Translator: Truth
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
Lu Ye nearly fell off his Spirit Boat when the female mutant landed a kick on his chest.
The chances Lu Ye might survive a Tyrant-level mutant without a flying Spirit Artifact were exactly zero. That was why he had curled his legs around his Spirit Boat immediately after he took the kick. Both him and his Spirit Boat were sent flying to the distance.
After he managed to stabilize himself, Lu Ye hurriedly looked around for the female Mutant. However, she was nowhere to be seen. That was the moment he sensed danger coming from above and looked up.
The female Mutant was falling down on him. He tried striking her with his flying weapons, but she easily knocked them all away with her claws. This scene terrified Lu Ye to say the least. For the first time, he realized just how wide the gap between himself and a Tyrant-level Mutant was.
He had witnessed two Tyrant-level Mutants before this woman. The first one was Beaky, and the second was the Great Serpent. However, Lu Ye had never fought either of them directly. This would be the first time he fought a Tyrant-level Mutant in battle.
He had killed many Heaven Nine cultivators as a Heaven Seven cultivator until now, but even a Heaven Nine cultivator was just fodder before a Tyrant-level existence.
Why was a Tyrant called a Tyrant? It was because they alone were enough to rule over the entire battlefield.
To be fair, he was partially responsible for the crisis he was in. The Tyrant had been resting and bothering no one until he got curious and went near her.
Lu Ye felt extremely unlucky as of late. First the Mutant Wasps, now a Tyrant-level Mutant. Why couldn’t he have minded his own business?
There was no dodging the female Mutant falling on him, so he had no choice but to suck in a deep breath and raise the Inviolable. There was a flash as two Sharp Edges appeared on its surface. Then, he waited until the last possible moment before stabbing at the female Mutant’s neck with all his might.
Honestly, he thought his chances of wounding and even killing the female Mutant were pretty high. However, the female Mutant easily turned her neck to one side and dodged the brunt of the attack. The blade did slice through her skin and draw a bit of blood, but that was it. Before he could turn it into a horizontal sweep, he took yet another kick to the chest.
This time, the kick was powerful enough to numb his whole chest. There was a slight pause before both him and his Spirit Boat flew toward the ground at high speed. In fact, the impact was so great that his flying Spirit Boat actually snapped in half beneath him.
Boom…
A small pit appeared on the dark red soil as Lu Ye crashed onto the ground. The female Mutant wasn’t done though. Just a second later, she brought her claw straight down on his head. There was a loud bang and a cloud of dust cloud, but Lu Ye just barely managed to dodge out of the way before leaping to the side. He then ran like hell while applying his legs with Windwalk. He was bleeding through his mouth and his nose right now.
This was easily the worst battle of his life. The power gap was so huge that the most he could do was to put a small cut on his opponent’s neck, a cut that should’ve healed completely by now.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he had lost his flying spirit Artifact as well. Lu Ye could feel death breathing down his neck like an invisible beast.
However, the presence of death gradually faded over time. When he looked back, he discovered that the female Mutant was just standing there and staring at him quietly. In fact, she even leaped back dozens of meters and landed exactly where Lu Ye had found her at the beginning.
Lu Ye let out a sigh of relief when he confirmed that the female Mutant had given up on him. Then, he realized that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to kill him, but she couldn’t. ．𝚌ｏ𝚖
The Burning Lands grew hotter the deeper one traveled. If Lu Ye tried to make it to the center with his own power, the furthest he could go was one hundred kilometers before the center.
The female Mutant might be a Tyrant-level existence, but even she had her limits. Her absolute limit was her current location. Any deeper than that, and she risked injuring herself beyond her ability to recover. That was why she had jumped back to her original location.
Lu Ye relaxed completely when he realized this. While standing almost three hundred meters away from the female Mutant, Lu Ye looked down to inspect his chest wound. His solar plexus looked like a complete mess because the female Mutant had plunged her fingers in it. Thankfully, it wasn’t deep enough to cause any real damage.
His chest also looked a little dented. When he gave it a tentative push, pain would erupt from his ribs. He wouldn’t be surprised if some of his ribs were cracked or even broken. He did take two kicks—especially the last one—to the chest after all.
With that done, he sheathed the Inviolable and returned his flying weapons back to his Weapon Holder. It was only then he took out several Healing Pills and swallowed them.
He rested for a brief moment. Once he was sure he was safe, he finally grabbed the Inviolable and walked toward the female Mutant once more.
Compared to before, the female Mutant’s crimson eyes held less malice and more curiosity. She couldn’t understand why the weakling before her could withstand an environment even she wasn’t able to endure.
She tilted her head as Lu Ye walked closer and closer to her. Her eyes were filled with scrutiny.
When Lu Ye was two hundred meters away from the female Mutant, he stood still and matched her gaze expressionlessly for a moment. Then, he unleashed all nine of his flying weapons at her with lightning speed.
The female Mutant was powerful, but what did it matter if she couldn’t get close to him? He would be a fool to fight her at close range after witnessing her impossible flexibility, but it was a different story to wear her down bit by bit with his flying weapons.
The flying weapons whistled through the air and reached the female Mutant at nearly the same time. He controlled them so that they would hit her from multiple angles.
It was then the female Mutant showed him what it truly meant to move like lightning. Her claws blurred around her at high speed as she sent six of his flying weapons flying. Not only that, she had caught three of them with her claws. They were unable to escape no matter how much they struggled.
