Chapter 36: Clearing Rooms (1)

In the blink of an eye, a month had gone by.

In that period of time, the five chief stewards had come to find Su Chen a few times, hoping to lower the ransom price or increase the time they had to come up with the money.

Su Chen could delay the due date, but the money had to be exact.. After all, he wasn’t busy and could wait.

Su Chen was performing experiments on Bai Ou today like any other day.

After feeding him a Bloodline Stimulation Medicine, Bai Ou’s bloodline began to boil.

Su Chen watched the Origin Energy in Bai Ou’s body flow as he tried to mimic the movement.

Su Chen’s body suddenly trembled. A strange hum suddenly began to sound from his body.

This hum began to pulsate within his body, giving those who heard a strange, indescribable sensation.

The glow in Su Chen’s eyes began to fade and was immediately replaced by excitement.

He succeeded!

He had finally succeeded!

In that instant, he had finally reached a breakthrough in the Empty Cry Thunder Spirit Bloodline. It became another bloodline that he had broken through, just like the Soaring Snake Bloodline.

Unlike the Soaring Snake Bloodline, his breakthrough this time didn’t depend on an Origin Substance containing herb. The Empty Cry Thunder Spirit was supernatural and didn’t eat physical food. It nourished itself solely from absorbing lightning essence.

Thus, Chen had been unable to find an appropriate Origin Substance, but he had seen the way it affected the human body. Thus, he was able to successfully mimic it.

The low hum just then was the result of his successful mimicry. Although it couldn’t injure anyone, that low hum was the foundation for the Bai Clan’s thunder-type Origin Skills. The Empty Cry Thunder Explosion, for instance, was built upon that low hum. Now that he controlled it, Su Chen’s Thunder Blade had become immensely more powerful, reaching the mixed bloodline limit.

Although Bai Ou was from a Bloodline Nobility Clan, his bloodline had only been awakened to a limited extent, so his true combat prowess was only at the upper limit of someone with a mixed bloodline. This meant that Su Chen could use those Origin Skills about as well as Bai Ou could now.

A moment later, Su Chen raised his hand and chopped through the air. The sound of thunder exploded forth right next to Bai Ou’s ear.

Bai Ou’s consciousness was buffeted violently. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he passed out.

“Not bad!” Su Chen was extremely satisfied.

Although the pure strength of the Thunder Blade was not at the level of the Erupting Firebird, it could be used in rapid succession and it also affected an opponent’s consciousness. When used in rapid succession, its power was not lower than the Erupting Firebird.

That was also to say that, following the Erupting Firebird and Clear Wind Net, Su Chen had obtained a third Origin Skill comparable to Bloodline Origin Skills.

Of course, they were only comparable to Origin Skills from common high-tier Demonic Beasts.

The extent to which one has awakened a bloodline, as well as the tier and quality of that bloodline, determined the power of a Bloodline Origin Skill.

After becoming Shi Kaihuang’s disciple, Su Chen had a clearer understanding of the power that individuals with bloodlines possessed. He knew that people like Bai Ou or even Ji Hanyan were far from being the strongest individuals on this continent. Those whose bloodlines were truly at the very peak were unimaginably powerful.

The path towards breaking through bloodline restrictions was both weighty and long!

Even so, strengthening the Thunder Blade was enough to make Su Chen very happy.

“Hmm, if I go to the Hundred Refinements Pavilion right now, I wonder how I’ll do?” Su Chen wondered aloud.

Now that his strength had increased, he naturally wanted to test it out. Su Chen couldn’t help but think of going to the Hundred Refinements Pavilion.

Why not go and test out his current strength?

The same skinny student from before was still standing at the front desk of the Hundred Refinements Pavilion.

That student still remembered Su Chen. Upon seeing him draw closer, he instantly became much more enthusiastic.

Su Chen didn’t waste too much time with him. He went straight for the fourth door.

In the past half year, although he had been running experiments the entire time, he had still done the basics when it came to cultivation. The only thing he had completely given up on was raising his cultivation base. He was still in the fifth layer of Qi Drawing with fifty two Yellow Stars. It had not increased at all, but he controlled many more Origin Skills and was also much more familiar with all of them.

After entering the fourth door, Su Chen reappeared in a barren desert again.

He had yet to stabilize himself when four low-tier Vicious Beasts suddenly charged at him.

The fourth room pitted Su Chen against four low-tier Vicious Beasts. Although he knew it was just an illusion, the ferocious aura they gave off was still quite frightening.

