CH 268

Translator: Truth

Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys

Back in the building Lu Ye was hiding in, the short cultivator would sometimes run to the entrance and peer through the gap between the door. He was probably checking if the fog had faded away. 

Lu Ye paid him no attention and continued to recover his strength. According to the jade slip he bought from the Divine Trade Association, it was uncertain how long the fog would last. Sometimes, it could be as little as two hours. Sometimes, it could last around one or even two days.

Half a day passed like this. The short cultivator was peering through the door again when he suddenly, he shouted, “Ju Jia.”

The broad body tempering cultivator stepped out from the room. He was bare-chested and wearing a tattered hemp garment.

The short cultivator clasped his hands at Lu Ye and said, “We shall be taking our leave, fellow cultivator. See you another time.”

Despite the temptation, he ultimately decided against attacking Lu Ye.

The tall and short duo left the building after that. It wasn’t long before they vanished into the distance.

Lu Ye waited until they were completely gone before he rose to his feet. After checking from the door for himself and confirming that the fog was gone, he too exited the building.

First things first, he was going to replenish Amber’s Ghost Spirits. While doing so, he would search for the forces of the House of Wintry Blossoms as well.

In fact, he had another objective in mind. Ideally, he wanted to replace all of his Ghost Spirits with sentry leaders or special apparitions like Liu Sanbao. The normal sentries were just too dumb and inflexible, so their actual strength was lower than their cultivation level might suggest. The sentry leaders did not possess that problem, and special apparitions like Liu Sanbao even less so.

While it was true that neither the sentry leaders nor Liu Sanbao possessed a mind of their own after they were converted into Ghost Spirits, they were capable of executing Amber’s orders perfectly. They were far more useful than your ordinary sentries.

Of course, apparitions like Liu Sanbao were pretty rare. Realistically, his army of Ghost Spirits would consist mostly of sentry leaders.

Both the Xianyuan City Watch and the cultivators had emerged from their hidey-holes after the fog had faded completely. Every once in a while, Lu Ye’s senses would pick up a nearby fight or two.

It wasn’t long before he encountered his first squad of sentries. Before their sentry leader could even say, “You dare!” he had already sent his own Ghost Spirits to capture them. A moment later, the entire squad had been captured and converted into Amber’s Ghost Spirits.

Although his objective was to replace all of his Ghost Spirits with sentry leaders or special apparitions like Liu Sanbao, he saw no reason to let go of the ordinary sentries just yet. It was more important to fill up the ranks first and leave replacing for quality later.

Every time he encountered a building with a lantern at the entrance, he would explore it in hopes of running into another special existence like Liu Sanbao. Unfortunately, his search hadn’t borne fruit so far.

This suggested that special apparitions like Liu Sanbao were pretty rare in the city.

Two hours later, after Amber had fully replenished its Ghost Spirits, Lu Ye instructed it to release one into the open. It was because he wanted to perform a test.

When he rounded a corner and saw a sentry squad, the Ghost Spirit trailing after Lu Ye immediately summoned its Spirit Shackling Rope and bound Lu Ye. They then continued forward as if nothing was going on.

The distance between the two groups kept shortening until finally, they brushed past each other. The sentry squad hadn’t even spared him a glance.

[It does work!]

Lu Ye raised his eyebrows.

The reason Lu Ye carried out this little test was because he wanted to avoid unnecessary conflicts with the Xianyuan City Watch after completing his objectives. After all, killing them only wasted his energy and earned him nothing.

Now that he knew that he could trick the Xianyuan City Watch by pretending to be bound, the amount of unnecessary battles he had to fight just went down drastically.

Of course, he wasn’t done hunting the Xianyuan City Watch just yet. He wasn’t going to stop until he had replaced everyone with a sentry leader or special apparition.

Suddenly, a couple of cultivators walked out of a nearby alley and saw Lu Ye. Their leader was a guy who looked to be in their early twenties. He shot Lu Ye a glance and said, “Please show us your Battlefield Imprint, fellow cultivator.”

Lu Ye returned the glance and activated his Battlefield Imprint as requested. A blue light immediately shone from the back of his palm.

“Kill him!” The cultivator ordered with a wave of his hand. The group immediately assumed combat stances.

However, the sentry behind Lu Ye abruptly retracted the Spirit Shackling Rope. Then, countless apparitions flew out of Amber’s body—the tiger was currently lying on Lu Ye’s shoulder right now—and threw their Spirit Shackling Ropes. The group was tied up like a pig before they even realized what was happening.

Lu Ye took a moment to crack his neck before walking up to the male cultivator. He then pulled the Inviolable slowly out of its sheath.

The guy was stunned to say the least. He asked while staring at Lu Ye in disbelief, “How could you control the sentries?”

They had come out of the alley because they saw that Lu Ye had been captured by the Xianyuan City Watch. If he was an ally, then they would try to save him. If not, they would kill him and reduce their number of enemies by one.

However, they never imagined that there existed a cultivator who could control the Xianyuan City Watch!

“Do you know where Chu Qing of the House of Wintry Blossoms is?”

“No.”

“Then you’re useless.” The Inviolable fell, and blood splattered all over the ground.

He repeated the question to the second person, and he answered, “Yes, I know where she is.”

“Really? Swear it by the Heavens then.”

“I… I don’t know.”

…

A minute later, Lu Ye rose from the corpses and hung their Storage Bags on his waist.

He was pretty sure that this group wasn’t from the House of Wintry Blossoms because there wasn’t a single woman among them. Either they were Thousand Demon Ridge independent cultivators, or they were members of Sunlit Mountain. Naturally, they had no idea where Chu Qing was.

