Martial Peak

Translator: Silavin & PewPewLaserGun

Editor and Proofreader: Leo of Zion Mountain & Dhael Ligerkeys

After dealing with the Array Plate, Yang Kai picked up a jade bottle in front of him.

What was contained in this jade bottle was none other than the Life Revitalizing Jade Cream obtained inside the Emperor Garden! However, if Yang Kai’s guess was correct, this was just a diluted version of Life Revitalizing Jade Cream.

In order to verify his conjecture, Yang Kai opened the jade bottle and took a big sip without any hesitation.

If someone were to see Yang Kai doing this, they would likely hurl curses at him for his family-ruining practices. Life Revitalizing Jade Cream could extend the life of a cultivator and enhance their vitality. It was nothing short of a magical elixir that could rejuvenate one’s youth, something extremely attractive to any Origin Returning Realm master. A single drop could extend a cultivator’s life by a hundred years, yet Yang Kai just drank a mouthful of it. This was nothing short of a careless waste of Heaven’s precious gifts.

The taste was pure and even somewhat sweet, as if it was the freshest spring water from a mountain stream, and after this liquid reached Yang Kai’s stomach, it immediately transformed into a wave of pure energy that began flowing through his veins.

Yang Kai carefully felt the changes going on inside his body while showing a joyful look upon his face.

He found that his own vitality and Blood Qi were rapidly being strengthened, with his blood showing faint signs of boiling over. Soon, this massive influx of vitality reached a kind of limit and no longer had any place to go, causing Yang Kai’s face to flush bright red and making him feel like he would explode and die in the next moment.

However, Yang Kai was not panicked at all and instead began silently cultivating, using his Saint Qi to gather the erupting vitality in his body together.

As this vital energy gathered, so too did Yang Kai’s blood, all of its components and essence coming together, as if attracted by some kind of inexplicable force.

Time passed by and after roughly half an hour, Yang Kai suddenly heard a soft dripping sound in the depths of the mind.

Frowning slightly, Yang Kai used his Divine Sense to investigate his body and was shocked and pleasantly surprised by what he discovered.

He found that a new drop of Golden Blood had been added to his body!

Not the kind of ordinary, dull golden blood that flowed through his vessels, but the pure, orthodox Golden Blood that could be cultivated into a Golden Blood Thread!

Not much of this Golden Blood currently existed in Yang Kai’s body. When he first came to Shadowed Star, he possessed more than ninety drops, but after all these years, using some of it in combat, feeding some of it to the Divine Tree, and using it for various other reasons, the number of drops of Golden Blood had decreased to about half that number.

And since Yang Kai knew that his Golden Blood was of great benefit to the Divine Tree, he had been giving it a drop every few months. This was quite an expensive price to pay, but the results were also quite astonishing.

Now that he had his Golden Blood Thread Secret Technique, each drop of Golden Blood could be cultivated into a Golden Thread, but even if Yang Kai refined every drop of Golden Blood he had left like this, he would still only possess a couple dozen or so, which was far fewer than he planned for.

Although Yang Kai could supplement this Golden Blood all on his own through cultivation, each drop of Golden Blood required three months of accumulation to condense. This was something Yang Kai verified a long time ago.

Yang Kai never imagined this Life Revitalizing Jade Cream would allow him to condense pure Golden Blood in his body.

However, this was not difficult to understand; after all, Life Revitalizing Jade Cream was one of the Three Great Divine Waters and was originally meant to enhance the vitality of a cultivator. Yang Kai’s Golden Blood was essentially an extremely condensed mass of vital energy.

Composing himself, Yang Kai continued circulating his Secret Art, refining the efficacy of this Life Revitalizing Jade Cream.

After another half an hour, a second drop of Golden Blood was formed.

It was not until after the third drop of Golden Blood took shape that the efficacy of the Life Revitalizing Jade Cream disappeared completely.

A small sip of Life Revitalizing Jade Cream allowed him to condense three drops of Golden Blood, so with the amount he had left, Yang Kai figured he could condense another thirty or so drops. This would almost completely make up for all these years of consumption.

Yang Kai was overjoyed and immediately began drinking the Life Revitalizing Jade Cream bit by bit, continually refining it into Golden Blood.

He did not feel it was wasteful in the slightest. Life Revitalizing Jade Cream may be a life-saving medicine for those masters who didn’t have long left to live, but for him, creating more Golden Blood from it was the best use possible.

After taking it like this though, Yang Kai was even more certain that the Life Revitalizing Jade Cream he obtained was just a diluted product. The real Life Revitalizing Jade Cream must have more powerful effects than this and was surely hidden somewhere inside the Emperor Garden!

Considering all this, Yang Kai’s blood began to boil. If he could really enter the Emperor Garden and obtain that pure Life Revitalizing Jade Cream, he would never again have to worry about having enough Golden Blood. In fact, it probably would not be a dream to replace all of his blood with this kind of pure Golden Blood.

With the powerful vitality and restorative abilities of this pure Golden Blood, even if Yang Kai became grievously injured, he would be able to recover rapidly.

After two days, the entire bottle of Life Revitalizing Jade Cream had been consumed clean, but Yang Kai still showed an unsatiated look. But unable to ask for more, he took out a piece of Space Spirit Crystal, closed his eyes, and began absorbing the Space Force contained within it.

Quickly, half a year passed by.

Over the past six months, Yang Kai did not take one step outside his cave mansion, only doing three things.

