Chapter 175 - The Power of Astral Reaching Realm
The Ocean Beast moved incredibly fast, far beyond one’s imagination. Within a mere twenty-four hours, the ship had sailed over ten thousand miles away from the River Bank City. This ship was nearly twice faster than the half-demonic beast horse – Ghost Eyes Jade Lion.
Only a broad river like this Wild Goose Falling River could allow the Ocean Beast to move at such a high speed, if this river changed into a smaller one, the ship would be destroyed and everybody on it would’ve died long ago.
Perhaps the designer of this ship was concerned about the fierce wind caused by the high speed during sailing that might throw passengers off the deck, so this ship was crafted into a smooth fusiform, and two wooden chambers were set in the prow which shrouded a small half of the ship’s bow, distributing the wind that pushed against the ship, and protecting the deck area from being blown by the wind.
Creak!
Pushing the cabin door open, Ye Chen saw the sharp bow of this ship cut through a cyclone and swiftly moving across it. The lightning-fast speed and great power of this ship actually gave Ye Chen goosebumps.
“This is indeed a masterpiece crafted by the Puppet Martial School, I’ve never thought that a ship can be so unimaginably magical.” Standing beside Ye Chen, a middle-aged man with a curly beard, who was an advanced Clasping Yuan Realm martial artist leaned against the wall and praised.
Ye Chen asked confusingly, “Is this ship crafted by the Puppet Martial School as well?” He had seen quite a lot works of the Puppet Martial School before, such as human shaped wooden puppets and puppet crows. Even as a space and time traveller, Ye Chen was deeply shocked by those lively and exquisite works.
“Royalties of the Black Dragon Empire have once discovered the remains of a Puppet Martial School’s branch stronghold, and found many valuable works in it. Ocean Beasts were part of them. It’s said that the South Chamber of Commerce had purchased five Ocean Beasts from the Black Dragon Empire in total, each costing them more than five hundred million gold; in addition to this price, the South Chamber of Commerce has to pay a huge amount of magic stones yearly for these ships. In other words, the chamber of commerce is merely renting these ships.” The middle-aged man with a curly beard looked like an ordinary man wearing a grey outfit, and seemed to be around forty-five years old.
Ye Chen’s eye bulged and said, “They have already paid five hundred million gold for a ship, but still need to give magic stones as yearly contribution, isn’t the empire way too greedy?!”
The middle-aged man grinned and responded, “They only have to contribute magic stones in the first ten years. Besides, you can just do a rough calculation, every time this ship carries a batch of passengers across this river, they can make millions of gold from those passengers, and every year, they can transport ten batches of passengers, at least; moreover, other than passengers, this ship can also transport other goods. In fact, the most important function of Ocean Beasts was to ship cargos for the chamber of commerce. After all, every single trip made by this ship means a distance of over hundreds of thousands of miles, is there any other kind of ship that can do the same thing?”
Ye Chen agreed with him. The South Chamber of Commerce was an influential chamber of commerce, commercial activities were surely the most important thing to them. Shipment of cargos would be much easier and convenient with Ocean Beasts, and with these ships, an amazing amount of manpower and material resources, as well as time, would be saved.
Ye Chen and this middle-aged man didn’t know each other too well, therefore, their chat had only carried on for a short while.
Standing beside the fencing around the deck, Ye Chen saw an air barrier three feet away from him. That was formed from highly compressed air. If a Mortal Realm martial artist had taken a step forward and bumped into this air barrier, he or she would definitely be sent to the air; even Condensing Reality Realm martial artists would have to spend all their efforts in order to stabilise their bodies in this air barrier.
When Ye Chen looked through the air barrier, he saw the seemingly boundless water.
As one of the three largest rivers in the South Zhuo Region, this Wild Goose Falling River was six-hundred and fifty thousand miles long; its main body flowed across the Windy Nation, Thousand Thread Nation, Grey Mystery Nation and the other thirteen nations; countless tributaries of this river covered almost every corner of the fifteen nations.
As an enormous river, Wild Goose Falling River was merely the smallest one amongst the three largest rivers. The largest one was called Rosefinch River, not only did it run through a large half of the South Zhuo Region, but also reached other regions such as the Misty Snow Region and the Cloud Billows Region; in fact, the Wild Goose Falling River could be counted as one of the tributaries of the Rosefinch River. You probably couldn’t even imagine how vast the Rosefinch River exactly was, it was even broader than the oceans of Ye Chen’s original world.
