Chapter 1199 – Towards True Martial City
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The slaughter within True Martial Great World became increasingly intense as more and more martial artists gathered near True Martial City. Compared to Immemorial Imperial City, True Martial City had far broader grounds for hunting and killing. Just Demon Sealing Ridge itself was nearly a thousand miles long and wide.
Although Demon Sealing Ridge was the highest level hunting ground near True Martial City, not every martial artist chose to go there. For instance, Zhong Wenshu and Sacred Martial Mansion’s three prodigies chose to go to a nameless canyon nearby Demon Spirit Ridge. This canyon was winding and deep and also very well hidden. The level of the nightmare beasts within also wasn’t low.
The reason they had chosen this place was mainly for safety.
Whether it was Lin Ming or certain masters of True Martial City, it was possible they could be hunted down and slain.
“Did you hear the stories? It seems that some strange red-furred monster has appeared at Demon Sealing Ridge that especially hunts down top masters. Even masters ranked similarly to us have been killed.” Sacred Tianhao solemnly said.
“That is a matter that only the top 10 ranked masters need to deal with; we do not have to worry about it. It also shouldn’t affect our place, so we’re much safer here. Moreover, five months have already passed. The second round of eliminations approaches. There should be only a month left. During the second round of eliminations, the number of participants eliminated will be even more exaggerated than in the last round. I think that Lin Ming will start to move.”
“I wonder what the little bastard is doing so sneakily that he only comes out at the end. Whatever, we just have to avoid him and we’re fine.”
As Lin Ming was mentioned, Sacred Yueping grit his teeth. When the three prodigies of Sacred Martial Mansion fought Lin Ming, the disparity between them had been an unsurpassable moat. It was a vivid memory that would never be erased from his mind, the shame of his life.
Sacred Yueping’s guess wasn’t wrong. Ever since Lin Ming killed Sacred Martial Mansion’s three prodigies, he had continued to be closed up and didn’t even go out to hunt once. His ranking rapidly fell.
As the second round of eliminations began, the merit value of nightmare beasts suddenly experienced a massive rise. The many participants rapidly accumulated merit points. With Lin Ming not doing anything at all, his ranking naturally fell as his merit points remained stagnant.
On the first day, he fell from around rank 30,000 to rank 33,000 on the Divine Seal Decree. Afterwards, he fell around 2000-3000 ranks every day. In just one month, he fell off the top 100,000 ranks of the Divine Sea Decree.
And the further he fell, the faster he fell. Currently, Lin Ming was ranked around 280,000.
As for the Divine Seal Decree, it only ranked the top 300,000 martial artists of the entire Divine Realm. In other words, Lin Ming would soon fall off the Divine Seal Decree!
In Good Fortune Great World, Lin Ming’s change in ranking naturally was noticed by the countless disciples and Elders of the Unbroken Cult.
“That Lin Ming, isn’t he Junior-apprentice Sister’s husband? How come his ranking is falling straight down?”
“Yeah, wasn’t he very fierce?”
“It seems that he’s going to fall off the Divine Seal Decree soon.”
After some time, many disciples of the Unbroken Cult couldn’t help but discuss this in low whispers. But then, a gruff voice rang out. “Lin Ming’s drop in ranking is only because he hasn’t moved for these last two months. Then again, if we ignore that reason and just look at his 280,000 ranking, he will still become a late Holy Lord character in the future. He is a martial artist that ascended from the lower realms and yet he was able to achieve such success. But as for all of you, you are all martial artists born in the Divine Realm, and have done nothing with your lives at all! So, before you speak of others, make sure you have the qualifications to do so!”
The Unbroken Cult’s Great Elder callously berated them. These disciples were immediately embarrassed by their own words.
The Great Elder fiercely swept his eyes over all the disciples. The reason he said this was because when Mu Qianyu and Qin Xingxuan asked him to help search for Lin Ming’s name, Lin Ming still hadn’t been able to surpass 1000 merit points, and this continued for a long time. From this it could be seen that for some unknown reason, Lin Ming hadn’t done anything at all. For the second round of eliminations, this was likely the same possibility.
“This Lin Ming… he really is able to stay still. There is still another month left in the second round of eliminations… he should be able to rush back into the top 30,000.”
The Unbroken Cult Great Elder thought out loud. But in truth, even he wasn’t too sure of what would happen. Before this, during the first round of eliminations, he hadn’t noticed Lin Ming’s ranking rising at all. He had only seen his extraordinary final result.
But this time, he was carefully observing from start to finish.
Within the Unbroken Cult’s floating palace, Mu Qianyu and Qin Xingxuan were also staring at the Divine Seal Decree.
