Chapter 1003: Ninestar Island, I'm Here! (3)

Su Yu's interest was piqued. He asked softly, "Lord, is there a way for us to get one of these rankings?"

Ying Yun, the Mountainsea, nodded with a smile, "Yes. But don't ask me about it. I don't have the courage to buy something like that. When you reach Ninestar City, you can try to buy one from the Heavenly Hunt Pavilion. The Allheaven Treasure House might try to restrict the circulation, but that's not the case for the Heavenly Hunt Pavilion. They can even lay the blame on the Allheaven Treasure House. They are intentionally doing this to create trouble for their competitor."

Su Yu was both surprised and amused to hear that. The Heavenly Hunt Pavilion was actually selling a ranking maintained by the Allheaven Treasure House...

Ying Yun continued speaking, "That's not surprising at all. After all, the Allheaven Treasure House is also selling the results of the Heavenly Hunt Index. Index copies are hard to find yet everyone is very curious about the latest happenings. But the index copies are even harder to get than the ranking copies. Thus, the Allheaven Treasure House provides this service. Naturally, the index copies they sell do not come with the special functions of the original index copies."

Su Yu nodded. He felt like his horizons had been broadened yet again. So both those organizations were actively undermining each other. It was very obvious what was happening. He decided to buy the pirated copies later. He had been quite curious about the latest updates. His only source of information as of late had been gossip.

At the very least, he needed to read about the accomplishments of the various geniuses to form a more accurate judgment about their strength. As for the Dao Affirmation Ranking, he was only curious if Xia Longwu was ranked first.

He also hoped to see Old Zhu's name to boost his own confidence. After all, that was his backer. Then again, Old Zhu might not even be on the ranking even if he was also a ninth-stage Sunmoon.

There were probably too many Sunmoons among the myriad races to rank them all. In fact, almost all the prefects of the thirty-six human prefectures were ninth-stage Sunmoons. And that was excluding senior human cultivators like Cheng Mo of Great Tang and many others. Even with a conservative estimate by Su Yu, there were at least fifty of them. And that was the minimum number.

There were also the principals of the various academies, the generals of the elite armies, and the older experts who had retreated from public life to recover from their old injuries. And among the other races, even the races without Invincibles had some ninth-stage Sunmoons to offer.

Excluding the major races, just the minor races could produce hundreds of ninth-stage Sunmoons. Including those from the major races, Su Yu reckoned that there were probably over a thousand ninth-stage Sunmoons in existence. Of course, most of them would be staying in their own realms.

For example, the nine realms of Ninestar Island. They had more than ten ninth-stage Sunmoons, but not one of them would leave. After all, they were basically Invincibles when they were in their own realms. But if they left, other Invincibles would be able to kill them easily.

With so many ninth-stage Sunmoons in existence, Su Yu wasn't so sure Xia Longwu would be the strongest. Perhaps there were stronger Sunmoons around. He did not recall hearing about Xia Longwu killing ninth-stage Sunmoons. He did hear about some eighth-stage Sunmoons dying in Xia Longwu's hands, though.

Su Yu was normally unbothered about this since he had never thought too deeply about it. But now that he was thinking about it, he felt quite helpless. There were too many races in existence. Due to the sheer number of races in existence, there were also way too many Sunmoons in existence.

Su Yu had never calculated the exact number of races in existence, but he reckoned there were at least thousands of them. And for the most part, even the weaker races would be able to produce some Sunmoons. Thus, it was reasonable to put the estimated number of Sunmoons in existence to at least one thousand.

As for Invincibles, there were at least several hundred in existence. Or even more. Just the divines, devils, immortals, humans, and dragons had over three hundred Invincibles. What if the other races were included? The number would become far higher. The more he thought about it, the more tiny he felt. With so many super experts in existence, why was he feeling all smug about himself?

There were so many Sunmoons out there. The Mountainseas he had been killing might be able to act as the overlords of minor realms or elders of the human academies, but what were Mountainseas here? They were as good as ants.

Nobody knew what he was thinking. If they knew, they would probably go mad with anger. What bullshit was he thinking? How many years had the myriad races existed? There were countless living beings in existence. With so many living beings in existence, a Mountainsea was basically as rare as one in a hundred million. A Sunmoon was even rarer.

The seemingly huge number of super experts in existence was actually something that had accumulated over numerous years. As a mere nineteen-year-old human, why was he measuring himself against Sunmoons and Invincibles?

***

The group continued chatting with each other while moving at a moderate speed.

They did stumble upon several active battles on the journey, but each time, Ying Yun took them on a detour away from the battle. He would do the same even if the combatants were only Cloudbreaches.

There was no need for them to get involved. It was pointless to take the risk just to showcase their courage. There were simply too many Cloudbreaches in existence. Even the first and second-ranked geniuses on the Heaven Index were Cloudbreaches. There were also numerous Cloudbreaches on the Earth Index. All these geniuses were capable of killing Mountainseas like it was a game.

The number one rule to surviving in the Allheaven Battlefield was tact. It didn't matter how strong one was. There would always be someone stronger out there.

Su Yu had been paying close attention to his surroundings during the journey, taking note of potential routes for his escape after the conclusion of his scam. Speedy departure might be necessary after his scam. Thus, it wouldn't be a bad idea to study the area in advance. It would be awkward if he ended up delivering himself to his enemies during his escape just because he didn't know his way around, right?