“One day, when I tread across all mountains and rivers then finally reach the top of this martial world, what will this world look like to me?” Facing the rapidly flowing, boundless river, Ye Chen clenched his fists and thought of his goal.
“Everyone, dinner is ready, please come in!”
The cabin’s door was pushed open again, and a member of the South Chamber of Commerce leaned his head out from the door and said to the others.
“Good, I’m just feeling a bit hungry.”
“I heard that food on the Ocean Beasts are marvelous! I wonder what we will have for dinner…”
Hearing people’s discussion, Ye Chen smiled and walked in as well.
After dinner, the day ended.
Ye Chen went back to his own cabin.
This Ocean Beast had four floors in total, the bottom floor was a cargo storage space, the second floor was the living quarters of the members of the South Chamber of Commerce, while powerful martial artists working for the South Chamber of Commerce and the other passengers stayed at the third and fourth floors. Ye Chen stayed in room number five at the fourth floor. It was a quite big room, having an area around twenty to thirty square meters.
As Ye Chen sat on the bed and crossed his legs, he began his daily cultivation.
……
Ten days had soon passed.
This Ocean Beast had already travelled across a few nations, and had now entered the territory of a mid-ranked nation, the Rising Sun Nation.
“From now on, all kinds of powerful martial artists might show up anytime, you people should be prepared for that; do not provoke any of them.” The captain of this Ocean Beast, a middle-aged peak-level Clasping Yuan Realm martial artist, who had a cold face, walked onto the deck and warned all the passengers.
A young man, who was protected by four Clasping Yuan Realm martial artists and had seemingly come from a noble family, grinned then said, “Captain Xu, you’re a peak-level Clasping Yuan Realm martial artist and one of those powerful martial artists hired by the South Chamber of Commerce, you must have met so many legendary people. Can you please tell us something about those powerful martial artists? We have nothing to do anyway.”
The captain glanced at the young man. This young man named Zhao Kang, the third prince of the Thousand Thread Nation who especially loved to make friends with powerful martial artists. Many influential martial artists were his friends, however, in the eyes of those South Chamber of Commerce’s people, those so-called influential martial artists were just a bunch of average people, and were only slightly famous within the Thousand Thread Nation.
“Since our Prince is interested, I can indeed share some of my experiences.” He travelled to the Thousand Thread Nation a lot, therefore, leaving a good impression to Zhao Kang was certainly beneficial. After all, not every issue could be easily solved by brute force, otherwise, there wouldn’t be so many forces that had tangled interests and problems in this world.
Hearing him, several others turned their eyes to the captain as well and walked over, all showing great interest.
“There’s not much to say regarding the Clasping Yuan Realm. A martial artist in this realm can’t be counted yet as one who is truly powerful, only people above this realm deserve the word ‘powerful’. We all know that, when a martial artist converts all of his or her Zhen Qi into Zhen Yuan, this martial artist will be able to step into the Astral Reaching Realm, and gain great power that can even allow him or her to travel across the heaven and earth. However, not everyone knows about the other abilities of Astral Reaching Realm martial artists, that I am about to mention.”
Clearing his throat, the captain continued, “The first ability possessed by Astral Reaching Realm martial artists is the ability of Zhen Yuan solidification. Unlike Zhen Qi solidification, the results of Zhen Yuan solidification are much more powerful and solid. For example, if an Astral Reaching Realm martial artist lost his sword, he could easily materialize one using his Zhen Yuan; the power of a Zhen Yuan sword is only slightly weaker than a low-ranked great sword, but far more powerful than ordinary weapons. Without a doubt, Astral Reaching Realm martial artists’ Zhen Yuan could transform into other objects as well, like blades, spears and any other kind of weapons, I think you all have understood it. The second ability of Astral Reaching Realm martial artists is being able to grow the Zhen Yuan flame by the friction of their Zhen Yuan; the Zhen Yuan flame can easily melt some especially tough kinds of metals and forge them into weapons. You may feel that this ability sounds nothing special, but you have to know that, when some rare and precious kinds of metals has been forged into weapons, those weapons can be extra solid and nearly indestructible, even no worse than low-ranked great weapons as only a few people in this world know about how to actually forge a low-ranked great weapon. Even if those Astral Reaching Realm martial artists don’t need those weapons, they could just give them to their families, friends and children. Apart from forging weapons, the most important and powerful usage of the Zheng Yuan flame is that, it is able to burn an Astral Reaching Realm martial artist’s Zhen Yuan and generate a volcanically great power that can allow the Astral Reaching Realm martial artist to launch a destructive, final attack. However, there’s a great side effect though; if lucky, this will injure the Astral Reaching Realm martial artist from the inside, to the point that he or she needs to spend a very long time on recovery, and if unlucky, if the Zhen Yuan have burned too fast and violent, that Astral Reaching Realm martial artist might accidentally burn himself into ashes.”
