Tribulation of Myriad Races

“Is Su Yu in trouble?”

“He did it to himself.”

After a slight hesitation, Xia Longwu said, “Give him some help. Take some of the burden off him…”

“Have you gone mad?” Tian He said, “The moment we do that, we will expose ourselves to the myriad races. Everyone will know that I’m on your side or at the very least, on the human race’s side. Your plan will fail before it begins. What will happen to me, then?”

“Maybe my grandpa can help you with this.”

Tian He replied coldly, “Great Xia King? Yes, his saber is strong. But his saber is also ruthless. He might end up severing me before he could even sever my death qi. I only agreed to work with you because I trust you. If you act rashly like this, you won’t be able to keep our confidence. Xia Longwu, you’ve contacted more people than me. Isn’t that so? Su Yu is seeking death himself. Why must you ask us to seek death alongside him? We only work with you to stay alive. It makes no sense for us to throw our lives away working with you.”

After a short silence, Xia Longwu nodded, “I was too rash. I’ll take a look at Grandstar City.”

“You’re going?” Tian He frowned, “Everyone is already aware that you’re in the Allheaven Battlefield. Everyone has their eyes on that place. If they discover you there, even Invincibles will move out to take action against you.”

It wasn’t like they could only kill Xia Longwu while he was attempting dao affirmation. That was merely the best chance to do so. Previously, they had sent assassins after him. But all the assassins had been easily defeated. That only stopped because his enemies wanted to avoid further losses.

But now, he was going to deliver himself right into their hands. Was he courting death?

“It’s fine. I’ll just watch from afar.”

After saying that, he vanished with a flicker.

In the inner hall, the stone statue opened his eyes and glanced at Xia Longwu. In his eyes, a silhouette had fused with Xia Longwu. The stone statue said nothing about that. Was that the future body?

The future body might bring him more strength, but without the past body, he was still vulnerable to the severing of his past. Simply put, he would be more vulnerable without fusing with the past body.

Just look at the nether Invincible. Even after losing his future and present bodies, he was able to stay alive. He only lost some strength, but there was no threat to his continued existence.

The stone statue wondered just how strong this future body Xia Longwu had captured was.

Amid the countless futures, it was very possible that one might end up capturing a weaker future. For example, a future when he was gravely injured, or a future when he was approaching the final stretch of his life.

After fusing with a body, a switch would be extremely difficult. Firstly, one needed to get another carrier to capture a new body. Secondly, the act of traversing the River of Time to capture the future body was also extremely difficult. Any carelessness could result in death. This was how many ninth-stage Sunmoons had met their end during secluded cultivation sessions. Ȓ₳ŊȪꞖΕ𝒮

Meanwhile, this fellow was busy running everywhere instead of focusing on his past body after getting a future body. What a crazy guy. Or to be precise, these damn humans were all crazy. It was as though they all had a phobia toward calm life.

Xia Longwu should have spent more time looking for a suitable past body. A lot of people preferred capturing a past body from a single moment before. It was more likely for this to be the strongest past body they could capture.

But nothing was certain in the River of Time. Even the act of capturing a past body from a single moment before might be interfered with. The stone statue decided to stop worrying about this. That Su Yu was starting to stir up trouble again. Fortunately, Su Yu wasn’t in his city anymore. He wondered how Grandstar was feeling.

That troublemaker had sealed the city yet again. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? If Su Yu ended up dying, Grandstar wouldn’t be able to find a replacement anytime soon. He would need to shoulder more of the burden, and the most certainly wouldn’t be fun.

But that might also be a good thing as Su Yu was too weak to take on that big of a burden anyway. With him out of the way, Grandstar could look for a more suitable mayor.

***

While Heavendoom was thinking about all that.

Grandstar was completely calm.

He felt zero increased pressure.

Su Yu was surprisingly durable. No matter how much death qi Xing Yue sent his way, he was able to handle it well. Not a tiny bit of death qi had leaked out of him.

Just this alone was enough to turn Su Yu into a suitable mayor in Grandstar’s eyes.

What a good mayor.

There was no comparing the dark devil dragon with Su Yu. Previously, some death qi would leak out of the dark devil dragon every now and then, forcing Grandstar to take on more burden.

Meanwhile, this was not a concern with Su Yu as the mayor. It was as though the concept of overflow did not exist for Su Yu. Each time one believed that he would reach his limit, he would give a resounding no as the answer. He would show that he was still not at his limit.

The current situation was the best example. Wave after wave of death qi rushed into Su Yu’s body, but he merely sat there cultivating like this was just a normal cultivation session. He showed no reaction whatsoever toward the increase of death qi.

In fact, he even had some attention to spare as he was still reading while cultivating. Yes. He had been reading a lot as of late in his attempt to form more characters. At the moment, he had only formed twenty-five characters. That number was too small. He had been using his characters a lot recently, but they could only play supportive roles.

The days when he could smash his opponent to death with a single hammer strike were long gone. Back then, he had relied on his willpower heavily during combat. First, he would stun his opponent with a hammer strike. Then, he would cut the opponent down with his saber.

Now, he could still stun early Mountainseas with his hammer, but what even was the point when he could blast them apart with one punch? Then again, his characters had also proven to be extremely helpful. For example, the calm, tribulation, deceit, and change characters.