Still, this minor incident had turned out to be more useful than he initially thought. Not only was he able to fool the Xianyuan City Watch, he could trick enemy cultivators into committing suicide as well. He was tempted to repeat this trick ad infinitum, but in the end he decided against it. Being bound by the Spirit Shackling Rope meant he would not be able to respond to sudden dangers immediately.

He continued forward. When he encountered a sentry squad, he would capture their leader and replace an ordinary sentry in his ranks. When he ran into a group of cultivators, he would battle them and kill them all. For obvious reasons, the cultivators were no match for him. What they thought was an easy kill was really a powerhouse with over thirty Ghost Spirits backing him up. It was like a horror show where their moment of joy turned into a nightmare at the snap of a finger.

The amount of Storage Bags he got steadily increased during this time.

Of course, he occasionally ran into cultivators from Grand Sky Coalition as well. According to them, the cultivators of Sunlit Mountain and the House of Wintry Blossoms were in the middle of massing their forces. They were clearly plotting to take down all the Grand Sky Coalition cultivators who entered this palace in one fell swoop.

After all, Thousand Demon Ridge outnumbered Grand Sky Coalition by at least a hundred people this time. It was because Lofty Plume Court wasn’t able to arrive in time.

As a result, Hidden Light Sanctuary was in a dire position right now. Even the independent cultivators on Grand Sky Coalition’s side were forced to join forces with Hidden Light Sanctuary for survival.

It could be foreseen that the two factions would clash in the very near future. The outcome of this clash would directly decide the fates of all cultivators in the Lost City of Xianyuan as well. If Thousand Demon Ridge emerged victorious in this clash, they would surely press their advantage and slaughter all Grand Sky Coalition cultivators.

There were supposed to be two Grand Sky Coalition factions versus two Thousand Demon Ridge factions in this pocket dimension. Unfortunately, the Grand Sky Coalition faction named Lofty Plume Court were unable to arrive before the Rift of Fortune was closed.

Naturally, every Grand Sky Coalition cultivator Lu Ye ran into had tried to persuade him to join them. He turned them all down though. He could not deny that it would be safer if he met up with his allies, but it would also be too late for everyone if they waited until Thousand Demon Ridge was ready. Plus, he only looked like he was alone. He really had an army of thirty one Ghost Spirits in his command. He should be able to handle any threat as long as he didn’t run into too many enemies at once.

Traveling alone also afforded him the freedom to take any course of action he wanted and the opportunity to weaken Thousand Demon Ridge. In fact, he had already killed many Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators while he was searching for the House of Wintry Blossoms, not to mention that he hadn’t replaced all of his ordinary sentries with sentry leaders yet.

Some time later, Lu Ye came to a stop at a three-storey building. It had caught his interest because it had not one, but an entire row of lanterns hanging at the front. There was also a horizontal board on top of the entrance, although it was tattered to the point where all but the first word was unrecognizable, “House”.

Lu Ye pushed open the doors. The stench of decay immediately washed over him.

It was impossible to tell how the room was originally arranged. It looked as if a hurricane had passed through the place. There was also an old staircase leading toward the second floor.

Lu Ye looked around the first floor for a bit and found nothing. When he entered the second floor though, his eyes immediately lit up with delight. Finally, he had found his second special apparition.

Not including the apparition in front of him, Lu Ye had only encountered one special apparition throughout his search, and that was Liu Sanbao. His combat performance was beyond exemplary, and he was at least several times stronger than a sentry leader.

The apparition in front of him was a fragile-looking woman with a gorgeous countenance. She wore a dress that suggested that this building could’ve been part of the redlight district and carried a pipa.

Lu Ye did not think she was weak just because she looked fragile, however. It was because he saw three corpses not far away from the woman. He didn’t know who these unlucky bastards were, but their expressions suggested that they had been tortured horribly before their deaths. There was encrusted blood on every hole on their faces, which were frozen in pain.

Noticing Lu Ye’s arrival, the woman shot him a shy look that would have stolen the soul of a lesser man. Her vermillion lips parted slightly as she spoke in a voice as gentle as water, “Do you know how to recite poetry, sir?”

All special apparitions in the Lost City of Xianyuan carried some sort of obsession or hobby from before they died. Liu Sanbao was a gambler, so the first thing he did after Lu Ye entered his house was to invite him to gamble. The gamble would not stop until one party had lost everything including their lives. Most of the time, Liu Sanbao was the undisputed winner.

Unlike Liu Sanbao, this apparition’s obsession was a bit more esoteric. This was the first time anyone had asked him if he knew poetry.

“No.”

“Do you know how to compose a rhyming couplet then?”

“Nope.”

“What do you know then, sir?”

“I know how to kill!”

Lu Ye raised his Inviolable.

The woman’s Spiritual Light was even thicker than Liu Sanbao’s, so she was probably a Heaven Grade Eighth or even Ninth-Order apparition. As expected of the Lost City of Xianyuan, this place was full of monsters.

The female apparition shot the Inviolable a glance but smiled at Lu Ye. She did not get angry despite his impudence.

Her smile quickly vanished from her face, however. It was because spectral sentries began flying out of Amber’s body until the room was filled with them.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaah….” The female apparition wailed. She looked terribly sad as tears streamed down her cheeks.

It wasn’t because she was terrified for her life, however. An invisible wave of energy swept across the entire second floor, causing the Spiritual Light of every sentry to start flashing erratically. Even Lu Ye felt a little faint.

Lu Ye’s expression immediately turned serious. It was a sonic attack; an attack that was transmitted via sound. He had heard about it, but this was the first time he actually experienced it in battle. He tried to raise his saber but discovered that he couldn’t quite control his arm.