“So terrifying!”
Someone gasped in deep shock.
Ye Chen stood slightly far away from the captain, yet he had understood every single word spoken by the captain. ‘Burn the Zhen Yuan? This sounds a bit similar to the Sky Cloud Martial School’s [Burning Sacrifice], the only difference between these two techniques is that, what will be burnt when a martial artist uses the technique is his or her Zhen Qi or inner Qi, but the Zhen Yuan flame will burn the martial artist’s Zhen Yuan. The difference between Zhen Yuan and Zhen Qi is huge, therefore, the power of [Burning Sacrifice] can’t even compare with the power of the attack launched by an Astral Reaching Realm martial artist by burning his or her Zhen Yuan. In this way, the fight between Astral Reaching Realm martial artists can be flexible and unpredictable. Those who are more powerful might not necessarily defeat others who are slightly weaker than them, as once the slightly weaker side became berserk, he or she might decide to burn his or her Zhen Yuan. As a consequence of that, the two of them might perish together.’ Thought Ye Chen.
“No wonder people say that Astral Reaching Realm martial artists are truly powerful. They’re not only powerful, but can also boost their power up with so many methods. Without an overpowering advantage, an Astral Reaching Realm martial artist will never easily start a fight against another Astral Reaching Realm martial artist. Just like how Thunder Freer is not afraid of the Top Elder of the Purple Sun Martial School who is more powerful than him, at all.”
Thinking of this, Ye Chen was also intrigued by the captain’s speech.
The captain continued, “According to the different qualities of Zhen Yuan, the power generated by burning the Zhen Yuan can be in different scales. For example, martial artists who possess fire powers, can burn their Zhen Yuan very easily and smoothly, while martial artists with water powers will have to spend much more effort on this. Nevertheless, to martial artists with water powers, the side effect of burning Zhen Yuan is much smaller than it is to the martial artists with fire powers; which means, after launching an attack by burning their Zhen Yuan, martial artists with water powers can recover much faster than martial artists with fire powers. To Astral Reaching Realm martial artists, there are no definite advantages and disadvantages, and every single one of them has their own specialties.”
“Hm?”
The Captain abruptly stopped talking then turned his head, looking behind.
Seeing the captain’s actions, the others turned around as well.
“An Astral Reaching Realm martial artist! He has wings!” Ye Chen was the first one who clearly saw the arriving person, as his awareness was much greater than the captain’s.
The moving speed of this Ocean Beast was lightning-fast that it could travel seventy to eighty meters in every blink of an eye; but at this moment, a human silhouette had been flying over at a tremendous speed. Wherever he passed through, all cyclones and violent airwaves had been shattered into oblivion. Because the person was flying at a low altitude, he had raised a series of enormous surging waves from the Wide Goose Falling River. A huge, deep chasm appeared wherever he passed through as hundreds of meters high river water was intensely propelled outwards due to his momentum
Just this sight wasn’t astonishing enough as this man had a gigantic pair of wings on his back that was around twenty to thirty meters wide, seemingly able to cover the whole ship as he flew over.
Whoosh!
That man’s wings suddenly shook while he was still around a mile away from the ship. In the following moment, he showed up on the deck and a fierce gale was brought by him, entirely shaking the Ocean Beast, seemingly able to turn it over.
“Ah, you are Black Crow Taoist Priest. My humble name is Xu Changjian, one of the South Chamber of Commerce’s attendants.” The captain cupped his hands and bowed deeply to that winged man, while speaking politely.
Everyone else had finally seen the man’s face clearly after he neatly landed on deck. It was a scrawny middle-aged man wearing a black outfit; by now, the pair of wings which seemed ethereal, had folded behind his body. Soon, the pair of wings completely retracted back into his body, to the point that one could not even find any trace of it on his back.
The scrawny middle-aged man laughed aloud and said, “I’ve been flying for over a hundred thousand miles, now feeling a little bit tired. Is it okay if I take a break here on your Ocean Beast?”
“Of course! It’s our greatest pleasure!”
“Haha, very nice of you.”