Depthless Hunger

With his three-marked medallion in hand, Kai strode into the Bloodcoral archives unchallenged. It proved to be nothing like the libraries from home except for the collections of texts: endless scrolls filled the cubbies around the walls, with no apparent organization. He didn't even waste his time with it, just asked an outer disciple dressed like a scholar about his search.

And to his surprise, it was easy. An hour later he had everything he needed.

The sects on Cloudspire made everything so complicated that Kai had been sure he'd need to earn a Library Medallion and cultivate through the Book Foundation stage to get access, but they just handed him a scroll on shrouds. Just as he'd hoped, there were several Bloodcoral shrouds, some of which would even fit his purposes. They were overall inferior to those he'd learned on Krysal, many broadcasting cultivation stage, but they would still help him blend in.

While reading, Kai experimented with his chosen technique until he had settled the new shroud over his soul. It would give way in battle, of course, but that would only reveal the Savage Heart as an explanation for his power. Now he had multiple layers of protection that would keep him from standing out on Cloudspire. Well, he might still stand out, but nothing about his soul would be suspicious.

With a shroud in hand, Kai idly considered just leaving the Bloodcoral sect behind. He missed his wives and he didn't want to butt heads with any more cultivators. But no, it hadn't actually been that long and he had other objectives that would be easiest now that he'd earned some authority here.

Besides, this sect was closer to the Frontier than anything else he'd seen in a long time. Their early stages squabbled, yes, but that was exactly the same on Deadwaste - his own life history was proof of how petty jealousies and nepotism could interfere with a broader objective. Surely at the higher levels of the Bloodcoral sect he would find their own elites and maybe unite with them to deal with the monster threat.

Monsters, that was a good topic to research. Kai requested some other scrolls and looked for monsters to hunt, getting more mixed results.

The greatest knowledge was about oceanic monsters, and all of those were firmly controlled by the Bloodcoral sect. Maybe he could hunt some of those if he earned enough marks on his medallion, but Kai would decide if that was worth it later. He had more luck with legends of monsters around the continent: there was something called the Shambling Mass in the Northern Expanse that sounded immensely powerful, rumors of dragons in the Heavenly Mountains and Lakes, and stories of great clawed beasts in the Southern Rivers.

That last one might be the ideal next hunt. Kai found some maps, smaller but more detailed than Zae Zin Nim's, and confirmed everything he knew about geography. He would need to travel southeast to reach the Blueblade sect and meet up with them, so if they had what they needed, they could keep traveling in that direction for the hunt.