Chapter 118 – Foreign Battleground
The giant revealed a look of greed and laughed. “Good, good! The credit for this is going to be mine! Today’s harvest is pretty good. First, I got to see the hostility aura and then I saw the bead. Lin Yi, if you dare to fight with me, I’ll kill you!” With that, the giant came out of the cloud. His body was more than 100 feet tall. It gave off an aura that suppressed people.
Cracking sounds came from his body as he shrank to the size of a normal person. There was a mark of a hammer on his forehead.
Lin Yi shouted, “Tch! What do you mean!?”
The giant stared at Lin Yi and walked into the circle. After entering, he waved his hand and the circle turned back into two dragons. The portal disappeared without a trace. The sky immediately lit up again and the clouds disappeared.
Lin Yi’s expression was very ugly as he coldly looked at the still dumbfounded Teng Huayuan. He let out a cold laugh and then disappeared into the horizon.
Every cultivator outside the Jue Ming Valley remembered the youth that dared to fight with a Nascent Soul cultivator. The Foundation Establishment cultivator named Wang Lin was carved into everyone’s hearts.
Zhao’s right to enter the foreign battleground was ruthlessly taken away. It didn’t matter if there were any remaining tokens because the lord messenger that came to open the tunnel had already left to chase something. Why would he still remember something as small as this?
Lin Yi was filled with anger as he watched the item the cultivation union was looking for taken being away before his eyes. This feeling made him want to cough up blood.
Especially when he thought about how the bead had always been in Zhao and how he was the overseer of Zhao. If this got out, it would be too embarrassing.
Teng Huayuan’s face was sullen because he didn’t know if Wang Lin had died or not. He believed Wang Lin to be dead, but he couldn’t get rid of this feeling of terror in his heart.
The people outside the Jue Ming Valley gradually left and the story of Wang Lin spread with them. Eventually, every cultivator in Zhao knew of Wang Lin.
Punnan Zi took the disciples back to the Xuan Dao Sect. There was a female disciple behind him. That was Liu Mei. She watched everything and felt bitterness in her heart.
She didn’t know why, but she had a sliver of affection for Wang Lin. This sliver of affection not only didn’t disappear with time, but would resurface in her heart in the dead of night.
Wang Zhuo and Wang Hao also came to know about what had happened outside of the Jue Ming Valley. The hatred they had toward Wang Lin for the destruction he brought gradually disappeared.
The two of them knew that they didn’t have the guts to fight against Nascent Soul cultivators. But this didn’t mean that the two of them had given up on revenge. Wang Zhuo and Wang Hao were set on killing Teng Huayuan. It was their lifelong goal.
After Punnan Zi came back, he learned of the Wang family’s tragedy. Under Liu Mei’s plea, he accepted Wang Hao as a disciple.
Liu Mei knew that this was the only thing she could do to help Wang Lin, even if he will never know about it.
Teng Huayuan returned to Teng Family City with that feeling of terror and went into closed door cultivation. He swore that he wouldn’t come out until he has reached the late stage of Nascent Soul.
The entire country of Zhao seemed to suddenly quiet down.
The foreign battleground was filled with rifts in space and steel wind. At this very moment, there were thousands of people from dozens of rank 3 cultivation countries here to clean up the battleground.
The highest level cultivator here was at the late stage of Foundation Establishment. With this cultivation level, they could barely take a step without being in danger, so how could they complete the task of cleaning up the battleground?
In fact, when they entered the foreign battleground, the lord messenger that opened up the tunnel gave each of them a piece of jade. This jade protected them from the steel wind and will teleport them back to their own country after 50 years.
But against the mysterious spacial rifts that could appear anywhere, these jades were powerless.
The foreign battleground is still very dangerous for these Foundation Establishment cultivators, but if they are careful and lucky, they can still make it out alive.
Generally speaking, the survival rate of the foreign battleground is 30%.
Although it is not high, considering all of the materials and magic treasures they can find while cleaning up, it is not so bad. After all, cultivation is a heaven defying thing, so the higher the risk, the better the reward.
And anyone who returns safely from the foreign battleground will have a higher status within the sect. Their cultivation level will also be higher as cultivating in the foreign battleground is far faster than back at their sects.
After all, the foreign battleground has very dense spiritual energy. That and years of constant danger forces their cultivation level to rise rapidly.
Basically, every time the cleaning is completed, there will be people who have successfully formed their core. This is why so many Foundation Establishment cultivators risk their lives to come here.
At this moment, in the foreign battleground, at the 67th northeast angle, there was a youth in white digging at a body with a knife. If one looked closely, this person was cutting at the gap of the body armor on the body. He clearly wanted to get the body armor.
The body armor was already heavily damaged and covered in burn marks.. The chest portion of the armor had been completely shattered, revealing a fist-sized wound.
In addition to that, on the body of the giant, there was a very faint image of a hammer. If one didn’t look closely, they wouldn’t see it at all.
This youth’s name was Mai Liang. He was a cultivator of the War God Temple in the country of Hou Fen. He had already been at the foreign battleground for more than 30 years, so he was very experienced.
There needs to be a little explanation here. In the foreign battleground, one doesn’t age, but when they leave, they will rapidly age the years that they have been inside.
As he was digging, his expression suddenly changed and he immediately laid down. Just then, a ray of black light shot by and passed him.
The youth was stunned. He thought that he had seen a bead in the ray of black light, so he gave up on the armor and chased after the light.
He had been here for 30 years, but aside from his peers, he hadn’t seen another live person; however, he had seen several magic treasures that could fly on their own.
Although no one had managed to get their hands on one, Mai Liang had heard about them. These magic treasures with their own consciousness were very powerful.
