<<Previous Chapter Index Next Chapter>>
Translator: Truth
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
In the air, Lu Ye hurriedly adjusted his posture as the ground rapidly closed in on him. In the end, he was able to hit the ground on one knee.
“Oh my!” Someone exclaimed in surprise, “Why are you bending the knee to me all of a sudden?”
Lu Ye’s eyes twitched when he heard the voice. He looked up and saw Hua Ci beaming at him.
“Cut the jokes and give me a hand already. I can’t stand up on my own…”
A while later, Hua Ci had deposited Lu Ye on his bed on the third floor. He was sound asleep by the time she began treating his wounds.
He had fought with almost no pause for several days straight. He was beyond tired.
Their wooden building had become a true shelter. Outside, there was nowhere he could go without being hunted down by the Thousand Demon Ridge. This was the only place he could truly relax and rest.
Lu Ye woke up to the sound of light snoring. He also felt a slight pressure on his chest. When he opened his eyes and looked down, he saw that Amber was curled up on his chest.
Lu Ye pinched the back of its neck and moved it to one side. He then sat up and just… blanked out for a bit.
He did not return to reality until the fragrant scent wafted in from outside. The stimulation immediately caused his stomach to gurgle.
He changed into a new set of clothes and took a moment to straighten out the wrinkles. Then, he walked down the stairs and exited the building.
A table had been set in the courtyard. It was covered in all kinds of delicious food. There was even a makeshift stove beside the table. Yi Yi and Hua Ci were cooking and enjoying a great conversation with each other when he arrived.
For a time, Lu Ye simply crossed his arms and admired the girls from the door. He watched as Yi Yi crouched on the ground while adding some wood to the fire, and Hua Ci—a headscarf wrapped around her head and an apron around her waist—busying in front of the stove. He was glad to be alive, truly.
“You’re finally awake, Lu Ye!” Yi Yi called out happily when she saw him.
Hua Ci looked back and met his eyes with a gentle smile. “You must be hungry. Sit down and eat.”
Lu Ye strode up to the table and grabbed a seat. He then grabbed his chopsticks and hesitated for a not insignificant amount of time. Finally, he decided to start with the plate of mushrooms first. It was because he literally did not recognize everything else on the table. All he knew was that the food must come from the Myriad Poison Forest, and most people in the world would never be able to enjoy such “delicacies” unless they were unique like him or Hua Ci…
He raised his eyebrows when he took his first bite of the mushroom. It tasted surprisingly delicious and fresh for, well, mushrooms. And of course, the Tree of Glyphs in his Source Spiritual Point gave off gray smoke immediately after he took his first bite…
Now that his appetite was completely aroused, any trepidation he might have had regarding the ingredients were completely gone. He started chowing down to his heart’s content.
Hua Ci sat opposite him after placing the final dish on the table. She took her time eating and put some food on Lu Ye’s plate from time to time.
Yi Yi couldn’t join in because she was an apparition, so she simply stood behind Lu Ye and brushed his messy hair for him.
A fulfilling meal later, Lu Ye leaned back against his chair, crossed his legs and rubbed his stomach in deep satisfaction. He then enjoyed the cup of tea Yi Yi had served him. Her service was excellent as usual.
The fatigue he had accumulated for days was gone just like that. He had to admit that Hua Ci’s dishes were incredibly nutritious. Assuming that one had a way to deal with the poison, one could go from deathly tired to perfectly energetic in just a few days. If nutrition was blood, he would be bleeding out of his pores right now.
Lu Ye did not feel like moving after such a fulfilling meal, so he said, “Can you please bring me the Storage Bags, Yi Yi?”
They had killed a lot of people during their latest adventure. Naturally, he had acquired a comparable amount of loot as well. He didn’t have the time to unlock them before, but now was the perfect time to do so.
“’Kay,” she replied before floating up to the third floor. It wasn’t long before she returned with a massive pile of Storage Bags.
Yi Yi loved it when Lu Ye unlocked the Storage Bags. The act of uncovering something unknown itself was an exciting experience, not to mention that there were always pleasant surprises.
Every time Lu Ye had unlocked a Storage Bag, Yi Yi would remove its contents and separate them by category. If the Storage Bag contained something good, then she would break out in smiles. If not, then she would mutter, “Pauper!” under her breath.
It should not need to be said, but no two people were exactly as wealthy as one another. In Lu Ye’s case, he basically never had to worry about cultivation resources besides his first few months of cultivation. To date, he had never ran out of Spirit Stones or Spirit Pills, and it wasn’t looking to happen anytime soon.
For most other cultivators though, their finances were so-so at best. Most of them were simply incapable of amassing Lu Ye’s level of wealth via slaying enemies.
Cultivators consumed cultivation resources since the day they started cultivating. Spirit Stones and Spirit Pills were a staple for any cultivator, and yet some of them were unable to afford it especially when their cultivation level was low. Afterall, they had to spend some of their money on life-saving items such as Spirit Talisman Papers.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, their expenses only went up every time they climbed a cultivation level. A Seventh-Order cultivator had to purchase flying weapons to expand their repertoire, and an Eighth-Order cultivator a flying Spirit Artifact for faster travel. And of course, a Ninth-Order cultivator must purchase a Heaven-Grade cultivation technique if they wished to advance further…
In fact, the poorest community in the Spirit Creek Battlefield wasn’t the Outer Circle cultivators, but the Inner Circle cultivators. They had a million things they needed to buy at this stage of their cultivation.
While their financial situation was better after they entered the Core Circle, cultivators naturally consumed more cultivation resources each time they climbed up a cultivation level. As a result, many people remained as poor as a pauper.
