Translator: Truth
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
After deducting their salaries, the Divine Opportunity Column was only left with 35,200 Sect Contribution Points.
Next, Lu Ye purchased a Blessing with a single thought. The sound of turning gears resounded, and it felt as if something inside the Divine Opportunity Column itself was changing. It was exactly the same as before.
One thousand Contribution Points were deducted from the total, but in exchange the Outpost’s Spiritual Qi was improved by another ten percent.
The second Blessing he purchased cost 1,500 Contribution Points, and the third cost 2,000 Contribution Points. It looked like each Blessing cost 500 Contribution Points more per purchase.
Lu Ye stopped when he had 2,700 Contribution Points left. It was because the next upgrade cost 6,000 Contribution Points.
All this time, the gears of the Divine Opportunity Column kept grinding. As expected, the purchases had induced a massive change inside the column.
At the same time, a vortex of Spiritual Qi appeared in the sky of the Outpost without warning. A massive amount of World Spiritual Qi was drawn in from every direction.
At first, the initiates and associates exploring the Outpost were greatly confused by the sudden phenomenon. They immediately realized what happened when they felt the Spiritual Qi in their surroundings improving at an incredible rate though. Loud cheers filled the Outpost for a time.
It took two whole hours before the vortex finally dissipated, leaving the Outpost with a much greater concentration of World Spiritual Qi than before
Including the Blessing Lu Ye had purchased a month ago, there were now a total of eleven Blessings on the Divine Opportunity Column. This meant that the Spiritual Qi within the Outpost was 120% greater than in the wilderness!
To say this was incredible would be an understatement. One might say that one’s cultivation speed had been accelerated by 120%.
It was only now Lu Ye that realized just how terrible it was to lose an Outpost. In the past, he thought that losing an Outpost to an enemy wasn’t too big a loss because—assuming that the ground itself wasn’t fully destroyed—they would lose some facilities and disciples at worst.
But now, he realized that losing an Outpost also mean losing all the Blessings on the Divine Opportunity Column! That was one or even several generations of slow accumulation gone just like that! To say it would be a unbearable loss would be an understatement!
With this, he finally realized why Dong Shu Ye had left the Nine Star Clan as well. He was the Legate when the Mystic Sect had conquered their Outpost and stolen all the Blessings on the Divine Opportunity Column. There was only one way a mere Seventh-Order cultivator could atone for this sin, and that was death. Naturally, the man had run away before he could be executed.
The Battle Royale of the Legates was a festival to the sects of Jiu Zhou because it equalized the playing field and gave everyone the opportunity to plunder another sect’s Blessings to their heart’s content.
The Crimson Blood Sect was a prime example of this. At the current stage, forty four thousand was an unimaginable amount of Contribution Points. If Lu Ye and Hua Ci hadn’t performed well in the Battle Royale of the Legates, it would take god knows how many decades to accumulate that many Contribution Points necessary to improve the World Spiritual Qi of their Outpost to the current extent.
Thanks to them, decades of hard work had been shortened to just a single month. Not only were they able to improve the Outpost’s World Spiritual Qi by over a hundred percent, they themselves had gained tons of rewards.
The Battle Royale of the Legates was an opportunity for all sects to obtain a huge reward at a small cost, but of course, one must be prepared to suffer a huge loss as well. If they won then all was well, but if they lost… It was one thing to lose a Blessing worth five hundred Contribution Points, and another to lose both their Legate and the prolegate.
Even so, the potential loss wasn’t enough to dispel the sects’ enthusiasm toward their festival.
Unfortunately, the Battle Royale of the Legates only happened once every three years, so Lu Ye could hardly rely on the next instance to make his fortune. He reckoned he would be long gone by the time the next battle royale took place.
“Oh right.” Lu Ye suddenly recalled something and took out his Mystic Fruit seed. “Do you wanna give this a try?”
“What is it used for?”
“Let’s just say it’s greatly beneficial to one’s cultivation. You’ll know exactly what I mean when you try it out yourself,” Lu Ye threw the seed into Hua Ci’s hands.
The moment Hua Ci channeled her Spiritual Power into the seed and blanked out, Lu Ye immediately broke out into a shit-eating grin.
A moment later, Hua Ci suddenly opened her eyes and let out a huge groan. At the same time, she panted heavily while sweat poured down her forehead like the rain. It wasn’t until she checked her stomach as if to confirm she was unharmed before she finally let out a long sigh of relief.
“I didn’t scare you, did I?” Lu Ye was deeply amused by her reaction. Neither he nor Shui Yuan had reacted nearly as badly as she had.
In response, Hua Ci glared daggers at him and said after a long time, “You owe me fifty Contribution Points!”
“You’re a rich lady now. What do you care for fifty Contribution Points?”
Hua Ci shot him another glare before she finally tossed the seed back into his hands. While she could see its uses, it just wasn’t suited for a medicine cultivator like her. She strode toward the exit after that.
Right as she was going to pass through the door, Hua Ci suddenly looked back with an innocent smile on her face. “Try not to get hurt in the future, okay?”
Lu Ye caught her meaning immediately and complained, “Come on, it’s just a small joke…”
After Hua Ci was gone, Lu Ye put away the Mystic Fruit’s seed and inspected his Battlefield Imprint.
