The cranes Aotian had cared for had undergone extreme changes.

Now, they were even larger than the Red Tiger. Although he was still much stronger, in size he had been surpassed by the birds that had once seemed modest compared to him.

To understand their evolution, one must first look at their initial status, back when Aotian bought them from the Bamboo Sword Sect.

[Beast: Misty Plume Crane

Cultivation: Early Stage of Level One Beast

Bloodline: Misty Plume Crane (Diluted)

Qualifications: Late Stage of Level One Beast]

Under the tutelage of the Red Tiger, they learned to control their own spiritual energy… of course, only after he had learned from the elders himself so he could teach them. He then instructed them in body refinement using the technique the sect had provided them — which, to Aotian’s surprise, turned out to be highly effective on beasts — once again, only after the great red feline had mastered it personally.

Thanks to the wild teaching of Professor Tiger, all of them quickly reached the late-stage of Qi Refinement, allowing Aotian to feed them evolution pills according to the bloodline path he had selected for them.

Thus, with the use of ascension pills, a thousand cranes evolved:

[Beast: Misty Plume Crane

Cultivation: Late Stage of Level One Beast

Bloodline: Misty Plume Crane

Qualifications: Perfection of Level One Beast]

The evolutionary path Aotian had chosen was the best available to them: simply purifying their bloodlines. All the other paths offered inferior results, so his decision was clear.

Since their blood was already quite pure, the only noticeable difference after evolving was that they became slightly larger and more beautiful, but overall, the transformation wasn’t very striking.

Then, once again, they trained and refined their bodies until they reached the perfection of Qi Refinement — which doubled their size.

If before they were able to carry one person on their backs, now two or even three posed no difficulty at all.

With that, they met the necessary criteria, and a new evolution was within reach. Fortunately, the resources required for this advancement were still within Aotian’s means.

Thus, for the second time, the thousand cranes evolved. And this time, the change was immense:

[Beast: Alpha Misty Plume Crane

Cultivation: Early Stage of Level Two Beast

Bloodline: Alpha Misty Plume Crane

Qualifications: Perfection of Level Two Beast]

They became enormous, even more beautiful, and carried a fierce presence. Carrying between 10 and 20 people was no longer an issue. With the bloodline evolution, they directly reached Foundation Establishment.

And so, the powerful air taxi service of Infinite Dao Airlines was officially in operation.

Another benefit was that Aotian gained a better understanding of his beast evolution power. When the cranes evolved into pure-blooded cranes, there were no longer any evolutionary branches beyond the Alpha Misty Plume Crane. This made it clear that their bloodline had indeed been fully purified.

And after evolving into Alphas, there were no further evolutions. But Aotian wasn’t too disappointed — he already had an idea for continuing their evolution.

If they couldn’t evolve further because they lacked blood from other beasts… then he just needed to find a way to taint the cranes’ bloodline with stronger, compatible blood.

Well, that was the idea — the actual application was still out of his hands, and he’d need to study how to make it happen.

This solidified his decision regarding the Red Tiger’s evolution path. Rather than turning him into an Alpha Red Tiger, it was better to aim for the stronger lineage he had previously chosen:

Option 12:

[Bloodline: Blood Tiger (Diluted)

Qualifications: Perfect Stage of Level Three]

[Requirements:

Required Cultivation: Early Stage of Level Three

Pill: Blood Beast Pill — Recipe: Bloodheart Fruit, Blood Ginseng…]

Back to the present — the Red Tiger, leading the flock of cranes who elegantly flapped their wings behind him, ran through the sky at high speed. His steps in the air made it look as if he were running on the ground instead of in the air.

Although he had not yet reached the Golden Core — or in beasts’ terms, Level Three — he could fly short distances thanks to his powerful spiritual energy, creating thousands of small explosions under his paws, like platforms to support his massive body in the sky.

Previously, he had been incapable of such a feat, as he only controlled his energy instinctively and crudely. But with the elders’ lessons, he had learned to precisely manipulate that power flowing through his skin and blood.

Cultivators at Foundation Establishment could also fly this way, without a sword’s aid, but it could cause injuries due to lack of fine control and lead to quick exhaustion of energy.

Only a powerful spiritual beast that had learned to control its energy could perform such a feat so naturally at this level — though it still consumed spiritual energy rapidly.

Since the distance was short and the speed was great, the beasts soon landed on the ground, before the crowd, to the left of where the elders had gathered.

The presence of thousands of second-level spiritual beasts was a stunning and impressive spectacle, one that none of the disciples — not even the elders of the Bamboo Sword Sect — had ever witnessed.

