Sage of Humanity

Hovering in midair, Lu Ye hurriedly adjusted his body and awkwardly landed on the ground, his legs gave way, and with a thud, he knelt on one knee.

"Oh man!" A surprised cry rang out in front of him, "All was well, why such a grand gesture?"

Hearing the voice, Lu Ye's eyes twitched, and he looked up to find Hua Ci looking at him with a smile.

"Help me up, I can't stand..."

A moment later, settled in on the third floor of the wooden house, Lu Ye had fallen into a deep sleep while Hua Ci was tending to his injuries.

After several days of continuous battles without much rest, he was truly exhausted.

The little wooden house in Ten Thousand Poisons Forest had truly become a sanctuary. Outside, enemies surrounded him on all sides, wherever he went he could be chased and attacked by a group from Ten Thousand Demons Ridge, but only upon returning here could he truly relax.

Waking up from a good sleep, he heard faint snoring and seemed to feel something pressing on him. Lu Ye looked down to see Amber curled up and sleeping on his chest.

Lu Ye lifted his hand, grabbed Amber by the neck, and moved it to one side, sitting up with his thoughts drifting...

Daydreaming!

Alluring aromas wafted in from outside, as if someone was cooking something delicious; it was this smell that brought Lu Ye back to his senses and, enticed, his stomach growled.

After changing into a set of clean clothes and getting dressed neatly, he went downstairs from the third floor to the courtyard.

A new table was added to the yard, full of dishes, and next to it was a stove. Yiyi and Hua Ci were chatting and busy cooking.

Lu Ye crossed his arms and leaned quietly against the doorway, watching Yiyi add firewood and observing Hua Ci, who was bustling around the stove with an apron and headscarf, suddenly feeling that the human world was indeed a wonderful place!

"Lu Ye, you're awake?" Yiyi saw him and exclaimed with joy.

Hua Ci turned around, met Lu Ye's gaze, and gently smiled, "Hungry? Sit down and eat."

Lu Ye walked to the table and sat on a stool, picked up the chopsticks, and hesitated before the many dishes laid out in front of him...

In the end, he decided to start with a dish of mushrooms; at least he recognized the dish as mushrooms, the rest he couldn't identify at all.

The only thing he could be certain of was that everything on the table was from the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest!

This kind of meal was truly a luxury that not everyone could afford.

Tasting a mushroom, Lu Ye's eyebrows lifted in surprise at the unexpectedly delicious flavor; he looked inwardly at his own Root Spiritual Orifice, and as expected, a wide expanse of gray fog that had been burned appeared on the Talent Tree...

With his appetite fully aroused, Lu Ye stopped caring about the true identity of the ingredients and ate without reservation.

Hua Ci soon brought another dish to the table and sat across from him, eating slowly and methodically, occasionally picking some delicacies for Lu Ye.

Yiyi, unable to eat, stood behind Lu Ye, combing his disheveled hair.

After a satisfying meal, Lu Ye half-reclined in his chair, patting his belly and leisurely crossing his legs, fully content. Yiyi brought over tea and served him perfectly.

The fatigue of the past few days was swept away; it had to be said, the things Hua Ci made were a bit poisonous, but they were really nourishing.

During the first few days of recuperating here, he had to endure Hua Ci's various tonic concoctions until his nose bled.

Just having had a full meal and not feeling like moving just yet, Lu Ye said, "Yiyi, help me bring the storage sacks from upstairs."

This outing had seen the demise of quite a few people, and it brought back many storage sacks. There was no time to unlock them before, but now was a perfect moment to pass the time.

"Sure." Yiyi floated up to the third floor and quickly returned, bringing back a large pile of storage sacks.

And then came the most anticipated moment.

Yiyi loved watching Lu Ye open storage sacks because no one knew what was inside until they were opened, and sometimes certain sacks could bring unexpected surprises.

As each storage sack was opened, Yiyi took out all the items and sorted them into categories. Whenever she found something good in a sack, her face beamed with joy, but if a sack held few treasures, she'd mumble about the owner being a pauper!

Each person's level of wealth varies. For Lu Ye, except for the first few months of cultivation, he didn't have to worry about resources; he always had an endless supply of Spirit Stones and elixirs to consume.

But for most cultivators, life was just getting by.

Because most cultivators couldn't accumulate wealth through slaying enemies like Lu Ye could.

From the day a cultivator begins their cultivation, they are constantly consuming resources. Elixirs and Spirit Stones need no mentioning; at lower cultivation levels, these are always in short supply, and any surplus had to be spent on a few Spirit Talismans as life-saving items.

Upon reaching Level 7, one has to consider buying weapon control artifacts.

At Level 8, it becomes necessary to acquire Flying Spirit Artifacts.

At Level 9, one must buy Heaven Rank techniques...

Looking across the whole Spirit Stream Realm hierarchy, the inner circle cultivators are actually the poorest group because they need to buy so many different things.

Upon reaching the Core Circle, the situation improved slightly, but as their cultivation grew, so did the costs of cultivation, and many lived a life of hardship.

Besides the ordinary Spiritual Artifacts they used, the accumulation of elixir pills and Spirit Stones in their storage sacks actually wasn't much.

