Martial Peak
chapter-2012

Chapter 2012, Shattered World Principles

One day later, Yang Kai and Mo Xiao Qi opened their eyes one after another, each of them smiling lightly, apparently having completely recovered.

Mo Xiao Qi recalled her Monster Beasts and asked Yang Kai, “Big Brother Yang, now that we’ve reached the third layer, we certainly can’t miss out on the benefits here. Should we act together or separately?”

Yang Kai thought about it for a moment before deciding to ask, “What do you want to do?”

Mo Xiao Qi giggled, “If we want to be safe, I think it’s better to act together, but if we want more benefits, we should act separately. Big Brother Yang probably doesn’t know, but the biggest benefits in the Five Coloured Treasure Pagoda aren’t actually the various precious treasures that are scattered about, nor the artifacts which have been left behind, but the shattered World Principles and Star Sources!”

“I’ve heard something about this before, but I’ve yet to really experience it. Why is that?” Yang Kai frowned.

Mo Xiao Qi smiled and said, “Of course, it’s because the first and second layers don’t have a high concentration of such things, but the third layer is different. What’s more, there are only two of us here, so no one will compete with us for these benefits! If we can acquire some shattered World Principles and Star Sources, it will be of great help to us in breaking through to the Dao Source Realm.”

Yang Kai nodded and smiled, “So what you mean to say is, you want to act separately?”

Mo Xiao Qi spat out her tongue cutely and replied, “En, after all, if the two of us travel together, even if we encounter such benefits, we’ll need to divide them up between us… Big Brother Yang, it’s not that I don’t want to split things equally with you, it’s just…”

“I understand, since you are confident enough in yourself, then we’ll act separately,” Yang Kai interrupted her with a smile.

“Then Big Brother Yang must be careful, there are Eleventh-Order Monster Beasts in the third layer.”

“You as well,” Yang Kai nodded.

Yang Kai was not actually worried about Mo Xiao Qi. With her methods and the artifacts she was wearing, even if she actually encountered an Eleventh-Order Monster Beast, it wouldn’t be a problem for her to protect herself.

As for himself, he was not worried either. If things got dangerous, he could just release his Monster Insect Queen. As long as he wasn’t besieged by several Eleventh-Order Monster Beasts, Yang Kai was confident he could safely traverse the third layer. He might even be able to take this opportunity to condense more Blood Beasts.

His current Blood Beast Army was composed entirely of Monster Beasts from back in his native Star Field, and was naturally no longer useful in the Star Boundary, so the time to raise a new generation had come.

After the pair finished their discussion, they chose different directions and headed out.

With the two of them moving in opposite directions, it was almost certain they would not run into each other again until the Five Coloured Treasure Pagoda closed. This way, they would have plenty of space to search for their own opportunities.

A day later, Yang Kai stood on a large open plain, waving his hands lightly as he sent out one Moon Blade after another.

Not far in front of him, the Monster Insect Queen drew blue and purple arcs with its dual swords, causing a gentle fall of snow to fill the air as it brought out the full power of these Origin King Grade High-Rank artifacts.

Around the Monster Insect Queen, an icy domain had formed where rich Ice Principles had turned the surrounding thousand-metre radius into a frozen wasteland.

The opponent of the Monster Insect Queen was a Blue Flame Thunder Wolf, another Eleventh-Order Monster Beast that resembled a wolf and a jackal. It was small in size and had extremely flexible movement as well as a mastery over Thunder and Fire attribute strength, making it a powerful opponent.

The Monster Insect Queen could now exert power on par with a Second-Order Dao Source Realm cultivator, but even after fighting this Blue Flame Thunder Wolf for some time, it was unable to kill it, emphasising the latter’s prowess.

Yang Kai did not dare to intervene in the battle between them rashly and instead took some distance from the fight while using his Space Secret Arts to hinder and harass the Blue Flame Thunder Wolf’s movements.

As time passed, more and more wounds appeared on the Blue Flame Thunder Wolf, its movements becoming slower and slower due to the invasion of the Monster Insect Queen’s Ice Attribute Energy.

This was the true terror of the icy domain as it could slowly and silently weaken an enemy, causing them to gradually freeze in place, losing their life without even noticing.

Two more hours passed when finally, accompanied by a miserable howl, the Monster Insect Queen’s dual swords pierced into the enemy’s vital spots, bringing forth a giant splash of red blood. The Blue Flame Thunder Wolf struggled viciously, forcing the Monster Insect Queen to retreat again and again.

Unfortunately, this was nothing but a futile last struggle.

Soon, the eyes of Blue Flame Thunder Wolf lost their lustre and it fell to the ground, no longer moving anymore.

Only then did Yang Kai step forward.

The Monster Insect Queen opened its mouth and swallowed the dual swords into its body before immediately crawling over to Yang Kai and nuzzling him affectionately.

Normally, Blood Beasts could not show such life-like behaviour, but because the Monster Insect Queen had its own chaotic sentience, it was able to show such mannerisms.

Squatting in front of the Blue Flame Thunder Wolf, Yang Kai thought for a moment before deciding to condense a new Blood Beast from it. Taking out a Golden Blood Thread, Yang Kai pierced it into the corpse of the Blue Flame Thunder Wolf before sitting down cross-legged and forming a series of seals with his hands, executing his Blood Beast condensing method.