If it had been before, Su Chen probably would’ve made a strategic retreat in the face of four low-tier Vicious Beasts. However, he was not worried at all this time.

He began to wave the blade in his hand, stabbing out fourteen times. The blade of light flashed brightly, and the sound of thunder exploded forth, forming a massive wave of sound that surged forwards. The low-tier Vicious Beast in the lead howled as it was sent flying by the violent waves of sound. Even the three Vicious Beasts behind it let out pained whimpers; the Empty Cry Thunder Explosion had generated a soul attack that was hard for them to withstand. The illusions within the Hundred Refinements Pavilion were shockingly realistic. They were even able to simulate the effect of consciousness-type attacks.

The four Vicious Beasts began to whimper in pain from the Thunder Blade’s attacks.

However, they felt no fear from this pain. Rather, it intensified their savagery, and they simultaneously tilted their heads to the sky and howled.

Immediately afterwards, one of them charged furiously towards Su Chen with a ferocious aura.

Even when faced with simultaneous attacks from four beasts, Su Chen remained immovable like a mountain.

In the exact moment when the four Vicious Beasts were close together, Su Chen suddenly let out a loud yell.

“HA!”

Boom!

His yell was like thunder, stopping the four Vicious Beasts in their tracks.

At the same time, Su Chen drew his blade.

When he pulled his blade, a streak of razor-sharp blade light appeared, slicing through the four beasts like they were ethereal.

When the blade light subsided, the four beasts split in half, eventually dissolving into bits of light and disappearing.

The upgraded Thunder Blade could defeat four beasts in one blow. It was already quite powerful.

No new beasts appeared, so Su Chen returned to the main hall.

After exiting, he discovered the he had only earned fifty contribution points. He remembered that the Hundred Refinements Temple considered the year of the student as well when giving contribution points. Every student would only earn 25 or 50 points for completing the rooms according to their year. The only way to earn additional points was to clear the rooms ahead of schedule.

Because Su Chen was already a second year student, he received the standard fifty contribution points for clearing the fourth room. If he had taken two tries to clear it, he would’ve earned half that.

He had originally planned on clearing the fourth room before the end of the school year, but because he had been so busy it had completely slipped his mind.

“It seems that I won’t earn extra points unless I jump levels. I’ll try the fifth room,” Su Chen smiled.

“You can definitely do it,” the skinny student laughed.

A mid-tier Vicious Beast appeared in the fifth room.

Mid-tier Vicious Beasts were equivalent to genuine high-layer Qi Drawing Realm cultivators. This implied that, in the Institute’s eyes, even third-year students should possess strength roughly equivalent to a high-layer Qi Drawing Realm cultivator.

This criterion was not something normal people could compare with.

Su Chen had dealt with mid-tier Vicious Beasts before, but that was along with Iron Cliff and while Su Chen was fully armed.

The Hundred Refinements Pavilion didn’t allow any external aid, including Origin Tools or Talismans. In addition, because he was alone, the difficulty was much higher.

Even so, Su Chen was still able to defeat his opponent.

Defeating this Vicious Beast also officially indicated that Su Chen’s strength had surpassed that of a high-layer Qi Drawing Realm cultivator.

In addition, this was the strength that a student of the Institute should possess – students at the Hidden Dragon Institute usually were half a tier higher than most common people.

After clearing that room, he obtained 100 contribution points.

If he had waited until his third year to clear it, he would have only obtained 25 contribution points.

After completing the fifth room, Su Chen asked the skinny student whether any other second-year students had cleared the sixth room.

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The skinny student flipped through the record book before replying, “Twenty-five already have.”

Twenty-five second year students had already cleared the sixth room?

Indeed, everyone was improving. No one could be underestimated.

“Do you know what’s inside the sixth room?” Su Chen asked.

“A low-tier and a mid-tier Vicious Beast.”

Su Chen calculated his own strength as well as his battle abilities. He felt that he could use the Soul Eye and Soul-Fixation Technique to lock the mid-tier beast in place before using the strengthened Erupting Firebird to quickly finish off the low-tier beast. Then, he could simply defeat the remaining mid-tier beast. Feeling reassured, Su Chen said, “I’ll take a shot at it.”

The skinny student clapped his hands and smiled, “I knew you could do it.”

Upon entering the room, however, Su Chen was completely caught off-guard.

That was because the “mid-tier Vicious Beast” the skinny student had mentioned was actually from the Ferocious Race.