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Translator: Truth
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
Feng Yue tried dragging the moment for as long as possible. When she finally came within an arm’s reach, Lu Ye immediately grabbed her arm and pulled her closer.
Feng Yue panicked as a shudder coursed through her body. She closed her eyes, gathered her courage and uttered through gritted teeth, “You may own me, but you’ll never own my heart…”
“Hah…” Lu Ye made a strange noise that caused Feng Yue to open her eyes and see just what was going on. It was then she realized that the strange noise Lu Ye made was him blowing away the dust on an engraved block before bringing it down on the back of her hand.
The second the stamp made contact with her skin, Feng Yue felt as if her fate had been rewritten. She could clearly feel an invisible connection between herself and the Crimson Blood Sect’s Divine Opportunity Column.
Her eyes widened like saucers after that.
“What did you say?” Lu Ye shot her a strange look after putting away the engraved block used to mark a Battlefield Imprint.
“N… nothing.” To say she wasn’t expecting this boon at all would be an understatement. When she recalled her earlier misunderstanding, she blushed so hard that even the roots of her ears were red.
She had been a Legate herself before she surrendered to Lu Ye. Naturally, she understood better than most what Lu Ye had done.
From now on, she wasn’t a rootless cultivator anymore. The fear that she might be kicked out of the Outpost one day was gone as well. She was now a disciple of the Crimson Blood Sect.
She felt like she had seen the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Am I an initiate, or…?” Feng Yue asked carefully.
“No. You’re a true acolyte.”
Lightheadedness struck her immediately.
She thought she would be lucky if Lu Ye took her in as an initiate, but the outcome was even better than her expectations.
“You should understand why I dare to take you in as a true acolyte.”
Feng Yue nodded like a chick pecking at the ground. “I do!”
“Then go.”
Feng Yue gave Lu Ye a respectful salute before turning around and heading toward the exit. When she stepped into the sunlight, she felt as if a huge burden was lifted from her shoulders. The shadows in her heart were gone before she realized it, and she felt so free it was almost as if she had been reborn.
She had been in a bad state since Lu Ye had brought her to the Crimson Blood Sect’s Outpost. Forget that Clan Feng wasn’t willing to pay a heavy sum to ransom her, she wouldn’t have dared to return even if they were. Although her opponent was the Vanquisher of Sects himself, it did not change the fact that the Outpost Clan Feng had developed for decades had been lost while she was in charge. If she dared to return to Clan Feng, only two outcomes awaited her. One, she would be made an example of so that future disciples would not repeat her mistake; it was entirely possible that that punishment would entail execution. Two, she would be turned into a bargaining chip of political marriages.
Neither outcome was acceptable to her.
Unfortunately, her chances of escaping from the Crimson Blood Sect and joining another Thousand Demon Ridge sect was even more unlikely, so she had no choice but to remain in the Outpost.
It might look like she had integrated into the Crimson Blood Sect recently, and it was a fact that the cultivators of the Outpost treated her very well, the grim reality was that she had no future so long as she could not attach herself to the sect. Forget the million other things she couldn’t do as an independent cultivator, her inability to earn Contribution Points alone was basically a death sentence to her cultivation journey. After all, she was a medicine cultivator. How was a healer like her supposed to kill enough enemy cultivators to sustain her cultivation needs and have a future?
Not only that, all Thousand Demon Ridge Outposts close to the Crimson Blood Sect’s had been oppressed to the death a long time ago. Even the disciples could not find an enemy cultivator to kill, much less her.
If she could not earn Contribution Points, she would not be able to purchase a Heaven-Grade cultivation technique. And if she could not purchase a Heaven-Grade cultivation technique, then her cultivation would be stuck at one hundred and eighty Spiritual Points forever.
However, Feng Yue did not think that the Crimson Blood Sect would accept her, not without considerable effort and luck on her part at least. Not only was she a former Clan Feng, she was also a medicine cultivator.
