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When Tao Zhengyu and Yi Yi rendezvoused with Lu Ye at the New Moon Sect outpost, little did they realize that they would be beholding a scene that would be etched into the fabric of his memory for the rest of his lifetime.
Corpse after gruesome corpse lay scattered upon the blood-spattered flagstones on the floor, their positions twisted and chaotic. The blood stains on the ground painted a macabre canvas that depicted how savage was the earlier skirmish, a morbid trail of red and dismembered limbs that led straight to the forecourt of the New Moon Sect’s Sanctum of Providence.
Upon the steps of the Sanctum of Providence was a solitary figure sitting there, leaning in a casual recline with an air of nonchalance and a saber lying beside him. A serpent of violet lightning was slithering all over him, crackling in its serpentine dance.
Watching how the amethyst lightning was gnawing at the physique of the person gave Tao Zhengyu a disconcerting discomfort. It was nigh impossible to fathom the torment one would endure within the embrace of such a thunderous hue.
Beyond the shadow of the Sanctum’s edifice, deep inside its recesses, a miasma of crimson malevolence hung heavy, where no less than a score of lifeless corpses lay amassed.
The New Moon Sect outpost sat right inside the core regions of the Battlefield, a place where every Cultivator was at least a Ninth-Order if not higher.
Yet, these practitioners who once held dominion over heights, in Tao Zhengyu’s eyes, now lay dead within the pool of their own blood, their warmth steadily fading.
Tao Zhengyu could have sworn that he counted at least fifty dead bodies.
When his eyes set upon the person seated upon the steps, Tao Zhengyu was overcome by such a crippling sensation as if he was gazing upon a towering mountain summit that stretched beyond the clouds overhead—a height that he would never, ever, be able to scale.
This was Lu Yi Ye, the fifth acolyte of the Crimson Blood Sect—his senior brother.
Months ago, he had made history when he single-handedly tamed every Thousand Demon Ridge sect and order through his savage might. It wasn’t until he ascended into the Cloud River Realm that they rejoiced and celebrated with unbridled elation.
But who would have guessed that the most feared Annihilator of Sects would revisit the Spirit Creek Battlefield after just a three-month absence, only to lay waste to the outpost of a major Thousand Demon Ridge sect?
Tao Zhengyu climbed the steps and greeted, “Brother Lu Yi Ye.”
“Go,” motioned Lu Ye, “Go inside and do your thing.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Tao Zhengyu, knowing full well why he was brought here. He stepped inside the Sanctum of Providence and with his credentials as legate of the Crimson Blood Sect outpost, he stripped the Divine Opportunity Column of the New Moon Sect outpost of all its Blessings.
This was his first time, but it wasn’t hard. All it took were a couple of tries and Tao Zhengyu easily got the hang of it.
Yi Yi placed before Lu Ye the Storage Bags she had gathered from the dead bodies she had ransacked. With a worrisome tone, she asked, “Are you all right, Lu Ye?”
The Judgment of the Heavens was anathema to the human soul and spiritual entities like Yi Yi would find themselves affected greatly just by being near it. Even a glance was enough to induce a sense of vertigo in her.
“I am fine.”
Lu Ye responded casually. With the Tree of Glyphs consuming the invasive Judgment of the Heavens, he felt rather well. Even the pain felt relatively tolerable.
If anything, he was more bothered by the loss of his Contribution Points, which was a two-thousand-point deficit.
The Heavens’ rewarding of Contribution Points clearly took him for a Cloud River Realm Third-Order, even though his rank would remain at the Heaven Nine stage for as long as he stayed here in the Spirit Creek Battlefield.
And as a Cloud River Realm Cultivator, every kill would not win him points, but rather, a deduction of his Contribution Points.
What a huge loss it had been.
He had come here seeking remediations for the losses he had sustained but instead of gaining points, he was losing more points.
But he had collected enough loot and Storage Bags from the enemies he had slain to make up for the deficit. Lu Ye stuffed a few Spirit Pills into his mouth to recuperate while he took the time to undo the magical seals that held the Storage Bags.
Nevertheless, there was little to be expected of the loot he had collected from Cultivators who were still of the Spirit Creek Realm. Even Tan Li’s, a Heaven Nine Cultivator, hardly fared better.
Lu Ye finally finished undoing the magical seals of his booty.
That took approximately half an hour, revealing nothing that might have dazzled him nor stirred his heart.
