Throughout the Rockwell Kingdom, and even beyond its borders, many powerful and influential figures had quickly been alerted to the unfolding disaster and were now moving to investigate and contain the situation.
In Redwood Town, though, everyone had frozen stiff, completely unsure of what was going on or what they should do next. All of them were simply overwhelmed as they gazed at the shocking scene playing out above the Great Western Forest.
Lucas was no exception, as reflected in the young boy's eyes was what could only be described as a second sun, an enormous ball of fire that rapidly rose up from the horizon and towered over not just the tallest trees in the forest, but even eclipsed the grand peaks of the Barrier Mountain Range.
The fireball soon gave way to a distinctly shaped cloud of smoke and ash that continued to rise and expand at an astonishing rate, seemingly trying to breach the very sky itself and head out into space.
In that instant, a multitude of thoughts flashed across Lucas' mind as he tried to analyse the situation, What was that? Was it a natural phenomenon? No, it didn't seem like it. There were no prior disturbances, and the flash and shockwave were too uniform, it was more like an explosion!
A bomb? But what kind? Anti-matter? No, the flash of light wasn't right. Some kind of high-yield plasma weapon? No, in atmosphere there'd be residual electrical arcing. A primitive nuclear device? Possibly… but, given the blast size, the warhead would have had to be enormous!
Wait wait wait, I haven't seen anything in this world remotely close to that level of technology. I'm thinking about this too narrowly. What about that initial shockwave of World Qi? Maybe it was some kind of hybrid Spirit Engineering-Technological device?
Oh no, what about radiation?! How far away was the blast exactly… 300? No, maybe 400 kilometres?
It wasn't until Lucas felt a gust of wind hit him from the behind, the opposite direction of the explosion, that he snapped out of this spiral of thoughts and turned to see Senior Farah suddenly appear beside him.
Lucas, who had been completely stuck in a daze, wasn't sure how long it had been since the initial blast, but it couldn't have been more than 5 minutes. Farah being able to cross the roughly 5 kilometres distance from the Central Square to the far western farms in under 5 minutes was certainly shocking, but not too surprising.
Farah might have been heavily injured many decades ago, leaving her in a state where she was unable to freely utilize her full strength, but she was still a Mid-Rank Spirit and Martial Initiate.
What did surprise Lucas was the massive weapon Farah was carrying with her.
Pitch-black, single-edged, nearly 2 metres long and more than 10 cm in width at the tang; it was a sabre of gargantuan proportions. Lucas wasn't sure what metal this weapon was forged from, but it couldn't possibly be light. Even so, Farah was carrying it like it was a small meat cleaver.
Suffice-it-to-say, this was no butcher's tool, but rather a weapon of war designed for one purpose and one purpose only, slaughter!
Farah's arrival also acted as a kind of trigger, shocking the farmer owners and farm hands in the surroundings out of their stupor.
Immediately, panicked shouts and screams rang out as everyone, aside from the Town Lord's group and the newly arrived Farah, began fleeing to the east, trying to get as far away as possible.
Under normal circumstances, Charles Newton, as the local lord, would have tried to calm the people down and maintain some semblance of order, but he was just as scared and confused as everyone else, barely able to think of anything other than this second Sun which had just risen into the sky.
Trying to tell others to calm down while he was visibly panicked would probably just make things worse right now.
Amongst all the people present, only Lucas and Farah seemed to retain any semblance of calm.
Lucas had knowledge from his inherited memories of weapons capable of such enormous destruction while Farah had her battlefield experience kick-in, allowing her to compartmentalize her emotions while she focused on the mission at hand.
"Senior Farah," Lucas turned to the only person who might possibly have the answers he needed right now and asked bluntly, "Do you have any idea what caused that explosion?"
"No," Farah replied gravely. Ignoring the chaos spreading around her, she spoke her thoughts aloud, "When I felt that initial World Qi shockwave, I thought it was fallout from a battle between two Spirit Master level existences, but the moment I laid eyes on… that…"
Frowning deeply, Lucas nodded as he muttered, "There's no way this was caused by mere humans or beasts."
