Just like before, Thunder Drake's only reply to their words was to beat them some more. When he was done with them, their bodies had shattered into a pile of precious rocks with two milky white cores at the center.
These circumstances didn't mean that the gem kings were dead. It only meant that the two gem kings had lost their bodies.
The two gem kings are still alive because their cores, where their consciousness resides, are still intact. As long as their cores are safe, they can always reform their bodies.
All they need right now is time for the milky cores to sink into the ground and germinate a new body using the nutrients in the ground. This body will be a weak body equivalent to the body of a baby. So all of their years of cultivation will go to waste.
But this is a chance at living again, which they will gladly take at this point. Unfortunately for them, Thunder Drake didn't give them the chance.
Someone else might see the milky cores and mistake them for gems. But as a nascent soul cultivator, he can see the fluctuations of consciousness emanating from the cores, so he knew that they were still alive.
Besides, the guide from the League of World Eaters already gave them some information about the gem people. This information included the fact that their consciousness resides in a special heart core.
Since this information was distributed to every soldier in the Blood Skull army, not even a foundation establishment junior would make the mistake of thinking that the two gem people were truly dead.
The only difference between the foundation establishment Juniors and Thunder Drake is that he can quickly identify the core from among the pile of rocks, which he did easily. A foundation establishment junior would have had to sift through the pile of rocks with their divine sense before they found the core.
After identifying the heart cores, Thunder Drake picked them up. When he did, he noticed that the consciousnesses within them had become agitated. This made him chuckle inwardly.
He used his spiritual sense to make contact with the heart cores and said to them, "I bet you didn't think that I could find your hiding place."
This time, there was no barrier to knowledge. Since their communication was between one mind to another, they could understand each other well.
So the two gem kings were able to understand that Thunder Drake was taunting them and making fun of them. They truly didn't think he could find them and were surprised that he could.
Their confidence in escaping death had lain entirely on the hope that Thunder Drake would be ignorant of their heart core. Now that he had found their core, it meant that they were doomed.
But aside from the fear of death, there was another emotion that they were struggling to accept. This was because the form of communication that Thunder Drake used to speak with them shocked them more than the fact that their heart core had been found.
The fact that he could speak to them this way also reinforced their suspicion that Thunder Drake was a gem emperor. This was because only a gem emperor could project the power of their mind outside of their bodies.
But there were still a lot of things that they didn't understand about the golem. These things confused them and made them refuse to believe that the golem was a grade 5 being.
The red gem king shouted in fear and despair, "You can't be an emperor. This world doesn't allow for emperors to exist."
The green gem king asked, "How can you exist in this world? Why are you so short if you are so powerful? What kind of being uses lightning?"
The red gem regained his confidence and said, "It doesn't matter if you're an emperor. Not only are you a weak emperor and can't match the great ivory emperor, but we also have the support of many emperors and a gem god."
Thunder Drake asked playfully, "Is that so? Then let me see for myself."
After he said this, he flooded their minds with his spiritual sense. They couldn't resist, so his spiritual sense was able to scour their minds and read their memories. This way, he was able to learn everything about them, including their personalities, their culture, their world, and their language.
The technique he used is the soul search technique. It is a technique that only those at the fifth mortal coil and above can use.
Thanks to the soul search technique, information acquisition is easy. But it comes at the cost of scrambling the mind of the target.
In fact, the soul of the target that the soul search technique is used on might break and be injured because of it. So this technique is not used easily.
In the case of the gem kings, the soul search technique scrambled their minds so much that they became unable to form a coherent thought. They became essentially brain-dead or, in this case, soul-dead.
They are still alive. But even if they reconstruct their bodies, they will remain mentally impaired until their souls are healed.
After Thunder Drake got what he wanted. He took the heart cores and packed the pile of colorful rocks, too. Then he returned to the command center on the third floor of the mothership.
He shared what he learned with the other two patriarchs. After deliberating on the new information, they decided to continue with their plans, but speed things up a little because they now know that the gem people are vulnerable at this moment without their two strongest fighters.
With their decision made, they passed on the new orders to the ten divisions of the first army through the rank 4 golem avatars in each of the mobile fortresses.
The right and left commanders of each division were the first to hear the new orders. Then they passed on the necessary orders to their squads.