Another change in the cranes was their intelligence. Before, they had been just slightly cleverer, like small children, only able to understand commands transmitted through spiritual energy and intent. Now that they had become Alphas and reached Foundation Establishment, their intelligence had evolved drastically, and a bright, clever light shone in their eyes.

They could now even transmit speech through spiritual energy, just like the Red Tiger.

‘Spiritual energy is truly magical. It grants sapience to beasts and power to fragile humans.’

Aotian couldn’t help but sigh in admiration at the wonders of the cultivation world.

‘Before, when I used to read about it, I took such things for granted. But seeing it with my own eyes… it’s truly amazing.’

While he got lost in thought, his other minds didn’t stop to admire alongside him. They still had work to do.

Elder Lie Zheng looked at the disciples and began to give orders:

“Alright, if you’re all done admiring, let me explain. These are the sect’s beasts, and they will be stationed at strategic points on the mountain. You may use them to travel within the sect area for the cost of 1 mid-grade spiritual stone. They can also be taken on missions, for the provisional price of 1000 contribution points, but they will serve only as transport, and will only fight or try to save you if you’re in great danger. And, in the event one of them dies under your command, you’ll have to pay a massive amount of contribution points, and depending on the reason, it may result in very severe punishments.”

He explained with a narrow-eyed gaze and a heavy, serious tone.

Gulp!

The disciples swallowed hard and memorized the elder’s words internally.

Seeing that they were paying attention and nodding in agreement, he softened his gaze and continued:

“Good. Split up and get on the cranes’ backs. We’ll take you to where you’ll be staying.”

He finished speaking and leapt directly onto a crane, standing tall with his arms crossed.

The other elders followed, then the disciples, and soon, the enormous cranes were full of people.

Aotian took Rihai’s hand with a smile and pulled her along.

But to her surprise, and to the crowd’s, he didn’t head toward a crane — he went straight to the Red Tiger, who looked at him in confusion.

Rihai cast a helpless glance.

“You never miss a chance to show off, do you?” she sighed, bringing her free hand to her forehead to massage it, feeling the astonished stares of thousands of disciples.

Aotian smiled shamelessly at her question.

“Well, it’s one of the few pleasures I have — surprising people. At least I’m not out there slapping people in the face or acting like some weirdo who despises everything and everyone.”

He joked, hopping onto the Red Tiger’s back, who looked at him as if carrying a big question mark on his head.

“Ugh… but who acts like that?” Rihai, who had been pulled along, asked in confusion as she sat cross-legged beside Aotian on the tiger’s broad back.

“A lot of people?” Aotian looked at her with a funny expression.

Rihai paused for a moment and thought.

“Okay, I’ve got nothing,” she joked, looking at him amusedly, realizing there really were plenty of people like that in the world.

‘What are you two doing? Weren’t you pretending to act discreetly?’ The Tiger turned his head toward the two on his back and looked at them in confusion, sending a private sound transmission.

‘We still are. But now we’re playing at being slightly less discreet. No one knows I’m a super young master yet,’ Aotian replied, winking conspiratorially at the Tiger while sending the message back.

‘Huh?! Don’t you hate being called young master?’ Rihai looked at him suspiciously, with a slight conspiratorial smile.

‘I can call myself that, for better explanation, but no one else can.’ He tapped his forehead with his index finger, in the classic “it’s all planned up here” gesture.

‘Okay, young master,’ Rihai transmitted, nodding seriously.

Aotian rolled his eyes.

‘Wow, what a shock… I’ll just pretend I didn’t see that one coming from suns away.’

Rihai chuckled.

‘Hehe, I know you liked it. And who even uses suns to measure distance? You don’t even know how big the sun is… do you?’ she teased him, confused by the odd unit of measurement.

‘I don’t know, but I’ve no doubt it’s huge.’ Aotian’s mouth twitched.

He knew the size of the sun on Earth, but he didn’t know how big the sun of the cultivation world was — probably immensely larger.

But as they teased each other, someone interrupted them.

‘Uhh… can you two stop transmitting to me while you talk? I’m getting a headache…’ The Tiger, with a dazed look, asked.

Whenever his master and the master’s female started chatting, he ended up getting lost at some point.

Rihai and Aotian stopped their conversation and turned to the tiger, where they saw his confused and distressed expression.

The two then looked at each other and smiled, amused by the situation.

Meanwhile, the tiger, still struggling to understand what they’d said, looked up at the sun with a confused expression.

And then he had a thought — one that, if Aotian found out, would definitely earn him a beating:

‘Why did master say the sun is huge? Is he dumb? Can’t he see the sun is small? It’s smaller than my claw…’

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep