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Several hours later, when the purple vortex pouring out the Spirit Mist had disappeared, Lu Ye checked his river of Spiritual Power and noted that it was bigger than before. However, he was nowhere close to ascending to the Fourth-Order.
When he left the Myriad Beasts Domain, he had spent nearly thirty thousand Battle Points to buy enough Amulets to boost him all the way to the Third-Order. Not only that, he was well on his way to the Fourth-Order.
Unfortunately, the greater one’s cultivation was, the more cultivation resources they had to consume to get to the next level. Assuming his rough calculations were correct, he probably needed only one Gold Amulet to ascend from the First to the Second-Order, two Gold Amulets to ascend from the Second-Order to the Third-Order, and three—no, four Gold Amulets to ascend from the Third-Order to the Fourth-Order. Naturally, his need would only increase over time…
This was why a single Purple Amulet was nowhere near enough to boost him into the Fourth-Order despite his good progress.
Lu Ye was okay with this though. It hadn’t even been two months since entered the Cloud River Battlefield, and he was already a Third-Order cultivator. He dared not say that his cultivation speed was unprecedented, nor would he claim that no one would ever surpass him in the future. However, he had to be one of the fastest growing Cloud River Realm cultivators in the history of Jiu Zhou. Knowing that, it would be plain hubris to expect more from himself.
Lu Ye was just about to take his leave when suddenly, he felt a strange buzz from all around him. At the same time, the world itself seemed to darken unnaturally.
Lu Ye immediately grabbed the Inviolable while observing his surroundings carefully. Before he could identify what was happening though, he saw a bright light rising into the sky like a new star from far, far away.
This alone would be cause for alarm, but the fact that the light was blood red in color worried Lu Ye even more.
The red light would continue to brighten in intensity as it climbed higher into the sky. Right now, anyone within a few hundred thousand kilometers of the light could probably see it.
Lu Ye frowned at the ominous-looking red light while going through all the intel he had bought from the Divine Trade Association since arriving at the Cloud River Battlefield.
He did not know what the red light was, but it could only be an act of the Heavens. Cloud River Realm cultivators did not have the ability to cause such a huge scene.
A few seconds later, he recalled something and suddenly turned as white as a sheet. Without hesitation, he constructed Soar and shot into the sky like a shooting star. Not only that, he even boosted his speed further with Windwalk, going from zero to two hundred in an instant.
Lu Ye generally avoided using Soar with Windwalk because the two Glyphs cost an ungodly amount of Spiritual Power to maintain, but this time he didn’t try to conserve his energy at all. He escaped like an ancient beast of legend was mere seconds away from devouring him whole.
“What’s wrong, Lu Ye?” Yi Yi voiced her concerns from inside Amber. She did not understand why Lu Ye was acting like he was being chased by the enemy. She tried spreading out her senses but could not sense anyone close to them.
“I’ll explain to you later!” Lu Ye replied in a hurry. There was no time to even explain things to Yi Yi.
If the red light really was what he thought it was, then there was no time to waste. To the strong, the red light represented great opportunities and rewards. But to a puny Third-Order cultivator like him, it was more like the grim reaper himself. He had to get out of range before it was too late!
Lu Ye would continue to fly like he was being hunted while the bright red star hung in the sky for an incense stick or so. Then, it suddenly exploded into a smattering of light beams!
From a distance, the scattering light beams looked like a ridiculously huge meteor shower. Each beam was ridiculously huge as well.
Lu Ye managed to cover between one hundred to one hundred and fifty kilometers of distance during the short period where the red star was idle, but…
Yi Yi suddenly cried out in alarm, “Watch out!”
His pupils constricted when one of the light beams suddenly cut through his vision and landed right in front of him. The next moment, it transformed into a massive screen of light.
Lu Ye knew this was going to be bad, but there was no time to slow down. He just barely managed to cross his arms in front of him and turned on his side before he slammed hip first into the light screen.
There was a loud bang as Lu Ye crashed full force into the light screen. The light screen did not budge in the slightest, but the combat cultivator was bounced away like a ball. He hit the ground so hard that he was dizzy and incapacitated for a few seconds. There wasn’t a part of his body that didn’t hurt like hell.
After he managed to climb back to his feet, Lu Ye glared at the red screen in front of him with a complicated expression on his face.
In the end, he didn’t manage to escape. It definitely wasn’t due to a lack of trying though. The light beam had landed in front of him and blocked his path right as he was about to make his escape. He could not believe that it was just a coincidence.
A bird’s eye view of this region would reveal that the red screen resembled an upside-down bowl that contained everything within hundreds of thousands of kilometers, and as Lu Ye had just proven with his own body, no one was allowed to leave its boundaries until the event taking place inside the red screen was over.
[Well, shit. I guess our plans to find Ju Jia will have to be postponed to a later date.]
Yi Yi emerged from Amber’s body and stared at the massive light screen in front of her with a stunned expression. She could see countless thin light strands circulating within the light screen like blood. Its very existence seemed to scream murder and carnage.
“What on earth is going on, Lu Ye?”
“The Carnage Colosseum. We’re trapped inside the Carnage Colosseum right now.”