"For now, Tianduo will be my number one target for identity theft."

Topsoil Spirit would be the better choice, but it was unfortunate that he had failed to capture that fellow. That was a potential disaster in the making. In fact, Topsoil Spirit knew so much about him that he no longer considered capturing that fellow. Rather, he wanted to kill that fellow to protect his secrets.

Su Yu was busy thinking when suddenly, a big fight broke out ahead of them.

Everyone looked in the direction of the fight. When Ying Yun saw the combatants, he hurriedly said, "Pick up the pace. We need to leave this area. It's Shi Zun of the stone golem race. His opponent is not weak either. It's an index genius as well. Sigh, not even Mountainseas can do anything against these geniuses."

He sounded endlessly helpless.

Shi Zun.

Su Yu's eyes flickered. This was a familiar name to him. Back when he was being pursued by Lei Jue, that stone golem had attacked Lei Jue out of nowhere, facing Lei Jue to take a detour around the stone golem.

One ought to note that Lei Jue was a ninth-stage Cloudbreach while Shi Zun was only a seventh-stage Cloudbreach. Furthermore, Lei Jue was someone who had killed Mountainseas before.

From this, one could imagine just how much of a genius Shi Zun was. When Su Yu looked into the distance, he saw an incomparably violent stone golem. Ignoring all the attacks his opponent was bombarding him with, the stone golem threw a punch and created a massive rumble. Punch after punch was thrown unceasingly, as though he would never run out of energy.

A short while later, his opponent started fleeing. Shi Zun did not hesitate to give chase despite his obviously slower movement speed.

Ying Yun was relieved to see the two leaving. He sighed and said, "There are too many geniuses on the island right now. Shi Zun is ranked thirteenth on the Earth Index, a rank lower than Tianduo. From my observation, the person fighting him earlier was probably Fu Shan, fifteenth on the Earth Index. He's also a giant, but not a primordial giant. Rather, he's a draconic giant. According to the rumors, this race was a result of breeding between dragons and giants..."

They all started gasping at the splendor of the geniuses. Meanwhile, Su Yu wasn't too bothered by what he saw. Rather, he was paying a lot more attention on a certain rumor he was hearing.

It was said that Shi Zun had a poor relationship with Topsoil Spirit. He would pick a fight with Topsoil Spirit at every opportunity. Su Yu was quite surprised. He wondered if Topsoil Spirit was really weaker than this fellow. Or perhaps Topsoil Spirit had merely been pretending to be weak.

Shi Zun was strong, but from the punch he saw earlier, Shi Zun's physical strength was actually slightly weaker than his. And he had failed to kill Topsoil Spirit even after consuming sixth-stage Mountainsea blood essence.

He had eventually pushed his strength to the level of a seventh-stage Mountainsea, but that was done solely to deal with the wooden stake.

"Shi Zun..."

New thoughts emerged in Su Yu's mind. Was the rivalry between Topsoil Spirit and Shi Zun real or merely an act? If it was real, perhaps Shi Zun held a natural advantage over Topsoil Spirit.

One of them was humanoid earth while the other was humanoid stone. They were quite similar in nature. As Su Yu was busy thinking, a massive city appeared ahead of them.

They had reached Ninestar City.

It was massive, but Su Yu's attention wasn't on the size. He was more focused on his slightly pulsing tribulation character. Evidently, a lot of people capable of threatening him were in the city.

Suddenly, a loud boom rang out above the city. A white dragon and a flaming devil were fighting.

"Long He, are you buying or not? If you're not buying, just piss off."

The devil snorted and threw a punch out. As a response, the dragon swung his tail at the devil. Heavy auras emanated out of them.

Long He roared furiously, "Dawo, don't push it too far! Your people bought the ancient dragonblood tree for only ten drops of sunmoon profound yellow liquid. We have offered ten times the price, but you guys are still being greedy about it."

"Hmph! Five hundred drops. We won't sell it for any less than that."

"Damn it!"

"..."

Right at that moment, someone else soared into the sky and said, "Isn't it a tad bit too excessive for the two of you to fight in the city? You're both experts of major races. Are you going to make a fool out of yourselves before so many juniors?"

Beside Su Yu, the Mountainsea did not even dare to speak through his mouth. Rather, he used voice transmission, "The devils and dragons are fighting again. This is all happening because of the ancient dragonblood tree. The third expert is the mayor of Ninestar City. He's also an elder of the Thousand Region Alliance. He is a very powerful late-stage Sunmoon..."

Everyone in the group was trembling with fear. The first thing they saw after arriving was three late-stage Sunmoons. They were both excited and nervous to see so many experts. Wasn't this why they were here? They were only here to witness the splendor of these top experts. Today, that wish had been fulfilled.

Index geniuses, Sunmoon experts, divines, devils, dragons, immortals...they had seen all these people after reaching the island.

Meanwhile, Su Yu was much calmer. Late-stage Sunmoons were not that rare for him. In fact, he could feel that these three Sunmoons weren't even stronger than Ming He. They were also weaker than Mo He, the original devil he had seen before. Similarly, they were also weaker than the primordial giant he had seen.

After glancing at the three, Su Yu judged that they wouldn't fight for real. Sure enough, with the persuasion of the mayor, the dragon and devil descended from the sky and vanished from everyone's view. Su Yu inhaled deeply. This was so exciting!

Lovely. This place was even more exciting than ancient cities.