Sage of Humanity

Name: Lu Yiye.

Status: Disciple of the Righteous Blood Sect.

Cultivation: 335 orifices.

Location: Spirit Stream battlefield.

Merit: 9,352 points.

Lu Ye hadn't used the battlefield marking to check his complete information in a long time. He was gravely injured, resting in a wooden hut, and aside from cultivating and reading books, there was nothing else he could do.

Looking at the column with his name, Lu Ye furrowed his brows, a wave of sorrow rising in his heart.

He clearly remembered his name as Lu Ye, but he didn't know when Heaven's Augury had started to recognize him as Lu Yiye.

The Spirit Stream Ranking had it so, and now even the information in the battlefield marking was the same!

It had been over two months since he advanced to the 8th Heaven, but he had only opened up 335 orifices. The speed of opening orifices wasn't fast, especially with the recent howling of the origin magnetic field and the ban on spirit force, which prevented him from operating the Bestial Gluttony Feast, significantly reducing the efficiency of his cultivation.

He was just twenty-five orifices away from the 9th Heaven, which wasn't far off!

His merits were not too abundant, having all been earned from killing enemies recently. This was despite having a large amount of spoils of war that hadn't been sold to Heaven's Augury treasure vault yet. If he had sold those, the number of his merit points would definitely have multiplied several times over.

The Spirit Stream battlefield was just like that; it was difficult for cultivators with insufficient strength to earn merit, but for someone like Lu Ye, gathering merit was simply too easy.

Especially since he was in a situation where he was opposed by the entire Ten Thousand Demons Ridge camp, stepping outside would attract a large group of people wanting to kill him, and if they couldn't kill him, they would be annihilated...

With Hua Ci's care every day, the injuries on his body recovered swiftly, though the condition of his right arm was not looking optimistic, still swollen immensely.

Reflecting on his battle with Lan Ziyi, Lu Ye was incredibly grateful that he had learned some special techniques from the saber skills insights of his third senior brother, Xiao Xinghe.

With those saber skills insights, the Single Flash Saber Technique became complete.

Furthermore, he had learned Repeated Slashing!

Whether Single Flash or Repeated Slashing, being both saber skills and techniques, used separately, the strain on Lu Ye wasn't too great. But if he used them together, the outcome would be as it was now. Six or seven days had passed, and his right arm still hadn't recovered, and that was with Hua Ci's care. Without it, Lu Ye estimated that his right arm would most likely have been ruined.

It was undeniable that Single Flash combined with Repeated Slashing was indeed powerfully excessive. Lan Ziyi's spirit robe defense was very strong; even Single Flash couldn't easily break through it, and it took three consecutive slashes by Lu Ye to finally penetrate it.

As powerful as it was, the side effects were severe, and the reason for such serious consequences was twofold: the last three slashes placed too much strain on Lu Ye himself, and the second reason was that Lu Ye wasn't skilled enough in executing them.

If he were more practiced, the side effects shouldn't have been so terrifying.

Over the past few days, besides taking elixir pills for cultivation, Lu Ye would meditate for two hours every day, breathing in harmony with the Boulder Mountain Saber to deepen the connection between man and blade, and also read the books he had brought from Madam Yun or contemplate the saber skills insights of his third senior brother.

Time flew by quickly.

In the wooden hut, Lu Ye and Amber were on high alert, while Hua Ci had gone to cultivate somewhere else.

With the current ban on nature's spiritual energy, the cultivation of all cultivators was greatly affected, except for Lu Ye and Hua Ci. The former's cultivation mainly relied on consuming elixir pills, while the latter fed on the poison mists of the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest.

One month had passed since the last blessing of Heaven's Augury, and the second blessing was about to arrive.

Having experienced it once before, Lu Ye was very much looking forward to this kind of blessing.

He didn't have to wait long. Heaven's Augury descended, and the scenery began to change.

By the time Lu Ye regained his senses, he had already appeared in the Heaven's Augury Pond, surrounded by rich spirit mist.

With limited time, he hastily set up a spirit energy gathering array in the Heaven's Augury Pond and constructed a small spirit energy gathering funnel within his own spiritual orifice. Read new chapters at My Virtual Library Empire

Yiyi flashed out from Amber's body, and they, a man, and a tiger, each found a suitable spot to devour the spirit mist heartily, feeling the mist's transformation and enhancement of their beings.

Lu Ye felt this especially keenly due to his unhealed injuries.

After the washing from the last Heavenly Reward, he had noticed that the spirit mist here had the effect of regulating the internal trauma accumulated in the body.

This time it was even more apparent. The wounds that hadn't fully healed rapidly mended, and his swollen right arm began to deflate and slowly returned to its normal state.

The cool and refreshing sensation was extremely pleasant.

The only regret for Lu Ye was that, even as the leader of the Spirit Stream Ranking, he could only stay in the Heaven's Augury Pond for one hour! The time was too short—given enough time, he might have been able to reap even more benefits.

But then he thought again that the effect of the spirit mist on cultivators was limited. Most cultivators could only enter three or four times before it lost its effectiveness, but he, currently at the 8th Heaven cultivation level, still had opportunities to enter.

Additionally, last time Lu Ye tried to collect some spirit mist to take with him, but it seemed to trigger something in Heaven's Augury, giving him the vague suspicion that the omnipresent Heaven's Augury might possess its own spiritual intelligence.

