Nine Evolutions of the True Spirit
chapter-172

The news that Lu Ping and Ai Shu-Tao had seriously injured Peng Chang-Qing didn’t attract much attention, instead another piece of news was spreading like wildfire.

Zhen Ling Sect’s Yin Zi-Chu had intercepted Xuan Ling Sect’s Ouyang Wei-Jian, and the two had fought.

Although Yin Zi-Chu and Ji Zi-Xuan had teamed up and defeated Miao Wei-Dong before, who was a member of the Xuan Ling Sect’s North Ocean 18 Warriors, he was alone this time.

Ouyang Wei-Jian’s strength was also similar to that of a North Ocean 18 Warrior and had an even higher cultivation base. Hence, it wasn’t a surprise that he won the battle.

Yin Zi-Chu retreated with many wounds while Ouyang Wei-Jian tried to chase after him. However, during the chase, Zhen Ling Sect’s Ji Zi-Xuan came just in time to reinforce Yin Zi-Chu.

Yin Zi-Chu and Ji Zi-Xuan, the Twin Talents, teamed up again and fought against Ouyang Wei-Jian. The battle turned into a stalemate, remaining as such until reinforcements from both sects arrived, leading to the battle ending.

Lu Ping didn't expect that the cold-looking Yin Zi-Chu would be so hot-blooded. At the same time, Ouyang Wei-Jian reminded Lu Ping of the Xuan Ling Sect white-faced cultivator, who ambushed him during his battle with the Primal Giant Crocodiles.

Apart from the humans, there were also several monster cultivators that had become famous. The most well known one was a monster cultivator called Young Master Jin, who had defeated Zhen Ling Sect’s Qi Zi-Cai and Xuan Ling Sect's Miao Wei-Dong, both of whom were North Ocean 18 Warriors. However, for some reason, Young Master Jin didn't kill either of them.

Then, in another encounter with Fei Yu Sect’s cultivators, Young Master Jin used a single sword attack and forced the Fei Yu Sect Enlightened Master to unseal his cultivation base, causing him to be teleported out of the Heaven of Seven Stars.

As a result, the Fei Yu Sect cultivators, who had lost the protection from their Enlightened Master, were mercilessly slaughtered by the monster cultivators following Young Master Jin. Only a few quick-witted survivors managed to escape.

Ever since the Fei Yu Sect incident, it was rumored that Young Master Jin had mastered the State of Intent in swordsmanship.

Furthermore, people speculated that most of the big sects had an Enlightened Master or two that had sealed their cultivation base, and hidden amongst their sect cultivators.

After all, even though Enlightened Masters would be teleported out of the Heaven of Seven Stars when they broke their cultivation seals, there was still a short window of time for them to deliver a deadly blow before they were teleported away.

Even if the Enlightened Master was just in the Early Core Forging Realm, no Blood Condensation Realm cultivators would dare say they could survive a full power attack from an Enlightened Master.

A piece of information that caught Lu Ping's attention was that during the many conflicts, the Ocean Overturning Gang had left several traces. It was as if they were always quietly lurking, stirring conflict from the shadows.

The Ocean Overturning Gang's cultivators worked in small groups, and meddled in almost every battle.

Even though there were internal conflicts among human cultivators, they would still come together to battle against monster cultivators. But that was not the case for the Ocean Overturning Gang cultivators, they were unprincipled and cunning, willing to work together with the monsters.

As a result, many forces had reached a tacit agreement to join forces against the Ocean Overturning Gang. But no matter how they searched, they couldn’t find the Ocean Overturning Gang’s hideouts. Even if they did find the Ocean Overturning Gang cultivators, there were usually just a few of them. This in turn made the Ocean Overturning Gang go on high alert, causing them to hide deeper.

Lu Ping still wore the mask to disguise his identity, but he no longer suppressed his cultivation base. After all, in situations like this, hiding his cultivation base would only attract evil intentions from other cultivators.

Generally speaking, it was very difficult to takedown a cultivator of the same rank in a one-on-one battle. Typically, it required three cultivators at the same rank and all kinds of preparations in advance, to prevent their opponents from escaping.

All in all, there were very few cultivators like Lu Ping who could obtain kills on their own, or even challenge cultivators with a higher cultivation base.

The Seven Star Palace was located in the middle of the Heaven of Seven Stars. This was also where the Heaven of Seven Stars’ five Great Ancestors battled.

After the battle, the Heaven of Seven Stars was left in ruins, but the Seven Star Palace was not damaged at all, making everyone marvel.

In the center of the Heaven of Seven Stars, there was a large crater roughly one-third the area of the Heaven of Seven Stars. Rumor had it that this was caused by the aftermath of the battle. The large crater wiped out everything other than the Seven Star Palace.

Over time, weeds, trees, spirit herbs, and spirit materials grew and occupied the empty space.

Lu Ping, Dabao, and Lu Qin, naturally wouldn’t leave empty handed. They harvested every spirit herb and spirit material they came across while on their way to the Seven Star Palace.

However, the spirit herbs and spirit materials here couldn’t be compared to those found in the Canyon of Sullied Gold.

While travelling, Lu Ping succeeded in erasing the divine revelation seal on the interspatial belt. This was only possible thanks to his superior divine sense, otherwise it would take twice as long to erase the seal.

However, Lu Ping was disappointed to see the items in the interspatial bracelet. After all, this was the first Enlightened Master’s interspatial item that he had gotten.

Unlike what Lu Ping had imagined, it wasn’t full of all kinds of treasures. Even so, the items were still an Enlightened Master’s collection, whilst there weren't many items, they were still high in quality.