Without these characters, it would be much harder to kill those with a similar level of combat strength. When facing an opponent with similar strength, using characters was akin to cheating.

At the moment, the long-dormant fire of inheritance was activated yet again.

Su Yu was in the middle of studying the death character he had formed recently. He had rarely used it after forming it.

Finally, he tried using it. And the moment he tried, he sighed. He had actually been overlooking something so useful. This was a great character. It was actually capable of absorbing death qi to grow.

What did he lack? Well, he believed that he lacked everything except death qi. Thanks to the ancient city, he had an unlimited supply of death qi. And that just happened to be the food for this character. Good character!

With the death character absorbing his death qi, he was able to reduce his death qi at a faster pace. And as time passed, the death character started growing. Before long, the character upgraded into the second tier.

At this point, Su Yu deliberately slowed his reversal speed. After all, he had to keep enough food to feed this character, right?

Su Yu was very impressed.

What a nice character. With this character, he could incorporate death qi into his attacks without transforming into a death spirit. This character would also serve as the perfect cover for his ability to transform into a death spirit.

Not bad at all. He decided to try pushing this character to the fourth tier as well. He did not forget another one of his new characters, the patience character he received from the notes of Great Zhou King the old turtle. This was a rather useful character as well. Since he had so much free time, he might as well work on it as well.

Su Yu was in a leisurely mood. He continued cultivating, forging his body, reading, and growing his characters. He did not look a tiny bit like someone tormented by death qi backlash. In fact, he even had to worry about the speed at which he was reversing the death qi. What if he accidentally reversed himself back into a non-resident? Wouldn’t that be unfortunate?

How big of a shock would it be if his name were to suddenly reappear on the index? Yes. He absolutely must control his speed.

***

Second day of lockdown.

The calm and harmony persisted.

No death spirits had appeared. Only a small number of death spirits would appear during the night, but this was normal for an ancient city. Everyone was still busy minding their own business without any worry. It was only the second day.

***

The third day was just as peaceful.

On that day, Su Yu completed his fifty-first body forging. His body forging was taking more and more time to complete. He needed a few days to complete one, and he also needed a lot more resources. After completing the 51st forging, he was left with 1,240 strands of heavenearth profound light.

From the 30th to the 51st forging, he had exhausted 460 strands. But after this, he would probably need more than 50 strands per forging. That was a terrifyingly high number. That was much more expensive than even 250 portions of heavenly source qi.

Back then, he had estimated that he would only need about ten portions per forging. But reality proved that he had been too naive. The resources required for body forging would not remain constant at every level.

As one grew in strength, so would the requirements. One should also remember that apart from forging his body, he had also been consuming heavenblood fruit to help his life force keep up with the growth of his body.

He was burning resources at a terrifying level for his cultivation. But as a result, his strength was also growing at a terrifying pace. Each additional body forging represented a massive increase in strength. In short, both his life force and physical body had been growing without stop.

At this time, Xing Yue was numbly increasing the flow of death qi to Su Yu. Wow. Amazing. He had grown yet again. The flow of death qi to Su Yu had reached a level that was completely comparable to that of a Sunmoon.

In short, transforming Su Yu into a death spirit required as much effort as transforming a Sunmoon.

But Su Yu…was only a Cloudbreach!

Just how much longer would that damn fellow remain a Cloudbreach?

Strictly speaking, Su Yu was only a Skysoar in physical cultivation. He had yet to even finish his body forging.

72-Forged Iron Devourer…could he really complete this art?

Xing Yue greatly doubted that.

Could someone with grand cycle acupoints really complete the 72-Forged Iron Devourer?

Xing Yue could count as well. The more acupoints one opened, the harder body forging would be. According to Xing Yue’s judgment, Su Yu would be stuck after reaching about fifty body forgings.

As someone who had opened grand cycle acupoints, how could he further forge his body? Was the concept of limit not applicable to him? Could talent really reach such a level?

Talent determined the upper limit of an individual. Resources had nothing to do with that. Just because one had resources, it didn’t mean that one could open acupoints or forge one’s body unceasingly. Eventually, one had to stop.

Just what was wrong with Su Yu? Could humanity really produce such an incredible level of talent after the ancient collapse? After the ancient collapse, the human race was dragged down from the very top.

The Human Realm was no longer a realm filled with treasures and heavenly source qi. The current Human Realm was poorer than even the realms of some regular top 100 races. How could humanity produce a monster like this with such a living environment?

There was a reason for the divines, devils, and other major races to occupy so many spots on the Heavenly Hunt Index. The quality of the source qi in their realms was far higher than what the Human Realm had. Furthermore, heavenly source qi was also much more common in their realms. This was why those born in these races would be stronger than humans at birth.

They were born into the Great Strength Realm. Some of the more powerful individuals could even produce descendants at the Infinite Strength Realm. Meanwhile, humanity needed to deal with the Source Opening Realm, including even the descendants of Invincibles.

Xing Yue was feeling very helpless. Whatever. No matter how strong Su Yu could grow, there was no escape. It was only a matter of time before he became their loyal subordinate as well.