This was why most of the Storage Bags Lu Ye unlocked contained only a paltry amount of Spirit Pills and Spirit Stones, and why the cultivators of the Thousand Demon Ridge wanted to kill Lu Ye so badly. The threat he posed to their entire faction was one half of the reason, and the bounty on his head was the other half.
Even if the bounty would be split between all the participants, it was still enough wealth to make them wealthier than they had ever been their whole lives!
Given enough benefit, anyone could be motivated to do anything.
An hour later, Lu Ye was done unlocking the Storage Bags. While Yi Yi was still sorting out the goods, he went to the Central Ward and began rearranging the whole thing.
Since the Central Ward was created using ward flags, and both Lu Ye’s cultivation level and his proficiency with creating Teleportation Wards were still lacking, he always had to rearrange it after teleporting back to the Central Ward.
Lu Ye felt the onset of a headache as he stared at the Central Ward. He did not know if it was a problem with his skill or his experience, but he could never teleport back to the exact location of the Central Ward.
When he was still experimenting with the teleportation, he had never teleported too far away from the Central Ward. This time though—maybe it was because the distance between the two wards was too great—not only did he appear nearly a hundred and fifty meters away from the Central Ward, he had appeared in the air instead of the ground!
He could survive a fall from thirty meters above the ground, but what if it was three hundred? Three thousand?
He had learned how to set up a Teleportation Ward as an emergency escape measure. If he had to teleport back to the Central Ward, it could only be because he was cornered and in poor condition. And if he was so weakened that he couldn’t even control his flying Spirit Artifact, then the deviation was going to kill him for sure.
Unfortunately, he did not have a good solution to solve this problem. For now, he could only rearrange the Central Ward to the best of his abilities and pray that the deviation wouldn’t be as bad the next time he used it.
While Lu Ye was busying himself and generally enjoying a relaxing time in the Myriad Poison Forest, the Yi Ye Elimination Front was busy turning the place he was last discovered upside down. However, they weren’t even able to find his hair, much less the man himself.
Somehow, Lu Yi Ye had vanished into thin air!
Back in the third floor of the wooden building, Lu Ye was swallowing Spirit Pills to recover his Spiritual Power and feeding the Tree of Glyphs with the Flame of Earthen Spirits he had bought from the Vault of Providence.
He had bought forty Flames of Earthen Spirits in one go, and he wondered what kind of Glyphs he would obtain this time.
Right now, most of the leaves on the Tree of Glyphs were on fire. Forget the lifelike Vermillion Bird perched on the crown on the tree, Lu Ye had mastered almost twenty ordinary Glyphs in total!
While many of them were unsuited for combat, that didn’t mean they were useless by any means. At the very least, it gave him more options when fighting against his enemies.
The reason he could slaughter a Heaven Nine cultivator like a chicken wasn’t just because his Spiritual Power was sufficiently pure and vast, but also because he could apply his Glyphs any time without being detected. The Glyphs were the real reason he was as tricky as he was strong.
Two days later, Lu Ye had made a full recovery. He had even unlocked two Spiritual Points. Today, he was only dozens of Spiritual Points away from reaching Heaven Nine. When the day came, there should be no one in the entire Spirit Creek Battlefield who could threaten him anymore.
He had good reason to be this confident.
Perhaps the non-stop battles from several days ago had acclimatized him to a tumultuous pace of life, but he felt almost uncomfortable with how idle life had been for the past two days. It was at this moment his friends informed him of some unsavory rumors the Thousand Demon Ridge had been spreading in the Spirit Creek Battlefield.
Because the Thousand Demon Ridge was unable to locate Lu Ye, they grew impatient and started spreading some rather ugly rumors about him. For starters, they called him a coward in hopes that he would be provoked into revealing himself.
Lu Ye had no plans of leaving the Myriad Poison Forest for now, so after he finished speaking with his friends via the Battlefield Imprint, he decided to pause his cultivation and activate his Battlefield Imprint. Then, he connected his mind to the Scroll of Supremacy!
As a ranker, he had the right to increase his ranking on the Scroll of Supremacy!
The reason he hadn’t challenged it before was one, he wasn’t in the mood to do so, and two, he wanted to obtain the best available reward!
The Heavens rewarded all those who climbed the Scroll of Supremacy. Specifically, it rewarded those who managed to stay on the rank list for at least a month.
Since only a hundred cultivators were listed on the Scroll of Supremacy, of course it was difficult to stay there for a month. This was especially true for those at the bottom of the rank list. The names there changed at least multiple times every day.
The higher a ranker placed on the Scroll of Supremacy, the better the rewards they would receive. Even if they lost and fell in rank, they could always make another go at it another time.
Right now, Lu Ye’s plan was to climb to the top of the Scroll of Supremacy and stay there for a whole month!
His fourth senior brother once told him that the reward granted by the Heavens was very beneficial to a cultivator. Naturally, the better the placement, the greater the rewards. That was why he advised Lu Ye not to hold back when climbing the Scroll of Supremacy. Ideally, he should aim for the highest spot he could reach in the shortest amount of time possible.
Lu Ye gave it a try and discovered that he could only challenge the bottom three cultivators on the rank list. They were all Heaven Nine cultivators from different sects.
The ninety-ninth and ninety-eighth cultivators were both from the Thousand Demon Ridge. The one hundredth cultivator was from the Grand Sky Coalition.
Lu Ye wasn’t going to challenge his own comrade as a matter of course. Without hesitation, he challenged the guy on the ninety-ninth spot.
I wish this was hard to believe: “this coward snuck up on our army a few thousands strong that surrounded him, killed over hundred people and cowardly run away” is unfortunately exactly the sort of rhetoric some people would unironically spout…