Chapter 913 – Strange Black Bead
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With Lin Ming’s understanding of array formations in addition to the grandmist space that annihilated all Laws, it wasn’t difficult for him to destroy a grand array formation that was only functioning at 20% or so.
This caused everyone to remain silent. Breaking through array formations like paper, slaughtering masters like chickens; Lin Ming was truly a dark star. It was impossible for them to think he wasn’t even 30 years old yet, and that just six years ago he had broken through to Revolving Core.
Lin Ming’s perception swept over the wreckage. After determining that there wasn’t any problem with the treasure chambers, he stepped inside.
The Blood Slaughter Steppes was a gathering land for geniuses, and the martial artists that came here every year were all rich individuals of their sects. In addition to guarding the Eternal Demon Abyss, gathering wealth, treasures, the Blood Slaughter Steppes could be said to be paved with gold. Every High Lord was ridiculously rich, and as the Steppes Master who controlled all of the Blood Slaughter Steppes, the degree of valuables in his treasure chamber could be imagined.
It had to be known that not every martial artist needed to build a treasure chamber; normally a spatial ring was enough. The exceptions were large sects or great characters like the Steppes Master who had far too many treasures in his possession but still needed massive numbers of items to reward his followers. Only when a heaven-step spatial ring wasn’t enough would a treasure chamber.
In this treasure chamber, there were 30-40 metal racks. Each rack was filled with heaven-step treasures, many of which were medium-grade heaven-step weapons. There were even some high-grade heaven-step treasures.
These things weren’t useful to Lin Ming but they would still be useful for gifting others or for strengthening the forces of Divine Phoenix Island. Lin Ming waved his hand and received everything into the Extreme Violet Ring. This ring contained a true small world within it. There were palaces, a sun, grasslands; the storage capacity was nearly unlimited. Nearly anything could be placed inside.
Behind these weapons was a massive amount of Blood Demon Crystals. The dark crimson Blood Demon Crystals were piled up and formed a small hill. Most of them were medium-grade Blood Demon Crystals, but there was even a smaller hill that was comprised of high-grade Blood Demon Crystals.
Blood Demon Crystals was the common currency used by the Giant Demon race and Imp race. Lin Ming had initially used this sort of currency to purchase items when he was at the Skysplit Tower.
A high-grade Blood Demon Crystal was worth 100 medium-grade Blood Demon Crystals, or about the equivalent of 20-30 low-grade spirit essence stones. Lin Ming estimated that there were tens of millions of medium-grade Blood Demon Crystals and around a million high-grade Blood Demon Crystals. This could be exchanged for at least 30 million low-grade spirit essence stones!
Such a massive amount of wealth was the total accumulation of the Steppes Master for the last thousand years! To loose such an amount would even make a Divine Kingdom suffer!
Lin Ming wasn’t polite; he took everything into his spatial ring.
Following that were Demon God Bones. Large and small Demon God Bones were like black colored beads, all of them piled up in two great boxes. This was also taken by Lin Ming.
As for pills, cultivation method manuals, and the rest, Lin Ming didn’t have much interest in that. In terms of wealth, the Blood Slaughter Steppes was beyond rich, but in terms of pills and inheritances, they were actually inferior to the four Divine Kingdoms.
“Mm? What’s this?”
Something caught Lin Ming’s attention. He discovered that beside the boxes of Demon God Bones, there was a baby fist sized bead. It was black all over, and it seemed to be made of wood but also not made of wood. It was like stone, but not like stone at all. There were many strange demonic patterns that were engraved into its surface.
“This isn’t a Demon God Bone.”
Lin Ming felt that were no energy fluctuations coming from the black bead. He investigated it with his perception but also didn’t find anything special about it. He reached for it, wanting to take a closer look of this bead.
As he took it in his hands his eyeballs nearly popped out of his head. Good heavens, this baby fist sized bead was even heavier than the Great Desolate Blood Halberd!
“What is this thing!?”
Lin Ming was completely stunned. With his casual million jin strength he still wasn’t able to lift it!
He was forced to open the Gate of Pain and use 2 million jins of strength before being able to take the bead in his hand.
“This should weigh at least 1.5 million jins or even 1.8 million jins! This is absolutely the heaviest thing I have ever seen!”
The black bead was less than 1% the size of the Great Desolate Blood Halberd, but it was actually two times heavier!
Lin Ming discovered that the structure holding the strange bead was very special. The material was a metal that could be used to forge a heaven-step treasure. The base was attached to the ground where a number of array formations supported it. Only then could it firmly carry the weight of the black bead, otherwise the black bead would have fallen through the ground.
“According to what I saw in the grandmist space about the evolution of the universe, such a heavy thing can only be produced within some great stars.”
Within the grandmist space, Lin Ming learned that celestial bodies like the sun and moon couldn’t last forever. The combustion of the sun would gradually burn away all of its energy, and it would slowly dim down before extinguishing into a dark star. Only the material of this dark star would have such weight.
Materials from that dark star would be understandable, and even grandmist energy was thousands of times heavier than the dark star matter. But the key point was that this black bead in Lin Ming’s hand obviously didn’t come from a dark star. Lin Ming could even feel a trace of the breath of life coming from within the bead.
Although it was incomparably weak, Lin Ming wasn’t imagining things! If it weren’t for his soul force being so powerful, he simply wouldn’t have been able to sense it.
“This thing is alive?”
Lin Ming was startled. He nearly dropped the black bead on the floor.
If this was possibly alive, then the gravity of this situation surpassed that of some dark star material being here. What kind of existence was this? It couldn’t be a dragon egg, could it!?
“Impossible! A dragon egg would not be so small. A True Dragon has a body that is tens of thousands of miles long, so it wouldn’t be strange for a dragon egg to be dozens of miles wide.”
