Martial Peak

Translator: Silavin & PewPewLaserGun

Editor and Proofreader: Leo of Zion Mountain & Dhael Ligerkeys

In addition to the Fire and Water Attribute treasures, Yang Kai also had the Bird Wood, which might satisfy the Wood Attribute treasure.

This Bird Wood was something Yang Kai obtained before arriving on Shadowed Star and was formed from the corpse of a Tenth-Order Thunder Luan Monster Beast. It should be no worse than the Monster Core of a Tenth-Order Monster Beast in value.

As for where he could find appropriate Earth and Metal Attribute treasures, Yang Kai temporarily had no ideas.

However, he wasn’t in a hurry; after all, even if he did manage to gather treasures from all five elements, he didn’t have time to dedicate to cultivating this Body Tempering Secret Art. Right now, Yang Kai had to cultivate his Space Blade and Golden Blood Thread Secret Technique, refine the Dragon Bone and Dragon Bead, and find a way to refine the Coloured Glass Bead.

The Golden Blood Thread was of particular importance to Yang Kai after he learned that it was capable of cutting through Shi. Yang Kai’s evaluation of this Demon Blood Temple Secret Technique had risen dramatically after he discovered this and he couldn’t help praising its creator for their ingenuity once more.

Currently, he had only cultivated a single Golden Blood Thread, and even that had yet to reach the grand accomplishment stage. Yang Kai wanted to cultivate more Golden Blood Threads, but he had no idea how much time that would take. For these reasons, even though Yang Kai was extremely interested in this Five Elements Indestructible Sword Tempering Art, he didn’t immediately begin cultivating it, planning to wait until he collected all the required treasures first.

Of course, studying and comprehending this Secret Art wasn’t an issue as doing so would allow him to gain twice the result with half the effort once he did begin cultivating it.

After silently making up his mind, Yang Kai temporarily stored the Five Elements Indestructible Sword Tempering Art back into his Space Ring before clearing his head of distractions and beginning to absorb the Soul remnant left behind by Manager Wang.

This was the first Origin Returning Realm Soul remnant that Yang Kai had absorbed, so naturally, he was quite prudent and careful with it, refining it slowly to ensure he didn’t miss anything.

After three days, the Soul remnant of the old man surnamed Wang was completely refined and Yang Kai opened his eyes to reveal a thoughtful look.

Although Manager Wang’s cultivation wasn’t very high, he had spent many years in the First-Order Origin Returning Realm and had his own unique insights into Shi. Now, these insights had become Yang Kai’s and through this refinement, he had gained a small understanding of Shi.

An understanding was one thing, but Yang Kai realized even more now that if he wanted to try to cultivate Shi, it would be almost impossible unless he broke through to the Origin Returning Realm. However, if he were to face an Origin Returning Realm master again, Yang Kai would now be able to use his understanding of Shi to bolster his resistance to it, so it wasn’t like he hadn’t obtained any immediate benefits at all.

Yang Kai believed that as long as he killed more Origin Returning Realm masters in the future, his comprehension of Shi would continue to increase, allowing many grains of sand to become a tall tower and ultimately reach a height greater than anyone else.

Regarding the process of breaking through, only when an Origin Returning Realm master cultivated their Shi to the grand accomplishment stage would they have a chance to break through to the Origin King Realm, but on Shadowed Star, no person was able to achieve this, so no Origin King Realm masters currently existed here.

The World Principles of Shadowed Star suppressed all the Origin Realm masters’ understanding of Shi. Yang Kai had yet to reach this level but even so, it was impossible for him to remain trapped on Shadowed Star forever. If he really reached the peak of the Third-Order Origin Returning Realm, Yang Kai would find a way to leave Shadowed Star, escape the suppression of its World Principles, and break through to the Origin King Realm in the outside world.

It was too early to be worried about such things, however, so Yang Kai quickly focused his mind and took out the Coloured Glass Bead Dai Yuan had given him, holding it in his palm before silently pouring his Saint Qi into it, attempting to refine it.

After maintaining this process for some time, Yang Kai’s eyes flashed as a look of pleasant surprise appeared on his face. Immediately increasing the output of his Saint Qi, a faint multi-coloured light began leaking from the Coloured Glass Bead into Yang Kai’s body, and under his guidance, it began gathering in his left eye.

This Coloured Glass Bead was equivalent to a Monster Beast’s Monster Core, so Yang Kai had thought that refining it and absorbing the energy from a Monster Beast’s Monster Core would be the same. Therefore, he had tried to use this kind of direct method and, to his surprise, it seemed this method was not only effective, but also quite easy to implement.

This made him overjoyed.

No longer holding back, Yang Kai slowly began to refine this Coloured Glass Bead while continuing to cultivate the Golden Blood Threads inside his body at the same time.

Time flew by and soon it had been two months.

This day, Yang Kai slowly opened his eyes and glanced down at his empty palm, furrowing his brow.

After two months of absorption, the Coloured Glass Bead Dai Yuan had given him was finally consumed clean and no longer existed. However, although this Coloured Glass Bead’s essence had been absorbed into his body, it would still take some time for Yang Kai to completely refine it. Now, in his Knowledge Sea, the gorgeous glowing light comprised of the Coloured Glass Divine Light contained inside the Coloured Glass Bead was suspended close to the Demon Eye of Annihilation.

However, Yang Kai felt that it was going to take quite some time to fuse this Coloured Glass Divine Light with his Demon Eye of Annihilation, something that slightly differed from his expectations, causing him to feel a bit unhappy.

After all, according to his previous predictions, the Demon Eye of Annihilation and the Coloured Glass Divine Light shared many similarities. So, in theory, they should have easily integrated, but now it appeared that his thinking had been too naive.

