<<Previous Chapter | Humanity's Great Sage | Next Chapter>>
Translator: Truth
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
The Scroll of Supremacy was a rank list generated by the Heavens themselves. Countless cultivators roamed the Spirit Creek Battlefield, but only the top one hundred were displayed on the Scroll of Supremacy. It was a ridiculously high bar to say the least.
While the Heavens did not provide an explanation as to how one could enter the Scroll of Supremacy, enough time had passed that the cultivators of Jiu Zhou had figured out all the rules themselves.
There were two ways to enter the Scroll of Supremacy. The first method was to battle before an audience and display your strength. If the Heavens decided that you were strong enough to enter the Scroll of Supremacy, you would.
When Lu Ye met Li Baxian for the first time, he was ranked tenth on the Scroll of Supremacy. He had intentionally concealed his strength. The Scroll of Supremacy only updated his placing after the Battle of Goldentip and his first duel against Yan Xing, elevating him from tenth place to third.
Later, Li Baxian challenged Yan Xing to a second duel and slaid the man right outside of the Raving Blademen’s Outpost. The Scroll of Supremacy then elevated his placing from third to first.
The Heavens determined that his strength had exceeded Feng Yuechan’s.
The second method was to challenge an existing ranker.
The Heavens had its own set of rules and methods. For starters, if a non-ranker challenged a ranker to battle and succeeded in defeating or killing them, then they would replace the ranker in question.
The Heavens offered many benefits to those strong enough to enter the Scroll of Supremacy. It was one of the main reasons why many Heaven Nine cultivators were reluctant to enter the Cloud River Realm even after they had honed their skills to perfection. If they entered the Scroll of Supremacy and obtained the Heavens’ rewards first, then their potential would be greater when they entered the Cloud River Realm.
The gap between two cultivators was much more noticeable when one had reached the Heaven-Grade Ninth-Order. After all, not all cultivators were made equal even if they shared the cultivation level.
Although Lu Ye had killed plenty of Heaven Nine cultivators up until this point, none of them were Scroll of Supremacy cultivators. In fact, his chances of winning against a Scroll of Supremacy cultivator was debatable at best. After all, the impartial judge that was the Heavens would have included him in the ranking list long ago if he was that strong.
That all changed today. Today, Lu Ye had slain over two hundred Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators with Glyph: Fire Phoenix. Not only that, five of them were rankers on the Scroll of Supremacy.
The highest ranker of the five was the thirty-third ranker, Wu Beihan, and Lu Ye was given his placement because he was the one who had killed him in combat. It did not matter how he did it. The fact that he succeeded was good enough.
Of course, Fire Phoenix was powerful enough that not even the current champion—or any of the previous champions—could have survived it. Going by the first rule, Lu Ye should have ranked first on the Scroll of Supremacy.
However, the Heavens weren’t a mindless golem that could only execute a given set of instructions rigidly. It possessed a mind of its own. It probably understood that Lu Ye’s demonstration of power, while most impressive, wasn’t a true indicator of his strength. After all, Lu Ye would never have gotten the chance to execute the Glyph in a normal fight, not to mention that he literally did not have enough Spiritual Power to create the Glyph.
In fact, he had only successfully created the Glyph this time because he had created five Spirit Storage and stored up a hundred and fifty percent worth of Spiritual Power beforehand. Also, his enemies had just stood there and taken the attack because their pride had gotten the better of their survival instinct. In a real battle, his enemy would never give him the time to execute the technique.
That was why the Heavens had granted him Wu Beihan’s placement, but not made him the champion of the Scroll of Supremacy.
Regardless, it did not change the fact that Lu Ye, a mere Heaven Seven cultivator, had somehow squeezed his way into a ranking list that was supposed to be made up of Heaven Nine cultivators. As if that wasn’t crazy enough, he had entered the Scroll of Supremacy as the thirty-third ranker. To say that it blinded everyone who saw it, be it from the Thousand Demon Ridge or the Grand Sky Coalition, would be an understatement!
No one had ever ranked this high the first time they entered the Scroll of Supremacy. Most of them had to crawl from the bottom of the ranking list!
Once again, Lu Ye had made history.
The cultivators began messaging their acquaintances, and the news quickly spread to every corner of the Spirit Creek Battlefield and the Jiu Zhou like wildfire. Soon, there was no cultivator in the world who hadn’t heard about this.
The world was stunned of course, and not just because Lu Ye had made history by entering the Scroll of Supremacy as a Heaven Seven cultivator and the thirty-third ranker. They were also stunned by the technique he had cast to make it all happen in the first place. No one knew what technique it was or how he did it. All they knew was that it had manifested the Vermillion Bird of the Four Sacred Beasts itself, and it had annihilated over two hundred Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators like nothing.
Meanwhile, Lu Ye was feeling like shit in every sense of the word. He had taken off running the second he fell out of the Vermillion Bird and hit the ground. The Myriad Poison Forest was permanently covered in poisonous fog, trees and foliage, so he stood a fairly good chance of shaking off his enemy. This was before mentioning that he had the Concealment Bracelet Lady Yun had given him and Glyph: Invisibility. Unless his luck was absolutely rotten, he should be able to escape and meet up with Yi Yi and the others without being undetected.
Then, the Scroll of Supremacy appeared above his head like a giant banner, showing the Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators who were searching for him exactly where he was. Now, his enemies were all moving toward him at high speed!
To say that Lu Ye was overflowing with bitterness would be an understatement. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he noticed that the name on the Scroll of Supremacy wasn’t Lu Ye, but Lu Yi Ye.
