Sage of Humanity

The young leader immediately sensed something was wrong. He didn't know what they had encountered this time, but it was clear that his group was afflicted with an extremely covert and severe poison. No one had realized it before the onset of symptoms.

This was truly petrifying.

His first reaction was to swiftly leave this place. However, as soon as the thought arose, he felt his spirit force dissipate and instinctively reached for the arm of Hua Ci, gasping, "Save..."

His eyes suddenly widened as he saw over a dozen points of red light flying in from all directions and landing on the back of the healing cultivator's hand.

He was all too familiar with this—it was a sign of earning merits after slaying enemies.

The dozens of people who died from the poison were all killed by this healing cultivator!

Disbelief flooded the young man's eyes as he stared at Hua Ci in horror, "You..."

He suddenly looked down, noticing his own hand. In his desperation, he had grasped the arm of the female healing cultivator, but now that hand was completely numb.

It dawned on him, recalling the words the female healing cultivator said before they entered... He really had entrusted his life to her now.

"Why?" the young man ground out, truly unable to comprehend why this female healing cultivator would strike so ruthlessly at them, people with whom she had no quarrels or grievances.

Hua Ci smiled gently, "I forgot to introduce myself, I am a disciple of the Righteous Blood Sect!"

The young man's pupils contracted sharply, his expression flickering between emotions, unsure whether to cry or laugh.

A Righteous Blood Sect disciple...

He had actually brought a healing cultivator from the Righteous Blood Sect into the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest to search for Lu Yiye's tracks; no wonder she took the opportunity to poison them.

But how could someone from the Righteous Blood Sect dare to appear so brazenly outside the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest? He was now full of regret for not verifying Hua Ci's allegiance before, but given the situation at the time, he didn't even think to check such information.

"I'll kill you!" As his consciousness blurred, the young man mustered all his strength to lift his palm and strike at Hua Ci.

Hua Ci merely drifted back a few steps, easily avoiding the blow.

Thump...

The young man's body fell heavily to the ground, with a red light flying out and landing on the back of Hua Ci's hand.

Looking around at the corpses strewn everywhere, Hua Ci couldn't help but feel a sense of unreality... She knew the inheritance she had received was powerful, but now it seemed even stronger than she had imagined.

Before, she only had various mushrooms as a means to deal with enemies, and those methods would work against low-level cultivators but become less effective as cultivators' strength increased. If cultivators were to fly with weapon control, her methods would hardly have any room to play.

However, after acquiring the complete inheritance, her methods of killing were no longer limited to planting mushrooms. She could poison someone whenever she desired.

The Ten Thousand Demons Ridge cultivators accompanying her had long been silently poisoned.

Looking down at her hands, Hua Ci could feel her heart pounding fiercely in her chest.

Who says, a healing cultivator, cannot, kill!

Dropping the protective spirit force, Hua Ci took deep breaths of the poisonous mist surrounding her, a mist that cultivators from the Core Circle avoided at all costs, yet to Hua Ci, it was even better than nature's spiritual energy, with a sweet taste filling her mouth...

She collected her emotions and started to gather the storage sacks scattered around, one by one.

Moments later, Hua Ci departed, leaving behind rapidly decaying corpses.

...

Deep inside the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest, Lu Ye, who was being carefully nursed back to health by Yiyi, suddenly looked down at the back of his hand, feeling something unusual from his battlefield marking.

He quickly checked it out.

It wasn't a message from someone but rather a challenge issued to him!

Lu Ye then remembered that it had been three days since he had climbed onto the Spirit Stream Ranking.

His Second Senior Sister had mentioned this when they communicated earlier.

A cultivator who had just landed on the Spirit Stream Ranking had a three-day grace period to adjust before they would be eligible to challenge those ranking higher and be challenged by those ranking lower.

In other words, a cultivator who had just joined the ranking would not be challenged, nor able to challenge anyone else, within those three days.

The range of challenge was within five ranking positions.

For example, since Lu Ye was now ranked thirty-three, the strongest person he could challenge was the one ranked twenty-seven. Correspondingly, among the cultivators ranked below him, those ranked from thirty-eight to thirty-four could challenge him while thirty-nine could not, as that would exceed the five-position limit.

The challenge of the Spirit Stream Ranking was a very interesting affair, since Heaven's Augury was involved and maintained it, there were many unbreakable rules.

This type of challenge didn't require a face-to-face confrontation, as most cultivators of the Spirit Stream Realm were active on the Spirit Stream battlefield, and some stayed within the Nine Provinces. If someone always hid in their home or in their sect headquarters, it would be impossible to challenge them in person.

The challenge could be initiated simply with the help of the battlefield marking, with Heaven's Augury operating behind the scenes. It was very convenient.

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Take the current moment for instance, even though he did not know who launched the challenge against Lu Ye through the battlefield marking, Lu Ye now had four hours to prepare himself, to adjust his condition to the best state to face his opponent.

When the time came, Heaven's Augury would transport Lu Ye and his challenger directly into a specially created small space, where the two sides would fight. Moreover, this type of small space offered many kinds of terrains to choose from. As others came to challenge Lu Ye, he would have the right to choose the terrain, selecting one that would give him an advantage.

