“Senior, this is a good place.” Lu Yin stretched lazily as he took a deep breath of fresh air. He was tempted to start cultivating given the incredible density of star energy here, but it would all soon leak out.
Elder Jiu Shen frowned as he looked to the distance. “Something’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong?” Lu Yin asked.
Elder Jiu Shen grew solemn. “I’m not sure, but I have a bad feeling that I haven’t sensed in a long while.”
His expression grew increasingly grim. “We should leave, now.”
Lu Yin became concerned. Elder Jiu Shen had already entered and was clearly anticipating the prospect of finding any possible inheritances that could help him become a Semi-Progenitor, and yet he still wanted to leave. This meant that the man was not being overly cowardly, but rather that he had truly sensed something.
Lu Yin was just about to reply when he felt something tremble close to his heart. Was that his death energy? No, it was his fatesand that was vibrating. Suddenly, a force pulled Lu Yin in a certain direction. To be more accurate, the force was pulling the fatesand within his body.
There was something in these ruins that had triggered a reaction with his fatesand, and even Lu Yin could not stop himself. He reflexively started walking in a certain direction.
Elder Jiu Shen immediately went after the youth.
They soon arrived at the foot of a mountain, and there, they saw a gray figure rushing towards them.
Lu Yin was shocked; someone was already here? In that case, why had he not seen any runes?
He was just about to attack when Elder Jiu Shen stopped him. “It’s just some remnant spiritual force.”
Remnant spiritual force? Lu Yin thought back. “You mean like what I saw in the Mountain and Seas Zone’s tablet world?”
Elder Jiu Shen nodded.
During the competition for the Astral Tower, Lu Yin had seen mysterious gray figures within the tablet world. They were formed from remnant spiritual force from ancient times, and each of the figures simply repeated the actions they had done in life over and over again. Periodically, those actions would change, but everything that was done seemed to be actions that had occurred in the past.
Why was something like that in these ruins?
The gray figure did not seem to have noticed Lu Yin or Elder Jiu Shen, as it simply rushed past them and disappeared.
That was simply how remnant spiritual force behaved; the figures could not detect people unless there was a disturbance. However, the moment that any remnant spiritual force was disturbed, it would attack and try to kill every living thing nearby.
Lu Yin had had a memorable experience in the tablet world, and he was suddenly facing something similar once again.
The two men glanced at each other before moving on towards the top of the mountain.
They soon saw two gray figures walking down the mountain. These silhouettes were both wearing the same clothes with the emblem of a cloud, meaning that they were cultivators from the Celestial Frost Sect.
As the two humans walked towards the peak of the mountain, the number of gray figures they saw increased, and they were eventually surrounded.
Lu Yin and Elder Jiu Shen dodged the silhouettes as they climbed to the peak. They saw a dozen platforms there and some gray figures were sparring each other atop the platforms while other figures watched.
“They’re having a tournament. All of these people are Celestial Frost Sect disciples,” Lu Yin commented.
Elder Jiu Shen calmly commented, “These disciples are only Limiteers with a few Explorers, though the Explorers are not participating. This should be a tournament for external disciples who are fighting for the opportunity to formally enter the sect.”
Lu Yin’s attention was drawn to a row of gray figures that were probably the elders monitoring the tournament, and they had to be quite powerful. A cultivator would have to be at least an Enlighter in order to qualify to be an elder within the Celestial Frost Sect.
Lu Yin and Elder Jiu Shen had only covered a small portion of the mountain, and they quickly continued upwards, still aiming for the peak. They saw tournaments for Explorers, Cruisers, and even Hunters.
This mountain was known as Mount Shaoyou.
At the tournament venue that featured Hunters, the two saw the master of Mount Shaoyou, as everyone else was standing behind the figure. The two were not able to determine the mountain master’s exact realm, as it was nothing more than remnant spiritual force. However, based on the Celestial Frost Sect’s past strength, this person had to be at least an Envoy. Still, it was impossible to know the person’s exact capabilities.
After leaving Mount Shaoyou, they moved on to Mount Taihe, which was nearby. The force attracting the fatesand within Lu Yin originated from behind Mount Taihe.
There were not many people on Mount Taihe, and the two only saw one disciple practicing a battle technique at the peak of the mountain.
“Void Rip?” Lu Yin was shocked.
Elder Jiu Shen was astonished. “You know that technique?”
Lu Yin nodded. “I’ve seen it before.”
They continued observing as the figure created a line between two dots. However, the line then disappeared as the disciple had failed. Undaunted, they tried yet again.
“Void Rip is the Celestial Frost Sect’s most powerful battle technique, and I’ve only ever seen their Junior Progenitor use it while I was in that world. Since this person was given the opportunity to learn the battle technique, he had to have been an elite disciple,” Lu Yin explained. The two were only communicating through voice transmissions, as neither one dared to openly speak lest they be detected by the gray figures.
They both stood there, watching the gray figure silently train.
After half a day, the figure successfully used Void Rip, and the battle technique astounded Elder Jiu Shen. “If he were fighting a peer, this battle technique would be invincible.”
“I’ve fought against it before,” Lu Yin stated as he turned to face Elder Jiu Shen. He smugly followed it up by stating, “I defeated it.”
Elder Jiu Shen arched a brow as he recalled Lu Yin’s performance during ZENITH.
They followed a small path after leaving Mount Taihe, as they did not dare do anything that would attract too much attention. They were currently traveling through a recreation of the past, and they had no idea if a gray figure might suddenly appear in the sky above them and alert the entire Celestial Frost Sect.
