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Translator: Truth
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
Lu Ye was standing on a high ground of the battlefield, holding the Inviolable with one hand and throwing Spirit Pills into his mouth with the other. He only chewed them a few times before swallowing them all to recover his Spiritual Power. Then, he took out a large chunk of superior quality wasp honey and shoved it down his throat as well. The wasp honey he brought out of the Misty Mountains restored not just his Spiritual Power, but his stamina as well. It was perfect for his current situation.
A fierce battle was happening in the arena beneath him. The combatants were Yi Yi and Amber versus a Heaven Nine body-tempering cultivator.
After half a day of non-stop fighting, Lu Ye finally decided that he needed to catch some rest. That was why he decided to leave Yi Yi and Amber to it.
Yi Yi hadn’t participated in the duels until that point. Naturally, she had been itching to have a go.
Yi Yi alone would’ve had a hard time defeating a Heaven Nine cultivator, but it was a different story with Amber’s aid. Since Yi Yi was connected to the tiger in both spirit and mind, their rapport and teamwork were more or less perfect. Amber’s job was to keep the enemy’s attention on him, and Yi Yi’s job was to cast spells and attack the enemy.
Even if they weren’t able to defeat the enemy immediately, the body-tempering cultivator didn’t have the chance to surrender. It was because Amber would roar at him the second he opened his mouth. Amber’s roar itself was some sort of natural Divine Power that targeted the mind and the Divine Soul, and he had absorbed a ton of soul mist during their stay at the Lost City of Xuanyuan. As a result, his roar was growing more and more powerful.
So far, they hadn’t encountered a single Spirit Creek Realm cultivator who was capable of withstanding its roar.
Meanwhile, the body-tempering cultivator was wishing that he had never joined the Yi Ye Elimination Front. He was unable to defeat his opponent, but he couldn’t even surrender either. Lu Yi Ye was watching from the sidelines like a hawk as well. He was pretty sure he was going to die here.
This wasn’t fair. The battles of the Scroll of Supremacy had always been a one-versus-one duel, so why was a combat cultivator allowed to bring a Tamed Beast with him? Okay, that was an unfair statement. Cultivators brought Tamed Beasts into the battlefield all the time. But what about the female spell cultivator he was fighting? Surely she didn’t count as a Tamed Beast, right?
In any case, what should’ve been a one-versus-one battle had turned into a one-versus-three battle. No wonder his comrades were unable to defeat Lu Yi Ye. The combat cultivator himself was formidable enough, but he also had numbers on his side. They never had a chance.
He was furious, but there was nothing he could do to change his fate. He couldn’t even inform his comrades about Lu Yi Ye’s bullshit. This was a separate space from the Spirit Creek Battlefield and Jiu Zhou after all. He was unable to contact anyone from here.
The battle lasted an entire hour before the body-tempering cultivator finally collapsed on the ground. His entire body was covered in wounds and bruises caused by Yi Yi’s spells. It was a most pitiful sight.
Yi Yi let out a cheer and picked up the loot. She held out the Storage Bag in front of Lu Ye like she was asking for praise and chirped, “I won!”
Lu Ye rubbed her head affectionately before accepting the Storage Bag. “You did well. Would you like to fight the next match?”
“Yeah!” Yi Yi said determinedly.
She rarely had a chance to refine her own combat skills and techniques because Lu Ye’s enemies would rather swarm him with massive numbers than attack him one by one. This was the perfect opportunity for her to do just that.
Of course, this was only possible because she was working together with Amber. She wasn’t strong enough to defeat the Heaven Nine cultivators by herself.
The next challenge came the second they returned to the wooden building. Lu Ye accepted it and waited for an hour for Yi Yi and Amber to recover before reentering the battlefield.
The oddity was immediately caught by the Yi Yi Elimination Front. Since they began challenging Lu Ye, the young man had accepted the challenges at first notice and ended most matches in just dozens of breaths. However, the previous battle lasted an entire hour long, and he waited at least an hour before accepting the next challenge request.
What did this mean? It meant that Lu Yi Ye was so spent that he was no longer at peak form. That was why he had taken an hour break later to recover his strength.
This discovery gave the Yi Ye Elimination Front hope. The end was finally in sight!
Another hour passed, and the battle ended. As if on cue, Lu Ye received another challenge request. This continued for a couple more fights until Yi Yi was completely exhausted, and even Amber was looking a little shriveled.
“That’s it for me, Lu Ye. It’s your turn now,” said Yi Yi before returning to Amber’s body to rest.
In the wooden building, Lu Ye fed Amber some Spirit Pills before accepting the challenge request from a cultivator whose name he did not and could not care to learn about. When he entered the battlefield though, he was surprised to find that his challenger this time wasn’t a body-tempering cultivator, but a combat cultivator!
[Did I kill off so many body-tempering cultivators that they had to send their combat cultivators or something?]
On the other side, the Thousand Demon Ridge combat cultivator blanched when he saw Lu Yi Ye charging at him at high speed. Not only did he look perfectly unharmed, he looked energetic enough to fight them for days. The Yi Ye Elimination Front had sent him in because they thought he was on his last legs, but they were dead wrong.
A moment later, the cultivators of the Yi Ye Elimination Front were completely stupefied. Lu Ye had suddenly picked up his pace once more and slain every enemy in just dozens of breaths. Since no one had survived the challenge, they didn’t even know what the hell was going on inside.
It was like someone had poured a bucket of ice water over the candle flame that was their hope.