Spirit Initiate, Spirit Adept, Spirit Elite, Spirit Master, Spirit Grandmaster, these were the five Great Realms that comprised the Grand Spirit Realm.
Apparently, there were more Realms above even those, but no such master had appeared on the Blue Sky Continent since the beginning of the New Era, at least not publicly.
Lucas had learned that a Spirit Initiate, even one that had just broken through, could be anywhere from 3 to 5 times stronger than when they were in the Sea Establishment Realm, making the gap between the two Grand Realms absolutely incomparable to the ones between the individual Mortal Realms.
Once one stepped into the Grand Spirit Realm and became a True Cultivator, this kind of dramatic increase in strength continued with each new Great Realm they reached.
In simple terms, it wasn't unusual for a Low-Rank Spirit Adept to be 5 to 10 times stronger than a Low-Rank Spirit Initiate, though this wasn't an exact science by any means as there were too many factors to take into account.
In the Rockwell Kingdom, however, there were no Spirit Elites, much less Spirit Masters or Grandmasters, so Lucas wasn't quite sure what the power scaling between them was like. Assuming it continued in a similar fashion though, that meant that in the most extreme of cases, a Spirit Master could exert strength thousands of times greater than a Body Tempering Realm mortal.
Again, it was difficult to estimate exactly what someone with that kind of power could do, but opening craters in the earth with a single stomp, smashing giant boulders with their bare fists, and chopping down towering trees with a single swing of their sword were all probably withing the realm of possibility.
However, if someone told Lucas that the explosion he was witnessing was caused purely by human strength, he would never have believed it, and Farah agreed with him.
Nodding along, Farah mused solemnly, "I've witnessed a Spirit Elite fight against a Seventh Order Beast, and I have experienced the pressure of a Spirit Master before, but whatever caused this explosion has to be thousands of times more powerful than even such beings."
Shaking his head Lucas corrected gravely, "More like tens, no, hundreds of thousands of times."
Pursing her lips, Farah wanted to say that was impossible, but the words caught in her throat as she stared at the cloud of dust and ash that was now almost 10 times higher than even the tallest of mountains in the Barrier Mountain Range.
"Could one of the Barrier Mountains have erupted?" Charles, who had finally snapped out of his daze, joined the conversation from the side, clearly trying to make sense of the catastrophe he was witnessing.
"I doubt it," Lucas shook his, "A volcanic eruption, even a sudden one, is generally preceded by smaller ejections of ash and widespread earthquakes. What's more, it doesn't look like the origin of the explosion was actually from one of the Barrier Mountains."
"There's also the World Qi shockwave we all felt," Farah commented, agreeing with the young boy, "In order to produce such a shockwave, a massive source of World Qi had to be involved."
Frowning slightly, Charles pondered aloud, "What if there was a Spirit Crystal mine beneath the eruption?"
Farah shook her head, "When a large amount of Spirit Crystals are destroyed all at once, the resulting release of World Qi feels like a swirling windstorm. This felt more like a solid wall of Qi smashing into us, which implies it somehow originated from a single point."
Tearing her eyes away from the mushroom cloud with great difficult, Farah glanced around to make sure no one else was listening in before asking Lucas in a hushed tone, "Do you know of anything that can cause such an explosion?"
Clearly, Farah was asking the young boy if there was something in his inherited memories that could explain what was happening now. Charles also focused his attention on Lucas, hoping he could provide them with some answers.
In this regard, Lucas didn't disappoint them.
"I can think of several ways to create an explosion of this scale," Lucas said flatly, as if the mass destruction they had all just witnessed was nothing special, "But I think we're focusing too much on the how and why, rather than on what's really important."
Tightening her grip on her weapon, Farah's expression became even graver as she turned here eyes back west, "You're right. We have bigger concerns right now. We can figure out what caused this disaster after we survive it."
It took Charles a moment longer to figure out what Farah and Lucas were talking about, but he soon paled and gasped, turning his gaze to the vast, ominous Great Western Forest, "Oh no…"
Nodding solemnly, Lucas muttered, "We don't have much time."