If Lu Ye were to challenge others, then the right to choose would be in the hands of his opponents.

Of course, one could also refuse a challenge.

However, refusal was equivalent to admitting defeat, and the challenger would replace him in the Spirit Stream Ranking.

Lu Ye had only heard about such things and had never experienced them. He was somewhat surprised to suddenly receive a challenge.

However, after giving it some thought, it was probably because the Ten Thousand Demons Ridge had grown impatient with waiting. He had been hiding in the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest, out of reach of Ten Thousand Demons Ridge, and since he hadn't died of poison, they likely wanted to use the challenge to probe his condition. If possible, they would even prefer to use this method to kill him, so they would no longer need to risk delving deep into the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest.

After carefully examining the various pieces of information transmitted by the battlefield marking, Lu Ye found the situation to be just as Second Senior Sister had described. He had two choices: to accept the challenge or to decline.

After contemplating for a moment, Lu Ye made his decision and accepted the challenge. In the darkness, Heaven's Augury descended, and more information emerged from the battlefield marking.

Currently, he had four hours to prepare. Additionally, he could choose the terrain where he would fight his enemy.

Upon examining the terrains, a rough idea of each unique small space appeared in Lu Ye's mind, including their exclusive features, size, and so on...

There were about a hundred various small spaces in total, including ruins, wilderness, deserts, jungles, and seas.

The sizes of these spaces varied greatly, with the largest encompassing several miles in diameter and the smallest being only a few dozen yards...

Since this was his first time experiencing such an event, Lu Ye naturally wanted to gather as much intelligence as possible.

He tried to use the marking to probe for information about his challenger, but regrettably found nothing. For some unknown reason, Heaven's Augury offered an invisible protection to the challengers.

He then checked the Spirit Stream Ranking, glancing at the five individuals ranked from thirty-four to thirty-eight.

Among those five, three were from Ten Thousand Demons Ridge and two from the Haotian Alliance, all with the cultivation of the 9th Heaven. The one who challenged him was certainly one of those three from Ten Thousand Demons Ridge.

Yiyi looked on curiously, "Lu Ye, is someone looking for you?"

"No, someone on the Spirit Stream Ranking has issued me a challenge," Lu Ye responded casually.

"Someone is challenging you?" Yiyi was surprised, "Did you accept?"

"I accepted."

"But your current state..." Yiyi looked worried. Although three days had passed, the aftereffects of Lu Ye's use of the Fire Phoenix had not subsided, and he was very weakened. He probably couldn't even exert half of his usual strength.

"I'm not going to fight him; I'll just watch."

Accepting the challenger's request did not necessarily mean that he had to fight. Once the four-hour time limit was over, he would simply concede.

It was nothing more than being replaced by somebody else in the Spirit Stream Ranking.

Upon hearing Lu Ye say this, Yiyi was reassured.

Lu Ye then checked those ranked within the top ten in the Spirit Stream Ranking. These individuals were all from the 1st grade sects of the Nine Provinces. A brief scan of the entire ranking revealed that the top fifteen were almost exclusively from 1st grade sects. After the fifteenth place, cultivators from 2nd grade sects began to appear.

Only beyond the fiftieth place did cultivators from 3rd grade sects sparsely start to show up, and even then, they were not many.

Lu Ye saw Yooi Lianzhou's name, ranked seventh on the Spirit Stream Ranking, which was quite high.

The first rank belonged to an individual from Tianzhou's Daoxuan Sect named Szi Guang. He wondered if this person used to be ranked fourth.

With Yanh Xing, who was the second rank, dead, and both Feng Yuechan and Li Baxian having advanced to Cloud River, the three major thorns of the Spirit Stream Ranking were gone, and the fourth rank was automatically promoted to first rank. In truth, he should be thanking Lu Ye. If Lu Ye hadn't purchased two orifice repair pills for Li Baxian, it's unlikely that he would have ever achieved the first rank.

After understanding the various aspects of the Spirit Stream Ranking, Lu Ye retracted his focus and continued to recuperate.

He didn't waste any time while recuperating: he read a book he had brought from Madam Yun and continuously swallowed elixir pills for his cultivation.

Because there was a Protective Array in place, it was inconvenient to build a spirit energy gathering array or to lay out Spirit Energy Gathering Spirit Runes within his spiritual orifice. The flow of nature's spiritual energy, if too swift, would cause the poisons surrounding him to erode the array more severely, increasing the burden on the array.

Luckily, even just by swallowing elixir pills, his cultivation speed wasn't slow – in fact, it's fair to say that this has always been his main method of cultivation.

Soon enough, the four-hour time limit arrived.

Lu Ye connected his mind to the battlefield marking and forfeited the fight.

Looking at the Spirit Stream Ranking again, he had slipped from the thirty-third place to the thirty-seventh, with the Ten Thousand Demons Ridge cultivator having taken his place.

Lu Ye narrowed his eyes slightly, committing the name and background of this person to memory.

Before his focus returned, information about another challenge came through the marking.

Lu Ye accepted once more, then set it aside.

Meanwhile, news quickly spread throughout the Ten Thousand Demons Ridge camp: in the Spirit Stream Ranking challenge, Lu Yiye was avoiding combat, suggesting he might be in a dire situation!