Chapter 1097: Immense Gains

In some unknown location in the Fifth Star Ring, there was a spirit mine where a huge lid covered the sky, cutting the place off from the outside. It also prevented any fluctuations inside from being detected.

The swamp inside was full of craters, which had been created during the battle between Xu Qing and the Imperial Sovereign. In addition, there were innumerable minor world bubbles that had been blasted open.

Xu Qing hovered in midair, his face pale, his body covered in bloody wounds. He wasn’t paying attention to any of that, though. He was looking at the decapitated body of the Imperial Sovereign. He quickly performed a one-handed incantation gesture, all while keeping his guard up in case something else happened. If anything even slightly unusual occurred, he would unleash another sword attack.

He kept watching until the Imperial Sovereign’s energy was gone and his corpse started fading away. Only when it was clear that he had been completely wiped out of existence did Xu Qing start to feel more at ease.

It had not been an easy fight. Perhaps it was because he was in a different star ring where things were different than where he had grown up. Regardless, Xu Qing was fairly certain after what he had experienced in this fight that the Imperial Sovereign he had just killed was stronger than the Imperial Sovereigns from the holy lands.

I can think of three reasons. First, the guy I just fought is special in some way. Two, the Fifth Star Ring is a much more dangerous place than I expected, and thus, all Imperial Sovereigns are more complicated than I’m used to. Three, the Imperial Sovereigns from the holy lands lived comfortable lives and didn’t have a lot of fighting experience.

Xu Qing really had no idea of precisely how different the Fifth Star Ring was, or what unknowns he would be facing. However, his eyes remained calm. And thanks to the fight, the baleful aura on him had grown stronger.

Hovering in midair, he looked around before fixing his gaze on the spot where the Imperial Sovereign’s corpse had disappeared. There was a bag of holding there.

Xu Qing grabbed it, then blurred into motion. When he came to a stop, he was at the spot where the shield had slammed into the ghost gate. It was a divine ability that had summoned the ghost gate, so after the Imperial Sovereign died, it crumbled into nothing. Looking around, he collected back his shield and then stepped over to where the incense stick was. The incense had only burned for a moment before his Grand Emperor’s shears severed its karma and extinguished it.

This thing seems pretty nice.

He waved his hand, and the incense stick flew over to him. He quickly erased any branding marks on it, then marked it for his own. Finally, he looked over at Little Shadow.

Little Shadow’s true form was still fighting it out with the crystalline treasure tree. Little Shadow had started out at a disadvantage. Without its gruish nature and regeneration abilities, it would long since have been killed. But after the Imperial Sovereign died, the crystalline treasure tree trembled and lost its supporting foundation. And that was when Little Shadow had started really fighting back. As rumbling booms echoed out, Xu Qing looked at the copy of himself within the treasure tree.

“You possess a bit of intelligence, don’t you?” he said coolly. “In that case... either you surrender or I wipe you out.”

In response to his words, Little Shadow trembled in excitement and transmitted some emotional fluctuations to lend some weight to Xu Qing’s threat.

The crystalline treasure tree shivered. The figure within it could sense how terrifying Xu Qing was, so after a moment of contemplation, it clasped hands and bowed to him. Then the figure disappeared. The crystalline treasure tree’s true form glittered with bright light a few times, then went dark. It made no further attacks.

Xu Qing reached out and made a grasping gesture. The treasure tree didn’t fight back. It flew toward Xu Qing and let him wipe out the old branding marks and claim it for his own.

Little Shadow returned to him looking extremely tired.

“You did very well,” Xu Qing said.

Little Shadow perked up. Praise from Xu Qing was incomparably meaningful to it, and it looked very happy. “Milord... I’m... useful....”

Xu Qing nodded. Then he looked at the crystalline treasure tree.

The tree was strong, especially when it came to how it could absorb the energy and divine abilities of enemies and use them to create a projection. Combined with the life-burning incense, which would force an opponent to use a similar technique, it could obviously count as a trump card.

I gained quite a bit from this battle. In addition to these two treasures....

He looked at the Imperial Sovereign’s bag of holding. Anticipation suddenly flickered within him.

Before checking the bag of holding, there’s a little matter I need to take care of.

He looked off into the distance and coolly said, “If you haven’t revealed yourself within three breaths of time, I’ll make sure you never do.”

His voice echoed through the spirit mine. After two breaths of time passed, the air above the swamp off in the distance rippled, and a figure emerged, changing from transparent to visible.