Mai Liang used his fastest speed to chase after the bead. The more he chased, the more excited he got, especially because this area was kind of desolate. In the past year he had been here, he hadn’t met another peer. Thinking about that, his heart started beating even faster and he secretly thought, “My luck has finally arrived. If I could get that treasure and return to the sect, then junior apprentice sister would admire me. Then, I’ll give this treasure to the sect head and have him make junior apprentice sister form a cultivation pair with me. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
Mai Liang used every ounce of his strength to chase after the bead with that fantasy in his mind.
But that bead was simply too far. Mai Liang hadn’t chased very far before the gap grew. Mai Liang clenched his teeth and pulled out an item from his bag of holding. This item was a shuttle. It was red and released slivers of heat.
This was the biggest harvest he had while cleaning the foreign battleground. He normally wouldn’t dare to take it out because he was afraid it would be stolen. However, right now, the treasure was about to get away. He couldn’t be bothered with keeping it a secret, so he took out the shuttle and threw it forward.
The shuttle instantly grew to several times its normal size and with a hum, charged forward at a very quick speed. Mai Liang was clinging onto the shuttle from the moment it grew. He could only feel the wind hitting his body like punches. It was a long time before he could finally open his eyes and see that he had already closed quite a bit of the distance between him and the bead.
Filled with excitement, Mai Liang clinged onto the shuttle and chased after the bead. Time quickly passed. Although Mai Liang wasn’t getting left behind by the bead anymore, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t overtake or catch up to the bead. He could only maintain the current distance between him and the bead.
It wasn’t until three days later that Mai Liang noticed that he had entered a foreign part of the foreign battleground. He became nervous. It has to be said that besides the steel wind and spacial rifts, the most dangerous things in the foreign battleground were foreign places.
A foreign place had many dangers. A large amount of spacial rifts could suddenly appear and devour everything. Mai Liang had heard from the elder that the foreign battleground was simply too large and they were only cleaning a small portion of it. And just in that small portion, there were places that contained a lot of spacial rifts.
As he was hesitating, he suddenly noticed that rows of very dense white stripes appeared before him. Looking at the stripes, Mai Liang’s expression changed as he forced the shuttle to stop and quickly back up.
He was too familiar with these white stripes. When spacial rifts appear, they first appear as these white strips. Soon, the white stripes will fuse into a large spacial rift that will devour everything.
Mai Liang’s face was pale as he looked around. After realizing that there were only spacial rifts in front of him, he relaxed a bit. He wryly smiled and said, “Forget it. It’s not worth dying for a treasure that I don’t even know the effect of. I haven’t be able to do pair cultivation with junior apprentice sister yet. I don’t want to die needlessly here.”
Just at that moment, a small, white stripe appeared before the ray of black light. Without any hesitation, the ray of black light went into the spacial rift.
Mai Liang sighed and cursed. “Spacial rift, you swallowed yet another treasure. In the 30 years I been here, you have swallowed so many. If not 10,000, it has been 8,000. Why can’t you leave one for me?”
He had just finished cursing when he felt a chill as someone patted his shoulder.
He was instantly covered in cold sweat as he slowly turned around to see a middle aged man. The middle aged man’s expression was very ugly as he asked Mai Liang, “Little guy, did you see that black light?”
The Mai Liang was able to instantly see the hammer pattern on the middle aged man’s forehead. He took a deep breath because he had seen this pattern many times during his 30 years here. He had seen one just a few days ago.
He heard from some of the elders that this pattern was the symbol of the Giant Demon Clan from a rank 5 cultivation country. The members of the Giant Demon Clan were born with spiritual energy, so they had the best bodies for cultivation. They were also the only rank 5 cultivation country that contained only one sect in the entire country.
The people of the Giant Demon Clan could only freely change their bodies once they reach the Soul Transformation stage. Since this person looked like a normal person, he must be a Soul Transformation expert from the Giant Demon Sect.
Mai Liang’s throat was dry. He was too scared to lie, so he quickly said, “Senior, I saw that ray of black light. It went over there and was swallowed by a spacial rift.”
The middle aged man was the one who had chased after Wang Lin from Zhao. He chased it the entire way as quickly as possible, but the more he chased, the more shocked he became. That bead’s speed was the same as his. It was even able to dodge all of his interceptions. Not only that, but the bead’s speed gradually became even faster until it was able to lose him.
In addition to all of that, there were still the spacial rifts. Even though he wasn’t afraid of spacial rifts, it would be very annoying if he were to get caught in one. With his early stage Soul Transformation cultivation, he could only prevent himself from being sucked in. He could not move around as he wished.
With the obstruction of the spacial rifts, his speed became even slower. Even with teleportation, he could only prevent himself from getting left behind.
On the way, he found Mai Liang. He was shocked to find that Mai Liang was able to travel faster than him thanks to that shuttle.
After hearing Mai Liang’s story, his face was sullen and he was very angry. Although the foreign battleground was very large, it still had borders, but there were no borders inside the spacial rifts. Even if he were to go back home to get a late stage Soul Transformation cultivator to help him, it would still be like searching the ocean for a needle. There wasn’t much hope.
Thinking about that, he looked at Mai Liang. He reached out, took the shuttle from Mai Liang, and shouted, “This thing is now mine!”
With that, he moved and flew back toward where he came from without even looking at Mai Liang.
After that person left, Mai Liang wiped the sweat from his forehead, let out a breath, and quickly left the area.
Mai Liang didn’t know that that person was extremely famous in his rank 5 cultivation country. However, he was famous because he always had to take something or it would be a waste otherwise, like the time when he took Lin Yi’s light tower.