It was an unwritten rule in the Cultivation World of Jiu Zhou that enemy medicine cultivators could be ransomed at a reasonable price. It was one thing if she only stayed at the Crimson Blood Sect as an independent cultivator—if the Thousand Demon Ridge tried to accuse them of breaking the rules, they could simply argue that the Crimson Blood Sect and Clan Feng were still in the middle of negotiating the ransom money—but if they actually accepted her as a disciple, then the unwritten rule would truly be broken.
As with all things, once there was a precedent, another would surely follow. If that were to happen, turmoil would surely embroil Jiu Zhou for a while, at least.
The unwritten rule had remained unbroken for countless years. That was why Feng Yue had thought that she would live and die as a Ninth-Order cultivator. Then, Lu Ye did the unthinkable.
The young man hadn’t bothered explaining his reason for accepting her as a true acolyte properly, but she was smart enough to figure it out herself. Not long ago, Lu Ye had turned the entire Inner Circle upside down and nearly triggered an all-out war that would have entangled the entire Spirit Creek Battlefield.
What was recruiting an enemy medicine cultivator as a true acolyte compared to that? Who would even dare to accuse him of rule-breaking? Those stupid enough to do so would likely lose their Outpost the very next day.
Plus, the Thousand Demon Ridge had broken the unwritten rules again and again to eliminate Lu Ye. They did not even have the moral high ground.
Now that she thought about it, Lu Ye might be the only one in the entire Spirit Creek Battlefield who had the right, power and even the moral high ground to break an unwritten rule or two without repercussions.
He hadn’t just taken her in as an associate or an initiate either. A true acolyte! It was the highest rank one could achieve as a disciple, and the benefits reflected that. Not only could she receive a monthly salary from the headquarters, she was also eligible to receive Contribution Points when the sect issued them in the future.
Right now though, what Feng Yue desired the most wasn’t to earn Contribution Points, but to build a house of her own at the acolytes’ residential area.
Despite her former status, Feng Yue was fairly well connected. After she sent a few messages through her Battlefield Imprint, eight disciples soon showed up to help her build her new house. They all congratulated her after learning that their fifth senior brother had accepted her as a true acolyte.
Gu Yang was a highly efficient worker. Not even half a day had passed before he had finalized the list of names Lu Ye had asked for and passed it to him. After reviewing the list with Hua Ci and confirming that it was good, he asked Gu Yang to summon everyone to the Council Hall to officialize the promotion.
The next few hours were a joyous one. These disciples happily stepped into the Council Hall one by one as Gu Yang promoted them in his capacity as the prolegate and updated their position in the disciple register. When tomorrow came, the Crimson Blood Sect would welcome a hundred true acolytes and two hundred initiates.
While they were working, Shui Yuan was paying the sect master a visit at the headquarters. She then repeated Lu Ye’s ideas to him.
The sect master nodded in agreement. “Yi Ye is right. It is time we recruit more people. If we continue to pick our disciples only from the independent cultivators, we will definitely suffer from an absence of Cloud River Realm and Real Lake Realm cultivators in the future. That would be detrimental to the sect’s development.”
“Should we hold a recruitment ceremony then?”
“No, there’s no need. You and I are the only ones who are relatively free in the sect right now, and I don’t think either of us fancy the idea of preparing such a big event by ourselves. The recruitment ceremony can wait until after Yi Ye and his friends have ascended.”
“But how can we find our talent if we do not hold the ceremony?”
“Just leave it to me.”
After Shui Yuan had taken her leave, the sect master searched around his room for a bit until he found a sealed letter. It was an invitation from a tier-Two sect in Bing Zhou called the Three Sages School.
Bing Zhou was a tumultuous, war-torn province because it was neighbors with a hostile province. As a result, the sects in both provinces were generally quite powerful. For example, both provinces had five Tier-one Sects each.
The Three Sages School might only be a Tier-two sect, but its power and wealth were not to be underestimated. They also had a lot of Divine Ocean Realm cultivators.
A sect this powerful generally held a recruitment ceremony every two or three years. They welcomed talented individuals from all across Jiu Zhou to grow their strength and ensure the continued existence of their sect.
That said, most of their talents generally came from the same region—that was to say, the sect’s area of influence. There would always be individuals who would rather travel further to join the sect of their dreams than the one closer to them, but most of the time, the sects were able to nab the best talents within their own territory.