Lu Ye shared the intel he had purchased from the Divine Trade Association with Yi Yi after answering her question because the event was a little too complicated to explain verbally. While the young girl was checking the contents of the jade slip, Lu Ye observed his surroundings and confirmed once again that they were definitely trapped within the Carnage Colosseum.
Frankly, this was one of the last events he expected to encounter in the Cloud River Battlefield, or at least not as a Third-Order cultivator. The Carnage Colosseum was a random event that could only be encountered in the Cloud River Battlefield. Every time it appeared, an area of land would be enveloped in a screen of red light.
The size of the affected region wasn’t always the same, and it was very difficult to predict when it would happen. Sometimes it only occurred once every year or two. Sometimes, it occurred multiple times in a single year. The location of the Carnage Colosseum was also completely random.
The one constant of this event was the blood red screen. Anyone could pass through the red screen and enter the region after it appeared, but they wouldn’t be able to leave until the event was over.
Judging from the size of the red screen, this was definitely a large-scale event. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers of land was huge even for a Cloud River Realm cultivator, of course, it was nothing compared to the entire Cloud River Battlefield.
Obviously, the Carnage Colosseum was given its name because it involved a lot of violence and carnage.
Usually, unfamiliar Cloud River Realm cultivators rarely got into conflict with one another. It was because they didn’t know the other person’s affiliation. It was a different story in the Carnage Colosseum, however. A cultivator’s affiliation was automatically revealed as soon as they got within a certain range of another cultivator. In this sense, it was a bit similar to how the Battlefield Imprints lit up on their own when a sect fought against another sect.
In the Spirit Creek Battlefield, a cultivator’s Battlefield Imprint would automatically light up if a war was declared between two sects, and they were close to a member of the opposing faction. It was so that unfamiliar cultivators wouldn’t accidentally kill their own allies.
So far, Lu Ye had not killed more than a handful of Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators since he entered the Cloud River Battlefield. It wasn’t because his nature had changed, but because he simply did not have the chance to do so. Conflict rarely happened between two unfamiliar cultivators unless they knew for certain that the other person belonged to an opposing faction.
It was different in the Carnage Colosseum, however. If two cultivators were close enough to one another, then their affiliation would automatically be revealed. If they belonged to the same faction, then all was well. If not, then of course they were going to murder the crap out of each other. This was doubly true if one cultivator was drastically stronger than the other.
This was why Lu Ye had tried to escape as soon as he discovered the truth. Even if he was used to overcoming enemies who were multiple minor realms above his cultivation level, he was just a Third-Order cultivator. If he ran into an Eighth or Ninth-Order enemy, forget killing them, he might not even be able to escape their wrath.
Simply put, he was still too weak to participate in a dangerous event like the Carnage Colosseum.
Unfortunately, he ultimately did not make it out of the Carnage Colosseum. In fact, he strongly suspected that the Heavens were fucking with him. He was literally a few steps away from freedom when the light screen just happened to block his way.
He had no doubt that the Heavens were behind the Carnage Colosseum. He wouldn’t even be surprised if someone told him that the Heavens had specifically created it to test the cultivators of Jiu zhou. At the beginning of his cultivation journey, he had believed that the Heavens were an ephemeral existence that rarely interfered with a cultivator’s life. However, he came to notice the opposite as his horizons broadened.
The Carnage Colosseum was a bloody and dangerous place, but the rewards it offered were just as great. For starters, a Token of Providence event almost always occurred in the Carnage Colosseum. There was a high chance it would manifest a Gold Amulet as well.
It was common knowledge that the Token of Providence event rarely produced Gold Amulets. For example, the iridescent cloud Lu Ye had encountered during his first day in the Cloud River Battlefield was just a tetrachromatic cloud that produced a Purple Amulet at best. A dichromatic cloud would produce a Green Amulet at best, a trichromatic cloud would produce a Blue Amulet at best, and a pentachromatic cloud would produce a Gold Amulet at best.
Not only that, a Roster of the Carnage Colosseum was generated for every instance of the Carnage Colosseum. It was similar to the Scroll of Supremacy in the sense that the top one hundred performers of the event would be listed on the ranking list. Lu Ye would guess that they were rewarded based on how well they placed on the Roster of the Carnage Colosseum as well, but he didn’t know for sure because it wasn’t mentioned in the intel he bought from the Divine Trade Association.
Not only that, the Heavens would bestow someone in the Carnage Colosseum a Gold Amulet every day. Some people might think that this was a wonderful thing, and it was—but only if the chosen cultivator’s cultivation level was high enough. Otherwise, it was just an absolute nightmare.
Usually, an Amulet could be used anytime, anywhere. However, this particular Gold Amulet could not be used or even stored inside a Storage Bag until the chosen cultivator had held it for twenty-four hours. Only then could it be used or stored like a normal Gold Amulet.
To put it simply, the cultivator who was bestowed a Gold Amulet must somehow protect the Amulet for twenty-four hours straight.
Of course, this still wasn’t too big of a hurdle to overcome. Theoretically speaking, the holder of the Gold Amulet simply needed to find a good hiding spot and stay there for twenty-four hours straight. If they happened to be a ghost cultivator, then even better.
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