 mages couldn't hide much from his powerful consciousness. That led him to sense the annoyance carried by June's gaze.
She was trying to suppress that emotion, but seeing her lover's prowess and noticing the blushing expressions of some female cultivators near her made it impossible to hide that feeling completely.
Noah sighed and took out a new robe as well as a couple of Daniel's pills from his space-ring. He couldn't risk exposing his relationship with June, and he also had to pretend that his body-nourishing method had evident drawbacks.
Of course, he didn't go to a secluded place to change his clothes. That gesture would just create more suspicions.
A series of snorts, gasps, and suppressed laughs resounded among the cultivators as they watched Noah's changing himself. Yet, they quickly began to follow the orders of the leaders when they noticed their stern stares.
"I'll investigate the surrounding areas," Noah said before flying away, in the direction where the snake had arrived.
Elder Estelle did the same, but she flew in the opposite direction. As for the other three rank 5 cultivators, they simply remained above the volcano to oversee the work of the troops.
Noah flew above the clouds, and he soon sensed the presence of other living beings. A pack of Flying snakes appeared in his vision, but there weren't any rank 5 specimens among them.
'They should be its underlings.' Noah thought before shooting toward them while wielding his sabers again.
Killing a few rank 4 beasts and a dozen creatures in the third rank didn't take much, and Noah was able to obtain a large number of corpses in just a few minutes.
He dissected them too only to discover that each of those specimens had a fake dantian in the same spot as the rank 5 snake. However, those organs appeared far weaker, and the difference in their level wasn't enough to explain such inferior structures. Also, some of the fake dantians in the rank 3 specimens weren't even fully formed.
Noah felt another series of questions rising inside his mind, but he held himself back from making more hypotheses before inspecting other species.
His next destination was the ground, in the midst of the sparse vegetation that encircled the volcano and spread in the distance.
The search took a while, even with the enhanced senses of his body, but he ultimately found other species of magical beasts in that environment. They were generally small creatures with innate hiding abilities, and that could live underground if the situation required it.
'This should be one of the hunting areas of the pack of snakes.' Noah thought as he killed and stored every beast that he found.
That territory contained only creatures in the human ranks, which was what made Noah deduce that the dead snake in the fifth rank was the overlord of that area. So, his hunt went smoothly, and he was even able to capture some of those beasts alive.
The first detail that he noticed was that he didn't recognize some of those species, but he expected that since he was exploring a new world. However, his interest skyrocketed when he began to dissect and vivisect them.
'The Striped lemurs have the same fake dantians as the Flying snakes.' Noah thought as he kept on studying one specimen after another. 'Yet, these rat-type magical beasts don't have any trace of that organ.'
His investigation ultimately revealed that the species that had a fake dantian were fewer than those that didn't.
That feature didn't seem connected to the kind of those beasts, nor their rank. It appeared completely random, which was something that made Noah unable to create a reliable scheme in his mind.
Also, that feature was even hard to notice since the fake dantians were fused entirely with the bodies of the creatures and didn't radiate any particular energy. The beasts with that organ were merely stronger than normal beings in every aspect.
When Noah felt satisfied with the data gathered in that territory, he decided to rely on his body to try to uncover more details about those unusual beings.
The fake dantian of the rank 5 snake appeared in his palm, and Noah bit a small piece of it to test if it would taste differently or just cause other reactions inside him.
His body destroyed the minute chunk of flesh and turned it into primary energy that it absorbed in less than a second. The energy wasn't any different from that inside his Liquid dantian. Yet, it seemed to have an intrinsic behavior that made it aim to nourish his dantian first.
The energy reached his low-waist, but it went to feed other tissues when it saw that it couldn't improve that center of power any further.
'What is happening in these Mortal Lands?' Noah asked himself as he proceeded on eating other body parts of the snakes.
Then, he began to eat pieces of the magical beasts that had a dantian too, only to switch to those without it when he felt satisfied with what he had learnt.
The results of those tests left him completely speechless!
The primary energy contained in the corpses of the unusual beasts always aimed for his dantian first when it entered his body. Instead, that coming from the normal creatures worked as usual and nourished his entire structure, without any preferences.
'It's similar to a Bloodline Inheritance.' Noah concluded at that point. 'But it works on the dantians. I wonder if it can make them grow out of nowhere though.'