But such a possibility wasn’t beyond Yang Kai’s expectations, and as long as there was enough time, the Coloured Glass Divine Light and his Demon Eye of Annihilation could be successfully combined, the only difference now was how long it would take.

Putting this matter aside temporarily, Yang Kai waved his hand casually and two Golden Threads appeared from it.

One of these Golden Threads radiated a brilliant golden light and seemed capable of cutting space itself with unstoppable might. The other Golden Thread was obviously inferior to the first, with not only its coloured being dimmer but the power contained within it also being weaker.

This Golden Thread was the second one Yang Kai had condensed.

When a Demon Blood Temple cultivator cultivated this Secret Technique, even if they spent their entire life they may not have been able to create two Demon Blood Threads because the foundation of this technique was their own vitality. Everyone had a limited amount of vitality and using it excessively endangered their life. In Demon Blood Temple, only Elder-level characters whose strength had reached the Second or Third-Order Origin Returning Realm were capable of cultivating two or three Demon Blood Threads, while those below the Origin Realm would never have more than one.

Even so, these Elders were only able to cultivate multiple Demon Blood Threads after consuming numerous elixirs to nourish their vitality, otherwise, once they used too much of their vital energy they would die.

However, Yang Kai was different as there were several dozen drops of Golden Blood in his body. One drop of Golden Blood could be converted into a Golden Blood Thread, and he could increase the amount of Golden Blood in his veins infinitely. In theory, Yang Kai could condense countless Golden Blood Threads, which was also why he dedicated so much time and effort to this Secret Technique. It was simply tailor-made for him.

More than a month ago, he felt that his first Golden Thread had been cultivated as far as it could be.

It wasn’t that this Golden Thread was refined to its peak though. Because he had only obtained the first half of the Demon Blood Thread Secret Technique, Yang Kai simply didn’t know how to continue enhancing this Golden Thread.

With no other choice, Yang Kai began to cultivate this second thread.

With his previous experience, this second Golden Thread took shape much faster than the first and Yang Kai was certain he could bring it to its limit much faster as well.

Also, while cultivating the second Golden Thread, Yang Kai faintly realized something.

He felt that this Secret Technique wasn’t as simple as he first thought. If he had enough Golden Threads, he may be able to combine them to take on new forms and functions, but none of these were introduced in the first half of the Demon Blood Thread Secret Technique, so Yang Kai could only speculate that they were hidden in the second half!

After cultivating his Golden Threads to their limit, Yang Kai had no idea how to continue enhancing them or how to combine or manipulate them, so everything right now was only his own speculation. It seemed that if there was a chance in the future, he would have to pay Demon Blood Temple a visit. Only by obtaining the second half of the Demon Blood Thread Secret Technique could he continue enhancing his Golden Blood Threads.

During this retreat Yang Kai had gained a lot and, after calculating how much time he had been in seclusion, he decided it was time to go out.

He remembered Yang Yan saying that she would require his power to complete whatever project she was working on last time, but he couldn’t tell if that time had come yet. Since he had been in retreat all this time, Yang Yan had definitely not considered disturbing him.

Having made up his mind, Yang Kai took another look at the Red Candle Fruit piece to make sure it showed no signs of withering under the nourishing of the Red Candle Stalk before opening the cave mansion’s barrier and leaving.

The World Energy aura on Dragon Cave Mountain seemed to have become a bit richer than before, but this was only to be expected as there weren’t very many cultivators living here and their respective cultivations weren’t high. Because of this, the World Energy which was drawn to Dragon Cave Mountain by the Aura Gathering Array would only grow in richness, unlike in big Sects where thousands of disciples would continuously consume it. In such Sects, even if they had high-quality Earth Veins providing a constant stream of World Energy, maintaining a balance was the best they could do.

Dragon Cave Mountain was peaceful and quiet, and as Yang Kai swept his eyes around, he was unable to see anyone at all. This wasn’t a surprise though. Releasing his Divine Sense, Yang Kai quickly found where Yang Yan and the others were.

But what puzzled Yang Kai was that all those who had any authority on Dragon Cave Mountain were gathered together, as if they were discussing something important.

With a slight smile, Yang Kai wandered over to a bamboo tower where these few people were gathered, but before he arrived he heard Hao An’s voice call out, “They’re going too far! They were the ones who set the price in the first place, so why is this happening now?”

Immediately, Chang Qi responded in a calming tone, “Okay, okay! Old Hao, sit down first. The young ones are all sitting calmly, so why are you getting all excited for?”

“Foreign Elder Chang, what do you think of this?” Wu Yi asked.

“Hmph, this situation is clearly a little strange!” Chang Qi replied with a sneer, “Our cooperation with Shadow Moon Hall isn’t something recent. Over the past two years, the number of materials we have purchased from them can be considered to be astonishing, worth in excess of two hundred million Saint Crystals. We’ve always negotiated in good faith and paid in full, but now they are suddenly saying the cost of materials has increased! There’s definitely something more to this than meets the eye.”

“Exactly! Not only that, they even detained Yu Feng, which is also truly unusual,” Hao An seemed to have calmed down and agreed with him.

“On top of that, I noticed another strange matter,” Wu Yi said pensively deeply.

“Oh, what?”

“For the past three months, many of the shopkeepers and shop hands belonging to Shadow Moon Hall in Heavenly Fate City have been replaced and the people we’re all familiar with have completely disappeared. I cannot even find Luo Qing anymore.”

Inside the bamboo tower, the group of people looked around at each other as they suddenly realized that something big must have changed inside Shadow Moon Hall.