Lu Yin suddenly asked, “If Liu Ye and Fei Hua manage to find Nightking Dijiang and start fighting him, they’ll alert the entire Celestial Frost Sect. What should we do then? Do you think we’ll be able to escape?”
Elder Jiu Shen huffed, “You’ll jinx us.”
Lu Yin stopped talking.
“Hmm? There’s somebody hidden there,” Elder Jiu Shen looked towards a concealed section of the mountain. In that place, there was a figure practicing with spiritual force.
Lu Yin and Elder Jiu Shen stood in front of the figure and quietly watched from a few meters away.
This silhouette had a very powerful spiritual force, and it was practicing battle techniques that utilized spiritual force that all seemed rather familiar to Lu Yin. “These are the Daynight clan’s battle techniques.”
“No, they’re the Celestial Frost Sect’s battle techniques,” Elder Jiu Shen corrected.
Lu Yin carefully observed the figure. “Senior, was the Daynight clan able to enter these ruins at any time?”
“Of course.”
“If that’s the case, wouldn’t the Daynight clan have been able to learn all of these battle techniques?”
Elder Jiu Shen hesitated. “Are you suggesting that all of the Daynight clan’s battle techniques came from this place?”
Lu Yin nodded. “That’s quite possible since this was originally Celestial Frost Flowzone, and the Daynight clan was just one of their followers. They only grew in power after the Celestial Frost Sect left, and that was also when their many powerful spiritual force battle techniques started to appear. It was said that all of the battle techniques came from the Daynight clan, and while the First Nightking was indeed incredibly talented and it is possible that he created Skybreaker, he might have gained his inspiration from this place.
“Maybe… their battle techniques came from this person.”
Elder Jiu Shen silently stared at the figure, as what Lu Yin was saying was not impossible.
“It wouldn’t have been odd for the Daynight clan to have obtained their battle techniques from these Celestial Frost Sect ruins,” Elder Jiu Shen agreed.
Lu Yin continued, “I heard that the Daynight clan has hundreds of battle techniques, and I’m guessing that most of them came from this place.”
He stared at the gray figure. “This guy might basically be the foundation of the Daynight clan.’
Elder Jiu Shen felt stunned. “That actually makes sense.”
After a while, the two left and continued onto another mountain.
The next mountain was darker than the others, as it was not formed from rock but rather metal, and there were also some bloodstains on it as well.
“This probably used to be one of the sect’s punishment grounds, so it was likely the place that the Celestial Frost Sect’s disciples feared the most,” Elder Jiu Shen observed.
They reached the mountain’s peak and were just about to leave as they had not seen any figures on Mount Punishment. However, the sky suddenly underwent a massive change, and it felt as though the entire mountain had disconnected from the rest of the Celestial Frost Sect. Lu Yin and Elder Jiu Shen were instantly surrounded by small whirlpools, and they both reacted properly to this instantaneous change: they remained completely still.
Elder Jiu Shen had been just about to leave with Lu Yin when the small whirlpools joined together into a vortex that entrapped the two of them. They exerted an immense pressure that caused the elder to freeze in place. This pressure far exceeded the presence of any cultivator that Lu Yin had ever encountered before; not even the Wang family’s Semi-Progenitor had put this much pressure on him.
This was not mere pressure, and the two felt as though they were ants caught in a whirlpool.
Lu Yin had only experienced such a feeling once before, which was during the finals of ZENITH. The Sixth Mainland’s Progenitor of Combat had appeared and interfered with Shang Qing’s battle. The pressure that Lu Yin had felt back then was the exact same feeling that he was experiencing at this moment: this was the power of a Progenitor.
To a Progenitor, Lu Yin and Elder Jiu Shen were both the same: nothing more than ants. The only difference was that Elder Jiu Shen was a slightly bigger ant.
A moment felt like ten thousand years.
The next moment, a knife appeared in the sky and destroyed the maelstrom, releasing Mount Punishment that had been disconnected from the outside world. That was also the power of a Progenitor.
The knife and whirlpool became the center of a collision between two Progenitors, and that moment incited the greatest despair for Lu Yin and Elder Jiu Shen, as the knife was heading straight towards them.
Lu Yin’s eyes grew incredibly focused, and he felt as though his head was about to explode. Both he and Elder Jiu Shen would definitely be killed by this knife. They watched as the knife approached them, but then a hand swept out and took both the knife and whirlpool away. That hand had also belonged to a Progenitor.
They had just witnessed a battle involving three Progenitors. The hand had been the most powerful of the three phenomena that the two witnessed, as it had destroyed both the knife and the whirlpool. However, the impact of the attacks had still affected both Lu Yin and Elder Jiu Shen. The elder managed to to use his full strength to form a Celestial Sword from tens of thousands of stars to withstand the aftershocks of the attack. Then, he grabbed Lu Yin, and they both fell down on Mount Punishment.
Lu Yin had no ability to do anything at all, and he could only remain frozen and watch. Even his thoughts had been frozen.
Woosh!
Elder Jiu Shen spat out a mouthful of blood, and his right arm was torn and shredded to bits. He crashed to the foot of the mountain with Lu Yin.
After landing, Lu Yin finally managed to react. He just had experienced a life and death situation caused by a Progenitor.
Cough, cough.
Elder Jiu Shen coughed up a mouthful of blood.
Lu Yin immediately took out an Enhanced pill and fed it to Elder Jiu Shen, but the pill was useless to the powerhouse.
OMA’s Thoughts
Translated By: WQ
Edited By: Neshi/Nyxnox
TLC’ed By: OMA