Over half a day later, Lu Ye received no more challenge requests after a long wait. The reason was simple. The Thousand Demon Ridge had chickened out. For the past two days, the Yi Ye Elimination Front had lost over a hundred Heaven Nine cultivators to Lu Yi Ye. Not only that, over half of their casualties were body-tempering cultivators.
It should be impossible for any one cultivator to fight over a hundred cultivators in a row and win, and yet Lu Yi Ye had done the impossible. It did not look like they would win even if they sent another one hundred cultivators either. To continue with the operation would just be a waste of good talent and lives.
It was at this moment the Yi Ye Elimination Front finally realized that the operation itself was pretty pointless. Even if they were successful in kicking Lu Yi Ye out of the Scroll of Supremacy, what did it matter? It wasn’t like he was dead. He could just challenge the rank list again another time.
The realization made the one hundred or so lives they had lost to Lu Yi Ye feel even more painful…
Lu Ye was currently sitting at the absolute bottom of the Scroll of Supremacy, and yet it felt like he was the real number one of the rank list.
Lu Ye did not rush to climb the Scroll of Supremacy. Instead, he took out his twenty Flames of Earthen Spirits.
He had to postpone this for two days because of the Thousand Demon Ridge’s nonsense. Finally, he had the time to resume his work.
Lu Ye activated the Tree of Glyphs and fed it the Flames of Earthen Spirits. He watched nervously as he calculated the number of leaves that were ignited each time he fed the Tree of Glyphs.
Eighteen Flames of Earthen Spirits later, the glowing leaves were finally all ignited. The tension immediately left Lu Ye’s shoulders.
He fed the remaining two Flames of Earthen Spirits to the Tree of Glyphs before he finally concentrated on the burning leaves.
Boom…
His head shook, and he nearly blacked out from the sudden impact. It almost felt like his soul was departing his body. The next moment, a massive, complex packet of information was shoved into his brain with zero regard for his well being. Lu Ye’s face turned as white as a sheet as the pain hit him.
Unfortunately, he did not pass out this time. Maybe it was because he had experienced far worse when absorbing Fire Phoenix, or maybe it was because his Divine Soul was strong enough to withstand the shock. In any case, the impact wasn’t hard enough to knock him out, even though Lu Ye wished it was. He wouldn’t have to endure this unbearable pain if it was.
A long, long time later, he finally recovered enough to shake his head slightly. It felt like his brain had liquefied inside his skull and would leak out of his ears at any moment. If someone were to challenge him right now, then he would be hard pressed to win without Amber and Yi Yi’s aid.
Of course, that wasn’t going to happen. He had killed enough people to scare the Thousand Demon Ridge for the next couple days at least.
Lu Ye closed his eyes as he digested the massive and complex packet of information inside his head. A moment later, his expression gradually morphed into joy.
Having learned from his experience with Fire Phoenix, he had thought that the dozen or so leaves on the Tree of Glyphs looked like a pair of wings. That was why he went so far as to threaten Bai Lan into giving him twenty Flames of Earthen Spirits. He wanted to verify his assumption as soon as possible.
In fact, he was right. The new Glyph he obtained, Soar, was a better version of the Wings he once received from Lady Yun!
Prior to the Battle Royal of the Legates, Lady Yun had once tattooed the Glyph “Wings” into his back. The Tattoo had been proven to be a great boon and a lifesaver in many situations until it finally gave out during his adventure in the Burning Lands.
Lu Ye had been missing it since the day he lost it. The aching was especially deep when he was being hunted by the Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators.
If he had Wings during those times, he could’ve been faster and more agile in the air. He would not have felt as sorry as he did during the bad times.
However, a Tattoo consumed a lot of energy and resources even for a master Glyphweaver like Lady Yun. For starters, it required the blood essence of a bird-type Great Spirit Beast, which had been prepared by the Sect Master himself. Before this, Lu Ye was planning to accumulate more Contribution Points and check if the Vault of Providence had what he needed. If it did, he was going to buy the blood essence and request Lady Yun to tattoo him another Wings.
Now that he had Soar, it was no longer necessary. Since the Glyph came from the Tree of Glyphs, Lu Ye naturally had one hundred percent mastery over it. He could activate it any time as well. It was superior to a Tattoo in every way.
The Spiritual Power cost was something he had to test though.
He dashed out of the wooden building and arrived at a clearing. He then channeled his Spiritual Power and activated the Glyph. In an instant, a pair of fiery red wings with a wingspan of ten meters appeared on his back. A quick check later, he determined that it was more powerful than Wings because it had been constructed based on his own Spiritual Power.
On the other hand, the cost was greater as well. Lu Ye thought for a second and tried to reduce the amount of Spiritual Power he was pouring into the Glyph. The fiery wings shrank in response to his action.
The next moment, he took off to the sky like a bird.
He did not leave the poisonous fog because he didn’t want to risk being seen. Wherever he went, the poisonous fog swirled unnaturally because of the wing flaps.
A full tea time later, he finally descended back at the wooden building and half-knelt on the ground. The wings slowly shrank until it vanished completely.
His tests had given him a deeper understanding of the Glyph. The cost was greater than if he empowered his flying Spirit Artifact with Windwalk even after he shrank the wings as best he could. It was just something he had to deal with.
On the other hand, it was definitely faster and more nimble than flying on a flying Spirit Artifact.
If he had Soar when he was breaking out of the Myriad Poison Forest that day, he could’ve shaken his pursuers off with far greater ease.
In other words, as long as Lu Ye did not run out of Spiritual Power, he would never have to worry about being hunted anymore.
Silavin: Happy New Year!
(Belated) Happy New Year! Thanks for the chapter as always!