Tao Zhengyu, having deftly purloined every Blessing he could get his hands on from the New Moon Sect’s Divine Opportunity Column, emerged from the Sanctum of Providence with an air of invigoration. He strode towards Lu Ye and asked, “Where to after this, Brother Lu?”
Lu Ye carefully stowed away his plunder, not forgetting to stuff a few Spirit Pills and Stones into a separate Storage Bag which he tossed to Tao Zhengyu, saying, “Gimme a minute.”
He spun on his heels and headed into the Sanctum of Providence whereupon he reached the foot of the Divine Opportunity Column. He extended a hand, and touched the divine obelisk, and entered the Vault of Providence, selling his loot there in exchange for Contribution Points.
That brought his Contribution Points tally up to seven thousand. Without the faintest hint of hesitation, he proceeded to convert all accrued Points into buying Flames of Earthen Spirits. The reason was simple enough: the Tree of Glyph appeared to have been fully drained of its fuel and swift replenishment was imperative. Or else, the Judgment of the Heavens would go on inflicting its damage on him, which could encumber his plans.
The consumption of the Tree of Glyphs’ fuel in eradicating the effects of the Judgment of the Heavens far exceeded that of venomous toxins. Whether there was still enough fuel for the Tree or not, Lu Ye did not know. But what he did know was that a small portion of the sustenance for the Tree was always stockpiled as reserve whenever the Tree was to unlock new Glyphs.
The only time when the Tree of Glyph had fully run out of sustenance was during the Battle of Goldentip.
He was still a very lowly Spirit Creek Realm Cultivator at the time and he did not have enough Contribution Points—which was how the Tree’s sustenance became fully expended at the time.
But since he began acquiring Flames of Earthen Spirits from the Vault of Providence, his Tree of Glyphs was never short of sustenance.
Until now, which was the second time this happened.
The Tree of Glyphs devoured one Flame of Earthen Spirits after another like a starving wolf as the vast expanses of smoky ash ignited billowed. Still, the violet thunderbolts crackling all over him showed no sign of diminishing.
Over fifty lives had been taken by him and in the aftermath, the growing effect of the Judgment of the Heavens because of their deaths was poised to take a lot of Flames of Earthen Spirits to fully eradicate.
But what astonished Lu Ye the most was how the Tree of Glyphs refused to exhibit any reaction no matter how many Flames of Earthen Spirits he had consumed. He could only surmise that the Tree must have perceived his precarious circumstance and was focusing on removing the Judgment’s effects above all else.
With himself now beleaguered by the Judgment’s effects, the Flames were clearly being used by the Tree as fuel to combat the Judgment’s effects, not to unlock any more new Glyphs.
In mere moments, the Flames he exchanged from the Vault of Providence for over seven thousand Contribution Points were fully consumed, the boughs of the Tree of Glyphs now shrouded by an unceasingly thick smog that refused to dissipate.
A brief half-hour later, the Tree of Glyphs lay dormant, its leaves unmoving, and its reservoir of fuel once more completely depleted.
Still, the arcing electricity of the Judgment of Heavens persisted in its vibrant shade of purple upon Lu Ye, its vigor undiminished.
[All that for nothing?! What a loss!]
A flicker danced at the corner of Lu Ye’s eye, a telltale sign of his inner turmoil. His initial plan to seek restitution from the New Moon Sect for the losses he had sustained at first had ended up with even more Contribution Points bleeding away instead with every kill he took and trying to eradicate the Judgment of the Heavens had cost him a huge load of Points too. Instead of regaining Points, the hole was only just getting bigger and bigger, much to his dismay.
But if he were to take into account the Blessing Tao Zhengyu reaped from the enemy outpost, the balance undoubtedly swayed in favor of profit.
Nevertheless, being a Cloud River Realm Cultivator, any good for the outpost here was no longer relevant to him. The Blessings Tao Zhengyu plundered would be good for the rest of the outpost and not him—not even a modicum of benefit at all for him.
Lu Ye delved into the confines of his Storage Sphere once more. He had amassed a considerable trove of spoils since he entered the Cloud River Battlefield and he had not been able to find time to sort everything out.
His original intention had been to go through the massive heaps of booty the next time he visited a Divine Trade Association branch. But no time for that now.
He was in dire need of Contribution Points.
Once again, he re-entered the Vault of Providence where he sifted through every item and sold everything that was useless, keeping only some Spirit Pills and Stones that could be useful in the future.
