Stepping on the Demoness to become the strongest

Chapter 373: Chapter 69 The Servant
 

Yan Yu swiftly flew up the branches, loudly chirping.

I won’t accept this! Chirp chirp, I won’t accept it!

What kind of idiotic, trash mysterious realm challenge is this? It doesn’t test combat ability, nor does it assess adaptability and wit, it actually only looks at cultivation aptitude?

Cultivation aptitude is worthless!

Having cursed the designers of the mysterious realm’s ancestors for many generations, Yan Yu could only continue to think about strategies to pass the challenge.

Firstly, why would one hear singing while cultivating?

The mysterious realm is not a game instance, and the design of its mechanisms must still follow the physical laws related to cultivation — otherwise, the designers could just write “here cultivation speed is multiplied by a thousand,” then squatting in the mysterious realm for cultivation would make one invincible.

Since one must absorb Spiritual Energy to be able to hear the singing, it goes to say that the singing must be related to the Spiritual Energy.

The Spiritual Energy in the mysterious realm comes from the outside, transported, filtered, and purified by wards, hence the starting point has to be the wards.

Yan Yu randomly picked a direction and arrived at the edge of the mysterious realm’s boundaries, at the mountain range, and as expected, encountered an air wall there.

Flying around the air wall in a complete circle, through the changing flows of Spiritual Energy, one could determine that there were sixteen main streams of Spiritual Energy being transported into the realm from the outside by wards.

Damn it, if only I could also learn array formation design, then I could set up wards around my home, collecting sixteen hundred main streams of Spiritual Energy into my house; who would need that Demonic Sect Enchantress then? No need! With a concentration of Spiritual Energy sixteen hundred times denser, I’m afraid even the tables in my house would sprout and gain sentience.

Unfortunately, even in Lu Country from my past life, this was akin to something far more complicated than quantum physics, with maybe less than thirty people nationwide even able to get a start in it, right?

Bear in mind, cultivators live for hundreds or thousands of years, and have enough time to slowly get into any field of study, but according to what Empress Yuanzhen disclosed in the past life, even among cultivators, those who could learn array formation were one in ten thousand, which shows the enormity of its difficulty.

Yan Yu was always a seize-every-moment kind of person, and naturally, had no time to waste on array formations. Although he set aside time to dabble in array formation knowledge in his past life, he only learned the basics of “how to break formations” rather than “how to set up formations.”

Based on the locations of the sixteen main streams of Spiritual Energy, one could deduce the convergence point of Spiritual Energy within the mysterious realm, which should be… darn, almost forgot all about topology, try to recall it quickly.

Got it, there is a river that runs across the center of the mysterious realm. Rivers denote low-lying terrain and in array formations belong to the dispersing rather than gathering of energy; this suggests that nearby there must be some “negative dregs” of the main streams of Spiritual Energy that require dispersing. From the direction of the river flow…

Yan Yu swiftly flew up high, using the direction of the river below to fly back and forth. Eventually, he found an area where the Spiritual Energy was especially dense, approximately only ten cubic meters in size.

Damn, that was not easy! If I weren’t particularly insensitive to Spiritual Energy, even passing through it might not have made me realize something was amiss — like finding a black dot on a white paper, which is much simpler than finding a black dot on grey paper.

Stopping at the convergence point of Spiritual Energy, Yan Yu flapped his wings non-stop to maintain his altitude while quickly circulating the Qi Refinement technique inside his body.

As expected, the sound was much clearer this time.

The volume went from the level of a breeze brushing the willow leaves to the level of a mosquito buzzing by one’s ear!

Victory!

Yan Yu quickly focused his will, fully concentrated, held his breath to listen quietly, and heard the singing voice chanting:

“How great the Seven Treasures Palace is, naturally giving birth to lotus blossoms. Its dazzling light opens through the night, hazily illuminating the divine abode. Looking up at the Mystical Reality Platform, the cloudy edifices towering impressively. Light flowing, shining the mystical void, the soldiers set out to vanquish thousands of demons…”

I can hear it now!

He wanted to cheer for his own intelligence.

What’s so impressive about a strong man lifting barbells? It’s truly remarkable when a child can lift the barbells, doing what others can’t, that is what defines the strongest in the world!