Half a day later, the already dead Blue Flame Thunder Wolf shook and stood up again, but there was no light in its eyes or expression on its face. Instead, a faint Blood Qi was pulsing from its frame.

This was the most distinctive feature of Blood Beasts.

Yang Kai examined his work for a while and was satisfied to find that this new Blood Beast had not fallen to the level of an Origin King but retained its Dao Source Realm strength.

Now, Yang Kai had two Blood Beast guardians, the Monster Insect Queen and this Blue Flame Thunder Wolf, so he did not need to fear traversing the third layer in any sense.

Immediately, Yang Kai took back his two Blood Beasts and continued to explore.

…

Two days later, Yang Kai was sitting cross-legged somewhere in the third layer with a happy expression on his face, circulating his Secret Art silently.

At the same time, from the sky above, streams of light were continuously flowing towards him and disappearing into his body.

These streams of light were actually shattered World Principles from this ancient battlefield.

Just as Mo Xiao Qi had said, these were the most precious treasures within the Five Coloured Treasure Pagoda.

Yang Kai happened to pass by here and sensed a high concentration of Shattered Principles, so he immediately sat down and began absorbing them.

By absorbing these streams of light into his body, he was able to clearly perceive Principle Strength and lay a good foundation for his future breakthrough to the Dao Source Realm.

But soon, he discovered something strange.

That is, after these streams of light entered his body, the concentration of Shattered Principles was far too large for him to immediately absorb, but instead of escaping, they flowed towards his Sealed World Bead and quickly disappeared.

From the Embodiment, Yang Kai learned that these Shattered Principles had flooded into the Small Sealed World and been absorbed by it.

The Sealed World Bead was undergoing tremendous changes at the same time.

The space in the Sealed World Bead that had so many Shattered World Principles poured into it was rapidly becoming more and more complete, transforming from a mere contained storage space to a real world. There were also other subtler changes occurring in the aura of this Small Sealed World due to the influx of Principle Strength.

Yang Kai originally did not quite understand why all of this was happening.

But after careful consideration, a possibility came to mind.

The Sealed World Bead was, in the end, an Emperor Artifact, a powerful storage artifact that an Emperor Realm master had refined using profound methods. As such, its own World Principles were imperfect, so, even though people could live and cultivate inside of it to an extent, it was still not a real, independent world.

Right now, though, the Shattered World Principles from the Five Coloured Treasure Pagoda were pouring into the Sealed World Bead and helping to make up for the flaws in its own Principles.

Once the Principles inside the Sealed World Bead reached a certain level of perfection, it might become indistinguishable from a real world!

Yang Kai could not prove his hypothesis was correct, but he knew his guess was not far off from the truth.

As such, he did not try to stop this process and simply allowed it to continue. In any case, no matter how many Shattered Principles the Sealed World Bead absorbed from the Five Coloured Treasure Pagoda, it would not hurt him.

This absorption process took more than half a day, and when no more streams of light appeared in his surroundings, Yang Kai opened his eyes and heaved out a sigh.

After a moment of contemplation, Yang Kai found that his understanding of Principle Strength had indeed improved, and he now vaguely understood some of the mysteries of the Dao Source Realm, but this was far from comprehensive. Moreover, the Sealed World Bead was far from satisfied, and it seemed that it would need to absorb a great deal more of these Shattered Principles to become complete.

Standing up, Yang Kai continued his search.

What Yang Kai didn’t know was that the place he had just cultivated in should have had enough Shattered World Principles for a dozen or more Origin Kings to reach a level of comprehension where they would be capable of breaking through to the Dao Source Realm, but because the Sealed World Bead had actually absorbed the vast majority of these World Principles, it not only drastically shortened the time he could personally absorb them, it had also rendered this stretch of land a barren place that would no longer have any cultivation value for at least a hundred years.

If this matter was known to the Star Soul Palace, they would definitely not let him off easily.

To a certain extent, this kind of cultivation spot was part of Star Soul Palace’s foundation. A person ruining the foundation of a Sect was no small matter.

Over the next few days, Yang Kai kept searching for locations similar to the previous one, but unfortunately, there seemed to be very few such places so he was unable to find another.

Over the past few days, he had encountered some Monster Beasts, but with the protection of his two Blood Beasts, the Monster Insect Queen and Blue Flame Thunder Wolf, these attacking Monster Beasts naturally were unable to harm Yang Kai.

Either these attackers tragically died under the siege of the two Blood Beasts, or they fled.

Yang Kai did not condense any new Blood Beasts and instead processed the dead Monster Beast bodies, taking out their Monster Cores and any valuable parts in preparation to use or sell them in the future.

From his previous experiences in his native Star Field, Yang Kai understood that having too many Blood Beasts was more of a burden than a benefit. Having to control too many at once drained his Spiritual Energy too rapidly and condensing more Blood Beasts meant consuming more of his Golden Blood Threads while at the same time giving up on the valuable materials in these Monster Beasts’ bodies. It was not worth it.

After several days of searching without results, Yang Kai was feeling a bit disgruntled.

He did not know when the Five Coloured Treasure Pagoda would close, but he did know it would not be long before it did. This was a rare opportunity he would likely never have again, so Yang Kai could not help becoming anxious in his search for more Shattered World Principles to absorb.