Although the two of them had correctly guessed why Lin Ming’s ranking had dropped, seeing such a steep drop still made them feel nervous. Qin Xingxuan was especially restless. She feared that some accident might have happened to Lin Ming. It wasn’t because she was concerned about how strong Lin Ming was, but because if Lin Ming couldn’t obtain a stellar result on the Divine Seal Decree, then the Unbroken Cult might not escort them to see Lin Ming.
As Mu Qianyu saw Qin Xingxuan’s uneasy appearance, she said in a gentle voice, “Little Sister Xingxuan, don’t be so nervous. There is absolutely no need to worry about Lin Ming’s strength. Even if he runs into a stronger powerhouse during this tournament and is defeated, he’ll quickly catch up and achieve at least a similar result to the last time.”
“Mm… I understand.” Qin Xingxuan nodded.
And at this time, within the dreamland True Martial Great World, Immemorial Imperial City –
Lin Ming was sitting on a stone bed. Suddenly, his eyes flashed open. Seven-colored rainbow-hued lights appeared around him. He greedily absorbed them all like a whale swallowing water. Soon after, these energies entered his soul, carving the fourth divine dream mark into his being.
The four divine dream marks were all different. The first two divine dream marks were much brighter than the last two. As for the newest two, they were much more bleak and dim. It was clear that this was because they hadn’t been nourished with enough divine dream energy.
From the time that Lin Ming entered the divine dream space with his five months of cultivation, he discovered that he had obtained a tremendous benefit in the aspect of his soul. His cultivation also gradually rose, nearing the middle Divine Sea realm with every passing day.
As for his battle spirit, it also approached gold perfection. If his battle spirit reached the perfect gold level, then the next boundary would be a blue soul battle spirit. At that time, the power and intensity of his battle spirit would take a qualitative leap upwards.
Lin Ming closed his eyes briefly, thinking out loud to himself, “My soul force is over twice as strong than before I trained in the Divine Dream Law! This sort of increase is far too terrifying. Empyrean Divine Dream is truly a remarkable heaven-gifted genius. In the domain of the soul, she was actually able to establish her own method to temper the soul and allow true essence to fuse into it…”
Lin Ming sighed. His own soul, if compared to that of someone who hadn’t trained in the Divine Dream Law, was just like the difference between a martial artist’s body and the body of someone who only had brute physical strength. The difference between these two was clear.
When one’s soul was powerful, there were all sorts of benefits. For instance, one’s divine sense, alchemical ability, refining ability – all of this was related to one’s soul. In the future, he also wouldn’t encounter a bottleneck in his cultivation due to the insufficient strength of his soul.
Of course, the most direct advantage now was his increased soul force. Lin Ming could also sense an area over twice as large as what he could in the past.
Moreover, the clarity of his divine sense had also doubled!
This was especially true to his sensitivity to divine dream energy. As Lin Ming understood the Divine Dream Law more and more, his sensitivity to this miraculous energy was 10 times what it was before.
Now, as Lin Min closed his eyes, he could clearly feel all of the masses of divine dream energy lights in a scope of a hundred miles around him. These lights came in different colors and shades. Some were darker, some were brighter, some were smaller, and some were bigger. All of them represented varying concentrations of divine dream energy.
And these concentrations of energy formed in two situations: one was a participant, and one was a nightmare beast.
Lin Ming also discovered that the divine dream energy within nightmare beasts was different from that carried within participants. The divine dream energy within nightmare beasts was often single masses of light that came in one color.
As for the divine dream energy of the participants, that was much more mixed. After all, these participants killed a massive number of nightmare beasts and also gathered all of those different energies into their bodies.
“I should go out and start hunting now. I need to kill some participants or nightmare beasts so I can gather more dreamland energy to nourish my divine dream marks.”
Lin Ming thought. Then, he left his training chambers and moved toward Nightmare Canyon, a thousand miles away from Immemorial Imperial City.
However, along the way he discovered that there weren’t many masters at all. With his sense he was able to easily search a range of a hundred miles for dense gatherings of divine dream energy. Yet, in this extremely broad hunting zone, he wasn’t able to find any highly ranked masters at all.
If there were few martial artists then the nightmare beasts would evolve at an extremely slow rate. The nightmare beasts would have a correspondingly low merit point value.
“Where did all the masters go? Could they have gone to another city?” Lin Ming frowned. After the first round of eliminations, only 1% of the participants on True Martial Great World remained. For such a small number of participants, they could only gain more merit points by gathering together. It seemed that the martial artists of Immemorial Imperial City had migrated somewhere else.
Lin Ming captured the most powerful nearby martial artist to confirm his own guess.
“True Martial City… it seems that the masters of Immemorial Imperial City have all gone to True Martial City…”