While Aster and the others rode the spaceship towards the New Moon planet, back at Shadow Eye manor at the Crescent Moon planet, the veiled woman was calmly drinking tea.

The corpse of the black clothed figure was still laying down in front of her, but she didn’t seem to care about.

“Iris, open the damn door”, a loud bang could be heard from the other side of the wall, as well as a man’s angry voice.

The veiled woman didn’t rush and only after she finished her cup of tea, she used a talisman to open the wall.

A tall man with a black mask entered the room and the first thing he saw was his subordinate dead on the floor.

The air trembled as the man let out his spirit pressure, which turned out to be the one of an early-stage Void Manipulation cultivator.

“What is the meaning of this!”, shouted the man as he pointed at who used to be one of his trusted henchmen.

“He messed with the wrong person because of you, which costed him his life, that’s all”.

The black masked man clenched his fists, feeling his lungs full of anger.

“And why the hell didn’t you tell me sooner, I was in the middle of something when I was called due to a soul lamp breaking”.

The veiled woman placed her cup on the table, before she used her own pressure as a peak Genesis Manifestation cultivator, to make the pressure of the black masked man’s retreat.

“Why should I, also I don’t remember having given you permission to call me by my name Rufus, now take that trash out of my office and get lost”.

The masked man felt a vein popping on his neck.

‘You bitch, acting all high and mighty just because teacher has shown you some favoritism… just you wait’.

The black masked man grabbed the corpse of his subordinate and then left, not without giving the veiled a poisonous gaze.

He lost a big business opportunity, according to his subordinates stationed in the city, that group which left a moment ago, fitted with the description of the rumored male core disciple of the Myriad Occupation sect, and there were so many requests for his information, that the one who sold it first would make a small fortune.

“Coward, he sent his subordinate to me and made him speak of spying that boy out loud, he wanted to borrow a knife to get rid of me… luckily that senior didn’t take the bait”, mumbled the veiled woman.

‘Now that I think about it, since when there was a second Soul King in the Myriad Occupation sect, wasn’t the ancestor of the alchemy peak the only one in the whole stellar system?’, she wondered.

…

Leaving that small episode aside, arriving at the New Moon planet didn’t take more than one hour and a half.

“Now that’s something you don’t see every day”.

Felicia who was looking through the windows of the spaceship, saw huge spot whose black tone was slightly different than the color of the space surrounding it.

Without using one’s spirit sense to look through the whole space like an idiot, the only way to see that planet was paying a lot of attention, and see a spot in the space where the already dim stars didn’t shine.

But apparently Felicia could easily see in these harsh conditions, and she wasn’t the only one, Lilia, Alice and Aster’s visions weren’t hindered by the low illumination of this star cluster.

The spaceship descended into the planet, this time there weren’t any sentinels guarding the planet, but they still kept the concealment formation activated.

Lilia actually had to pilot the spaceship manually because the only thing that could be seen by most of them were vague dark shapes of different sizes, which conformed the landscape of the planet.

Mountains, oversized plants that were as tall as trees and even animal shaped shadows that moved from time to time, everything was hidden in the shadows.

Just as Agnes mentioned there was no sign of civilization here, at least not on a two-thousand-kilometer range around the area where they landed, the Naby city mentioned in the scroll wasn’t an actual active city, but the remains of one, that once existed in the past.

Which was also one of the few reference points that existed in the planet, it was terrifyingly easy to get lost here and since the illumination was so low it was extremely hard to orientate yourself.

The only certain way to move in the New Moon planet was going upwards… to leave, still there were some people who using countless of years and lives compiled a few rules for those who wished to hide here.

The first one was of course to not light anything up, because it will attract the attention of all the spirit beasts, and once they caught a glimpse of you, then they will all go crazy and start attacking everything near them.

Flying in general was also a bad idea because differentiating directions was incredibly hard, and if you travelled through the ground watching your step was a must, the deaths caused by falling in the nests of some beasts or traps set by the people that lived here were also quite high.

“I’ll return in a minute, wait inside the spaceship”, after saying that, Aster left the spaceship, since he could see he had no trouble to safely land on the floor.

‘Damn this is like being inside a terror movie’, he thought, being able to see was good, but that also meant he could witness things others haven’t.

There were bones spread all over the place, some looked really old while others were pretty recent, surprisingly there was no foul smell as if whatever they belonged to was completely eaten.

