Chapter 99: Primal Chaos Altar
Translator: Subudai11 Editor: Chrissy
The expected supernova explosion didn’t occur.
When Wang Lu closed his eyes and braced himself, he had put the Non-Phase Sword Bone defense to the limit, yet what he met was just a strange silence.
After a moment, a hesitant voice of a woman broke this silent. “Wang… em, Sect Leader, what kind of special ceremony are you holding?”
Wang Lu opened his eyes and caught the partly teasing, partly doubtful face of the Holy Maiden Feng Ling. He then turned his head; the natural scenery of the mountain and the Wang Family Village were still as beautiful.
There was no explosion, nor surging stormy sea of spiritual energy. Beside him, a one man tall gray sphere lied quietly on the ground.
Wang Lu coughed and waved at the dirty old man and the others to act. This old man, knowing what just happened, nodded and, together with Wu Feihua, cast their illusion spell to cover the scenery ten meters around Wang Lu.
This was also inline with their previous plan. Once the altar was smoothly established, they were to cover it with illusion technique, so that the villagers would not be able to see any flaws.
As soon as the illusion was activated, Wang Lu had nothing to worry about; he curiously reached out and touched the sphere’s surface. All of a sudden, his Primordial Spirit trembled!
Wang Lu was amazed to find out that the gray sphere and his Primordial Spirit had established a trace of inseparable tie. At the same time, he also could feel a gentle suction force, and the nearby surrounding spiritual energy was slowly sucked into the sphere. After a moment, the spiritual energy was once again dissipated… Although the scale was small, this was certainly the characteristic of spiritual energy tide!
After he gawked for a while, Wang Lu slightly opened his mouth, showing a look of disbelief.
“Damn! Is… this a unique altar type?”
This altar should’ve been a perfect Jade Condensation Altar, but after that weird comet debris had mixed in, it turned into this thing!? What was this? Was there any other spherical altar in the Nine Regions?
Wang Lu recalled that from Elder Lu Li’s Altar Encyclopedia, there didn’t seem to have a similar record. As for other ancient books, such as Nine Regions’ Record of Strange Things, they also never mentioned the existence of this kind of spherical altar… Despite his achievement as the Spirit Sword’s top student Erudite, he actually could not identify what was amazing about this altar!
However, not being able to determine based on his book knowledge didn’t mean that he couldn’t. An on-the-spot investigation was more than sufficient to do that. Wang Lu closed his eyes and his Primordial Spirit gradually penetrated inside the sphere. By observing its internal structure through their ties, with his knowledge, he could soon judge the characteristic of the altar.
However, once his Primordial Spirit was inside, he discovered that the interior of this spherical altar was chaotic! Once the spiritual energy was absorbed in, it immediately turned into a chaotic thing, which he was completely unable to observe!
“Tsk, this is indeed a unique type of altar, it’s a top grade haute style!”
There was no trace of internal structure, thus the characteristic of this altar could not be analyzed. Therefore, through the intensity of spiritual energy tide, as well as the difference between the spiritual energy absorption and dispersion, Wang Lu roughly determined that it was an altar of around sixth or seventh rank.
This was slightly inferior to the ideal Jade Condensation Altar… Wang Lu was somewhat disappointed. However, he quickly discovered that things were not as simple as that.
Although the intensity of the spiritual energy tide was low, every time it absorbed and dispersed the spiritual energy... it seemed like the amount of the spiritual energy was slightly more than the previous. Wang Lu had patiently waited for ten rounds and, with his keen spiritual energy perception, confirmed his judgment.
He had actually seen this altar characteristic in the book, which could be described in two words: growth type!
“Interesting…”
There was an unwritten rule in the Immortal Cultivation World; anything, regardless of magical treasure, flying sword, or altar… as long as it belonged to this “growth type”, its value could be doubled immediately! Because this property was too rare!