This made Lu Ye take note, unsure of how to test and confirm this suspicion.

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Lu Ye vaguely felt that if he could communicate with Heaven's Augury, perhaps he would be able to understand the true nature of the cultivation world!

Why are the Haotian Alliance and Ten Thousand Demons Ridge two major factions in opposition, and why can cultivators obtain merit by slaughtering those from different factions? What's the situation with the Heaven's Augury treasure vault, and what exactly is the connection between the Heaven's Augury Mercantile Union and Heaven's Augury?

Many cultivators, he believed, would like to have these questions answered.

The half an hour quickly passed, and by the time Heaven's Augury sent Lu Ye back to his wooden hut, his injuries had healed, and even his right arm had fully recovered.

This second baptism of bounty from Heaven's Augury had made Lu Ye's blood Qi and spirit more vigorous. He could feel that if he used the Single Flash Saber Technique in a Repeated Slashing state again, he should be able to execute the fourth strike, unlike previously, when he could only perform three.

There was no doubt that this was a marked increase in strength.

However, at the level of the Spirit Stream Realm, the only one who was worthy of making him use this kind of self-damaging saber technique was probably only Lan Ziyi.

Although the Nine Provinces cultivation world was full of talented individuals, there were still not so many monstrously talented figures in the world.

Two days later, the origin magnetic field subsided, and nature's spiritual energy began to flow again.

Lu Ye took a long breath.

As a cultivator, being imprisoned with one's spirit force unable to be used felt incredibly awful. During the roaring phase of the origin magnetic field, almost every cultivator would feel an inexplicable sense of crisis, because not only was their spirit force shackled, but even their senses were severely dampened. It was like suddenly becoming blind and deaf – nobody knew when danger might strike.

The first thing Lu Ye did was to reset the arrays inside and outside the wooden hut.

He had been constantly worried about one thing: the depletion of the Talent Tree's fuel.

Without the big arrays to isolate him, he had been living in the midst of the poison mist this whole time. Amber had always been with Hua Ci, and even Yiyi was confined within Amber's body, lacking freedom.

If the fuel stored in the Talent Tree was indeed exhausted, he would have to rely on Hua Ci to survive here.

Fortunately, the crisis was now averted.

He didn't set up the parent transmission array again because Lu Ye felt it was no longer needed.

He swore to himself that he would not leave the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest until he ascended to the 9th Heaven, even if the sky crumbled and the earth split outside!

The Three Saints Sanctuary had already been breached; thus, the forces of Ten Thousand Demons Ridge would have a hard time threatening him to show himself again.

With nature's spiritual energy available and the spirit force no longer shackled, the efficiency of cultivation greatly increased.

However, because Lu Ye spent a lot of time every day on saber skills cultivation, the pace of his orifice-opening maintained a steady state.

The saber skills insights from his third senior brother had been fully digested. What remained was practice and reflection, which required the precipitation of time and could not be rushed.

On the Spirit Stream Ranking, many familiar names had vanished, replaced by some he didn't recognize – a perfect illustration of the old adage: "As the old waves recede, new waves aspire to push beyond."

Lan Ziyi had climbed to the number two spot on the Spirit Stream Ranking but had not challenged Lu Ye again.

Her strength was indeed formidable, previously sufficient to compete with Lu Ye for the top spot, but her biggest reliance was her spirit robe. Since Lu Ye had the means to break through her spirit robe, she no longer qualified to compete with him.

As long as Lu Ye remained on the Spirit Stream Ranking, she could only be second to him!

He chatted casually with his Second Senior Sister Shui Yuan from time to time, leading an extraordinarily leisurely life.

Time passed, and before he knew it, more than a month had gone by.

After Lu Ye, accompanied by Yiyi and Amber, received the baptism of Heaven's Augury for the third time, he noticed a problem.

The spirit mist in the Heaven's Augury Pond had less of an enhancement effect on himself, and even less so on Yiyi and Amber, than the previous two times.

The first and second times, Lu Ye felt that his blood Qi and spirit had improved by at least ten percent.

This third time was less than half of the previous two.

He didn't know how much improvement he could expect the next time.

It seemed that the rumors were true that after receiving the baptism of Heaven's Augury three or four times, its effects on cultivators diminished.

Returning to his wooden hut, Lu Ye felt refreshed.

Examining his spiritual orifice, he had 359 orifices!

He was only one orifice away from advancing to the 9th Heaven!

When he first began cultivating, the sect master had told him that as a cultivator gets closer to completing their orifice-opening, the difficulty would increase. As a result, many cultivators were unable to fully open all 360 orifices at the Spirit Stream Realm level, depending on their aptitude and talent.

However, as long as one switched to cultivating a Heaven Rank technique and opened more than 240 orifices, they would qualify to advance to Cloud River.

Until now, Lu Ye had never experienced the increasing difficulty of orifice-opening mentioned by the sect master; it seemed that the difficulty of each orifice-opening was similar for him.

This was related to the purity of his spirit force. No matter how pure other cultivators' spirit force was, as long as they had consumed elixir pills, there would be pill poison accumulated. The higher the cultivation, the more severe the pill poison buildup. Although there were ways to remove pill poison, it's like injuries among cultivators – it might seem like the wounds had fully healed on the surface, but in reality, there are undetectable hidden damages.

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