Splitting the Heave

It seemed as though it wasn’t time for him to explore the Yuxi Peak yet. 

As he got further away from the Yuxi Peak, the Crimson Soul Tablet became extremely unresponsive as it remained motionless in his sea of consciousness.

When all was done and dusted, Shang Xia finally realized that he seemed to have forgotten something. 

Feeling around his sleeves, he pulled out his Spirit Extermination Gourd and popped the cork.

A tiny sword slowly emerged as it pointed towards the Yuxi Peak. It trembled quietly, and Shang Xia sighed in his heart. “Indeed…” 

Shang Xia had a sneaking suspicion that he would be back to the Yuxi Peak before long.

He also felt that the day he entered the Yuxi Peak would be the day he would step into the Martial Extermination Realm.

Concealing his aura, he continued to sneak further and further away.

Not too long after he left, the space around the Yuxi Peak trembled as a figure squeezed himself out from the void. He looked at the heaven and earth qi that was fluctuating around the Yuxi Peak before extending his divine sense to cover a huge radius around the mountain. It was too bad he failed to detect anything.

A cold snort left his lips as he turned to another spot in the void. “Old lady, why aren’t you enjoying your life back at home? Why are you here?”

A small patch of cloud scattered as an old woman emerged from the void with a face full of smiles. “I have no choice. My granddaughter is extremely playful and said that she had to join some sort of gathering or something. This old lady only has one granddaughter you know? I’m afraid something bad might happen to her and decided to follow her in secret.” 

“Oh.” The person who arrived continued, “Old Lady Yan, did you see what happened to the Yuxi Peak earlier?”

“I’m old, not blind. Of course I saw it.” Yan Su’er muttered.

A frown appeared on the face of the person who just arrived and asked, “Does that mean that you saw the reason behind the changes to the Yuxi Peak?” 

Unfortunately, Yan Su’er shook his head and sighed, “I didn’t arrive so quickly as to see what happened.”

Clearly unwilling to believe her, the person who just arrived realized he couldn’t do anything if she didn’t wish to say more. Flying around the Yuxi Peak without entering the screen of multicolored mist, he discovered no abnormalities and decided to take his leave.

After seeing the person disappear, Yan Su’er stared at the Yuxi Peak with unknown thoughts running through her mind. After waiting for some time, she also disappeared.

The Yuxi Peak regained its original calm, but from afar, the giant structure seemed to be shrouded in some sort of mystery.

…

Shang Xia obviously wouldn’t know what happened to the Yuxi Peak after he left. When he returned to the Observation Peak, he didn’t head back to the Talisman Hall immediately.

Instead, he returned to his chamber in the Shang Clan’s territory and held the Bamboo Void Breaking Talisman in his hands tightly. He looked at the five spatial cases in front of him and felt a strong headache. He had no idea which to open first.

Of the five spatial cases, one came from the Martial Extermination Realm Sima Zhanxing. Two of them were direct disciples of the Changbai Holy Land, Chu Chen and Senior Brother Zhou. Like Shang Xia, they were at the grand completion stage of the Martial Intent Realm. 

The last two were from Senior Brother Yue and Junior Brother Xiang from the Changbai Holy Land and even though they weren’t direct disciples, their cultivation level had already passed the third divine sense transformation and weren’t weak in any way.

According to logic, Shang Xia should be using the Bamboo Void Breaking Talisman on Sima Zhanxing’s spatial artifact.

After all, he was at the Martial Extermination Realm and his belongings should be much more valuable than those Martial Intent Realm cultivators.

However, when he thought back to the time they fought, Shang Xia recalled how Sima Zhanxing had the inner qi of a Martial Extermination Realm expert but his actual strength was a whole lot weaker than experts of the same level.

Even when using half his brain, Shang Xia could guess the reason behind it. As a cultivator from the Azure Origin World, Sima Zhanxing was definitely ostracized in the Azure Spiritual World. He might even be placed under strict supervision and the resources he could use to improve his cultivation were definitely severely limited.

Under such circumstances, he would probably have to use everything in his possession to raise his strength. How many treasures could be possibly left in his spatial artifact?

That was why Shang Xia was having a headache deciding which spatial artifact to open.

It wasn’t easy to get his hands on the Bamboo Void Breaking Talisman and he wouldn’t be able to craft them in the near future. He had to consider carefully which artifact to open.

After racking his brains, Shang Xia eventually decided to use it on Senior Brother Zhou’s spatial case.

The reason was simple. When Shang Xia killed him previously, he heard that their team was tasked with searching for treasures through the battlefield between the two worlds. It was most likely for him to possess the most treasures. 