There were only a few of this growth type altar in the Immortal Cultivation World. Extrapolating based on his experience, when the recently built altar, which was around sixth or seventh rank, fully growed to its potential, it was not unusual for it to be able to upgrade things one or two ranks from the original rank—this was far better than his expected result.
Right now, the only question was: although this spherical aura could absorb spiritual energy, its internal structure was simply chaotic, and thus, its output was completely random. Wang Lu had tried seven or eight spells to activate it, to no avail!
“Damn! A daring altar aren’t you!?”
However, since the highbrow move was invalid, he chose the popular move. Wang Lu sighed, pulled back his right foot and then fiercely kicked the sphere.
The next moment, the sphere suddenly trembled, then it crazily rotated. Before long, an opening appeared on its top, from which a thing was spat out and then fell to the ground; it was crystal clear and brilliant.
Wang Lu glanced down. “My goodness! Isn’t this high-grade spirit stone? From its conversion ability, this means that it can transform eight rank or higher spiritual objects! Its conversion efficiency is pretty good!”
With a hint of excitement, Wang Lu reached out and injected some spiritual energy into the altar, then he sent his foot to kick this altar. The sphere thus rotated again.
After a moment, with a loud chatter, it spat out another object from its top, which then fell to the ground. However, it was a jet black chunk of coal!
“What the! It actually spat out coal!? This altar is not consistent at all!?”
After that, Wang Lu poured in another share of spiritual energy, but the sphere refused to move. After he had pondered a bit, Wang Lu realized that the two objects that it spat out just now were probably the conversion of the residual spiritual energy tide from when the sphere was formed. And just now when he injected it with his own spiritual energy, the amount wasn’t enough to complete the condensation transformation.
However, this didn’t matter to Wang Lu. Although his cultivation was low, with insufficient spiritual energy, his spirit stones were many. From his mustard seed bag, he forked out some spirit stones. After refining them into spiritual energy and injecting it into the sphere, in several attempts, he had roughly found out the output formula of this spherical altar. The output of this altar was totally random. However, the amount of spiritual energy required for the sphere to work and spit out an object was roughly equal to the amount of spiritual energy contained within one hundred and thirty standard-grade spirit stones.
If he injected the sphere with less than this value, no matter how hard he kicked, the altar would not rotate. If it were more than this value, the altar would store up the remaining, and if it were several times the value, the altar would simply spit out several times.
In Wang Lu’s opinion, this spherical altar was simply like a lottery box. Using one hundred and thirty spirit stones, one could draw a random prize, its volatility was enormous… Wait a minute, this kind of thing seemed oddly familiar to him!?
Wang Lu was stunned for a while, and then fiercely clenched his teeth. He fished out the last batch of spirit stones, every last one of it, from his mustard seed bag, which amounted to several hundred, and then fully refined them into spiritual stones before injecting them into the sphere. The scale of this was so big that the dirty old man and the others who stood watching him in a circle could not help but stick out their eyeballs!
Another several hundreds of high-grade spirit stones!? Just to sacrifice them to the altar for its fuel… “Oh, Director, you surely are the Spirit Sword Sect’s spendthrift kid!? Everyone knew that the importance of an altar lies in its ability to condense out spirit stones and other things from spiritual energy, yet you actually did it in reverse, throwing away the spirit stones!”
After Wang Lu threw away all his spirit stones into the altar, the gray sphere suddenly levitated as if it was bursting with amazing spiritual energy, and then it crazily rotated, no longer needing someone to kick it.
Filled with anticipation, Wang Lu saw that, sometimes, its top opened up, spraying out once, twice, thrice… eleventh times!
Wang Lu was delighted, just now, the total quantity of high-grade spirit stones was just one hundred and twenty eight, which was equal to one thousand two hundred and eighty standard-grade spirit stones. This was slightly insufficient to produce ten spirit objects, yet the altar gave him a bonus of one!
As for the type of the objects...