Lu Ping wasn’t interested in counting the spirit stones, he took a brief look and roughly estimated there were around 100,000 spirit stones. However, compared to how many spirit stones he had, he was quite disappointed at first.

Other than the ordinary spirit stones, there were also six high-grade spirit stones, which he was happy to see. High-grade spirit stones had many uses, even Lu Ping had only collected no more than five high-grade spirit stones, and he still wasn’t willing to use them.

There were also several jade boxes containing spirit herbs. Lu Ping checked the spirit herbs and counted nearly a hundred rare thousand-year spirit herbs. They were clearly all harvested from the inner region of the Canyon of Sullied Gold.

The medicinal properties of the spirit herbs were well preserved, not losing much medicinal efficacy, showing that this Enlightened Master was experienced at harvesting spirit herbs.

In terms of medicinal pellets, there were very few left. This made Lu Ping wonder whether this Enlightened Master was really from the Liao Clan which was famous for their alchemy.

But the next item he saw quickly cleared his doubt, it was the pellet recipe for the Heart Condensation Pellets!

Lu Ping had no idea why someone would write down the recipe for a precious pellet like this on a jade scroll. He carefully checked the pellet recipe and determined that it was genuine, this really was the pellet recipe for the Heart Condensation Pellets.

It seemed that this Enlightened Master who fell in the Canyon of Sullied Gold was not just an ordinary alchemist from the Liao Clan, but also Liao Hu’s grandfather, Enlightened Master Liao Ding, who disappeared in the Heaven of Seven Stars 300 years ago.

There was also a jade scroll containing detailed records of the spirit herbs that Enlightened Master Liao Ding had come across, their medicinal properties, environment and place of growth.

Lu Ping meticulously read the jade scroll like it was a treasure. Although this jade scroll didn’t contain an alchemist's heritage, it was a knowledgeable jade scroll that every alchemist would die to have.

Alchemists had to learn all kinds of information related to alchemy whenever and wherever they could. This was an important accumulation for alchemists to improve their skills, second only to an alchemists’ heritage.

Lu Ping didn’t have time to check the details in the jade scroll, so he copied the entire contents of the jade scroll into his own jade scroll.

In the Canyon of Sullied Gold, Lu Pinghad harvested a lot of unknown spirit herbs, including some rare thousand-year spirit herbs and nine 3,000-year spirit herbs. The only issue was that he had no way to identify these spirit herbs. But now, with Liao Ding’s jade scroll in his hands, this would no longer be a problem.

There was also a pestle in the interspatial bracelet. Lu Ping took it in his hands and felt a vague resistance coming from it.

He probed with his divine sense to inspect the pestle, only to find that it didn’t have Arcane Inscriptions; it was engraved with a more mysterious and complex inscription.

Lu Ping's heart thumped, could this be a mystic treasure?

Could this mysterious and complex inscription be Mystical Inscriptions, the hallmarks of mystic treasures that Chen Lian had told him about?

Lu Ping was so happy that he sent his divine sense into the inscription, and poured his arcane energy into the pestle. He was trying to leave his mark in this mystic treasure to claim ownership!

This was the first mystic treasure Lu Ping had ever obtained.

Suddenly, the pestle began to consume Lu Ping's arcane energy and divine sense like crazy, as if it was a bottomless pit that could not be filled.

Luckily, Lu Ping was able to control his arcane energy and divine sense.

He breathed a long sigh of relief and began to slowly wrap his divine sense around the two identical Mystical Inscriptions in the mystic treasure.

At the same time, he also used his arcane energy to penetrate into the mystic treasure layer by layer.

Doing so would allow the mystic treasure to become familiar with its master's arcane energy and aura, so most of its power could be used against the enemy.

This was what cultivators often referred to as mystic treasure refinement and mystic treasure recognition.

In this case, where the original owner, Liao Ding, had died, Lu Ping could refine the pestle mystic treasure very easily.

Even with Lu Ping's powerful arcane energy, refining the pestle consumed almost half of his arcane energy and divine sense.

In other words, Lu Ping could only use this mystic treasure twice before he ran out of arcane energy.

This was because Blood Condensation Realm cultivators’ arcane energy and divine sense were too weak.

When cultivators advanced into the Core Forging Realm, the arcane energy in their body would transcend into true energy, and their divine sense would transform into divine revelation. It would then be much easier for them to use mystic treasures.

Lu Ping found a hidden hideout and entered it, to recover his arcane energy and divine sense.

At the same time, he took out the last item in the interspatial bracelet.

Sadly, it was yet another jade scroll sealed with divine revelation. So, Lu Ping threw the jade scroll into his interspatial ring.

This also meant that he now had two jade scrolls sealed with divine revelation.

One was from the cave-dwelling of a Late Core Forging Realm Enlightened Master, from Fei Ling Island.

The other was this jade scroll from Enlightened Master Liao Ding, who had died in the Canyon of Sullied Gold.

Lu Ping could only patiently wait for the day he advanced to the Core Forging Realm before he could unseal these jade scrolls.

Together with the Amethyst Bee Royal Jelly, Amethyst Bee eggs, the rare thousand-year spirit herbs, the nine 3,000-year spirit herbs, and the Golden Nut Tree obtained in Canyon of Sullied Gold, Lu Ping had gained a lot.

This harvest could even make Core Forging Realm Enlightened Masters hunt after him.

However, these were not the most important gains, the most important was the Million Poisons Pulp and the heaven-and-earth spirit water which was definitely above the mystic-class.

The Million Poisons Pulp was related to Lu Ping’s future cultivation for his [Water Sky Curtain].

While the heaven-and-earth spirit water was the key item for Lu Ping to breakthrough after he advanced to the Core Forging Realm. Although, he still didn’t know what kind of heaven-and-earth spirit water it was.