That was also the reason Shang Xia didn’t choose to open Chu Chen’s spatial case. Back when the war just started, Chu Chen had been hunted down by Shang Xia and he probably didn’t have a lot of time to look for treasures.

Senior Brother Zhou was different. Shang Xia only discovered their group when they were looking for the Lightning Fire Jujube Tree. He was searching for other treasures before that and he was probably a lot more loaded than Chu Chen.

With his thoughts in place, Shang Xia sent a trace of his inner qi into the Bamboo Void Breaking Talisman. As a thin glow covered the talisman, he slapped it on one of the cases on the tablet.

A ray of deep greenish-blue light emerged from the talisman before corroding the seal on the spatial case.

When the greenish-blue light surrounded the entire case, the restrictions on it were completely destroyed. As the glow faded, the Bamboo Void Breaking Talisman that Shang Xia stuck to the case earlier crumbed and scattered in the wind.

Casually brushing his hand across its surface, Shang Xia discovered that there was nothing to stop his divine sense from entering the case. Several items emerged from inside and clattered onto the ground below.

Luckily for him, his hands moved quickly. He grabbed a green-colored gourd before it could touch the ground.

He wasn’t unfamiliar with the gourd at all. It was similar to what he obtained from a direct disciple from the White Deer Paradise, Li Tianshou! It was a piece of equipment used to collect extermination qi or store extermination origins!

Weighing the gourd in his hand, Shang Xia revealed a look of disappointment.

With his wealth of experience when it came to collecting extermination qi, he knew that pure heaven and earth qi in the form of extermination qi was extremely dense. A fully filled gourd would weigh more than a thousand catties.

It can be hard to make great work when its stolen from "pawread dot com".

Like the one Shang Xia had, there were two extermination origins contained within and there was also a portion of extermination qi from Windy Valley the Lightning Bird sought refuge in.

Every time he brought out his Spirit Extermination Gourd, he would prepare himself so as not to be caught off guard by the hefty object.

When Shang Xia showed off the extermination origins to Shang Ke previously, the Shang Clan Patriarch was finally willing to refine the Lingkong Formless Extermination Origin back in the clan. In exchange, Shang Xia gave the Cloudy Gale Extermination Origin to the clan for Shang Jian’s eventual refinement. Only then did his Spirit Extermination Gourd become a lot lighter than before.

Opening the gourd in his hand, he saw two strands of faint mist emerging from within. Shaking the gourd slightly, he forced the thin mist back into it. “Well, it’s not exactly a waste.” 

Closing the gourd secretly, Shang Xia’s expression was no longer as disappointed as it once was. He could tell that the thin extermination qi inside was of two different types. Of course, they were far from completion.

Normally, disciples would be like Senior Brother Zhou who went around collecting extermination qi and the like bit by bit to finally complete a single extermination origin. Not everyone was like Shang Xia.

Now that he obtained two strands of extermination qi, he didn’t really know what to do with them. Even if he wanted to absorb extermination qi of the same type and complete the extermination origins, it would be hard for him to look for where to start. Of course, that didn’t mean that they were completely useless.

As a qualified Talisman Master, Shang Xia knew a thing or two about crafting rank four talismans even though he hadn’t reached that level.

According to the Zhu Family Talisman Scripture, the creation of rank four talismans would involve using extermination qi! Throughout the process, the Talisman Master wouldn’t exhaust their extermination origins for obvious reasons. No one would choose to damage the foundation of their extermination origins to make talismans!

As such, stray strands of extermination qi were what rank four Talisman Masters used to craft rank four talismans!

After studying the process of rank four talisman crafting, Shang Xia even realized that precisely because extermination qi was used in the crafting process, all rank four Talisman Masters had to be in the Martial Extermination Realm!

Putting the strands of extermination qi aside, the gourd itself was also a treasure. If the gourd was something that could be mass produced, the holy lands would have long since distributed them to as many disciples as they could!

Since he was done examining the gourd, Shang Xia turned to look at the other items on the ground. When he saw a single several black jade bottle that had several seals on it, his eyes lit up. 

Tearing the seal away carefully, he peered into the bottle only to see half of it filled with a grayish powder that was emitting a desolate aura.

“This… Are these ashes?!” Shang Xia carefully replaced the seal before sinking deep into contemplation.

All of a sudden, he recalled something Zhang Haogu told him some time ago about a special sort of rank four treasure called the Essence Bone Ember.

That was an ingredient that could only be obtained by grinding the bones of a powerful rank four beast who had died not too long ago. Before their inner qi fully dissipated, it would be gathered into their bones and Essence Bone Ember would be obtained if it was ground to power immediately.