Chapter 921: Present
Sam captured the remaining two Astral Plane cultivators to get some information. He placed them in thunder prison and while Yanwu munched on the corpses and the rest of the beasts helped him by gathering those corpses.
He then went to a quiet place to meditate a bit as he went through his observations of the new changes in his body.
The Golden lungs he has are a definite result of the Golden Sun crow bloodline. He knew that much and now he can breathe fire like a normal bodily function with minimal energy.
Apart from that, he saw the real advantage of those lungs in the previous battle. The fire elemental fusion and light elemental fusion are consuming way less energy than normal. It reduced by almost fifty percent and even the bloodline technique is taking way lesser energy than normal.
These are really great advantages. He can easily outperform his opponents. Now all that was left is the other remaining bloodline art of the Golden sun crow bloodline which uses the lungs directly and if he finished that, he would be getting a better and almost complete understanding of the function of these lungs.
After making sure he made all the observations, he took his gun and went to meet the two hostages they got. Sam wanted to save the leader's soul at least so that they can get some memories, but there are barely any bones left and the brain is an important component in conducting the soul necromancy.
There is no way they could perform it.
So, he can only resort to these two people.
Sam inserted one finger into the muzzle and shot them first to give them a demonstration on what would happen.
A finger getting crushed, is not exactly a pain that could be tolerated easily.
And they sing like little birds after that demonstration.
They gave plenty of useful information and Sam kept them up the whole night as he listened to it carefully.
The Solar Fragments' next plan is to send a similar force, but this time there would be more middle-stage cultivators, more late-stage cultivators and it is possible for a few peak stage Astral Plane Initiation cultivators to come and their leader might be Initial Stage cultivator of Astral Plane Pre-transcendence.
Sam is a bit surprised. Because the maximum limit is a middle-stage of Astral Plane Pre-transcendence.
So, he asked about why they are not sending a person of that stage and the answer is simple. They thought it would be an overkill and they don't have too many Middle-stage Pre-transcendence stage cultivators to spare.
They cannot afford to send one to such a sure-win battle at least in their minds.
Then Sam proceeded to ask the remaining questions about the strategy and such and he finally understood why they failed this miserably.
This is all because of Hou Yi. That guy severely downplayed Sam's prowess and means. All he did is give them a gist of how he had different bloodlines and beasts at his disposal. He didn't care about Sam's influence, he didn't care about his inventions and he didn't care about his meticulousness.
In Hou Yi's opinion, Sam is a lucky brat and that is what he projected to these people which made them feel a bit relaxed and opted for such a loose strategy.
They sent the Consummate stage cultivators to create some chaos and since Sam's headquarters is in the western continent, they thought it would take some time for him to get a hold of this situation.
And they are sure that they are best in the Consummate realm compared to all of Sam's subordinates and confident in their hiding skills.
On top of that, they didn't think that Sam would search for them himself or send other Astral Plane cultivators, all they had to do is stay there for a week.
And then comes the scout batch. They are not only responsible for making deals with the major powers, but they are also responsible for scouting some of Sam's important locations and attacking them so that they would inform the first batch of the main force.
If the scouts are in a good situation, the main force will split up and if they are in a bad situation they will play more of a defensive game and inform the same to second main force as soon as they came.
If it was the first case, they would just finish this off in a week and come back to the space tunnel and when it opened they would go back to the other side.
Sam was really surprised by how ignorant the Solar fragments are to attack him like that and how petty and brainless Hou Yi can be.
Because of his personal evaluation of Sam, he lost a perfectly good tribe.
Even Sam felt a pinch in his heart. Such perfect force and he just wasted them by placing them in a faraway place with limited resources and also sent them to their deaths.
After listening to the whole story, Sam left the place and made some preparations.
There is one big gift, that he wants to give the Solar fragments and since he knew that the space tunnel is two-way street, he is going to use that to send this gift to them.
He made this thing as a precaution against the Kala tribe. If he was not able to take care of them normally, he would have used this and be done with it.
Everything would have been over with one attack.
But for that, Sam needs to create a proper setup and he also needs to maintain perfect timing.
He started working on the valley himself, the first thing he did is dig a large vertical hole in the middle of the valley exactly on top of which the space tunnel appears
And he started digging tunnels underground connecting to that large hole in the next two days.
After he was done there, he placed a large rocket inside the vertical hole. This rocket is actually made of Space elemental stones and it is essentially a large elemental energy cell.
As for the propulsion agent, he used a combination of methane and bio-fuel. All he needs is for its weight to be carried with the propulsion.
There is no complex structure and there are not many complicated devices mounted on it. It is an energy cell shell with a lot of compressed fuel placed in it which would send the rocket away.
He dug an extra tunnel above the tunnels that dug under to act as exhaust outlets, this tunnel is for him to reside there and destabilize it.
After he was done with that, he started setting a formation. Similar to the one he did in the battle with the first batch of the main force.
A formation that could mess with the spatial energy and collisions.
The next batch would have far more superior strength and it would be hard for him and the beasts and even the Raiju elder to take care of all of them.
So, he has to make sure that he did some serious damage before they even stabilized their position.
And after the whole setup is over he went into the divine dimension to create another large rocket but with different elemental stones layered together to create a different explosive.
This would be of great use in dealing with the Solar fragment when he knocked on their doors.
The days passed quickly with Sam being extremely busy.
And the day for the arrival of the second batch of the main forces came.
Sam is hidden inside the tunnel he arranged himself for destabilizing the rocket and as soon as he sensed the spatial fluctuations, he started destabilizing it.
It is an extremely large energy cell. Larger than anything he ever made, so it would take some time.
The Solar fragments appeared one after the other and they were surprised to see the half of the rocket which is exposed openly and they came near to check it.
For them it is merely a pure mass of spatial energy.
Sam completely focused on the energy cell and he destabilized it extremely fast to the point that the vein on his forehead is bulging due to the mental pressure.
After three minutes, the rocket was in the final stages of destabilizing and Sam activated the fuel jet which started the propulsion, the solar fragments that are examining it suddenly felt a bit surprised and alerted, but before they could do anything, the rocket slowly started raising towards the spatial tunnel while creating large Spatial waves due to the destabilized energy.
At this exact moment, the Void hopper activated the formation. Even though it has limited battle abilities and has limited maturity, it can do something as trivial as this and as soon as the formation around activated, the spatial energy waves coming from the rocket clashed with the vibrations coming from the opposite side and since the range is too large and the waves covered the whole valley, the explosions due to the collisions also covered the whole valley which included the positions of the Solar fragments too and the explosions didn't treat them lightly.