It was a young man with a very pale face. He looked terrified. Without any hesitation, he dropped to his knees and kowtowed to Xu Qing. Great beads of perspiration ran down his forehead, until it looked like he was raining sweat. He was the servant of the Imperial Sovereign that Xu Qing had just killed.

He was only in the Spirit Trove level. He had been very content to be the servant of an Imperial Sovereign. And at the beginning of the fight when Xu Qing had been seemingly hemmed in from all sides, he had been feeling quite derisive of him. But then things changed very quickly. The sight of the Imperial Sovereign dying left him stunned and unsure of what to do.

He didn’t dare to make a move, and had been hoping that the invisibility talisman the Imperial Sovereign had given him would keep him safe. He knew it was unlikely to keep him hidden, but had hoped that in the chaos of the moment, Xu Qing wouldn’t notice him. But the words spoken by Xu Qing caused him to tremble uncontrollably as he flopped down and kowtowed.

Xu Qing looked him up and down. He had no intention of killing him. In fact, after the fight that had just played out, Xu Qing got the feeling this person could come in handy. Looking away, he sent his divine will into the bag of holding. After scanning the insides, his eyebrows shot up. There was a lot of good stuff inside.

The glimmering spirit stones alone were enough to leave him feeling very pleased. There were enough to form a small mountain. It only took a moment for Xu Qing to realize that these spirit stones were different from the ones in Revered Ancient. Each and every one contained the power of natural laws. He took out one and examined it more closely.

Are these made by assimilating gods? Is that how they get the power of natural laws?

In addition, the bag of holding had something even more valuable than spirit stones. It had pieces of immortal jade. They formed something like a river of immortal energy that flowed within the bag of holding.

The sight of it left Xu Qing feeling stunned.

After examining it for a while, he realized that the immortal jade had even stronger natural laws than the spirit stones. In fact, the sensation he was getting reminded him a lot of the time he had first absorbed essence power. It was just weaker. But even that was shocking.

Given all this, it seems the Fifth Star Ring is definitely more complicated than I thought. And it seems this guy was really rich.

Over the years, Xu Qing had killed a lot of people and taken a lot of loot. This was the first time the contents of a bag of holding had been so shocking. His anticipation grew as his divine will went past the spirit stones and immortal jade and began to scan the other things inside the bag of holding.

Soon he found a huge collection of bottles that were full of medicinal pills. There were different levels of quality. Given the level of his dao of medicine, Xu Qing could assess many of them and tell how to use them. But some were outside of the realm of what he had studied.

Just this short inspection of the bag of holding left Xu Qing’s heart pounding. Next, he sent his divine will in further in the hopes of finding jade slips, ancient records, and magical treasures and items.

Sadly, although there were a few magical treasures, none were very powerful. That was understandable. Given the battle that had just played out, there was no doubt that the Imperial Sovereign would have pulled out any magical treasures that would have been useful. The incense and the crystalline treasure tree were examples.

However, there were still a handful of items that piqued his interest. For instance, he found a beast hide that glowed with black light, as well as a medallion. He pulled both of them out.

The beast hide was about the size of his palm, and with the black light it emitted were many symbols that flitted and flowed about as if they were alive. After examining the hide, he sent divine sense inside to examine the symbols. A moment later, his expression flickered.

“49 Taboo Formations!” he murmured.

There was no information about where the beast hide came from, but it did contain information about a collection of daoist magics called the 49 Taboo Formations!

Xu Qing immediately thought of the 33 Taboo Formations the Imperial Sovereign had used.

The 49 Taboo Formations could gather the power of the magical laws of heaven and earth to unleash a host of taboo formations. Some could unleash killing power, some could seal the enemy. All of them were extraordinary.

The downside was that every time you used it, you had to accumulate all of the formations in advance. The upside... was that to use it, all you had to do was say 49 words, and it would pop out in a way the enemy couldn’t defend against. As you gained enlightenment of the divine ability, and as you furthered your cultivation, the requirement of the number of spoken words reduced.

The dead Imperial Sovereign had cultivated the technique down to the level of 33. Based on the description in the beast hide, if you cultivated it to the highest level, you could unleash the taboo formations with only 2 spoken words. What was more, the speaking requirement wasn’t limited to the person using the technique. It would work even if the enemy spoke the words. The reason the final limit was two words was that the formations were split into yin and yang varieties, and the taboos were split into life and death varieties. They couldn’t be combined.

As Xu Qing held the beast hide, he thought back to how the Imperial Sovereign had used the taboo formations in their fight. All of a sudden, something occurred to him.