This was also why the Ten Thousand Demons Ridge cultivators were so keen on killing Lu Ye; on one hand, they truly felt the threat Lu Ye posed to the Ten Thousand Demons Ridge, and on the other hand, the benefits of killing Lu Ye were too great.

As long as they could kill Lu Ye, even if the reward was to be divided equally among all the participants, any Spirit Stream Realm cultivator would become overnight wealthy!

Everyone hustles for their own gain.

An hour later, after the storage sack was fully opened, Lu Ye left Yiyi to organize the contents and walked over to the nearby parent teleportation array.

This parent array, being set up with array banners and Lu Ye's current low level of cultivation, was not very stable, and after each use, it needed to be reset.

Looking at the parent array in front of him, Lu Ye felt a headache coming on; he didn't know if it was an issue with his array-setting technique or lack of experience, but the location of each teleportation always seemed to be a bit off.

During earlier trials, the deviation wasn't too far from the parent array.

This time, though, it was rather outrageous; he had teleported back from about 30 miles away and ended up about fifty yards from the parent array, a significant deviation, and he appeared mid-air!

Falling from a height of about thirty yards, he could handle, but what if it was a hundred yards or more?

If he teleported back from outside in poor condition, without even being able to control a Flying Spirit Artifact, wouldn't he fall to his death?

But at the moment, he really had no good solution; he could only try his best to set up the parent array and hope that next time the deviation would be less.

After a bustle of activity,

While Lu Ye was leisurely enjoying his time in the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest, the Lu Ye Extermination Alliance was endlessly busy. The area where Lu Ye last appeared had been turned upside down by a large number of cultivators, yet not a trace of him was found.

Lu Yiye just disappeared mysteriously like that!

In the third floor of the wooden hut, Lu Ye was swallowing elixir pills to recover his spirit force while activating the Talent Tree to devour Earth's Core Fire purchased from the Heaven's Augury treasure vault.

He bought forty portions of Earth's Core Fire this time, and he was not sure what spirit runes he would get from it, but he was still quite excited.

Looking at the Talent Tree now, many leaves were fiercely burning; setting aside the Fire Phoenix perched at the top of the tree that was vividly lifelike, Lu Ye had already mastered nearly 20th Dao of the ordinary spirit runes.

It must be acknowledged that many of these spirit runes were not suitable for battle, but those he could use were not few, which made his methods in the face of the enemy more flexible.

His ability to kill a 9th Heaven cultivator from a higher realm with thunderbolt tactics did not depend solely on his pure spirit force and profound foundations, but also on the various spirit runes he secretly activated during combat. These spirit runes made his combat methods unpredictable and hard to guard against.

Two days later, Lu Ye had fully recovered, and even his spiritual orifices had increased by two.

Now, he was only a few dozen orifices away from reaching 9th Heaven level. Once he reached that level, no one on the Spirit Stream battlefield should be able to threaten his safety.

He had this confidence.

Perhaps it was the continuous battles and ceaseless travels before, but suddenly having two days of rest made Lu Ye feel somewhat uncomfortable. Moreover, during this time, some rather unpleasant rumors reached his ears through the messages of a few good friends.

The Ten Thousand Demons Ridge had been unable to find him, probably growing impatient, and thus they spread quite a few unpleasant words, like saying Lu Yiye was cowardly and afraid of death, in an attempt to force him to show himself.

For the time being, Lu Ye had no intention of leaving the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest.

Thus, after ending the message exchange with a few friends, he thought for a moment, halted his own cultivation, and activated the battlefield marking, linking to the Spirit Stream Ranking!

Now, he had the qualifications to challenge the Spirit Stream Ranking!

After all, he had fallen from the 33rd position on the Spirit Stream Ranking.

He hadn't challenged it before, first because he wasn't in the mood, and second because he wanted to maximize the rewards from the Spirit Stream Ranking!

Being on the Spirit Stream Ranking did have its benefits!

As long as you stayed on the ranking for one month, Heaven's Augury would bestow some real benefits.

The Spirit Stream Ranking only held one hundred positions, so naturally, it wasn't easy to stay on it for a month, especially for those at the lower rankings; it was common to see the last few spots change hands several times in a single day.

Those closer to the top had a somewhat better situation; even if someone challenged them and they fell in rank, they still had the opportunity to climb back up.

What Lu Ye needed to do now was challenge the Spirit Stream Ranking and then secure a spot for a month!

His fourth senior brother told him that the benefits bestowed by Heaven's Augury were very useful; the higher one's ranking, the greater the benefits. Therefore, if there was a chance, one should try to surge up the Spirit Stream Ranking as much as possible and occupy the highest spot one could claim in the shortest time possible.

Lu Ye tested it and found that he could only challenge the last three spots; all three of these were 9th Heaven cultivators from different sects.

Both the 99th and 98th ranked individuals were from Ten Thousand Demons Ridge, while the one at rank 100 was from the Haotian Alliance.

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Of course, he intended to challenge those from Ten Thousand Demons Ridge, and he immediately activated the marking and issued a challenge to the one ranked 99th.