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A ray of light landed just outside the Carnage Colosseum. It was Li Baxian and Feng Yuechan.
They had rushed all the way here nonstop for two days.
Despite the need for haste, they did not recklessly rush inside. They might not have participated in the Carnage Colosseum, but they had heard enough about the event to know that Cultivators would be hiding in ambush around the entrance, waiting to waylay any unsuspecting fresh entrants to earn Carnage Points.
They looked for a secluded spot and sat down to meditate and recuperate.
Almost six hours later, they got up. They looked at each other—a tacit sign that both of them were ready.
Rays of light sparkled around them—more than fifty of them—and circled around them, each of them the conjuration of Li Baxian that resembled a swarming horde of flying swords.
“Ready?”
Li Baxian asked.
Feng Yuechan nodded.
“Let’s go then.”
The multitudinous shafts of light coalesced as one, joining together to form the likeness of a dragon that coiled around Li Baxian and Feng Yuechan, whisking them up into the air before slamming into the scarlet-red wall of light that was the entrance into the Colosseum.
The air reverberated with the steely hum of the sword dragon that took into the air in its ferocious splendor.
On the other side of the deep-red sheet of light, scores of Cultivators were waiting for their new prey when a sword dragon of white came blasting through the entrance of the Colosseum. The mere white-hot luminescence of the many sword-shaped shafts looked menacing enough to make any prowling enemy Cultivator think twice about attacking.
The dragon flew past the unseen gauntlets of Cultivators that remained hidden and slithered through the air furiously, speeding away until it was out of sight.
No one attacked it. Of the many Cultivators that had been camping at the peripherals of the Colosseum’s entrance, no one had done anything at all.
No one could doubt that that must be a Sword Cultivator making his entrance into the Carnage Colosseum. The sheer amount of shafts of light prolifically fused into the semblance of a raging dragon was enough to dissuade any would-be assailants from doing anything stupid. What if it was someone incredible? The sword dragon itself was clearly a testament to the newcomer’s might and prowess. Then attacking the newcomer would be nothing but a hasty and foolhardy mistake.
A few champions quickly noticed that their caution was excessive. But by the time they realized that the Sword Cultivator that came in wasn’t anyone overtly powerful, it was too late. The sword dragon had long streaked beyond their ability to catch up.
Li Baxian and Feng Yuechan maintained their altitude for moments longer before they finally landed somewhere in the wilderness. Li Baxian dispelled the army of swarming lights and they dropped to the ground one after another.
They made sure that they were alone before they finally breathed easily.
“I wonder how Lu Ye is now,” muttered a visibly distressed Li Baxian. He tapped his Battlefield Imprint to try reaching Lu Ye. He had not contacted Lu Ye since his last communication to prevent him from being worried about them. Now that they had come in, it was time to find out where he was.
He knew that both of them might not amount to much, but he was sure that if he could join up with Lu Ye, they could at least make sure that he would be safe.
Feng Yuechan was taking the time to look around them when Li Baxian was busy trying to raise Lu Ye when she looked up. This was her first time entering the Colosseum and she was still curious about everything inside. She had heard so much about how there were prizes abound on every corner of the Colosseum and perhaps this could be a chance for her to see the place for herself.
It did not take long for her to notice the giant blood-red pennant magically hanging in mid-air and once she saw the names, she realized that she was looking at the Carnage Roster.
Her gaze went up and down every column of names. When she reached the top of the list, those big beautiful eyes of hers went as wide as eggs. For one moment, she thought that her eyes were deceiving her. But once she looked again, she was right.
Right at the topmost, were the words that said “Lu Yi Ye”, and after the name, it said that he had a thousand five hundred and fifty Carnage Points.
The second-placed Xia Liang only had a little more than a thousand Points!
“Um, Baxian…” Feng Yuechan tugged at Li Baxian’s shirt.
“Hmm?” Li Baxian was still trying to reach Lu Ye to ask him about his location. He turned around and looked at Feng Yuechan.
“Look,” Feng Yuechan pointed a finger at the sky.