Wang Lu helplessly looked at the five piles of broken gravel on the ground. Of course, calling them gravels were a bit too much—they were essentially defective spirit stones, which couldn’t even be compared to low-grade spirit stones. Nevertheless, they contained a considerable amount of spiritual energy, which, for the dirty old man and the others, could be considered as a fine meal. If they didn’t consider this pile of damaged good spirit stones materials, they were worth more than ten high-grade spirit stones.
These five objects were a big loss to him. Of course, using spirit stones as the fuel for the altar that was basically just recycling the spiritual energy would always net in a loss. The altar’s superiority lied in the steady transformation of spiritual energy, however, its conversion rate would always make one anxious, unless it was a high-grade altar.
In addition to those five piles of broken gravels, there were also two jet black slabs of iron. Wang Lu was sharp-eyed, so he quickly recognized that they were the most precious object in the mortal’s martial art world, the Black Iron, which was the basic material for the fatty’s Black Iron Sword… However, in the Immortal Cultivation World, it couldn’t be regarded as a great treasure.
Black Iron aside, there was also a block of Cloud Mud, a mass of Solid Water, a piece of Fire Flint, all were more or less eight rank spirit objects.
Seeing those things, the dirty old man and Wu Feihua’s hearts were moved! In any case, those were eight rank spirit objects! Their Seven Stars Sect’s altar, that Ward Off Fifth Elements Beings Array, could not even condense out a ninth rank spirit object!
However, Wang Lu didn’t even give those things even so much as a glance. His gaze was firmly fixed to the last object.
That was a piece of crystal clear, perfectly round, glossy red spirit pellet. Its spiritual energy moved inside the pellet like waves. Wang Lu sighed, he had already recognized it—it was the fifth-grade elixir, Water Cloud Pill!
No one knew how this unremarkable sphere able to use the spiritual energy as the source material to spout out fifth-grade drug; this process was completely unscientific! The input and output were even more unscientific! If this fifth-grade elixir was offered in the Mysterious Sky Mansion, it could at least be sold for a thousand standard-grade spirit stones!
Wang Lu could not hold back his laughter anymore; he shook his head: “Eleven objects in a single shake, tsk, the chance is not too bad.”
From the input and output perspective, the chance wasn’t just too bad, but excellent, completely against the heaven! Counting from the spirit stones input to spirit stones output, even the top grade altar would still lose about twenty to thirty percent. As for the sixth or the seventh rank altar, it would at least lose more than half. Thus, Wang Lu had instead gained much from this result of eleven objects spouted out in succession. Actually, from these eleven objects, only the last object, the fifth rank elixir that could be counted. In practice, however, according to the dirty old man’s standard, able to produce eight rank spirit objects would already be counted as a great shake, a special shake! Thus, among Wang Lu’s eleven objects, six of them could be counted as six great shakes. Moreover, it was a top rate shake! If this was not defying the heaven, then what is? Wang Lu started to toot his own horn, saying something along the line of “not bad”, unfortunately, no one echoed him, making it not quite enjoyable to him.
After collecting the spirit objects and elixir from the ground, Wang Lu didn’t try to continue to test the sphere. On one hand, he didn’t want to push his luck, on the other hand, this was not the time to draw the lottery. He was still an actor playing an act on the stage, so, he needed to continue his act; the play already has too many accidents, it was time for it to come to an end.
Therefore, Wang Lu’s faint voice started to spread around the village. “This altar is made of innate heavenly tribulation bolts of lightning that I gathered from when there was still primal chaos. It embodied the wonder of the source of the universe creation… which I called Primal Chaos Altar. Now that the altar has been constructed, thou shalt doth thy most wondrous.”
Then he secretly winked at the dirty old man. The later immediately understood and canceled the illusion. Then he cast the invisibility spell to let Wang Lu appear to ascend to the Immortal World.
Witnessing this view from afar, most of the ignorant villagers immediately prostrated themselves toward the altar.
The invisible Wang Lu sneered, thinking, “Go on, bow before me. Bow before the eleven objects six shakes god! You like that aren’t you! You, limited IQ people, do it well, and perhaps you will be saved!