After hearing the last sentence of the song, Yan Yu suddenly felt the world spinning around him, a flash of white light, and then he appeared at the third challenge.

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Only to see here a blood-red sky and matching scarlet earth, it looked quite similar to the first trial, except the environment and climate were even more hostile.

Lava flowed like rivers, sparks fell like rain, and the sky was thick with dark clouds, with scorching winds assaulting the face from time to time; the temperature was conservatively estimated to be at least forty degrees Celsius.

Ordinary people standing here would be drenched in sweat in a mere moment. However, Yan Yu had already reached the Marrow Cleansing Stage, with improved foundational strength, so he only felt a slight discomfort and wasn’t too greatly affected.

His Divine Sense swept the surroundings, and he saw three streaks of sword light speeding by in the distance. They were black, purple, and gold, belonging to Zhao Yuanzhen, Chen Lingyun, and Ye Jun respectively, and were still shrouded in the light of the Xuan Guang Ruler.

Yan Yu immediately flew over on his sword to meet up with the ladies, asking,

“What happened?”

Zhao Yuanzhen appeared to be in a sorry state, with her arm limp from what appeared to be a fracture. She was channeling True Yuan into it to stabilize her injury; Chen Lingyun too looked disheveled, covered in dust and with messy hair, like a schoolgirl who had been bullied.

Ye Jun was the only one among the three whose complexion seemed relatively good. Upon seeing Yan Yu, she reacted with joy and quickly waved the Xuan Guang Ruler, trying to enshroud him in its protective light.

“Run! Escape with us!”

“Escape?” Yan Yu thought to himself in disdain, thinking what in the world could make me flee? Before the light from Ye Jun could reach him, a blinding white light suddenly streaked from afar, crossing a thousand miles in an instant and striking right before him!

Damn!

Yan Yu barely had time to place the Huang Tingjian horizontally in front of him. The word “Damn” had barely escaped his lips when he, along with his sword, was sent flying a great distance away.

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Meanwhile, Liu Longtao wore a glum expression as he followed Xie Ruoxi, continuing through the mountains.

After passing through Black Dog Ridge, they arrived at Golden Rooster Mountain. The creatures they faced were no longer ghostly wild dogs but ghastly figures of over one meter tall, like evil rooster ghosts with sharp beaks and talons as tough as iron. They were at least demonic creatures that had cultivated for two and a half years. Even a peck could cause flesh to rip and skulls to burst open.

Having regained her confidence and vigor after the previous battle with the Onmyoji, Xie Ruoxi led the way with her head held high, unleashing a Beacon of White Rainbow with every sighting of the rooster ghosts.

Her True Yuan was strong and the Heavenly Origin Sword was a heavy blade. Using rapid and straightforward sword techniques like the Beacon of White Rainbow perfectly aligned with the principle “A heavy sword without edge carries a mighty force.” She slaughtered the ghosts so fiercely that it was a scene of utter chaos, resulting in countless casualties.

Liu Longtao was secretly anxious; he was hoping for more of these rooster ghosts to gather so that he could perform a glamorous Taoism Method area cleanse and redeem his dignity in front of a national live streaming audience. However, with Xie Ruoxi killing them one by one, the ghosts couldn’t mass together to form a larger group.

It wouldn’t demonstrate his true strength to merely use the Ying Long Sword to aid in the slaughter. Lord Master had no choice but to discreetly transmit his voice,

“Don’t you think this method of killing is a bit inefficient?”

“Not at all,” said Xie Ruoxi. “I’m killing them quickly, one with each strike.”@@novelbin@@

“No,” Liu Longtao coaxed. “Killing them one by one? That’s so slow! It would be faster to wait until they gather and then use a Taoism Method to wipe them out neatly in one go.”

“But it also takes time for them to naturally come together, does it not?” Xie Ruoxi argued back. “With that time, if I kill them one by one, I might eliminate more of them.”

Liu Longtao hurriedly said,

“We can use a strategy to lure the enemy: we’ll circle around and draw them all in, then use a Taoism Method to deal with them in bulk. It will definitely be faster than your one-by-one approach.”

“That could work,” Xie Ruoxi agreed. “Go ahead and try luring the enemy.”

“Okay! Just you watch,” Liu Longtao was thrilled. “Here I go … huh?”

What’s going on here?

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