by Gore, A. P.
Chapter 30
Soul Stone
With a howling sound, a huge wind blade flew toward Li Wei. Thunder cracked when it moved through air. From twenty feet away, Wei felt the wind pushing against his face.
His face turned grim. With his divine sense, he realized the incoming attack was nearly at the level of a peak Foundation Realm cultivator attack.
Crap!
Wei burned twenty blood pearls and punched with his right hand holding the Demon Killing Crossbow. Explosive power rushed through his hand meridians, destroying smaller meridians in its path and upgrading his physical force to a new level. The crossbow in his hand vibrated as power roamed through it, spreading tiny cracks across the surface.
Wind assaulted his face, resulting in a couple of slashes across his face as their attacks grew closer.
Boom!
Their attacks met. A huge shockwave radiated Wei’s punch—holding the crossbow—met with the super wind blade, destroying grass and raising a small cloud of dust around Wei. Mad power rushed inside the Demon Killing Crossbow, breaking it in pieces. Even the shell enveloping the Soul Stone cracked on impact, and the rebound force rushed into Wei’s hand, breaking his bones and mangling his flesh.
Crazy pain shot through his right arm, and he could feel his bones cracking apart, but he didn’t lose the Soul Stone. In a flash, he realized the Soul Stone he held was much bigger than the one he’d previously absorbed.
System: Power source found. Activating Adsorption Mode.
Wei grew dizzy and a sharp pain overtook his mind and body, but he couldn’t tell if it was from absorbing the Soul Stone or his mangled arm.
The tool spirit’s body trembled when his attack hit the young man. Did he use too much power? Did he kill the young man?
When the young man had started uprooting herbs again, he’d lost all reason and attacked with power equal to layer nine in the Foundation Realm. The young man was insulting his master’s work, so how could he let him destroy the herb garden he’d grown for decades.
That young man deserved punishment.
But the tool spirit didn’t want to kill him. The tool spirit just wanted to punish him and then snatch that weapon and push the young man through the door. But that young man had attacked with the weapon, so it shattered into pieces, and then the young man dropped dead.
“Unrevealing Eyes.” Th tool spirit used a soul skill his master had taught him. It was a high-level skill that could see through everything.
“Blood as thick as a Houtian Realm cultivator, a Gold Grade divine sense, a strange power that hid his Physical Root’s grade, and layer eight in the qi Refinement Realm with a Silver Grade Spirit Root. This young man is not simple.” Th tool spirit shook his head. This young man bewildered him the more he looked into him.
This young man was different, but currently he was on the verge of death. Touching a Soul Stone in his current realm was a reckless action. Without attaining a soul space, no one could touch a Soul Stone with bare hands, and this young man was only a Refinement Realm cultivator. That huge Soul Stone had invaded young man’s body and attacked his flickering soul.
If this continued, he would die.
What a fool.
The tool spirit found himself with a dilemma. He could help the young man, but that would go against the master’s wishes.
. . . which he had already done twice by attacking the young man. He was the reason the young man was dying, and his master also wished that he protect the chosen ones.
Why not?
Sighing, he conjured a knife made of soul power and sliced at the young man.
Chapter 31
System Upgrade
Li Wei’s head swirled like a boat stuck in a whirlpool. It was so intense that he felt his brain would jump out of his skull and shoot to the skies.
“Damn this headache.” He grabbed his head and coursing pain shot through his arm. Something sticky was on his face. It smelled like his own blood.
“Fuck, why am I bleeding?” It was his own blood; he knew it without opening his eyes. After cultivating Blood Essence Body to the Foundation Realm, his blood had gained a fierce smell that he’d recognize from miles away. It had become so thick that every drop was five times bigger, and it surged with immense vitality.
“Where am I?” With some effort he pried opened eyelids that seemed to weigh tons.
A white, fuzzy environment surrounded him. It was so thick that he couldn’t even see his own body. There was no smell to this environment, nor could he hear anything except his own beating heart.