There was no such thing as a major sect who liked to look bad in front of others, which was why they sent an invitation letter to some of the most respectable seniors of their cultivation faction every time they held a big ceremony like this. It was both to generate some publicity for themselves and to strengthen relationships with other sects.
The gesture was mostly symbolic—for example, the sect master himself had not attended any ceremony even once throughout the years—but if the seniors did choose to attend, then they would benefit from their presence, wouldn’t they?
Not this time though. This time, he was going to attend the Three Sages School’s recruitment ceremony!
The sect master was a shrewd man. Why would he hold a recruitment ceremony himself when he could just attend one? In fact, the Crimson Blood Sect had lost a lot of talented individuals during the years they had languished, and the Three Sages School wasn’t so far away that they could claim that they didn’t benefit from their loss.
A moment later, the sect master departed from the Summit of Fortitude. He was gone in the blink of an eye.
As it turned out, the Three Sages School’s recruitment ceremony was soon to begin. Time truly waited for no one!
At the Outpost, Lu Ye was looking through the Vault of Providence in the Sanctum of Providence once more. He soon found a palm-sized box with nine holes in it. It looked like a bee hive at first glance.
The item didn’t look impressive, but in reality it was a Middle-Grade Spirit Artifact with eighteen enhancements on it.
A Low-Grade Spirit Artifact was a Spirit Artifact with zero to nine enhancements, a Middle-Grade Spirit Artifact was a Spirit Artifact with ten to eighteen enhancements, a High-Grade Spirit Artifact was a Spirit Artifact with nineteen to twenty seven enhancements, and a Top-Grade Spirit Artifact was a Spirit Artifact with twenty eight to thirty six enhancements.
Thirty six was not the maximum amount of enhancements a Spirit Artifact could carry, but at that point it was known as a Spell Artifact.
Spirit Treasure was the grade above Spell Artifacts, and the Nine Realms Scroll was one such example. Suffice to say, it was valuable enough to be considered priceless.
For Spirit Creek Realm cultivators, Low-Grade Spirit Artifacts were generally enough to last them until their ascension. Moreover, the more enhancements there were in a Spirit Artifact, the more Spiritual Power they consumed to function.
Of course, those who were wealthy and/or confident in their supply of Spiritual Power reserves could purchase a Middle-Grade Spiritual Artifact. As usual, it depended on the person.
Lu Ye currently had exactly one Spell Artifact. It was the sword he had obtained from the Real Lake Realm cultivator he had killed. He hadn’t sold it yet because he thought it might be useful in the future.
The beehive-like box he was called a Weapon Holder. It was a Spiritual Artifact that was specifically made to complement flying weapons.
When Lu Ye had returned from the Lost City of Xianyuan, he could already control four flying weapons at once. Today, he could control six or even seven without any pressure whatsoever.
He wasn’t just manipulating them telekinetically either. Each and every weapon was empowered with a Glyph, so the drain on his mental energy was even greater. Otherwise, Lu Ye was pretty sure he could control up to twenty flying weapons at the same time.
His capabilities were already far beyond that of his peers, but it was still nothing compared to his fourth senior brother’s.
That was why he was buying a Weapon Holder. Li Baxian had highly recommended it after listening to his problems.
Killing enemies using flying weapons was convenient, but it wasn’t without its flaws. For Lu Ye, it was the fact that he had to waste a bit of time producing them from his Storage Bag.
In battle, even the slightest delay could affect the outcome of a battle or even one’s life. That was why Lu Ye had never stored the Inviolable in his Storage Bag. If he kept the Inviolable on his person, then he could grab it the instant he engaged in combat. But if he put it in his Storage Bag, he couldn’t get to it at first notice. It was a pain and a serious risk considering certain scenarios.
Finally, a flying weapon could only hold so much Spiritual Power. If they ran out of juice, he would have to retrieve and recharge them to full.
These two flaws alone made flying weapons so much less threatening than they could be.
These flaws weren’t unfixable, however. The solution was called a Weapon Holder.
