Chapter 1275 - Scarlet Firmament Stone

The ghost face shrieked, its cry bone-piercing as it cursed Liu Wuxie for his deceit. He had lured it close, only to strike the killing blow when it least expected it.

Liu Wuxie did not waver. The Soul Fire roared higher, swallowing the ghost face in blazing waves. Black miasma poured from the specter's body, and the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron drank it all without a ripple.

As the ghostly energy streamed into the cauldron, part of it flowed into the desolate world, while the Ghost Eye took in another part. The instant it absorbed that energy, subtle changes stirred within the Ghost Eye, and the night around Liu Wuxie sharpened, clearer than before.

Darkness did not hinder cultivators who relied on divine sense, but this felt different. For Liu Wuxie, the night itself brightened until it seemed no different from daytime.

"Could the Ghost Eye really be one of the Eight Divine Pupils—the Ghost Pupils?" he murmured.

If so, he had struck gold. The path ahead would still be long before Ghost Eye evolved into the Ghost Pupils, but the thought alone sent a thrill through him.

He wondered what other powers would surface once Ghost Eye completed its evolution, whether he could command darkness itself to bolster his combat strength. When the refinement ended, the ghostly energy had nudged his cultivation forward again, pushing him closer to the fifth-level Origin Conversion Realm.

Dawn broke, and no other ghosts came prowling. He drew in the array flags and gazed into the distance, where a golden pillar speared the sky.

"This is..." Shock tightened his face. That radiance did not belong to a mere artifact. It was a treasure, one that had already awakened and fled.

"The Scarlet Firmament Stone!" Realization flashed. This was a stone that had developed spiritual properties.

A spiritually awakened Scarlet Firmament Stone was priceless, capable of forging artifacts suited to the Void Realm.

The Scarlet Firmament Stone vanished into the mountains, and cultivators poured after it. Among the pursuers, he spotted abyssal devils, elves, and other races racing in the same direction.

"If I can seize the Scarlet Firmament Stone, I'll have the main material. Finding the auxiliary materials will be much easier," he said under his breath. Then he shot forward like a comet, streaking toward the stone's wake.

No one had claimed it. Anyone could fight for it now, and luck would decide the winner.

A chorus of rushing air rose ahead as a crowd formed before him, most of them at the seventh- to eighth-level Primal Origin Realm, with far fewer at the Origin Conversion Realm. In a contest of this scale, Origin Conversion Realm cultivators held no advantage.

The Scarlet Firmament Stone tore through the air, plunged into a forest shrouded in poisonous miasma, and disappeared.

Hundreds flooded into the trees. Those with lower cultivation halted at once, unwilling to take another step. The miasma pressed hard on humans, though abyssal devils and other races felt it far less.

Elves and undead ignored the poison entirely and charged straight in. Many from the demon clan carried poison in their very blood, and they too advanced without fear.

Liu Wuxie hesitated only a heartbeat before stepping into the poisonous haze.

"This place is perfect for cultivating the Great Poison Mythical Art," he said. He had made no progress with it—rare poisons eluded him, and ordinary toxins could not condense a poison core. To advance the Great Poison Mythical Art, he needed a rare poison as a catalyst.

The forest sprawled vast and dim, slowing his pace. Several elves drifted overhead, gliding through the miasma with practiced ease.

Elves differed slightly from humans. Slender and graceful, they cultivated magic rather than true essence and preferred to cast at range. Close combat was not their strength and rarely their choice.

They noticed him. One elf even turned to watch him. She wore elven garb that artisans had woven from special leaves; soft cat ears framed her human-like face, and her pearly skin glowed. The leaves wrapped her flawless form, a vision that lent her a quiet, otherworldly charm.

𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Liu Wuxie knew elves, yet one as captivating as this was rare. Elves often possessed natural beauty, though not always by human standards. This one, despite the cat ears, possessed features so delicate they redefined perfection. Human women might be called beautiful; for elves, delicate was the more accurate praise.

Her nose was small, her mouth petite, and her eyes large enough to etch her image into memory at a glance.

She studied him with open curiosity, as if wondering how someone with such a seemingly low cultivation had entered a forest like this.

Each elf held a strange weapon—spear-like but not quite a spear. When they flourished, a faint glow spread to wrap their bodies, keeping the poisonous miasma at bay. The cat-eared elf even seemed to help him, subtly dispersing the poison around him.

Liu Wuxie could only offer a wry smile. Their kindness was genuine, but they could not know he needed to devour the miasma to cultivate.

Among the myriad races, only the elven race and the giant clan kept close ties with humanity. Elves and humans occasionally intermarried. In the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain, many great clans maintained strong relations with elves, so it was no surprise that an elf would aid a human.