Dream space. He was in a dream space. The white fuzzy feeling and only being able to sense his own body were hallmarks of a dream space. In a dream space, one lost every other feeling than their own body. It was a weird space that hovered between illusion and reality, but it was by far the best place to try new techniques.
Licking his lips, he tasted his own blood and wondered what had happened to the Soul Stone he’d grabbed after the tool spirit’s attack broke the Demon Killing Crossbow. There was nothing in his hand, but it bled profusely.
No, it wasn’t just bleeding. His hand was nothing but mangled flesh with pieces of bone jutting out and bled steadily. His arm was in worse condition.
“What happened with the Soul Stone? Did I absorb it completely?”
“System!” He shouted inside his mind despite not knowing if it would work.
A few messages popped up in his mind.
System: Analysis and Prediction functions unlocked.
System: Connection with power source is disabled by an external force. Power source is sealed inside the host’s brain. Absorption rate 1% per 10 days.
System: Insufficient processing power to unlock Analysis and Prediction function. Only sub-function Simulation can be used at 5% capacity due to lack of source power.
System: Simulation function unlocked.
What the fuck was this? What was sealed inside his brain?
Wei directed his divine sense into his brain and found a weird purple shell embedded right below his skull. In fact, when he touched the back of his head, he could feel a small bulge between his skull and the start of his neck. It pulsed with strange power, and his divine sense couldn’t wrap around it completely.
How had this happened? Heavens, why did weird things keep happening to him?
Sighing, he shook his head. Whatever. He was here to work on this heaven-given opportunity. Although his arm was in bad shape, he trusted his Blood Essence Body. That could do wonders when it came to healing.
He didn’t need arms in the dream space anyway. His imagination and his divine sense were enough to help him here. Although it hurt, this pain wasn’t much compared to when he’d burned multiple blood pearls. That pain was something. This was nothing.
“Meridian Expanding Pill,” he thought, and a pill recipe appeared in his mind.
System: Scanning pill recipe. Recipe can be improved with Analysis function. Improvement chances stand at 0.0000001% based on the data available. Analysis function is locked.
If he could have moved, he would have jumped backward, stumbled, and fallen on his ass. Had the system just offered to improve a pill recipe?
No, it must be joking.
But it wasn’t. From previous encounters with the system, he knew one thing: It was extremely powerful. If he could harness the power of the system, he would soar into the heavens. After this trial, he needed to analyze the functions the system provided. This was no longer an auxiliary thing anymore.
He continued reading the recipe.
Golden Meridian Healing Pill
Silver Dragon Elephant’s Beast Core
White Cicada Diluting Liquid
Thirst-Quenching Grass
Three Blade Gold Plant Flower
Qi Water
. . .
There were thirty different ingredients listed, and only a few of them were present in Basic Compendium of Herbs and Alchemy.
Recipe:
Boil Thirst Quenching Grass in one hundred drops of Qi Water for one hour and extract the dregs when thirty drops of water are evaporated. Filter the remaining liquid and store it in a separate container. The Thirst-Quenching Grass will have 64% of its vitality retained. Now cut the Silver Dragon Elephant’s Beast Core into seventy equal pieces and soak them in the White Cicada Diluting Liquid for ten minutes. The Silver Dragon Element’s core pieces will turn a purplish blue and secrete a blue liquid which will be stored in a separate container . . .
And the recipe continued for a hundred different steps.
He could sense headache coming at him.
How was he supposed to concoct this impossible recipe? The sheer number of steps would take days, if not months, to complete.
On the surface, each step was laid out with exact details, but it wasn’t that simple. There were many variables, and being an Array Master, he knew what Gold Grade things meant. Two-Layered Arrays, for example. When he’d first learned about them, he’d thought they would be simple. He just had to master two different arrays and then match the source points based on the power levels.