Also, the vegetation had mutated maybe due to the lack of light, instead of live green all the plants were of a dark color and had thorns on the majority of their bodies.

“Ok, let’s see how this works”.

Aster’s body shone in golden light illuminating everything around ten meters of him, just as he expected the unique golden tone of his spirit energy was pretty good to dispel any negative effect, the spirit energy of this planet was so heavily packed with darkness that anyone below the Star Tribulation realm without any darkness element-oriented attribute, would find really hard to cultivate or even breath.

Especially men, since this dark planet had quite a lot of yin energy lingering on its atmosphere, making it essentially poison after being exposed to it for a long period of time, if it wasn’t treated, luckily Aster’s yang was so strong that just by expelling some of his spirit energy he dispelled it.

That extremely pure and strong yang was also the reason of his abnormal healing and recovery ratio as well as his immunity towards any poison, his vitality was simply too high.

“That could be why the beasts of this planet go crazy, light brings yang and they have lived in darkness since their birth”, mumbled Aster as he heard sounds coming from the huge vegetation around him.

Even the ground trembled a bit, meaning there were beasts underground too.

Aster smirked, the border of the area he was illuminating changed its tone, from shining to a bit darker gold color.

“Arghhhreew!”, screeches came from within the vegetation before everything calmed down.

Inside the mind space Rya who used the excuse of taking a rest, just to watch over Aster, smiled after seeing him using annihilation in such a creative way.

“No matter what are you, there is no being that would like to approach annihilation… besides you~”, she mumbled.

Now that Aster became a living lighthouse, the others who didn’t have strong darkness related attributes, like Felicia or special eyes due to their lineages like Lilia and Alice, could see without using their spirit senses and alerting whatever lurked in the shadows of their existence.

“You can come out, the beasts won’t approach us”, shouted Aster, he absorbed the faint wisp of annihilation he let out earlier, so that those who weren’t star maidens weren’t affected by it, in any case he already demonstrated how dangerous he was, so the beasts won’t come looking for trouble.

‘This will be easier once I get Dragon Aura’, thought Aster, the goal he set himself was to be equally strong with or without annihilation, because he didn’t want to depend on just one of his abilities as that would hinder his growth in the future according to Rya.

“Mom?”, Aster felt a pair of soft arms enveloping him from behind, something that anyone in this planet would find terrifying, but he perfectly recognized the softness of his mother’s body, so that helped.

“You illuminate our world darling~”, whispered Lilia, making Aster chuckle, in this dark planet, the faint red glow in her eyes was easier to notice, although it didn’t last long.

“Be good, the faster we finish this, the sooner we’ll return to the sect”, making Lilia pout.

“Fine, but you are mine later”, she mumbled.

The others didn’t hear them, but the girls were sure they were flirting as usual since they did it at any given chance.

“Let’s go”, with Aster lighting the path and Agnes more or less making memory of the approximated area where Naby city was located, it still took them a couple of hours flying at their highest speed to finally find what used to be a city a few dozens of thousands of years ago.

Aster looked downwards from the sky at the remains of a city, the buildings were devoured by the flora of the planet and now there was no trace of the glorious past of the city, anyway he didn’t come here for that.

Aster spread his spirit sense around until he finally found something.

‘You shouldn’t have set a formation around your hideout’, he thought, his soul energy was strong enough to detect even the smallest traces of runes and formations, if the bandits didn’t set a formation, Aster might have needed to ask Lilia to use her spirit sense which covered a larger area deep into the ground, but now there was no need for that.

“The entrance to their hideout is inside some rock formations behind that mountain, Alice and Felicia will come with me, because they can see even without me lighting the area, the rest of you will take care of those who try to escape, mom you are in charge”.

Alice smiled, she gave Aria a gaze of sufficiency and then hugged her beloved brother’s right arm, earning a grimace from the other girls, but they didn’t say anything, Aster’s orders were logic, because if Lilia were to enter there wouldn’t be any challenge in completing the mission, in exchange Felicia was enough to deal with the Sea of Knowledge leader while Aster and Alice weren’t afraid of the Mortal Transcending vice leaders.

“Once we enter, you can let loose, Aria, your ice should be stronger in this yin filled atmosphere, make use of it”, said Aster before he, Alice and Felicia flew towards the mountain where the entrance to the hideout of the bandits was.