First was cultivating the Dao of Space by absorbing the Space Force contained within Space Spirit Crystals, and the second was refining more Golden Blood Threads inside his body. By now, he had several Golden Blood Threads. Because of his previous experience, he had become much faster at cultivating them.

The number of Golden Blood Threads had increased, but his combat strength had not grown much. The main reason for this was that Yang Kai only had the first half of the Demon Blood Temple Secret Technique. How to manipulate and combine these multiple Golden Blood Threads was likely hidden in the technique’s second half.

Yang Kai was not in a rush though, as long as Demon Blood Temple still existed, he would always have an opportunity to deal with this issue. Refining more Golden Blood Threads in advance is still beneficial.

The third thing Yang Kai attended to during this six-month retreat was promoting the fusion between the Coloured Glass Bead and his Demon Eye of Annihilation. After previously refining the Coloured Glass Bead, it had transformed into a hazy halo which encircled the Demon Eye of Annihilation. The two different entities had the same effect, but merging them together proved to be somewhat difficult. Now that he had some time, Yang Kai naturally focused on hurrying this process along.

In addition to these things, Yang Yan had brought him a number of strange looking items and had him pour his Space Force into them three times!

Not only did these things range in size from big to small, they had all kinds of shapes to them, making it impossible for Yang Kai to know what they were for. He had asked Yang Yan once about what these items’ purpose was, but the latter just grinned and refused to answer, only saying not to worry and just pour his Space Force into them.

Yang Kai shook his head helplessly. He had originally wondered why Yang Yan specifically said she would need his help refining some items, but now he understood, there really was no one else other than him who could do this.

In his spare time, Yang Kai also refined some pills.

After all, there were several dozen people on Dragon Cave Mountain, and they all required pills to assist in their cultivation. If they bought all their pills from the outside, the expense would be too great, so Yang Kai just instructed Wu Yi to purchase the appropriate herbs which he then refined himself, saving a large amount of Saint Crystals. This also allowed Yang Kai to practice and improve his Alchemy skills.

Over the past half a year Yang Kai refined many pills, but to avoid raising too much of a fuss, he intentionally only refined ordinary pills. Only occasionally would he refine one or two that had Pill Veins.

Yang Kai found that with the growth in his strength, his Alchemy technique had also improved greatly. It was no longer difficult for him to refine Origin Grade Mid-Rank pills and he figured that as soon as he broke through to the Origin Realm, he would be able to refine Origin Grade High-Rank pills.

The Artifact Spirit had also just recently woken up. This was its second time awakening as Yang Kai had allowed it to swallow another wisp of Sun’s True Fire after the first time. Counting the previous one, the Artifact Spirit had now devoured three wisps of Sun’s True Fire.

The burning aura of the Artifact Spirit was now more than twice as powerful as when Yang Kai first received it.

While Yang Kai busying himself, the Artifact Spirit used its power along with its Artifact Refining Furnace to refine the Dragon Bone and Dragon Bead for him, saving Yang Kai some additional effort.

On this day, Yang Yan brought a bunch of miscellaneous items for Yang Kai to inject his Space Force into.

Yang Kai had no complaints and did what she asked.

As he was doing this, Yang Yan informed him about the developments in the situation outside.

Because Qian Tong regularly sent people to deliver news, Dragon Cave Mountain was aware of the changes in the outside world.

Shadow Moon Hall had issued an open invitation to all the masters of all the major forces on Shadowed Star to discuss the matter of the Emperor Garden. After some discussions, it was agreed that a group of fifty top level Third-Order Origin Returning Realm masters would attempt to approach the Emperor Garden in search of a way inside.

Fifty masters set out, but only half returned.

The other half had fallen!

This happened almost four months ago. When Yang Kai heard about this, he nearly bit his tongue in surprise. After some inquiries, he learned that these fifty masters accidentally triggered some kind of profound Spirit Array and were immediately suppressed by a surge in Emperor Pressure, rendering them defenceless as the flourishing jade white hand transformed from World Energy crushed them to death one by one. The half who survived had only managed to escape using profound Secret Techniques or by causing their precious artifacts to self-destruct to free themselves, otherwise they would have all been wiped out!

Learning from this costly lesson, no one dared to approach the Emperor Garden again. Even a powerful lineup of fifty Third-Order Origin Returning Realm masters had no way to reach the Emperor Garden, let alone others.

However, the great forces did not simply give up and instead left behind some people to monitor the movements of the Emperor Garden!

Everyone guessed that the Emperor Garden had not yet officially opened. This guess was not without reason though; because of the Flowing Flame Sand Field’s precedent. Ordinarily, the Flowing Flame Sand Field was extremely dangerous and anyone who tried to intrude would be killed; however, after it opened, Saint King Realm cultivators could enter and explore it.

It was impossible to verify this hypothesis, but it had gradually been accepted by most people.

The masters from the great forces naturally didn’t have time to simply sit here and wait for the Emperor Garden to open as they had their own business and problems to attend to, so they simply left behind some people to monitor the situation.

Unfortunately, Shadow Moon Hall suffered much hardship after this incident.

They had invited all the parties to explore the Emperor Garden together, which was done out of good intentions, but suddenly, more than twenty Third-Order masters had died, damaging nearly every great force on Shadowed Star. With no other place to vent, the blame naturally landed on Shadow Moon Hall’s head.

Shadow Moon Hall’s good intentions had only given them trouble in this instance. If one or two great forces had accused them, they would not have cared, but with more than twenty blaming them, Shadow Moon Hall had no choice but to handle things with caution.