Translator: TheBrokenPen
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
Somewhere in the Battlefield proper, where most of the war and strife, plots and intrigues took place, a huge battle had just ended and a young man, whose tunic and robes were soaked with sweat and the blood of his enemies, sat on the ground, meditating and recuperating. A young lass stood guard not far behind, combing her own hair. She looked no less fatigued than the young man, but her bright, sparkling eyes vigilantly scoured all directions to ensure that no threats were around.
Her Master Wang Yang was resting and she would not let anyone disturb his peace.
The young scion-and-handmaiden duo was none other than Wang Yang and Xiao Zhu of the Mystic Clan. After the Mystic Clan’s invasion of Nine Star Clan lands, Wang Yang brought Xiao Zhu with him, and together, they ventured deeper into the Battlefield’s interior. A trip of pilgrimage would do them some good and gain them more benefits for their current strength and rank.
They could enjoy great power and influence by staying in the peripherals of the Battlefield, but that would only lead to stagnation and complacency. Cultivators who hungered for more growth usually moved deeper into the inner areas of the Battlefield, hoping to reap more Contribution Points.
All of a sudden, Wang Yang opened his eyes. He examined his Battlefield Imprint.
“Oh?” the look on his face turned odd.
“What’s wrong, Master Wang Yang?” Xiao Zhu scurried over when she heard his audible reaction.
Wang Yang peered at his handmaiden and his companion. “Would you believe it, Dong Shu Ye just sent me a message.”
“Dong Shu Ye?” Xiao Zhu gasped with surprise.
Dong Shu Ye was rushing back to the Nine Star Clan outpost of his command when he heard it was under attack. It was during the subsequent battle that Wang Yang destroyed three of his Spiritual Points and since then, Dong Shu Ye had not been seen or heard of. Until they heard about how Dong Shu Ye had gone rogue and the Nine Star Clan began issuing bounties for his head. But as far as he was aware, no one had been able to locate Dong Shu Ye.
That was understandable. Pinpointing Dong Shu Ye’s whereabouts would not be easy, considering the vastness of the Battlefield, unless the Nine Star Clan decided to handpick a team of master Cultivators to hunt down the deserter.
As for why Dong Shu Ye delivered a message to Wang Yang, that was easily explainable: because they had once exchanged contact details via their Battlefield Imprints before.
There was no friendship between the men. In fact, they were on opposing sides, so they had no love lost for each other. But as commanders of their respective outposts, the men under their command regularly got into fisticuffs that required them both to parley and negotiate.
For that reason, they exchanged each other’s signatures which they kept inside their Battlefield Imprint, allowing them the convenience to communicate from afar.
It was Dong Shu Ye’s suggestion at first.
Although, he would later regret it, for Wang Yang often loved to harass him by sending insulting remarks—“Step out of your fort and try taking a punch from me, you coward!”, “Curse you, you mongrel dog!”, and the like—just to mess with him. Dong Shu Ye had lost count of the number of times he was tempted to erase Wang Yang’s signature from his Imprint.
But contact between them both came to an abrupt end on the day Dong Shu Ye lost the use of three of his Spiritual Points. With all future prospects now crumbled into dust following his weakening, Dong Shu Ye was no longer a threat to Wang Yang, who saw him as nothing but a beaten dog that wouldn’t warrant any further attention.
Yet Dong Shu Ye had made contact with him out of the blue.
“What did he say?” asked a curious Xiao Zhu.
“Try believing this then: it’s about that intruder with a tiger.”
“Wait, that intruder Lu Yi Ye?”
Xiao Zu would never forget the intruder whose inadvertent incursion was what sparked the war between the Mystic Sect and the Nine Star Clan. He was instrumental in the Sect’s successive conquest of the outpost despite not being one of them and it was by Wang Yang’s order that she sold an Earth-Grade cultivation discipline to him. To think that three months had passed by since they last met and Xiao Zhu did not believe that she would be hearing this name once again, even more so, from the mouth—or rather, in this instance, a missive—of Dong Shu Ye.
The fact that he sent a message itself was odd and bizarre enough. [No wonder Master Wang Yang looked so surprised], she mused.
“Here, take a look at it yourself,” Wang Yang said, forwarding the message to Xiao Zhu.
Xiao Zhu read the message and her forehead creased deeply with bewilderment.
