Chapter 2028 – Hallowed City

Chapter 2028 – Hallowed City

Relying on altars was so deeply ingrained in the mortal world that whoever dared question this practice was viewed as a treasonous heretic. Sometimes, they were sacrificed to the altar for their blasphemy.

The people of this world did not worship gods, but altars. They firmly believed that the altars represented their ancestors. The stronger a tribe, the stronger their altar. In the same vein, the stronger the altar, the stronger the tribe.

It was a positive feedback cycle.

But at the same time, the altars greatly restricted humanity’s development. People received everything they wanted through the altar—strength, food, and everything else. Due to the ease of this arrangement, the human race neglected to develop and strengthen itself. All desires were easily fulfilled when offered sufficient sacrifice. The battles they fought were to increase the amount of their sacrificial goods and expanse of territory. Everything was done for the altars.

……

Sacred Reliance’s altar more or less laid in shambles. If other tribes attacked them, the tribe would be relegated to enslavement or sacrifices for other altars. Thus, Lu Yun’s talk of strengthening themselves via ramming trees received instant widespread acceptance.

He didn’t mean haphazardly throwing oneself against a tree, but using the method of wood from the body tempering method of the five elements in immortal dao.

Given immortal dao’s current state of prosperity, it’d nearly traversed the entire chief worlds. Lu Yun’s original invention of the body tempering method of five elements had been expanded into thousands of variations and sorted into various categories. Even he didn’t know off the top of his head how many there were.

The technique of charging a tree was the most appropriate for the situation at hand. It was simple and wouldn’t raise attention from the world’s cultivators. After all, who would connect body slamming trees with cultivation?

The creator of this particular technique was Lu Yun’s son—Lu Qing.

With Lu Yun’s incredible mental strength, he only needed to extend his consciousness ever-so-slightly through the surroundings and send a very gentle mental nudge to guide the Sacred Radiance Tribe into cultivating the new technique.

After the grueling battle that they’d just endured, there was less than one thousand left of the tribe. However, this also meant that they were the elites of the tribe. The weaker ones had all been taken away to be sacrificial goods.

Thus began Sacred Radiance’s tree ramming activities on a grand and spectacular scale. Lu Yun sat cross-legged on a bluestone boulder and silently deduced when the eyes of great dao would arrive.

They were evolving too quickly. He’d originally calculated that it’d take them at least fifteen years to reach this place, but now they needed only thirteen. At this rate, the eyes of great dao would develop with increasing speed and possibly reach this place after three years…

They’d gone utterly crazy as of late and destroyed everything within fifty million kilometers whenever they detected a hint of something out of order. If their search led them here, all of Lu Yun’s efforts would be wasted.

Naturally, he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for death. Over the subsequent period of time, his golden armored warriors manifested in all parts of the world and incited various disturbances to attract the eyes of great dao.

Sometimes, he even sent the Tome of Life and Death with his warriors and exposed it to the targeted eye of great dao!

While the light of great dao destroyed the warriors, the treasure wasn’t restricted by space or time. Each time, it disappeared from sight a split second after the warrior perished.

That nearly sent the master of the eyes into a fit and gave Lu Yun a new goal—break another eye of great dao.

It would be much harder this time around since the three hundred and sixty-five eyes had grown to unimaginable levels. Even Lu Yun wasn’t able to shake them with his current strength. Neither could the Disordered Empyrean Supreme easily accomplish the task.

He gave up on the idea, but formed an even more insane plan. He collected all one thousand and eighty warriors and sent them to the imperial domain of the Cardinal Sacred Palace.

Last time at the Thalassic Lake, Lu Yun pinpointed that the principal force hunting him in this world originated from the center of the realm: Cardinal Sacred Palace—the strongest of all factions. That was where the three hundred and sixty-five eyes of great dao came from.

He hadn’t formed grudges with anyone after arriving in this world—Lu Yun just wanted to quietly cultivate for ten years and immediately leave without a fuss. But people constantly calling for his head was the outcome!

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t kill people, he just didn’t want to involve innocents. However, prolonged duration of harassment would incite fury in even a saint. Fluffy rabbits went on the offensive when they were backed into a corner.

Therefore, Lu Yun planned on killing people now.

His temper was well and truly roused. If Sacred Radiance was destroyed after he’d planted the seeds of his great dao in the tribe, it would take untold years to replicate his work anew.

Thus, one thousand and eighty golden armored warriors transformed into different things through the Shapeshifting death art. They sped to the imperial domain of the Cardinal Sacred Palace with the fastest speed possible.

The heart of that imperial domain was the Cardinal Sacred City. The actual sacred palace floated over the city like a heavenly palace, throwing off aureate radiance like it was a city of divine spirits.

The greatest powerhouse of the palace—the Cardinal Supreme—lived in the palace.

Cardinal Sacred City wasn’t a metropolis freely accessible to all. It was more like a sect grounds in which the sacred palace nurtured disciples. Only palace disciples lived in the city, but it also wasn’t entirely off limits to visitors.

Visitors from the rest of the world could transact with the sacred palace to enter the city, but the entrance fee was remarkably expensive and one couldn’t remain for long.

Five hundred million kilometers outside the palace was where cities and domains for ordinary cultivators could be found. Cardinal Sacred City was the heartland of Cardinal Sacred Palace territory and the core of this world.

Cardinal Sacred Palace was the strongest out of the five sacred palaces, but no one knew how vast the world was. Perhaps there were stronger factions beyond the five. Lu Yun didn’t know since he was newly arrived in this world.

An eye of great dao hovered over the sacred palace, exercising constant surveillance over the area. This was the three hundred and sixty-sixth eye of great dao, the strongest out of them all. No one dared try anything on the ground with it in the air—no one but Lu Yun.

One thousand and eighty golden armored warriors paid the entrance fee with the local currency of dao crystals and entered the city in one hundred batches.

Dao crystals were crystalline items condensed from the origin of great dao. Immensely useful in cultivation, one dao crystal could supply at least one hundred years’ worth of dao qi for a high supreme. The entrance fee to Cardinal Sacred City was three hundred dao crystals and visitors could only stay for three days.