Name: Lu Ye
Identity: Crimson Blood Sect disciple.
Cultivation: Eight Six Spiritual Points.
Location: Spirit Creek Battlefield
Contribution: Five Thousand, Three Hundred and Fifty Two.
Five thousand Contribution Points was an incredible sum to say the least. If he were to spend it all on Flame of Earthen Spirits, he would be able to purchase over twenty of them in one go.
Of course, the reason he had this much was because he paid himself a salary of 4,400 Contribution Points earlier. But even without the salary, he still had almost a thousand Contribution Points thanks to all the enemies he had killed at the Chess Sea, and as a Sixth-Order cultivator no less. At the minimum, he earned fourteen Contribution Points per Seventh-Order cultivator he killed.
As the saying goes, you are what you eat. In the future, he had to participate in as many wonderful festivals like this as possible.
On a side note, he had only unlocked two Spiritual Points since he joined the Battle Royale of the Legates. It was difficult to remain at 100% Spiritual Power in a combat-rich environment, and one could not cultivate unless they were at one hundred percent. Plus, all the Spiritual Power he converted had been used for recovery.
It was fine though. Now that the Outpost’s Spiritual Qi was 120% thicker than normal, his cultivation speed should go up tremendously.
Now that Lu Ye was, relatively speaking, rich as fuck, he did not need to worry about Contribution Points in the short term. He also had plenty of cultivation resources. He went to the Vault of Providence and paid two thousand Contribution Points to purchase ten Flame of Earthen Spirits in one go.
He could buy more, but the seed of the Mystic Fruit was a new sinkhole for Contribution Points. There was no harm in holding some Contribution Points in reserve.
Brimming with excitement, Lu Ye headed straight to his personal training chamber after he made his purchase.
He encountered a lot of people on the way. They all paused in their tracks to pay him their respects.
Some people addressed him as fifth senior brother because Li Baxian was the fourth disciple of the Crimson Blood Sect. Although Li Baxian was now a disciple of the Devoted Ones, the Crimson Blood Sect would always have a place for him. Hua Ci was the sixth, Kong Niu the seventh, Yi Yi the eighth, and Ruan Lingyu the ninth. That was all.
There were also people who addressed him as Legate, associates to be exact.
In the past, the Outpost was as quiet as a ghost town. Now, it was so much livelier than it was before.
After Lu Ye had entered his personal training chamber, he sat on the floor and took out the Flame of Earthen Spirits. Then, he waited as his Tree of Glyphs devoured the flames one by one.
Each time a Flame of Earthen Spirits disappeared, one of the leaves on the Tree of Glyphs would burst into flames. On average, one Flame of Earthen Spirits would ignite one leaf.
When all of the Flame of Earthen Spirits were gone, there were fourteen burning leaves on the Tree of Glyphs. This was the first time Lu Ye had ignited so many leaves in one go. Before this, he had only ignited four leaves and obtained four Glyphs in total.
He could hardly contain himself as he stared at the burning leaves. By now, he realized that each leaf represented a priceless treasure of untold value.
He sucked in a deep breath and concentrated on the fifth leaf. 𝘯𝘰𝘷．𝑜𝘳𝘨
A while later, Lu Ye opened his eyes with an odd expression on his face. The good news was that learning the Glyph didn’t tax him too much this time. The bad news was that the fifth Glyph was not what he expected it to be.
Previously, all the Glyphs he had obtained—Sharp Edge, Protection, Gathering Spirits and Bloodrage—had a clear use and focus. They were either for offense, defense, or support.
The fifth Glyph was a very special Glyph, however. It could not be used independently, meaning that it was completely useless on its own.
To put it simply, it was a connection-type Glyph that connected multiple Glyphs together and allowed them to unleash their effects at the same time.
In fact, it might be more accurate to call it a technique than a Glyph. One he had seen before, even.
There were a total of nine Glyphs in the Inviolable. Seven of them were used to reinforce the blade, and the remaining two to increase its damage. These nine Glyphs had been connected together using some sort of technique so that they would function as one cohesive unit.
In the past, he was pretty interested in the technique but lacked the time to research it in any capacity. Moreover, he was pretty sure he lacked the knowledge and experience to discover anything useful even if he did spend the time. For starters, it was only now he realized that there existed a kind of Glyph that connected all kinds of Glyphs together.
Lu Ye rested for a moment before moving onto the sixth leaf. To his surprise, it was yet another connection-type Glyph, though it was vastly different from the one etched on the fifth leaf. This meant that there wasn’t an all-in-one solution that connected all the Glyphs together. To put it simply, different Glyphs required different techniques to connect.
It wasn’t until the seventh leaf that he finally obtained a Glyph that could function independently.
And so Lu Ye spent the whole day inspecting his new Glyphs. Every time he became tired, he would cultivate to restore his strength and focus. He didn’t need to do anything special either. Thanks to Gathering Spirits, World Spiritual Qi was constantly being funneled into his body, and Gluttonous Feast was also converting the Spirit Pills he ate into Spiritual Power. In fact, you could say that he was growing his strength just by sitting on his ass, changing his cultivation discipline to Gluttonous Feast and constructing Gathering Spirits in his Spiritual Points. Of course, he still needed to take charge when he had accumulated enough Spiritual Power to attack the barrier surrounding a Spiritual Point, but that was it.