He looked up and saw the humongous pennant. Seconds later, his pupils contracted with disbelief, “What!? Number one?!”
The first word that crossed his mind was “Impossible”. With so many champions congregating here, there was no way Lu Ye could have such might and power to be ranked not only first, but so ahead of the next runner-up with a several-hundred-Carnage-Points lead.
[More than one thousand five hundred Carnage Points?! How many has he killed already]
[Is that really him or just a guy who shares the same name?!]
But “Lu Yi Ye” did not seem like a common name. At least not common for such coincidences where two people sharing the same name could be inside the Carnage Colosseum at the same time.
[Could it really be him?]
Li Baxian did not know what to think. He had come expecting to find Lu Ye trapped in one corner, fending for his life with perils skulking about, waiting for the best chance to strike. Yet if that really was Lu Ye at the top of the Carnage Roster, then the worry and distress that had propelled him to come all the way here might have been for nothing.
[If that really is Lu Ye at the top of the Roster, that would mean that he must be in hardly any danger at all! He’s having fun!]
Nevertheless, he could not tell if that really was Lu Ye yet, not until he asked Lu Ye himself.
“Lu Ye, that Lu Yi Ye guy at the first place of the Carnage Roster, is that you?”
Lu Ye was sitting right at the center of another one of his many Teleportation Wards when he received word from his senior brother. He flatly denied, “No, that’s not even possible.”
His highest was somewhere between the tenth and the twentieth spots. There might have been changes after he had killed that Sixth-Order. By now, he expected that his name must have long dropped out of the Roster again.
To top it off, Lu Ye had only three kills under his belt, amounting to almost five hundred and fifty Carnage Points, which would bring him no closer to the top spot of the Carnage Roster.
“Then it must just be a coincidence. There’s a guy here with the same name as you and he’s occupying the first place of the Roster with a thousand five hundred and fifty Carnage Points,” said Li Baxian while he thought, [This fellow must be a Ninth-Order. With this many Carnage Points, there’s no way he’s a low-tier Cultivator!]
Li Baxian knew exactly who the second-placed Xia Liang was. Formerly one of the best Cultivators of the Spirit Creek Battlefield, the Raving Bladesman had once fought against Li Baxian before and the latter knew for a fact that Xia Liang was a powerful figure who was now beyond any doubt a Ninth-Order. But this mysterious figure who shared the same name as Lu Ye was now the leading participant in the Carnage Colosseum and that would mean he must be stronger and more dangerous than Xia Liang!
What an incredible figure!
Far away, deep inside his cave, Lu Ye began to feel something had gone amiss. But he did not dwell too much into it. As far as he was concerned, he has only five hundred and fifty Carnage Points—not the amount that could possibly put him in the first place.
What perturbed him more was the fact that Li Baxian had endangered himself by entering the Colosseum for his sake. It was a move that Lu Ye felt conflicted about; he was touched and worried at the same time.
To say nothing of the other fact, that was how Li Baxian had deliberately kept this a secret from him. Only after coming in, did he finally reveal that he had come all the way here just to look for Lu Ye.
Lu Ye extracted his ten-point map and ascertained his position, which he informed Li Baxian about.
“We’re coming for you, brother. Wait for us.”
After sending his last message, Li Baxian and Feng Yuechan set off for Lu Ye’s position. It wasn’t too far and flying using Telekinesis should have just taken two or four hours. But they could not risk being seen, therefore, they had to keep to the ground and to slower speeds.
Quickly, they pressed on.
In the meantime, Lu Ye waited inside the cave quietly.
All in all, Li Baxian coming to join him was nevertheless good news to him. Fighting with him around would mean higher survivability. At any rate, there were still the Teleportation Wards to rely on in the case of encountering any superior enemies.
He did not neglect to notice that Li Baxian said “we”. That meant he had to be with someone else, which was most probably Feng Yuechan.
How powerful they were right now, Lu Ye did not know. By his reckoning, they had entered the Cloud River Battlefield a few months before he did, so they should be almost at the same level. Moreover, they had spent more than a decade in the Spirit Creek Battlefield. The amount of experience and mastery of the skills they had amassed through so many years have made it easy for them to slay even Cultivators beyond their current ranks.
