The entire upper echelons of the McCall Family were visibly distraught when they heard Grey's words.
"Do you mean there's something stopping us from advancing in our cultivation?" The Old man in black asked, a little hint of hope in his eyes. What he deduced from Grey's words is that there's something blocking the cultivation of every single person from the McCall Family.
"You can say so." Grey nodded, before he continued to explain, "When I first came here, I faintly noticed something odd about this place, but at the time, I couldn't pinpoint the issue no matter how hard I tried, so I gave up searching for it…"
Everyone listened intently to whatever Grey was saying, all keeping their eyes on him and their mouths shut. When they heard Grey say that he gave up searching for what he sensed was wrong, they all felt their hearts go cold. In the end, it was only by accident he discovered the problem. In fact, if not for the increase in his consciousness strength, there was no way he would've even been able to find the strings. This wasn't the first time he inspected the body of one of the McCall Family members and he didn't discover anything out of the ordinary the last time.
"Young Lord… what can we do to stop it?" The Old man in black asked carefully. He already felt respectful towards Grey's massive strength, if Grey were to help the McCall Family block whatever was siphoning their strength, then there's a chance that they might be able to actually produce Sovereigns.
If something has been diverting some of their essence somewhere else, then the McCall Family not producing a single Sovereign over the past few thousand years or so seemed reasonable.
"What I don't understand is how each of you have this thing in you?" Grey found this very odd, how could every member of the McCall Family have strings attached to their cores without their knowledge?
Even if the Old man in black was only a Venerable, he would still be able to sense if someone messed with his core. The only explanation is that his core has been altered a long time ago. Coming to this conclusion, Grey felt he was more or less right.
The entire place fell silent as they all looked at Grey with hopeful eyes. They didn't even know they had something attached to them in the first place, how could they deal with it? They all knew that only someone as powerful as Grey who could discover the strings could destroy.
After a short silence, a thought came to Grey's head, "Can you bring a child that hasn't formed a core yet, then one who hasn't awakened their elements."
An Elementalists doesn't instantaneously create their essence cores, rather, it takes a while for it to form. What Grey wanted to see is if this string takes root before the core is formed, or before any of them even awakens their elements. Following Grey's order, two children were brought into the room. One of them hadn't awakened his elements yet, while the other was only in the Collection Plane. Seeing someone so young in the Collection Plane, Grey couldn't help but reminisce about his experience. Even after three years of the time he should have supposedly awakened his elements, he was unable to thanks to the orb in his body. Of course after seeing how magnificent the effect of the orb was, he had completely forgotten about his sad early life.
With a quick scan Grey got what he wanted, the little girl in the Collection Plane, although she hadn't formed her core yet, there was a string attached to her body. This string isn't as subtle as the ones attached to the cores, but due to the manner it was used, there's no way Grey would take it as a bad thing for the little girl as he wouldn't even notice it. The only reason he could tell there was an anomaly was because he already knew there was a problem, he just needed to pinpoint anything odd about the little girl to find it.
"It's as I expected, only those who have awakened their elements and are in the process of creating their cores have these strings attached to them." Grey explained, taking a deep breath, he looked at the Old man in black, seeing his expression, he could tell that he had thought of something.
Sending the children away, the Old man in black said seriously, "This can only happen if whatever is attaching the strings is connected to our place of cultivation."
Just like many other top Families and Factions, the McCall Family's Manor had cultivation chambers that were better for cultivating than ordinary rooms. These cultivation chambers are specially designed with array formations to increase the density of the elemental essence in the chamber they're using for cultivating.
"If it's okay with you, then I'd like to take a look."
After refining the blood essence of Jacob Vaergahl, and also learning most of what Jacob knew about array formations, he felt like since they safely kept the blood essence of Jacob Vaergahl, they should be rewarded in some way. Now that there's a major problem with their cultivation, if he could help them with that and the Family's overall strength increased, their chances of regaining their lost prestige was quite high.
"Of course, Young Lord." The Old man in black will even allow Grey ransacked the McCall Family's treasury if it meant helping them stop whatever was siphoning essence from them. If his deductions were right, then this was most likely the reason the McCall Family has been unable to produce a Sovereign for well over a millenia.
There has been no suitable explanation and reason for their sudden decline in strength. No matter how talented the genius is, once said genius gets to the Venerable Plane, their cultivation speed will reduce drastically. Making it almost impossible to get to the Peak of the Venerable Plane, much less break through to the Sovereign Plane. The likes of the Old man in black and the other Old men could all be regarded as elite geniuses hence the reason they managed to achieve the Peak of the Venerable Plane with so many limitations.