Martial Peak

Translator: Silavin & PewPewLaserGun

Editor and Proofreader: Leo of Zion Mountain

Amidst the vast Starry Sky, a Starship carefully avoided the stray asteroids as it sailed towards its goal.

The Starship wasn’t big, less than two hundred meters in length, the smallest type in the entire Star Field, barely Saint King Grade Low-Rank. The hull of such a Starship wasn’t very sturdy, and from the dents and scrapes on its hull, it was clear it had suffered damage from numerous asteroid hits.

If it was a higher grade Starship, such damage would never have been possible.

This small Starship sailed extremely cautiously and seemed to be full of cargo, so its overall speed was quite slow.

Inside the ship, there were about sixty cultivators of varying strength, each one performing their routine duties.

For this expedition, they had been ordered to go out to mine some ore from a nearby Ore Star for half a year, and it wasn’t until a few days ago when they had filled their cargo hold that they had set sail for home.

There were originally a hundred of them, but now only a bit more than half of them remained. They didn’t know why, but the Ore Star they had travelled to had many ferocious beasts appearing and disappearing, resulting in the deaths of many of their companions while they were mining.

The survivors were all just happy to be returning alive so they spoke no words of complaint.

Six months of hard work could be exchanged for many years of freedom, so they were quite satisfied. After this trip, they would receive a large amount of remuneration and could use that money to purchase better Secret Arts and Martial Skills while possibly even acquiring higher grade artifacts. Everyone aboard the Starship felt a sense of accomplishment as they imagined such a bright future.

Wu Yi, a First Order Saint King, was this Starship’s captain. At her age, having such cultivation on Shadowed Star made it clear her aptitude wasn’t bad. The Elders in her family had asserted that as long as she cultivated diligently, she would definitely reach the Origin Returning Realm in the future.

Her strength wasn’t the strongest on the Starship though, that title belonged to her family’s Foreign Elder who possessed a Third Order Saint King cultivation. This Foreign Elder was very old though and besides sitting in the Starship to ensure its safety, he was aloof to all other matters, even Wu Yi wasn’t qualified to command him.

There were other Saint Kings around as well; after all, this mining expedition required a certain amount of strength to protect itself.

Wu Yi stood in the Starship’s power room at this moment and was gazing out the transparent window, staring at the Starry Sky, a sense of longing flashing across her beautiful eyes.

Shadowed Star was her home, but the World Energy on Shadowed Star couldn’t be compared to other major Cultivation Stars in the Star Field. It was a barren place with scarce resources and supplies, lacking in high-grade precious treasure and powerful masters alike.

The strongest masters on Shadowed Star were just Second-Order Origin Returning Realm cultivators and many of them were already over two thousand years old. It wasn’t even clear how much battle strength these masters had.

Shadowed Star was also situated in a relatively remote part of Heng Luo Star Field and was surrounded by countless Dead Stars nearby. To find an Ore Star to mine, a several month long journey was necessary. During this period, everyone onboard the Starship was constantly on edge, fearing that the ship would be destroyed.

Because of its remoteness and barrenness, the great forces in the Star Field rarely paid any attention to this area, and even the ruthless Galaxy Ridge and Abandoned Lair didn’t run over to engage in plunder and bloodshed.

Although Shadowed Star was technically part of the Star Field, it had almost become its own independent world, forgotten by everyone else.

Wu Yi very much wanted to leave Shadowed Star and take a look at the outside world. When she was young, she had listened to many stories of the wondrous sights and scenes of the other Cultivation Stars in the Star Field as well as the great masters at the Origin King Realm. The unimaginable beauty and splendour of those other Cultivation Star where one could cultivate many times faster than on Shadowed Star, all the various different kinds of people, the Saint Crystals and pills that could never be used up.

Compared to those other Cultivation Stars, Wu Yi felt like a little countryside girl who had never seen the world.

She yearned for everything in the outside, but the status of her family severely limited her freedom, and since she was quite sensible, she had soon begun focusing on making contributions to her family instead of her childhood dreams, offering to lead this dangerous trip to the nearby Ore Star. For every ten Starships that were sent out, it would be fortunate if five returned from this task, so no one dared to take on this job if at all possible. In the eyes of the Elders of the family, this was almost akin to punishment rather than a duty.

However, with Wu Yi being a woman, in her family’s eyes, even if she were to accidentally die outside, it wouldn’t damage the foundation of the family, so they had easily agreed to her leading the expedition.

If it was instead a male direct descendant of the family, the Elders would never have allowed him to take on such a dangerous mission.

[A group of old short-sighted fools, no wonder they can only wait to die on Shadowed Star!]

[So what if I’m a woman?] Wu Yi snorted softly, clenching her fists while secretly vowing that one day she would leave Shadowed Star and escape from this suffocating prisoner’s cage, find her own freedom, and bask in the wider and more exciting world.

“Young Lady!” A Third-Order Saint hurried over, his eyes greedily lingering on Wu Yi’s splendid mountains and enchanting valleys before he quickly lowered his head and focused his gaze on his feet.