It looked like this was the first time the female Mutant saw a Spirit Artifact. It was because she was examining the struggling objects in her grip curiously.
Lu Ye could not stop his eyes from twitching. He could accept the female Mutant dodging or sending off his flying weapons. She was a Tyrant-level existence after all; a creature that represented the absolute pinnacle of the Spirit Creek Battlefield. But to snatch three of his Spiritual Artifacts out of the air like they were nothing? This was embarrassing to say the least.
Worse still, he couldn’t even get his Spirit Artifacts back. He had gone for wool and came back shorn.
With a thought, he created an Explosion on all three Spirit Artifacts. Lu Ye had been able to imbue his flying weapons with Glyphs since he came back from the Lost City of Xianyuan, but this would be the first time ever he imbued them with an Explosion. In fact, he had only ever used Explosion on an Explosive Ward.
Unfortunately, the female Mutant proved to be exceptionally perceptive. The second the Glyphs took form, she immediately tossed the flying weapons into the air.
Three loud explosions later, the three flying weapons clattered lifelessly on the ground like mortal weapons. In fact, the explosion had taken out most of their Spiritual Power, and the enhancements imbued within the body were completely destroyed. It was a miracle that they were still glowing a little. Even if he could retrieve them somehow, they would no longer function as intended.
Lu Ye briefly calculated his loss since he ran into this female Mutant. First, he had lost a Spirit Boat. Second, he was forced to destroy three of his flying weapons. Third, he himself was beaten black and blue in the battle…
It was one of the biggest losses he had suffered since becoming a cultivator.
Without hesitation, he turned around and headed to the center. The power gap was just too huge. He had given up on killing the female Mutant completely.
He blamed the Divine Trade Association for his losses. The 10-point map clearly stated that there were only three Tyrant-level existences in the Misty Mountains, so why was there a fourth in the Burning Lands. He hadn’t made an error in judgment, it was the intel he received that was faulty.
“Wait!” The female Mutant called out suddenly. Her voice sounded a little raspy, but there was the hint of a charm somewhere.
Lu Ye was surprised yet again. He did not think that this Mutant would be able to speak.
He was sure she wasn’t a Mutant cultivator. He had observed her carefully just now and confirmed that she did not possess any Spiritual Artifact or cultivate any cultivation technique. Her fighting style could basically be summed up in a few words: instinct and vast Mutant Power.
A true Mutant cultivator could coexist perfectly with Humans. After they had assumed? a Human form, they would unlock Spiritual Points and cultivate just like any other Human. There were plenty of sects in Jiu Zhou with Mutant disciples, and they looked almost identical to a Human.
So no, this female Mutant was no Mutant cultivator. She was probably a Primal.
Although Primal and Mutant cultivators both shared a human appearance, they weren’t quite the same as one another. The former’s way of life and cultivation style were more primal and closer to a Spirit Beast.
Lu Ye couldn’t identify her original form because she looked almost human. Judging from her ridiculous agility though, she probably wasn’t very big.
The female Primal hadn’t said a word during the fight, and she had obviously never seen a Spirit Artifact before. That was why he thought that she had never encountered a Human until now. It would appear he was wrong.
At the very least, she was capable of speaking the Human language.
Lu Ye stopped in his tracks and looked back at her. When their eyes met, the female Primal said, “Bring me what’s in the center!”
“And what is in the center?”
“A flame. I can sense that it is a powerful flame.”
He was right. The female Primal was looking to enter the center of the Burning Lands and seek out the legendary Fire Attribute treasure. Although she wasn’t strong enough to get there, she was close enough to sense that it was a fire.
[So, it’s a treasure that even a Tyrant lusts for. This is good news.]
This reminded Lu Ye of the Great Serpent. Just like the woman, the Great Serpent greatly desired the dragon scale. If he had to guess, the fire probably had the same beneficial effects to the female Primal as the dragon scale to the Great Serpent.
He turned back toward the center and walked forward. He heard the woman calling out to him, “I’ll be waiting for you here!”
Lu Ye simply pretended he hadn’t heard her.
Even if they didn’t share the same objective—that was the legendary treasure that resided at the center of the Burning Lands—the female Primal had kicked his ass and cost him a Spirit Boat and three flying weapons. Why in the world would he hand over the treasure to her?
A flame, she had said. It was probably the thing that had created the Burning Lands. Lu Ye very much desired to witness the flame that could transform several thousand kilometers of land into a scorching hell.
Lu Ye rummaged through his Storage Bag as he continued forward. Now that his Spirit boat was destroyed, he had to refine a new flying Spirit Artifact as soon as possible.
The Spirit Boat he was using had belonged to Yuan Guang of the Sky Pillar Sect. Since Yuan Guang was just an ordinary Ninth-Order cultivator, the quality of the Spirit Boat was so-so at best. Lu Ye had killed and looted plenty of Heaven Grade cultivators as of late. He was sure that one of them would have a flying Spirit Artifact that fit his needs and wants.
A while later, he chose a Spirit Artifact that looked almost the same as the Spirit Boat he was using. He then channeled his Spiritual Power to refine enhancements within the flying Spirit Artifact. It wouldn’t take too much time or effort to do so considering his current cultivation level and Spiritual Power purity.
An incense stick later, Lu Ye was flying a Spirit Boat-shaped flying Spirit Artifact once more. In fact, it was definitely higher quality than the one he was using before. He blitzed across the sky after empowering it with a Windwalk.