Earthquakes started to happen again in the neutral city as soon as Noah resumed his experiments. Still, the Hive had improved the underground training area while he was away.
The tremors that reached the buildings on the surface weren't strong enough to cause any damage, and the citizens soon became used to those events. After all, it wasn't a secret that heroic cultivators performed experiments during their seclusion, and Noah already had a reputation in that field.
As the years passed, the earthquakes became something iconic of Divine Market city. Everyone became used to them.
Daniel shared the training area with Noah, but he cultivated in other places or even in the wilderness since it was too dangerous for him to remain there during Noah's experiments.
Noah had kept on increasing the amount of darkness used during his tests, which only caused heavier repercussions after each failure. Also, the fact that he wasn't making any noticeable progress made him more reckless with his experiments.
Noah would often fill the entirety of the training area with his darkness and start manipulating it as he tried to find a shape that his "Breath" accepted. The Divine Deduction technique was crucial in the process since he analyzed and changed approach even when he was in the middle of a different procedure.
It was impossible to predict the reactions of his darkness. Noah usually had to improvise since his "Breath" reacted in unforeseen ways during the approaches that he had chosen beforehand.
The increased quantity of darkness created even more unexpected reactions, which turned the entirety of the training area in a rank 5 danger zone due to how often Noah ended up causing an explosion.
However, nothing seemed able to satisfy his darkness. His "Breath" appeared unable to find a stable form whenever Noah tried to increase its power.
It had been more than ten years already since his return from the Odrea nation, but Noah had only managed to pile a series of failures. He had reached the point where he could list thousands of approaches that didn't work and not even a promising one.
Noah had always known that creating higher energy would be hard. After all, he had spent sixteen years to make his darkness, and he already had a sort of blueprint when it came to that experiment.
Yet, he had never predicted that he would still be stuck on the starting point after so much time.
Noah knew the reason behind the level of difficulty of that project.
Generally speaking, cultivators had to be able to understand the laws to modify the structure and functioning of energies. They needed to follow universal rules concerning the behavior of the "Breath" of a specific element.
The same would have been applied to Noah's darkness. Still, he had created it using the shape that his primary energy had taken during the transformation into a Cursed Dragon. From there, Noah had just performed countless tests until he managed to create something stable, and that matched the power of Heaven and Earth's "Breath".
He had just memorized the procedure that his body had executed during the transformation and used it to make something that belonged only to him.
That process didn't involve laws or, rather, Noah wasn't making use of them consciously. His mind would only gain brief insights during his meditation, which he then applied to his tests.
What he obtained was a darkness that didn't follow any known behavior and acted according to laws that weren't part of Heaven and Earth's system.
That had always been Noah's plan, but now he found himself unable to use studies and researches concerning the "Breath" of the darkness element because his energy acted differently. Without them, he was entirely in the blind and could only keep testing until he found something that could give him hope in succeeding.
Of course, Noah didn't lose his determination during those years, and he had even kept on training following his usual tight schedule.
The invading forces were still reorganizing. A few decades weren't enough to make up for the losses endured during the war against the Shandal Empire.
Also, they weren't in a hurry to attack the Empire again either. The fact that the invaders had complete control over the new continent assured them that they would experience better growth compared to the Empire.
They would launch another offensive once they felt that the difference between their power was large enough to limit their losses. Still, their only focus was on turning their new domains into sources of income and nurturing new heroic assets.
That left Noah with no tasks other than becoming stronger before the new major battle. That was precisely what he was doing, even if he didn't have much success when it came to his higher energy.
A change occurred after the fifteenth year of isolation.
Noah was immersed in his darkness as usual. His hand performed quick gestures that affected the dense gas around him and tried to alter its shape.
He was trying to force his energy into a massive gale at that time. He planned to unify all that darkness into a unified shape that he would condense by creating an artificial tornado.
That was one of Noah's untested approaches. His darkness would slowly fuse into a denser form at his gestures and began to blow through the underground room, gathering more "Breath" as it flowed.
The gale seemed to work at the beginning, but the inherent violence in his energy soon began to create small unstable areas in that form. Blowing in an orderly way wasn't a problem, but conflicts started to appear once the wind of darkness reached a specific density.
The remaining darkness in the room would oppose the gale when it tried to absorb it, and black slashes shot once those two forms met. The situation eventually reached a point where more slashes were flying around the underground area than energy.
Noah decided to endure one of the slashes to test their power, but the results were disappointing. The attack could only scrape his skin, meaning that it had barely surpassed the limits of the gaseous stage.
'This is already the best that my darkness can accept,' Noah thought as he let his "Breath" disperse. 'I can't improve this gale form anymore.'
As tiredness filled his mind though, he heard familiar footsteps coming from the corridor that connected the underground area and the buildings on the surface.
"It took you a while," Noah said as he showed a smile to the woman that had just entered his training area.
"I lost track of time while I studied the book from Shandal's palace," June said, replying to his smile with one of her own.
She and Faith had returned to their organizations after the mission in the Odrea nation. The matter concerning their sudden ambush forced them to prolong their stay there. Also, June had obtained a great amount of knowledge from Shandal's castle, which led her to request to be reassigned in the neutral city only recently.