“Lu Yi Ye, often seen riding a snow-white tiger. Acolyte of the Crimson Blood Sect of Bing Zhou, and a rare prodigy. In two months’ time, he rose from the Third-Order of the Spirit Creek Realm to the Fifth-Order. Last seen in the vicinity of Mount Fengyun, suspected to be on his way back to his order’s stronghold,” she read aloud.
Xiao Zhu’s first notion after reading the message was that nothing in it made sense at all.
If only Lu Ye had seen it. He would have been doubled over with horror at “rare prodigy”. Even today, he could still remember how that Le Shan fellow with a mousy mustache was poking fun at him after it was tested that he only had the potential of one leaf.
“The Crimson Blood Sect of Bing Zhou?” Xiao Zhu almost laughed out loud, “Looks like we’re mistaken, Master Wang Yang. It turns out that that intruder wasn’t a student of one of those great militant sects.”
“Yeah, we were mistaken, all right,” Wang Yang’s lips twisted wryly, “But that doesn’t mean that he’s not special like those students of great militant sects and orders you just described.”
“The Crimson Blood Sect of Bing Zhou…” Xiao Zhu murmured the name again thoughtfully. She had seen the name of this militant order somewhere before, although she could not quite put her finger on it yet. But hearing Wang Yang mentioning it gave her a sense of déjà vu. “Wait,” she said all of a sudden, “That’s the one!”
“That’s the one!” she exclaimed.
Xiao Zhu was surprised now that she knew where did she see that name before. “But why did Dong Shu Ye send you this, Master Wang Yang?” she asked, feeling something was amiss.
“He wasn’t sending it only to me. He was sending it to every signature stored in his Battlefield Imprint moments before his death.”
“Moments before his death?!”
“He’s dead now!” Wang Yang confirmed suddenly. He had been trying to raise Dong Shu Ye since he saw the message, then he saw the signature belonging to Dong Shu Ye fading from his Battlefield Imprint: the sign that its possessor had perished.
Then he saw it. Wang Yang finally saw what Dong Shu Ye was trying to do. In the final moments of his life, Dong Shu Ye sent a simple message to everyone he knew. A message that could cause a storm so huge that it would rock the whole dimension of the Spirit Creek Battlefield until the provinces of Jiu Zhou in the real world.
Whether it was a hundred or maybe a thousand people that Dong Shu Ye had sent the message to, Wang Yang would never know. It was clear that by sending the message to every signature in his Battlefield Imprint, Dong Shu Ye was just seconds away from dying, showing how he was out of time to pick who the recipients of his message were.
[Was it the doing of that intruder Lu Yi Ye? Very likely. In the message, Dong Shu Ye specifically mentioned that Lu Yi Ye has reached the Fifth-Order of the Spirit Creek Realm. Meanwhile, Dong Shu Ye himself was now in the Sixth-Order since the destruction of three of his Spiritual Points. Killing an enemy one rank higher wasn’t impossible, especially for those who are unbelievably gifted,] Wang Yang contemplated quietly.
[But if that were true,] Wang Yang realized again, [And if Dong Shu Ye was telling the truth, then I really have misjudged that fellow. He might not be an acolyte of one of those great militant sects, but that didn’t mean that he’s in any way weaker than them!]
He could feel the abundant tides of his blood coursing vigorously in its warm flush. He got up at once.
“Um, Master Wang Yang?” Xiao Zhu asked, puzzled at why Wang Yang was looking suddenly enthusiastic.
“The game’s afoot, Xiao Zhu! It’s time we acquaint ourselves with the heroes of all around the Battlefield!” said Wang Yang as he trotted away. “disseminate that message as widely as possible!”
“Understood, sir,” answered Xiao Zhu obediently, tapping on her Battlefield Imprint as she followed him demurely behind.
At the same time, people from all corners of the Battlefield received the same message from Dong Shu Ye. Some thought nothing about it, merely dismissing it as just some inconsequential ramblings from a man whose fall from grace must have addled his mind, but to others, reading the message left them so greatly disturbed that they immediately reported the contents of the message to their higher-ups.
Slowly, the information about Lu Ye spread far and wide with the speed and intensity of a raging bushfire on an unstoppable rampage. In barely a half-day’s time, those who had been wary of the Crimson Blood Sect were made aware that the militant order had found a fresh young prodigy in Lu Ye—the young wunderkind who grew from the Third to the Fifth-Order in just barely two months.