This is an interesting divine ability. It’s linked to certain words you speak. So what would happen if I cultivated the ability down to the point of two words? And what if it was my name? Then if someone said my name, and I exercised a thought, the taboo formations would burst out. That would make it... almost impossible to deal with.

After considering the matter, he decided that was within the realm of possibility. If he put the divine ability into his name, then it would really be difficult for anyone to defend against it. For example, if an enemy cursed him by name, then he could use the formations to defend himself. Or if someone who wished him harm asked who he was, he could say his name and instantly unleash the formations.

This would definitely be useful as a trump card!

His eyes shone brightly as he thought about the matter a bit more before putting the beast hide away. He definitely planned to put this technique into his cultivation routine in the future.

Next he looked at the medallion. It was a gruish medallion that pulsed with an intense, baleful aura. As it hovered in the air in front of him, it caused the surrounding temperature to drop. It was as bright red as fresh blood. The background of the medallion depicted an empty field, while in the foreground was an eye.

Looking at it, Xu Qing came to the conclusion that this was the most special item in the Imperial Sovereign’s bag of holding. He didn’t touch it. He just looked at it for a while. Then he suddenly turned to look at the young man prostrating off in the distance.

“Your life depends on how valuable you prove to be. Tell me what this thing is.”

The young man suppressed his dread to look up at the medallion. Voice trembling, he answered, “It’s an Immortal Capital permission medallion.”

Xu Qing’s expression remained unchanged. However, the words ‘Immortal Capital’ definitely attracted his attention. “Tell me more.”

The young man took a deep breath. Considering that this person had just killed his own lord and master, he didn’t dare to hide anything. This person obviously wanted more information about this star ring, and the young man didn’t dare to be too cautious in the moment. Therefore, he gave a very detailed and systematic explanation. In fact, in order to make sure his explanation of the Immortal Capital permission medallion made sense, he went into a history of the Fifth Star Ring itself.

Xu Qing listened carefully. He was glad to have more confirmation he was in the Fifth Star Ring, and that there was a place there called the Immortal Capital.

In the past, the Fifth Star Ring had been full of gods. But when the Immortal Capital rose up, they crushed the gods and wiped out everything related to them. In fact, under the leadership of the Immortal Paragon of the Immortal Capital, the entire starry sky was compacted, and the Immortal Capital came to exist in the very center of the Fifth Star Ring. From then on, the Immortal Capital was considered holy and divine.[1]

What was more, the entire universe surrounding the Immortal Capital was compacted, and it ceased to be something like a starry sky. Instead, it turned into land where cultivators could reside. As time passed, cultivators proliferated until the population reached an astonishing level. It was almost impossible to count how many clans and sects there were.

𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Because of that, all cultivators had the same dream. They all wanted to ascend to the Immortal Capital! Anyone who did would be like

the carp who jumped over the dragon gate

. Their identity and status would change forever after that.

The people from the Immortal Capital were the lords of the Fifth Star Ring. And only the Immortal Capital existed high above all else, isolated from the outside world.

“Everyone wants to ascend to the Immortal Capital,” the young man said. “And the only way to get there is by fighting for it!” When he spoke the words ‘Immortal Capital,’ his eyes shone with the light of longing. “There’s a reason I said you have to fight for it. Every so often, the Immortal Capital holds the Trial of the Hunt![2]

“In preparation, the Immortal Capital sends out 10,000 Immortal Capital permission medallions and lets the innumerable cultivators of the Fifth Star Ring fight over them. It’s quite a brutal affair, and the casualties involved are shocking. That’s because the people who hold the permission medallions only qualify to enter the competition. The final number who get to ascend differs each time. Sometimes it ends up being the top 1,000 in the competition, but other times only the first few hundred!

“Senior, what you’re holding right there is an Immortal Capital permission medallion!”

1. The characters I’m rendering as ‘Immortal Paragon’ come up in other Er Gen translations. Different translators have translated the term differently, which in the context seems fine, as they seem to me to mean different things in the different novels. In other words, this term does not seem to be a connection point of terminologies between the novels. If there turns out to be some connection later, I’ll explain with footnotes, but from what I can tell it’s a standalone term. More will come later about what it means. ☜

2. The characters I’m rendering Trial of the Hunt are basically exactly the same as those I rendered “the Great Hunt” back in the Firemoon Darkheaven part of the story. This does not seem to be intentional on the author’s part, and by that I mean, he does not intend for these two different events to be connected. I suppose it’s possible he’s trying to build a theme, but based on how things play out, I’m hesitant to believe that he intends them to be “the same thing.” To keep things clear, I’m giving this version a slightly different name. ☜