Acknowledging their goodwill, Liu Wuxie let the moment pass with a faint smile and said nothing more.

The elves pressed on in search of the Scarlet Firmament Stone. The forest stretched so wide that the crowd fanned out, breaking apart in waves. The stone had sunk into the ground; no one could tell where it hid.

"The Scarlet Firmament Stone is nearby. Split up and search!" A shout from a high-level Primal Origin Realm cultivator rolled across the trees, eager to find the treasure first.

Keeping to the ground, Liu Wuxie lost sight of the cat-eared elf. Swamps forced detours, and soon his path diverged from the elves'.

Poison essence streamed into his body, expanding the poison realm within the desolate world. In return, that essence fed back into him, steadily refining the Poison Dao Art.

"If only I could find a Poison Seed. With one, I could master the Great Poison Mythical Art," he said. A forest of this scale almost guaranteed the existence of a Poison Seed.

He also needed a way to seize the Scarlet Firmament Stone. Too much depended on it; his performance in this event, and the fates of countless lives on the True Martial Continent.

He activated Ghost Eye and swept his senses outward. After refining the ghost face the previous night, his vision now stretched to a radius of three hundred meters.

"This is strange. Why do these trees look withered?" he wondered.

Trees in a poisonous forest should thrive on poison, not shrivel. Only one explanation fit: something else was siphoning the poison away, leaving this stretch of forest drained.

"We found the Scarlet Firmament Stone!" The voice was not loud, yet it carried a great distance.

Even from thousands of meters away, Liu Wuxie heard it clearly. At his pace, he would arrive in about five minutes.

The cry snapped every gaze in that direction. In minutes, more than three hundred cultivators surged toward the call, a tide of motion cutting through the mist.

He even picked out figures from the undead clan and the faceless clan among those entering the forest.

Moments later, the trees opened up. The miasma thinned and vanished, revealing a black lake, and above that ink-dark mirror hovered the Scarlet Firmament Stone.

The surface boiled with bubbles. Even at a glance, anyone could tell the poison within was terrifying. A single touch would kill even Void Realm cultivators. This was no ordinary toxin, but a concentrated form of nether poison.

Rumors claimed that the nether clan lived underground and survived on poison. Where the poison essence grew dense enough, it formed a lake as black as night.

This one stretched wide, roughly a thousand meters across, and no one dared approach rashly.

More than three hundred cultivators stopped about five meters from the shore. Any closer, and the lake's poison essence would burrow straight into their bodies.

Primal Origin Realm experts could fly, yet none risked it. The Scarlet Firmament Stone hung right over the black water; reaching for it would almost certainly mean contact with the nether poison essence.

If that essence entered an ordinary cultivator, it would tear down the body at once, freeze true essence where it flowed, and drop the victim into the lake, where the condensed toxin would dissolve them.

"With nether poison essence this dense, a Poison Seed must have formed below," Liu Wuxie muttered as he drew near. Now he understood the withered trees; the lake had siphoned the forest's poison to nourish the seed.

Every race that had ventured into the forest now gathered at the lakeshore, gazes locked on the Scarlet Firmament Stone, hands itching to act. With this stone, countless problems would vanish; no one would need to hunt for a core material again.

Someone tried to guide a sword out over the lake to snatch the stone, but the blade softened before it reached the center and sloughed into black liquid iron.

"What terrifying poison essence." Even high-level Primal Origin Realm cultivators paled, unwilling to advance a single step. Hopes that had burned moments ago, especially among lower-level Primal Origin Realm cultivators, dwindled to ash.

"You—go test the poison essence." A high-level Primal Origin Realm cultivator seized a ninth-level Origin Conversion Realm cultivator, intending to use him as a probe for the lake.

"You're pushing it!" the Origin Conversion Realm cultivator roared. He knew that a single misstep meant death. He turned without hesitation and bolted, unwilling to waste even a heartbeat.

"Run? Stay!" The high-level Primal Origin Realm cultivator, Li Dayuan, snatched him back with a sweep of his hand and hurled him toward the shore.

Using another human life as a test spoke volumes about his cruelty, but no one intervened. They wanted to know the lake's actual lethality as severely as he did. Weapons were not people; they could not reveal what the poison would do to a living body. A human trial was the simplest way to learn the truth.

"Senior Brother Li, I curse you to die a horrible death!" the ninth-level Origin Conversion Realm cultivator spat.

Li Dayuan only smiled, thin and vicious.

Sword aura flared, and the ninth-level Origin Conversion Realm cultivator stood a single step from the black lake.