[Is the Heavens mocking me or something? My name is Lu Ye, dammit! Someone will pay for this!]
Lu Ye continued to go deeper into the Myriad Poison Forest while clinging to his fraying consciousness and dragging his exhausted body. The poisonous fog might pose a problem for most cultivators, but it wasn’t a threat to him in the slightest thanks to the Tree of Glyphs. As long as it didn’t run out of fuel, it could burn away any and all poison that had entered his body.
Thanks to his powerful perception, Lu Ye usually sensed his enemies before they sensed him even with a Heavens forsaken “I am here!” banner above his head. Moreover, it was near impossible to see far in a forest filled with colorful, poisonous fog.
He had already put on the Concealment Bracelet. Every time he sensed that there was someone nearby, he would immediately activate its power and conceal himself.
Once again, Lady Yun’s gift had proven its usefulness. Although Lu Ye was swiftly regenerating his Spiritual Power, he would rather keep its consumption to a minimum. The amount of Spiritual Power needed to maintain the Concealment Bracelet was far less than Invisibility, and the effect was better as well.
Countless Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators passed through the area in search of him. Lu Ye waited until they were gone before he resumed his escape.
He walked and stopped and walked for a bit until suddenly, alarm bells abruptly rang in his head. He hurriedly stopped in his tracks and activated the bracelet once more.
His surroundings were perfectly quiet, and he could not see a soul in the area. A while later, Lu Ye thought that his paranoia had gotten to him and tried to deactivate the bracelet. That was when his senses screamed in warning again.
Realizing that it wasn’t paranoia after all, he held his breath and examined his surroundings carefully.
As with before, his exceedingly powerful senses saved his life once more. He sensed a faint flow of lifeforce a short distance away to Lu Ye’s side.
[Someone’s there!]
Considering how powerful his senses were right now, few ghost cultivators could conceal their presence so well that he almost failed to detect them. Whoever the hidden ghost cultivator was, he must be among the best of the best.
He quietly applied Insight to his eyes. As he expected, he saw traces of Spiritual Power flowing in a humanoid form at that location.
The ghost cultivator seemed to have noticed something as well. Still invisible, they wandered back and forth some distance away from Lu Ye until finally, they came to a stop less than ten meters away from him.
For a time, the duo just stared at each other. Then, the ghost cultivator’s Spiritual Power suddenly sped up. It told Lu Ye that the ghost cultivator was about to attack.
This didn’t necessarily mean that the ghost cultivator had seen through Lu Ye. He was probably just checking if his senses were accurate.
Metal rang as nine auras burst out of Lu Ye’s Weapon Holder. Of course he wasn’t going to give the ghost cultivator the initiative.
The ghost cultivator was so surprised by the surprise attack that he broke out of his invisibility, revealing a perfectly ordinary face. He was none other than the ninth ranker on the Scroll of Supremacy, Gui Yingzi.
Spiritual Power erupted as Gui Yingzi swung his dagger so fast that it looked like a blur. The man was able to parry all nine of Lu Ye’s flying weapons.
When he looked up, Lu Ye was also flying away from him on his flying Spirit Artifact.
Gui Yingzi was furious. This was the first time in his life that anyone had seen through him. He did not know how Lu Ye had done it, but to a ghost cultivator, being seen through by their prey was like having their underwear exposed. It was humiliating to say the least.
Without hesitation, Gui Yingzi summoned his own flying Spirit Artifact and gave chase. At the same time, countless cries erupted from every direction.
“Lu Yi Ye is over here!”
The Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators who were searching for Lu Ye in the sky had spotted him.
The silent game of cat-and-mouse immediately turned boisterous. Countless pursuers launched their flying weapons and spells even before they got close to Lu Ye, forcing him to weave here and there to avoid their attacks.
Thankfully, not long after he ventured deeper into the Myriad Poison Forest, he suddenly saw an aura flying toward him. The pilot was a brawny man with a white tiger lying on top of his shoulder. He was none other than Ju Jia.
Ju Jia’s condition looked concerning, however. Both his skin and his Spiritual Power looked incredibly green, a sign that he was afflicted by some sort of dangerous poison.
They had set out of their hiding spot the moment Lu Ye messaged Yi Yi to meet up with him. Since Lu Ye’s whereabouts were exposed, there was no need for them to conceal their tracks anymore. Speed was of the essence right now.
After the duo met up, Lu Ye immediately leaped onto Ju Jia’s Flying Spirit Artifact. Ju Jia immediately turned around and fled deeper into the forest.
At first, dozens or even hundreds of auras were chasing after them. As they got closer to the center of the Myriad Poison Forest though, more and more people began to fall off their tail.
Myriad Poison Forest was a deadly place where the fog grew increasingly poisonous the deeper you went. Although their pursuers had taken Antidote Pills and prepared some anti-poison Spirit Artifacts beforehand, they eventually reached a point where they just could not go deeper without risking their own lives.
If they continued further, Lu Ye might die, but they would join him in the afterlife.
What surprised them was that Ju Jia was still alive. A blind man could’ve seen that he was seriously poisoned, but somehow he wasn’t dead yet. His endurance was truly supernatural.
A tea time later, the pursuers had finally given up on chasing them completely. They had reached the maximum a Spirit Creek Realm cultivator could go without dying to the poison. Even with the Antidote Pill, the most they could linger at this point was an incense stick.
Even Ju Jia with his prodigious endurance was wobbling unsteadily and losing control of his flying Spiritual Artifact. In the end, he did lose control and crashed toward the ground.
He and Yi Yi had never gone this deep either.