Lin Ming used every method at his disposal to investigate the black bead. He even asked Demonshine and also scanned through the memories of the Ancient Demon, finally discovering nothing at all.
The only thing he determined was that Luosha had obtained this black bead from the Eternal Demon Abyss.
Within the Eternal Demon Abyss, there lived unfathomable existences. Luosha had been the Steppes Master for over a thousand years, and every ten years he would organize High Lords to explore the edge of the Eternal Demon Abyss. Whatever strange and mystical items that these High Lords first picked up that came from the eruptions deep within the Eternal Demon Abyss should be given to Luosha.
There was no doubt that Luosha also had no idea what this bead was. He likely thought that it was very magical, and decided to keep it and slowly study it, hoping that one day he would determine just what sort of precious treasure it was.
“I’ll take this first. If I ask Senior Fairy Feng then she might know what it is.”
Lin Ming touched his left hand and placed the black bead into the Extreme Violet Ring.
After sweeping through Luosha’s treasure chamber in a single go, Lin Ming searched through the old Imp’s spatial ring. This fellow had been the previous Steppes Master; his total wealth surpassed even Luosha.
It was only a pity that the majority of the old Imp’s wealth was hidden in his own treasure chamber. The contents of this spatial ring was only a small part of it.
Lin Ming searched through the spatial ring but didn’t discover anything as strange as that black bead. As for the rest of the normal treasures, they totaled to around 10-20 million spirit essence stones and there was even a jade slip containing the ‘High Chaos Devil Arts’. Lin Ming browsed through it. This cultivation method was much more profound than what he had imagined. It was even more exquisite than the Great Desolate Halberd Art, and wasn’t inferior to some inheritances from the Divine Realm. Some of the Concepts and Laws within it were lost unfortunately, so the old Imp wasn’t able to display its full might.
“It seems this cultivation method was also found in the Eternal Demon Abyss. The Eternal Demon Abyss is truly a land filled with treasures. I wonder just how many people obtained their lucky chances there.
“This High Chaos Devil Arts would actually be quite useful for me to study. It would give me a much better soul attack method.”
Lin Ming’s soul was extremely formidable, but it was inferior to his battle spirit.
A battle spirit was the manifestation of will and thoughts. Although related, it was different from the soul.
Will was an energy wave emitted from the brain; it was a type of energy similar to a force field. There were even some mortals with a particularly powerful will that could move objects in space. These types of people were referred to as telekinetics. If these people had extraordinary martial arts talent, it would be very easy for them to form a battle spirit before they reached the Divine Sea.
A battle spirit couldn’t directly be used to attack material objects, but it could be attached to anything to strengthen its power. This applied to true essence, force fields, soul, and many other things.
If Lin Ming attached his battle spirit to his soul, in addition to his Samsara martial intent, his soul defense power would be incredibly powerful. Anyone that tried to use a soul attack against him would be seeking death. For instance, that old Imp had his chaos demon spirit shattered in half after trying to use a soul attack.
Lin Ming’s soul defense was freakishly abnormal. But unfortunately, besides the Samsara martial intent, he didn’t have any true soul attack method he could use to kill enemies on his own initiative. This was because he didn’t have an appropriate soul-based martial skill.
This High Chaos Devil Arts could change this. With Lin Ming’s soul and perception as the foundation, in addition to his Samsara martial intent and Saint artifact bracer supporting him, it would only take from ten days up to half a month to learn this.
“Demonshine, take control all of these people and clear out the Blood Slaughter Steppes in the next several months. Everyone that remains must obey my commands, otherwise slaughter them without mercy! I’ll use this time period to close up and organize my harvests. The day I leave seclusion is the day we return to the Sky Spill Continent!”
In Lin Ming’s heart, Yang Yun was one of the few people that he wasn’t able to understand. Almost all enemies Lin Ming had faced were individuals that had been blinded by greed. Their main goals were to gather wealth and amass treasures, or cultivate to a higher boundary so that they would have a longer life. Those like Xuan Wuji and Situ Haotian could be included in this classification.
But Yang Yun was different. He was an ambitious man with ambitious ideals – these ideals could possibly be called the definition of madness. Moreover, he used every possible effort to walk towards his goals, willing to use any method to accomplish it, no matter how underhanded or unscrupulous it would be.
Such a person was the most terrifying opponent of all!
Every day that Yang Yun remained in the Sky Spill Continent was another day that Lin Ming remained uneasy. He simply didn’t know just what sort of mess Yang Yun would stir up.
At this time, Lin Ming had closed up in a chamber of the Blood Slaughter Divine Temple. The main portion of his time would be used to perceive the Ancient Devil’s memories.
What Lin Ming found surprising, was that this Ancient Devil was actually a magnificent array master; he was skilled in demonic path array formations.
Although Lin Ming had absorbed the memories of an array master in the past, that array master had been biased towards the orthodox path. If he could use these demonic array techniques to complement the orthodox array techniques, then his array formation skill would rise to yet another level!
“Cyclic Demon Slaughter Array, Spectral Blood Skylock Array, Yellow Springs Ghost Burying Array, Six Path Samsara Array.” Lin Ming slowly scanned through these memories. Whenever his mind began to be dazed and his thoughts a bit confused, the Saint artifact bracer he wore would sent up relaxing waves of energy into his mind like a cool spring wind. This cleared his mind, making all his thoughts much more lucid.
Know yourself, know your enemy, and be undefeated! Most of Yang Yun’s cultivation methods came from the Ancient Devil. When they inevitably battled in the future, the Ancient Devil would surely attach himself to Yang Yun to increase his strength. As long as Lin Ming could familiarize himself with the techniques and abilities of the Ancient Devil, then the battle was already half won!