However, when he tried it the first time, he realized the difficulty. The difficulty lay in the power ratio of source points. Every array had multiple source points, and these points determined how much overall power the whole array would exert. For an array to be successful, these source points had to have a certain level of power coursing through them, and there was a high and low threshold for these power levels. If he gave them numbers between one and nine, the whole array’s power level would become the sum of all those numbers.
But when he carved the same array again, he learned that the power levels he’d given to the first array’s source points had changed slightly. Although the overall power remained the same, the source point power level shifted slightly, and that made carving a Two-Layered Array an impossible job until he reached the Marrow Cleansing Realm in cultivation.
Alchemy was the same. In fact, it was more difficult than array carving. For example, the first step where it said to boil one hundred drops of Qi Liquid with Thirst-Quenching Grass—a simple step on paper, but it didn’t specify what the age of the Thirst-Quenching Grass should be, or what the density of the Qi Water should be. There were so many variables in the recipe that he didn’t know.
And he already felt lost to go through this all. A Gold Grade recipe was too tough for a noob like him.
Should he give up?
Chapter 32
Battle for recruitment
Sun Nuan gasped hard and swung her spear down. “Mad Rush Spear Thrust.” Her blood boiled and her qi rushed into her weapon, setting it ablaze for the blink of an eye before it clashed with her opponent’s long sword.
Her spear clanked on the long sword, unable to push it back. She tried to push more wood qi into her spear, but the rebound force shot into her arm, stretching the space between her thumb and index finger to the limit. Any more, and it might break apart.
She hated this. She hated being weak. She hated being called a wuss by her brothers. In the royal family, she was expendable, and that’s why they’d allowed her to come here. That might even lead to her marriage with Tiang Chi, and she hated him to her bones.
But she was weak. She couldn’t even beat a person in the same cultivation realm.
“Princess Nuan, is that all you’ve got? You’re too lacking to be my first wife. I might take you as my concubine instead,” Tiang Chi howled.
“Princess Nuan, please forgive me for going hard on you, but I have to win this match.” Her slender opponent pushed her back with his long sword and then thrust it with his wild ice qi, and she was thrown back dozens of feet.
“Princess Nuan loses,” someone shouted, and her slender opponent from the Thousand Ice Palace cupped his hands to show respect.
Sun Nuan grunted and looked away, her expression turning grim. She and Sun Hua had both lost their matches, so they had lost their right to recruit Wei Lin, who had reached the level five trial chamber. But she didn’t care about that. She kept wondering if he was the same kid from her childhood. She just wished to meet him once.
After the light for the fifth level lit up, every superpower had decided to recruit the talent based on their battle results, and so far, the Destiny Mirror Sect and the Thousand Ice Palace were leading. All small nearby countries that had sent their prodigies to the tower this year had fought in the ranking battles, but everyone had failed to win against the ten disciples sent by the two mighty sects, the Destiny Mirror Sect and the Thousand Ice Palace. Those two were superpowers from the White Feather Kingdom, a vassal of another empire, the Ocean Wave Empire. But the White Feather Kingdom and the State of Zin were neighboring countries and fought fiercely for resources and land. If this area wasn’t a special area, people from these two countries would have already started a war.
“Ding Su, we have won five battles each. How do we decide it?” Tiang Chi asked arrogantly. Ding Su was a prodigy from the Thousand Ice Palace and practiced ice attributed cultivation art. He had reached layer seven of the qi Foundation Realm months ago. He and Tiang Chi were neck-and-neck in power level.
“Let the prodigy decide that. He will choose which force he will join.”
Tiang Chi smirked. “Then your Thousand Ice Palace has no chance of winning. He is a prodigy in alchemy, and what other place would be suitable for him than my Destiny Mirror Sect?”
