Infinite Mana Cultivation-Chapter 19: A sensitive young princess

///Some Time Earlier, Roughly twenty-seven miles to the north-east///

"Hmm?"

Tia's face twitched as she sensed a slight disturbance in the flow of the spiritual energy.

'A monster?' Her first thought was quite alarming, but she ultimately decided to discard it. 'Even if, it would be too weak to endanger the scouts,' she thought. 'It's of no relevance.'

Sitting in the middle of a complex and more than just expensive formation, Tia couldn't afford such small things to distract her.

And so, with the issue now cleared out from her attention, she took in a deep breath before focusing back on the task.

By all means, she was a young prodigy. One generously nurtured by her family to make the best possible use of her talent. And it was the combination of her innate potential, diligent efforts, and near-endless sea of resources and support that allowed her to reach the rank of a nascent soul cultivator by the pristine age of just nineteen winters.

But all of that...? It still wasn't enough.

If she wanted to keep her title, keep her status, keep her privileged position within the family, she had to keep up with the devilish pace set by that damned royal family.

For that to happen, she had no other choice but to take a step further and become an eighth-rank, Dao Root cultivator before turning twenty-two!

Her father wouldn't have it any other way.

Only by having his daughter keep up with the pace set by the royal heirs could he maintain the same arrogant attitude he rubbed in the face of the royal family whenever they tried to pressure him into paying higher taxes.

It was a delicate balance. If the royal family ever managed to pressure her father into contributing more, Tia could no longer cultivate as freely, not with such a change directly affecting her access to cultivation resources.

A trip to the spiritual well in the neighbouring kingdom? She could forget about this kind of extravagance.

A tutoring directly from one of the rank eleven masters of the divine realm? Just the week's worth of lessons she received came at a price greater than what the royals were asking for in tax from her father!

Heck, even her cultivation trip out to the wilderness could become too expensive for her duke of a father to afford!

'While others only see mirth and splendor, the world of cultivation is as cutthroat when it comes to money as any other business,' Tia thought, biting down on her bottom lip as the worry momentarily distracted her from her task.

As a nascent soul cultivator, she no longer needed the same amount of qi as the cultivators of the lower ranks. It was a massive perk of reaching the noble stages of cultivation...

But needing lesser amounts of spiritual energy didn't mean it was any easier to gather it. In fact, it was quite the opposite!

For Tia to become a Dao Root cultivator, she had to comprehend just that — at least one innate quality of the spiritual energy that she could then learn to make proper use of.

This change in cultivation was exactly why, rather than touring the cultivation hot-spots of the known world, she opted to roam from one wilderness to the other, where hardly anyone ever would disturb the flow of the world's spiritual qi.

At least, that was the plan. Yet, right as Tia managed to gather her focus together and leverage her overly expensive and unhandy formation to attune herself to the flow of the world's spiritual energy...

"Whoa!"

Tia suddenly opened her eyes, panicking when a sudden wave of spiritual energy slammed into her side, throwing her off from her lotus position and then slamming her into the ground.

By leveraging her formation to amplify the flow of the world's spirituality so that she would have an easier time getting a read on it, she inherently exposed herself to the amplification of the fluctuations within the flow of spirituality too!

"WHAT?!"

Tia's head perked up as she pushed herself up on her hands, her face instantly locking in on the same direction the spiritual energy moved like a hunting dog that caught the smell of its prey.

The only difference? A dog would catch a smell and then follow the direction it came from. Tia, however, turned her attention in the direction the spiritual energy was moving towards.

"Did you feel it?" Raising her eyes, she threw her question to the ring of guards patiently standing in the moot points of the formation, where their presences wouldn't have any effect on the inner workings of this complex circuit.

As annoying as they could be at times, only making it harder for Tia to focus, it was the one concession her father, the duke, wouldn't give up on.

And now, of all times, Tia finally realized the importance of having her father's men so close to her.

Because rather than shouting over the long distance to where her tutors were positioned, she could directly look at her guards and see an absolute lack of reaction.

They were shocked, alarmed... not by the changes in the flow of the spiritual energy, though, but by the unnatural way in which she suddenly fell over.

And for Tia, that was enough for an answer.

"Alert the scouts!" she sternly commanded, quickly gathering herself up and then sitting back down in the nexus of her magnificent formation, "there's a monster nearby that's way too powerful for them to handle!"

This was one of the dangers of cultivating out in the open. While the kingdom has mostly succeeded in eradicating most of the monsters from its territory... No one was naive enough to believe there was no more danger left out beyond the limits of the cities and settlements.

Even to this day, the news of some hamlets going up in flames because of a monster attack were as common as any other natural disaster and treated exactly as such.

"My lady, don't tell me..." The leader of her bodyguards, Ian, nearly stepped out from his moot circle, stopping only when Tia gave him a grim stare. And as the man saw the determination in her eyes... "You can't!"

"I'm the only nascent soul cultivator in here, am I not?" she countered, sitting back down at the formation's nexus and crossing her legs only to sweep her long, perfectly white hair over her shoulder before resting her hands down on her knees.

"No, you are not!" Ian protested, moving as close to his circle's edge as he could without stepping out of it and disbalancing the flow of energies within the formation. "If we call for your teacher..." ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

"He's too far," Tia cut the protest short. "And just like you," she gave Ian a stare, moving her eyes from the man's face to the circle drawn at his feet and then back to his face, "if he steps into the formation, then no one will be able to scout ahead. Right now, I'm the only one who can do it."

With an expression that revealed she would suffer no more protests, Tia took a deep breath and closed her eyes, only to then slowly sigh it all out as her entire frame seemingly condensed into itself...

As if the very essence of what made Tia, Tia, had squeezed itself out of her body and escaped into an unknown realm.

In reality, however, Tia's consciousness momentarily floated above her before hitching a ride on the flow of mana that was as powerful as it was unnatural, surging in the direction the disturbance originated from.

'For something to cause such waves...' she thought, gritting her teeth as she had to steel her nascent soul with her spiritual energy to shield it from the world's spirituality attempting to diffuse her into its greater flow.

The thought of the disturbance originating from one of the legendary beasts that were known for their dislike for human interaction passed through the girl's head... only for her to quickly dismiss it.

'Legendary beast or not, it doesn't matter!' she thought as she weathered through the stormy spiritual weather of the mystical dimension with just one goal in mind.

To find out as much as she could so that her scouts... No, her whole party would have a shot at escaping the danger.