Naath slowly opened his eyes after he finished stabilizing the martial energy in his body. It had started to become slightly unstable as it began to fuse with his true void energy. Now his energy was close to 20% true void energy and Naath felt that as long as he continued with muscle strengthening and later stages this would only increase. Naath let out a long breath of exhausted energy. He slowly stood up and got a feeling for his new body. He threw out a punch and the air around his fist was actually whistling. When his arm fully extended the was a “snap” sound as the air was compressed slightly by the force.

Naath smiled and stretched feeling the new elasticity and strength of his muscles, Naath felt like he was slowly achieving the body he trained for 10 years to achieve in his old world. His old body had incredibly flexible yet strong muscle, the ability to dislocate all of his joints and still use everything just the same. His old body was also incredibly adaptive. Naath squeezed his fist looking down at it and smiled complacently. He knew he was more than just one or two times stronger than he was when he was at the peak of level nine bone hardening. Naath looked over to Brutus and noticed due to the whirlwind arts he was now at mid level seven bone hardening.

Naath smiled noticing this and decided to go hunting to test out his newfound strength. In a hall on top of the mountain in the raging river sect there were seven elders all with slack jaws in a complete state of disbelief. They had seen everything during Naath’s breakthroughs and simply did not know how to respond. Elder Gui out on his lake who was also watching was just as stunned, his teacup slowly slipped out from his hand and shattered on the ground. However elder Gui took no notice of this, he was simply in a state of disbelief.

All of these elders were stunned by the same thing, one sentence ringing in all of their minds. “In less than a year he entered muscle strengthening?” None of the elders could wrap their minds around this even the most talented elder Fu had taken four full years to go from bone hardening to muscle strengthening. The image of Naath fighting various beasts testing his strength was still on the screen, the scenes ever changing. However, the elders did not respond at all as if they were comatose. The only signs of life from them was the fact that they were still blinking and breathing. This state continued for a few hours.

Their states were finally broken when an angry voice came from outside of the elders’ hall. “Elders! Why have you abandoned your duties to the sect?!” Following this angry shout, the doors slammed open onto the walls of the elders’ hall.

All of them looked over and immediately stood from their seats and bowed respectfully greeting the man who just entered all saying, “welcome sect master!” Standing in front of all of them was a middle-aged man with short brown hair who stood about 6 feet tall.

He had a muscular figure, and a ramrod straight posture his brown eyes currently held a piercing glare. His jaw was set firm as he looked questioningly at the elders. One of them stepped forward answering the sect master saying, “apologies sect master, we were watching elder Gui’s disciple attempt to pass the test of leaving the ten thousand beast forest.”

The sect master's glare did not lighten even a little as he asked “so for some child all of you became so distracted that you couldn’t even perform your basic duties and attend meetings?”

The elders jumped slightly at the sting and anger behind these words. One of the elders pointed to the projection behind the sect master and said “sect master, if you look for yourself you will understand why we have become so enamored in this young man’s progress. Also it speaks volumes that elder Gui was willing to take a disciple does it not?”

The sect master's face remained firm but he turned to look and saw Naath currently in a fight with a peak stage level nine bone hardening lightning python. However, what the sect master saw in the next moment made him do a double-take.

The snake lunged at the young man on the screen who had jet black hair and glaring green eyes. The young man simply side-stepped it using both of his arms to force the lightning python's jaws closed. After that the energy around the young man's hands changed and the scales on the python looked like they simply dissolved. The snake's aura became weaker in a matter of seconds. After 10 seconds the small streaks of lightning that would occasionally crackle on the surface of its skin were completely gone and the light began to fade from its eyes. The snake was dead without the young man throwing even a single punch.

If this was all the sect master would not have been alarmed, however, he could not tell Naath drained the snake’s energy. He could also not figure out how the young man refined the snake's flesh so quickly. Even the sect master would take a week or two to refine the body of a magical beast. However, it seemed like as long as this young man’s hands made contact it was refined in seconds. Naath at this point extended his true void energy out of his body and around the python absorbing its entire body in a matter of 30 seconds.

Seeing the sect master expression ease up from anger into shock the elders all let out a breath they did not realise that they were holding in. Elder Gui back on his lake was just now slowly starting to come out of his state of shock. He realised that Naath was now strong enough to leave the ten thousand beast forest at any time. Just as he was about to go there and wait for Naath at the edge of the forest however he saw something in the projection crystal. What he saw made him smile and sit back down as he whispered to himself “not bad brat, you have a bright future.”

Naath back in the forest was back at the temporary camp he and Brutus had been at while cultivating. Brutus was awake now and Naath was giving him pointers about the whirlwind arts he had passed on to him. Naath let out a breath and thought to himself “if only we could communicate entirely.”

The rune heard this though and said “Naath, actually I know a way you can communicate with Brutus.” Naath’s interest peaked however he was slightly agitated and said. “Old rune, stay out of my thoughts! What's mine is mine what's yours is yours got it?! I’m going to let it slide this one last time. Now tell me this method and maybe I won't seal you when I get back to the sect.”

The rune said, “Fine I won’t read your thoughts anymore, here's the method.” The rune sued a stern tone, however, it was secretly relieved. He of course knew about Naath’s plan to seal him when they returned and was wracking his brains to think of a way out of that. Once Naath received the method he was astounded by how simple it was, he just needed to form a soul bond with Brutus. This was when he left a small portion of his soul energy in Brutus’s soul sea and took a bit of Brutus's soul energy into his own. Naath let out a laugh and then told Brutus about it asking if that was alright.

Brutus nodded immediately, not even hesitating in the slightest. Since their first meeting when Brutus wanted to make Naath into dinner they had grown as close as brothers. They both trusted each other completely. Naath began the process and slowly and carefully placed some of his soul energy into Brutus’s soul and took some of Brutus’s soul energy back into his own. Once this was done Naath immediately noticed a few things. The first was that Naath felt even if he and Brutus were separated by thousands of miles they could sense each other's location. He could communicate with Brutus only if they were within 200 feet of each other.

He felt they would also be able to sense when one another were in danger, Naath was in awe about these changes. He smiled and said “okay old rune, you get a pass I won't seal you. However, do not ever do that to me again! We are so far from even that this just barely scratches the surface. However, this is a good start for an apology.”

The rune felt a sense of relief wash over it and felt like if he could he would collapse to the ground having that sense of pressure relieved from him. With that Naath returned his attention to Brutus and used the soul connection to start conversing with him.