Especially since no one with just as much talent and gifts as them had stayed so long in the Spirit Creek Realm.
Yet all the time spent honing their experience and skills barely did any justice to the extraordinary natural gifts they had. Even those of average aptitude would find it unprofitable to linger in the Spirit Creek Realm for more than a decade. In fact, such a prolonged stay could have been better spent advancing straight through the Cloud River Realm and into the orders of the True Lake Realm.
Having pondered this, Lu Ye opted not to remain in the cave any longer. Instead he found refuge somewhere else and activated Glyph: Concealment to shroud himself from sight.
Li Baxian was already on his way here and it would be a massive quandary if he were to get himself trapped inside the cave when someone else were to arrive first.
He could use his Teleportation Ward to escape but that would mean he and Li Baxian would be separated. He could choose to stay and fight, but that would mean a certain amount of risk. Hence, he decided to just wait outside for better tactical mobility and flexibility.
He had just settled in comfortably in his hiding spot when he remembered what Li Baxian was asking him about earlier. That made him look up at the Carnage Roster hanging overhead. 𝚏ree𝚠nove𝚕.com
Li Baxian was right. There really was a Lu Yi Ye in the lead!
[So there really is someone with the same name as mine, eh? That’s amusing.]
His gaze began to travel downward.
But the longer he looked, the more the sense of dread and disquiet intensified.
Then he reached the bottom of the Carnage Roster, where the last name had five hundred and thirty Carnage Points.
By his calculation, he expected to have five hundred and fifty Carnage Points at least. That should place him somewhere in the ninetieth-odd.
Yet he could check for another hundred times and still, his name was nowhere else in sight other than at the top.
There was only one Lu Yi Ye in the Carnage Roster and it was at the top!
[Wait. Does that mean that I’ve been calculating it wrong?! My Carnage Points are not five hundred and fifty?]
[That’s impossible. I’m a Third-Order, but I’ve killed a Fifth-Order, then a Seventh followed by a Sixth. That would mean that I’ve been awarded a hundred and twenty, two hundred and fifty, and a hundred and eighty Carnage Points respectively. That would be five hundred and fifty! There’s no mistaking it! My rewards are directly tied to how much difference between my enemies’ ranks and mine! The figure should be correct!]
He looked at the name at the top and saw the amount of Carnage Points: a thousand five hundred and fifty…
[Wait, the number’s strange! That’s exactly a thousand points more than what I calculated!]
[Could that really be me?!]
[But where did that one thousand points come from?!]
Just when he was still struggling with what to make of the situation, waves of Spiritual Power signature from not far away diverted his attention back to reality. He listened, registering the archetypal ring of steel that could only come from swords. Next, he looked up. Faraway in the corners of the horizon, he could see pulsing waves of light. Someone must be there fighting and unleashing a gamut of spells.
He delivered an urgent message to Li Baxian to enquire about his condition. No reply came.
“Yi Yi!” Lu Ye grunted. Yi Yi knew what he wanted even before he said it. She dove right out of Amber and discorporated, vanishing into the ground and speeding towards the direction of the battle.
Lu Ye sprinted as fast as he could as well.
Li Baxian did not reply. That could only mean one thing: he must be occupied by something. Plus, he should be arriving any minute now. That would mean that he and Feng Yuechan must have been intercepted by someone and they were fighting, which was confirmed by the clangor of steel and the intermittent bursts of Spiritual Power waves.
Upon arriving at the scene, Lu Ye cast his gaze upward and was met with the stunning sight of deadly rays of light darting through the air in great numbers. Within a confined space, figures were skillfully maneuvering and crossing paths in the skies like shadowy phantoms, locked in a fierce battle.
Lu Ye immediately recognized two of them: Li Baxian and Feng Yuechan.
The former was fighting at his fullest with more than a hundred shafts of light answering his every beck and call, a true display of how deadly Sword Cultivators could be.
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