Progressing two ranks in just two months might look like an extraordinary feat, but it was doable. So long as a Cultivator could ensure that he had enough supplies to maintain his upkeep, progressing two ranks in the same time frame as Lu Ye was not impossible, especially for acolytes belonging to militant sects and orders that enjoyed greater wealth and affluence.
[Or maybe, those who had experienced a fortuitous encounter—rewards of providence or the like—in the course of their travels around the Battlefield…] Wang Yang realized. 𝘰𝑣.𝗇t
People have been trying to unravel the secrets behind the mysteries of the Spirit Creek Battlefield. Where did it come from and where it was really located, many had asked. Yet no one knew anything about the enigmatic pocket dimension. Questions have been asked about if the Battlefield was a dimension completely alien from the world of Jiu Zhou and some had speculated if the Battlefield was a pocket dimension separately created by an ancient entity of immense power.
Each hypothesis has its own merits. The Battlefield teemed with ruins and relics alien to the cultures and heritage of the civilization of Jiu Zhou and some were way older than Jiu Zhou itself. As well-hidden and protected as such ancient remains and monuments often were, they yielded to anyone lucky enough to stumble into them rich rewards that could bring great progress or advancement.
[So if that intruder really had such a lucky encounter, that would explain how he managed to rise two ranks in just two months plus…] he mused further.
It did not take long for intelligence about Lu Yi Ye to arrive from the outside world of Jiu Zhou.
Apparently, the Grand Sky Coalition had attacked the Evil Moon Valley just less than six months ago. The slaves of the mines were freed and were allowed the chance to enroll into the ten militant sects and orders who were part of the Coalition and Lu Yi Ye was accepted into the Crimson Blood Sect.
His real name was Lu Ye and he was called Lu Yi Ye (“One-leaf Lu”) because he was shown to have only the potential of one leaf during the magical potential assessment.
And records indicated that he only had his first Spiritual Point freshly unlocked at that time.
In order words, Lu Yi Ye had grown from having just one Spiritual Point unlocked to the Fifth-Order of the Spirit Creek Realm in just barely six months. That alone was more amazing than the completion of the First to the Fifth-Order of the Spirit Creek Realm in the same time frame.
If Lu Ye did indeed only have the potential of one leaf, then his precipitous rise could only be attributed to an incidental encounter that had granted him bounteous providence.
He was never in any good environment to train nor was any proper tutelage to guide him, for his mentor and Grand Master of the Crimson Blood Sect Tang Yi Feng was attacked on the way back to the stronghold of their order.
Further information would yield that Tang Yi Feng managed to defeat his assailant and killed him, but he too was hurt and for the past six months, he had been recuperating somewhere in Ao Shan, keeping himself hidden from public eye while his student Lu Ye was allegedly killed during the ambush.
So the Crimson Blood Sect had finally found an heir one moment only to have lost him in the next like a sleight of hand act gone wrong…
The deputy chief of the Grand Sky Coalition Pang Zhen was rumored to have confirmed this information and he was reported to have been extremely enraged by the attack that he ordered a full-scale inquiry, resulting in the arrest of several notable members of the Coalition discovered to have been colluding with the forces of Evil. The news of treacherous spies lurking within the ranks of the forces of the Good shocked the whole world.
[But clearly,] Wang Yang mused, [This is just a load of bullshit by Pang Zhen.]
Lu Ye was very much alive and beyond any doubt, it was Tang Yi Feng who had sent him here. In fact, Wang Yang now had every reason to suspect that the information about Tang Yi Feng still recuperating in Ao Shan was nothing but just a charade.
Tang Yi Feng might look like an honorable and venerable elder, but the Cultivators of the Thousand Demon Ridge knew better, especially after enduring his ruthlessness and wrath so many years ago.
News traveled fast in the world of Cultivators. In just one day, Lu Ye’s provenance and history—from his days as a slave to how he and his mentor were attacked—became public knowledge to virtually everyone with power and influence inside the Battlefield.
With Lu Ye and his one-leaf potential being a minor legend, breadcrumbs were lying everywhere, making it easy for anyone to put two and two together.
Militant sects and orders all around the Battlefield roused into action. Just decades before, the Crimson Blood Sect of Bing Zhou was a name that once sent fear creeping down the spine of anyone who dared to defy it and one that commanded both respect and awe. Cultivators of the Thousand Demon Ridge from the yesteryears of the Crimson Blood Sect’s supremacy could reminisce with horror and apprehension about how they managed to survive the Sect’s abuse until today.