“Tiang Chi, don’t be arrogant. People can’t live with just alchemy; they need to cultivate. What place could be better than my Thousand Ice Palace for him to cultivate? Even if he doesn’t cultivate ice attributed qi, we have a sibling sect, the Heavenly Phoenix Manor. This prodigy will of course chose us.” He stabbed his sword in the ground and looked provocatively at Tiang Chi.
“Do you think we lack cultivation resources? One call and people will surrender their Gold Grade cultivation arts to obtain a single pill, and we can push him to the Marrow Cleansing Realm in a month’s time. Can your sect do that?”
“Don’t speak nonsense, Tiang Chi. Do you think reaching the Marrow Cleansing Realm is a joke? If so, why are you still in layer eight of the Foundation Realm? Why don’t you take that miraculous pill of yours and reach the Marrow Cleaning Realm in one go?”
Tiang Chi chuckled. “Everyone will find out soon, but I’ll tell you in advance. Elder Qun is this close to mass-producing Marrow Forming Pills. Once that happens, your sect will have no grounds to remain in the White Feather Kingdom.”
Ding Su’s face turned grim, and all others wore serious expressions as well. The Mortal Realm was at the mercy of the Martial Realm, and super-sects from the Martial Realm ruled the whole Mortal Realm, or their vassal empires. These empires had many vassal countries. The State of Zin was a vassal country of the Great Qilin Empire. The White Feather Kingdom was a vassal country of the Ocean Wave Empire. Although the great sects from the Martial Realm ruled these empires themselves, they allowed other small sects from the Martial Realm to grow up in these vassal countries and have a piece of the pie to maintain balance. But this balance was loose. If a branch sect in a vassal country gained more power, they could kick other sects out of that country, and as long as they didn’t go below the bottom line of great sects from the main empires, they didn’t care if thousands of people died in these vassal countries. They only cared about the income they received every year from these vassal countries.
Maybe they weren’t so much different than demonic cultivators from demonic empires.
She sighed in her heart. The reality always hurt.
If the Destiny Mirror Sect gained a pill to increase the chances of Bone Baptization Realm cultivators breaking into the Marrow Cleansing Realm, that would completely upset the balance. Currently, only super-sects sold pills for breaking through realms, and rumor had it those pills were trash pills their disciples concocted. But they were nonetheless precious for small countries and sects. But if more powerful pills could be produced by sects like the Destiny
Mirror Sect, they would soon become overlords of a vassal country.
“Tiang Chi, don’t boast too much. I heard from one of the elders that the Divine Fragrance Palace’s Holy Maiden Tang Sia can concoct Blood Breaking Pills like candy, and soon she will try her hand at a Marrow Forming Pill. Don’t forget that we have a good relationship with the Divine Fragrance Palace, and our Holy Son Hu Qin is pursuing Holy Maiden Tang Sia. If they match up, do you think it will be difficult to get a Marrow Forming Pill for my sect prodigies?”
Tiang Chi didn’t reply, instead focusing his eyes on the trial chamber door.
A tremor passed through Sun Nuan’s body. She was too naïve to think that getting a recipe for a Bone Barrier Hitting Pill would improve the royal family’s standing. Instead, it would soon become useless once the Divine Fragrance Palace concocted Marrow Forming Pills.
Helplessness crawled under her skin. This was a bad situation. Her royal family would always live below the clutches of sects. But more than that, she resented that the prodigy would end up in one of these sects’ clutches.
And now both of the heavyweight sects were fighting for a prodigy who could make things better for her royal family. But she still had hope. After everyone else had been kicked out of the tower for failing the trial, she had determined who the one missing person was. It was young master Wei Lin. They had a fate between them, and she hoped he would choose to join the State of Zin.
“Hua’er. Be ready with a Blood Boiling Pill. If Wei Lin chooses us, we have to protect him no matter what. Once we get out of this place, we will find a way to make it back to the capital city,” she whispered determinedly. If she returned with a Two-Colored Poison Repelling Flower and a prodigy who had passed the level four trial, her reputation would become equal to the crown prince.