“What is it?” Wu Yi turned to look at him, “I just saw Yu Feng taking some men with him outside, what are they up to?”

“Senior Yu Feng just discovered a blood-red ore nearby and thought it might be something of value, so he took some people with him to retrieve it, but who could have known it was actually something much stranger than expected,” The cultivator quickly explained.

“Hm? What’s the situation?” Wu Yi immediately became curious. While she was staring out the window, she had indeed seen Yu Feng lead a team of people out on their Star Shuttles. Now it turns out they had brought back some kind of strange red ore.

“I think it would be best for Young Lady to go and see for herself, this subordinate also isn’t quite clear what happened,” The cultivator let out a hollow laugh.

Wu Yi’s delicate brow furrowed before she nodded, “Lead the way.”

Staying inside this Starship all day long was driving her crazy with boredom so now that there was a new novelty around, naturally it attracted Wu Yi’s interest. Perhaps Yu Feng was having similar thoughts, which lead him to rashly leave the Starship to bring back the strange blood-red ore.

Somewhere in the Starship’s hold, a large group of people stood around a large crimson crystal about ten meters in diameter, all of them marveling at this strange treasure. Although they were all curious about what this crystal was, none of them dared to approach it except for the one who had originally retrieved it, Yu Feng.

Yu Feng glanced around at the companions with a look of disdain and snorted, “So what if there’s a dead man inside this thing? What’s there to be afraid of?”

Saying so, he lightly patted the huge blood-red crystal with his palm.

“Yu Feng, what good thing did you find?” A clear and pleasant sounding voice called out from nearby and upon hearing it, all the crew members who were just lazily standing around straightened up their backs and fixed their sloppy faces. Even Yu Feng stood up tall and tried to wear a mature and reliable expression.

The crowd automatically separated and allowed Wu Yi to step forward. The light, floral scent which seemed to waft from her figure caused this group of men to greedily and joyfully sniff the air.

Wu Yi shook her head helplessly. On this Starship, she was literally the only woman. This group of wolf-like men, after many months of hard labour, were by now starved for companionship, and Wu Yi couldn’t bring herself to care about them showing such an ugly performance because even if she reprimanded them, they would all just wear stupid grins on their faces as if receiving her scolding was an honour for them. Wu Yi had long ago resigned herself to this kind of display.

Over time, she had simply begun turning a blind eye to these situations, and the more she ignored them, the more presumptuous they became.

Yu Feng, on the other hand, stood up to enforce justice, punching a few of the bolder ones who had openly sniffed the air before putting on a fierce expression and shouting, “I’ll kill anyone who dares act so disrespectfully to the Young Lady, stand back and show some manners!”

While he was shouting though he too was taking down big gulps of air like a drowning fish.

“It’s fine,” Wu Yi waved her hand casually as she walked over the blood-red crystal and asked, “Is this the thing you found?”

“Yes, Young Lady,” Yu Feng rushed over to Wu Yi and pointed at the giant crystal, “At first I thought it was some kind of treasure, but I didn’t realize until I actually obtained it that there was actually a dead person inside it. The poor bastard, I don’t know how he died, but when I saw him drifting through the Starry Sky, I couldn’t bear to just leave him there, so I brought him back and was planning to find a place to bury him on Shadowed Star.”

Wu Yi nodded gently, “Having a charitable disposition is good, especially considering your usual irritating behaviour. En, I didn’t expect you to have such a side.”

After being praised, Yu Feng’s mouth curled into a grin that stretched from one ear to the other, clearly not knowing the meaning of the word shame as he openly boasted, “In fact, I just look a little rough on the outside while in truth I am a true gentleman on the inside.”

Unscrupulous snickers and sneers echoed through the hold.

Wu Yi wanted to laugh as well, but felt doing so was too shameful, so she covered her mouth with her delicate hand while resisting her urge to smile and said, “Are you sure the person inside is dead?”

Yu Feng was stunned for a moment before asking, “Can someone in this kind of state actually survive?”

Wu Yi carefully looked at the people who were sealed inside the blood-red crystal. This man looked quite young, around thirty years old at most, and although he wasn’t too handsome, compared to the worthless lot on this Starship, he could be considered quite good looking. Even though his eyes were shut tight at the moment, this young man’s face seemed to have an inexplicable charm to it.

Releasing her Divine Sense, Wu Yi wanted to check if this young man had any signs of vitality, but to her surprise, the blood-red crystal seemed to be able to block her probing.

“Go invite Foreign Elder Chang Qi to come and see if this young man has truly died or not,” Wu Yi quickly said.

Immediately, one of the crew left the hold. Foreign Elder Chang Qi was the strongest person on the Starship. A Third Order Saint King, Chang Qi was the strongest master on the Starship, and if he weren’t already so old, he might have had hope of breaking through to the Origin Returning Realm. Perhaps he would know what this blood-red crystal was.

“Why bother inviting Foreign Elder Chang to come?” Yu Feng laughed walking over to the crystal and patting it gently, “Even if this guy is alive, he can’t come out. I just tried a moment ago, no matter how hard I strike this crystal, I can’t even leave a scratch on it. I really wonder what it’s made off.”