The metal birds and feathers fell apart and turned into energy that dispersed in the environment when Iron Feathers died. Noah checked his body for a while, but he saw no changes in the primary energy nourishing his tissues.
The Second Life formation had replaced Iron Feathers' corpse with the body of a magical beast, but the contents of his dantian had remained inside Noah.
'That was dangerous,' Noah thought as he bathed himself in the surge of energy that was filling every inch of his body. The amount of power contained inside the dantian of a solid stage cultivator in the fifth rank was immense, and it forced his injuries to heal.
It also pushed his body deeper into the upper tier, even if the growth was even lower than he expected.
Noah felt surprised for a second, but he soon found the cause behind that event. The tissues of his heart devoured all the primary energy that converged there. It seemed that his organ had become a bottomless pit capable of absorbing all the nourishment that it could find.
'Four centers of power,' Noah thought as he heaved a helpless sigh. 'I had to predict something like this. Having faith in my body is one thing, but I can't expect it to evolve into a higher form on its own miraculously.'
The addition of his burning heart had increased the requirements of his body, which was something that Noah had overlooked until then. The reason for that was that his center of power was slowly harmonizing with the new organ. It was pushing it toward a different type of existence.
Noah could already predict that his body would require even more nutrients in the future, but he accepted it. After all, he was already lucky that his hunger didn't increase because of that.
'I should be able to face a solid stage cultivator head-on if I use Snore,' Noah evaluated as he waited for his body to recover. He had suffered multiple injuries during the battle against Iron Feathers, and each one of them was quite severe.
Only his skin and muscles had suffered though. Noah had been careful and had planned all his moves thoroughly. Even his last charge hadn't been as reckless as it seemed.
First of all, he had used one of the features of Elder Julia's individuality. Some of the higher-ups of the other organizations knew that she could hide her attacks well, but most of them weren't aware that she could use that ability on cultivators.
Of course, that secrecy had vanished since everyone had seen Iron Feathers fall. Still, the outcome made it completely worth it.
Then, Noah had prepared himself to face Iron Feathers' counterattacks. He had dispersed his spells and used only the Mental Saber spell when his cover vanished.
In the end, the Demonic Sword and his body had done the rest. It didn't matter that some metal weapons had injured him or that Iron Feathers had a rank 6 body in the lower tier. As long as Noah could touch a human directly, he would be able to kill them.
The battle had shown him that some of his abilities could match the cultivators in the solid stage.
His martial arts were superlative. His body was in the upper tier, his dantian was in the liquid stage, and his Demonic Form had reached the middle tier too. With his darkness expressing his individuality, those assets together created attacks that surpassed the limits of the liquid stage.
The spells of a cultivator in the solid stage were still more potent for now, but the simple martial art wasn't the strongest weapon in Noah's arsenal. When he coupled it with his Demonic Form, its power would match the experts in the last phase of the fifth rank.
A dangerous sensation startled Noah awake and forced him to perform an evasive maneuver. A series of blue arrows soon crossed his previous position and disappeared in the distance, but his mind kept sending alert messages.
Noah kept on flying in random directions as the central buildings in the districts near the floating platform continued to launch blue arrows toward him. It seemed that the Empire was pissed about the recent event and wanted to make his stay in the battlefield as hard as possible.
However, Daniel and Amos' opponents had died, Icy Stare had escaped, and Iron Feathers had lost his dantian. The Second Life formation had saved them, but the Empire's side lacked assets that could focus Noah now.
The relentless assault of the arrows didn't lead to anything, and the central buildings soon stopped shooting them. After all, Noah only needed to activate the Merging spell to dodge them, while the Empire had to use many resources to create that attack.
With no one there to force Noah in a corner, focusing him ended up wasting resources.
"Can you still fight?" Elder Julia said after the assault of the arrows ended. Her question had a deeper meaning since it was evident that he had yet to empty his centers of power. The Elder was asking if he still wanted to help even after he had done enough already.
Noah nodded, and the Demonic Sword split into two sabers when it sensed his intentions. He didn't hope to retrieve more dantians since the cultivators of the Empire would be aware of his intentions now, but he could still help the invaders' side in its victory.
The Hive could then use his actions to request more resources once the Empire decided to give up. He could obtain many benefits since they were connected to the achievements obtained in battle.
Noah and Elder Julia began to fly side-by-side to join the fights happening everywhere on the battlefield. They initially respected the cultivators that were testing themselves in one versus one battles, but they soon helped them too since the greater good of the invading forces came first.
Red lights started to appear more often as Noah and Elder Julia helped in clearing the battlefield from the presence of rank 5 cultivators of the Empire. The number of powerful assets of the defenders decreased quickly since all the Elders they helped joined them in their sweep.
They then moved their attention to the other factions and helped them to end their battles as quickly as possible too. The invaders could finally start to assert their dominance at that point, and both the Council and the Elbas family accepted the help of the Hive even if they were slowly gaining the upper hand already.
All the experts in the fifth rank of the Empire eventually retreated or died under the positive trend started by Noah and Elder Julia. The Second Life formation prevented most casualties, but the red light didn't arrive for some cultivators who died on the battlefield.
As for the blue arrows, they became less dangerous once all the assets started to work together.