That at least brought in a haul of over ten thousand Contribution Points, enough for him to purchase more Flames of Earthen Spirits to be used as fuel for the Tree of Glyphs.
Amidst his preoccupations in his work, a solitary piece of news took flight within the real world of Jiu Zhou spreading with alacrity as it reached every major order and sect within the Thousand Demon Ridge coalition.
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After just three months, the Annihilator of Sects Lu Yi Ye had resurfaced in the Spirit Creek Battlefield once more. As if his reemergence was not bad enough, the harbinger of terror for all Thousand Demon Ridge Cultivators here had made a beeline for the outpost of the New Moon Sect, which he conquered single-handedly. In the aftermath, the outpost was laid to waste with more than fifty dead or maimed, including the legate Tan Li, who was found later with his head unceremoniously lopped off.
The news took the entire Thousand Demon Ridge coalition by storm.
Many, especially those of the New Moon Sect, uttered the name Lu Yi Ye with disgust and rage, believing that Lu Ye did not belong here in the Spirit Creek Battlefield, much less oppressing Cultivators lesser than him. If only they could enter the Spirit Creek Battlefield and challenge Lu Yi Ye themselves, thought the True Lake and Divine Ocean Realm elites of the Thousand Demon Ridge.
But yowling expletives and curses was pretty much all they could do. None of them truly had the courage to take on Lu Ye’s in the Spirit Creek Battlefield.
All it would take was one single loss against Lu Yi Ye and they would become the subject of mockery throughout the entire Battlefield.
At any rate, the enormous losses suffered by the New Moon Sect—the deaths of its younger crop of Cultivators, the sacking of its outpost, and also the plunder of its Blessings—would not be redressed by just rebuilding the outpost alone.
Back when Lu Yi Ye had demanded all Thousand Demon Ridge outposts for payment in return for not attacking them, the New Moon Sect outpost had offered up their riches as well in its bid to sue for peace.
Yet why did Lu Yi Ye come back here wreaking havoc after receiving payment?!
The high echelons of the Crescent Moon Sect assembled all surviving members of the outpost at once, seeking to unravel the motive of Lu Yi Ye’s sudden invasion.
Soon, a vital thread emerged: the mention of Tan Sheng by Lu Yi Ye during the invasion earlier. The latter had been claiming how he wanted to repay Tan Sheng’s kindness to him during their encounter at the Cloud River Battlefield.
Yet, beneath this veneer laid irony.
One could barely expect any “kindness” between Tan Sheng and Lu Yi Ye, if they were to encounter each other, since they both belonged to two opposing factions.
But that was enough for the leadership of the New Moon Sect to guess that the clue of Lu Yi Ye’s sudden hostility must lie with Tan Sheng. To that end, they immediately ordered men to enter the Cloud River Battlefield to reach out for more information.
News poured in swiftly enough. Apparently, during the last occurrence of the Carnage Colosseum phenomenon in the Cloud River Battlefield, both Tan Sheng and Lu Yi Ye were caught inside it, and in his bid to win the first place in the Carnage Roster, Tan Sheng had employed the use of a Tracking Disc. That culminated in an all-out manhunt by almost every Thousand Demon Ridge elite in the Carnage Colosseum that nearly sealed Lu Yi Ye’s demise.
That forced Lu Yi Ye into using a precious Gold Body Token and the costly summoning of a Divine Opportunity Column right after the Colosseum ended to narrowly elude his doom.
A Gold Body Token—a magical item of immense and incredible rarity—and a Divine Opportunity Column that would take a hundred thousand Contribution Points to summon…
That finally impressed upon the New Moon Sect about Lu Yi Ye’s motive—a clear act of retribution.
If anything, the Sect only had Tan Sheng’s failure to decisively put Lu Yi Ye to death once and for all to blame. A mistake that clearly had sowed the seeds of peril back then.
It did not take long for the rest of the Thousand Demon Ridge to realize what just happened and why. Word of what took place inside the Carnage Colosseum spread swiftly.
All of the Thousand Demon Ridge could only marvel in awe at Lu Yi Ye’s stupendous fortune for finding such a coveted treasure in the Gold Body Token. Without it, there was no way that Lu Yi Ye could have survived such impossible odds back then.
Judging from the timing, Lu Yi Ye appeared to have reentered the Spirit Creek Battlefield right after leaving the Cloud River Battlefield—an unequivocal embodiment of unrelenting vendetta, taken to the extreme.
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