Noah, June, and Faith resumed their exploration of the beasts' territory after he woke up. Yet, the group took even longer breaks in that period to focus on other things.
Some cultivators didn't take Noah's warning seriously, but most of them believed in his capabilities when it came to the magical beasts' field.
Most of the insights on the properties of the mutagen had come from him, and he had even been the first to discover the drawings of the half-human half-beast creatures.
When the assets ignored his cold behavior and his inclination to create chaos, they were left with a particularly fantastic expert and an even more incredible cultivator.
Of course, the members of the three enemy factions could see him in that positive light only because there was a natural truce among their forces in that world.
Those cultivators who trusted Noah's judgment began to look for the hidden properties of the mutagen actively. Still, it was evident to all of them that such capabilities were carried by the laws that ruled it.
The laws were a topic that most heroic cultivators failed even to see until they reached the peak of the last stages of the heroic ranks. They first had to understand their individuality, then learn to express it, and, in the end, link it to laws that they could wield.
Even experts in the fifth rank could barely begin to see the tools of the gods, and there were only eight of them in the new world. Also, the magical beasts and the primary energy that they carried wasn't the field of expertise of most of them.
Yet, the new world had given them something that could tune them with something linked to the laws.
The natives' training method for the mental sphere allowed the thoughts of the cultivators to copy Heaven and Earth's will, making them more in line with the laws contained in the environment. That could enable them to understand laws slightly or feel what they were trying to express, at least.
It was a stretch, but all the heroic assets felt that it was the only way to discover something that it would be impossible to learn at their level otherwise.
A large part of the cultivators on the volcano began to focus on the training method wholeheartedly, and Noah's group wasn't an exception.
Noah's supposition and the possible connection with the bloodlines' past made them shift their focus on something that they had decided to take it slowly for the time being.
As for Noah, he had to face another problem together with his training.
His body was now in the middle tier, which meant that it required a higher number of powerful nutrients to improve and appease his hunger. His hunts became more frequent, and he even began to refill his stash of corpses that he had almost emptied after his awakening.
The training with the method proceeded slowly, but the first signs of success started to appear after so many years spent trying to reproduce Heaven and Earth's will.
The Divine Deduction technique partially allowed him to make up for the self-destructions of the wills, and he managed to memorize the aura radiated by those messy laws a few years after the breakthrough.
It must be said that Faith had been faster than him in that field, but there wasn't much that he could do about it. She was weaker than him, and her existence hadn't openly clashed with Heaven and Earth yet. So, she had more time to understand the kind of aura that she had to copy.
After that, they would have to create a copy of the will and then use it to modify the walls of their minds following the natives' inscription method.
June needed a few more years to memorize the aura of the will, but even she joined her companions in the following steps of the training method after that.
In that period of training and hunting, the group kept on discovering more traces of the old reign of the Elite cultivators.
Noah's new state allowed them to explore areas that weren't accessible before due to the power of beasts habiting them. They found more drawings and even more hints as they ventured deeper into the wilderness.
Cleared images began to appear. They depicted scenes similar to what Noah had seen in his dreams, and they even added some details.
Noah and the others saw humans handing vials to kneeled humans, and the hybrid-like creatures following those drawings. There were even some images that depicted humans and beasts holding their hands in a friendly manner!
It was only when they were about to reach the farther regions from the human domain though that they started to see shocking things.
The ruins became more and more frequent as they reached for the other side of the continent. It was as if entire cities had fallen there. However, there were always the drawings that Noah's group had become familiar to see at the center of those ruins.
It wasn't hard to guess that the habitations of the previous rulers stood there back then. Yet, Noah and the others would have never expected for some of them not to be destroyed entirely.
"This is the most intact one that we found." Faith said as she gazed toward a castle in the distance that had mostly fallen apart.
Even if they were quite far away, they could sense part of the aura contained in the materials that made that structure.
"Yes. It must have been the home for some powerful entity." June said.
"Indeed," Noah added. "The materials are just on another level. They even manage to keep the magical beasts away after so many years. I guess that the Heaven Tribulation really happened then."
The group advanced toward the broken castle after that quick exchange of lines.
Noah was obviously in the lead, and he was even the only one that could sense the awful scent that the materials of the structure still radiated. Nevertheless, he had become so used to smell it by then that he didn't even hesitate to enter the castle when he reached it.
The entirety of the structure had black cracks on its outside that spread even on its insides.
"There definitely was a Heaven Tribulation here," June said when she inspected those cracks.
Noah instincts didn't react to them, but June could be sure of that with just a few looks. She had used the Tribulation as part of her cultivation method, while Noah was merely sensitive to its energy. It wasn't strange that she was the only one able to notice it.
When the group reached the dungeon of the castle though, the cracks became far less appealing.
A series of cells appeared in their view, and all of them had strange bones inside them. There were traces of dried blood even, but Noah's eyes had already widened when he saw the shape of those skeletons.
He could see that each cell used to contain beings that had both humans and beasts' features.