translator: ahad
Proofreading: shaheer
Humanity’s Great Sage – Chapter 1013: Guarding the Base
For a moment, the scene was chaotic; even with Dao Thirteen presiding over the situation, it seemed barely under control.
Zhang Julai slammed his hand onto the chair’s armrest and roared, “Shut up, all of you!”
The Blood Race members finally quieted down, but one still ventured to speak: “Cave Master, if that is the case, what are we to do for our future cultivation?”
They couldn’t truly be expected to just breathe in World Spiritual Qi or absorb power from Spirit Stones; otherwise, what advantage would the Holy Race have?
Zhang Julai had already received Lu Ye’s instructions and spoke confidently: “Forbidding you from slaughtering blood food is precisely for your future cultivation! Although blood food is not hard to breed, it is not easy to raise. If you kill too many, sooner or later we will fall into a situation where we have no blood food to use. From now on, every once in a while, I will have someone collect some fresh blood from the nearby villages; this will certainly be enough to guarantee your cultivation needs.”
In reality, for the Blood Race to feed on human blood, it was not strictly necessary to kill them. It was just that during the process of feeding on fresh blood, the Blood Race easily became overwhelmed by their primal urges, unable to control themselves. This meant that once a human was targeted by a Blood Race member, they would inevitably be drained dry and die.
However, if they were simply drained of some blood from their bodies, while it would temporarily harm the humans, their lives would not be at risk.
This was a method Lu Ye had come up with.
He had a plan in mind, but to implement it, he had to rely on the power of the Blood Race. With his identity as a Human, it would be difficult to accomplish anything in this Blood Refining Boundary.
Since he had to utilize the power of the Blood Race, he couldn’t oppress them too harshly; ensuring their basic cultivation needs was the absolute minimum requirement.
If they followed this method, in the future, nearby villages would only need to offer some fresh blood periodically, and no human would die because of the Blood Race.
The Blood Refining Boundary was under the rule of the Blood Race, and such was the general trend. Unless one had the strength to eradicate the entire Blood Race, it was difficult to improve the status of the Human Race.
One Blood Race member shouted: “The blood released… doesn’t taste very good.”
The method Lu Ye thought of had naturally been considered by other Blood Race members in the past, but it was only implemented for a short period before being abandoned. The main reason was the mouthfeel and the taste.
The feeling of capturing a living person and devouring fresh blood was completely different from drinking blood that had been drained from humans in advance.
The Blood Race had a craving for living blood in their bones.
Of course, it didn’t have much impact on cultivation.
Zhang Julai roared angrily: “This is the Cave Master’s first command! You must listen, whether you like it or not!”
Although the group of Blood Race members was unhappy, seeing Zhang Julai getting angry, they still verbally agreed. They had no idea why Zhang Julai would issue such an order.
“Don’t think about acting in secret. If anyone dares to disobey in secret and I find out, I will surely not be lenient.” Zhang Julai gave another stern warning.
This was the rule of the Blood Refining Boundary: might makes right. Now that he had Dao Thirteen as a deterrent, none of his subordinate Blood Race members dared to disobey him in his presence.
“The second thing…” Zhang Julai began again. “I am preparing to attack the Hundred Leaps Cave Dwelling!”
The Hundred Leaps Cave Dwelling was adjacent to Bright Moon Cave, so there were naturally some frictions between them. The Blood Race member who had fought with Zhang Julai previously was from the Hundred Leaps Cave Dwelling.
The Hundred Leaps Cave Dwelling had even come to attack Bright Moon Cave three times, but Sun Miaozhu had led Zhang Julai and the others to repel them. However, several Blood Race members were lost because of this, and the seeds of hatred were sown.
Therefore, when Zhang Julai announced that they were going to attack the Hundred Leaps Cave Dwelling, the previously dejected Blood Race members suddenly became excited. Some shouted: “We should’ve attacked them long ago. Cave Master, I am willing to be the first to charge in!”
“Cave Master, count me in!”
“I’m going too!”
For a time, everyone was agitated, wishing they could kill their way to the Hundred Leaps Cave Dwelling right now to give them a lesson.
Lu Ye stood beside Zhang Julai, watching silently. He was finally getting a taste of the Blood Race’s warlike nature. He had a lot of information in his mind about the Blood Refining Boundary, so he wasn’t surprised by this, but knowing about it and seeing it with his own eyes were two different things.
The Blood Race was so keen on fighting each other, and the reason was nothing more than Blood Crystals!
Compared to World Spiritual Qi, Spirit Stones, and the blood of blood food, Blood Crystals were the cultivation resources the Blood Race craved the most. This was the same logic as the Spirit Beasts in the Jiu Zhou world often breaking out in conflicts; Spirit Beasts could also improve themselves by devouring the inner cores of Spirit Beasts of the same type.
The announcement of the second command instantly dispelled the depression and unhappiness brought about by the first command.
Zhang Julai nodded with satisfaction. “Very well, since that’s the case, let us rest today and set off tomorrow!”
A Blood Race member asked: “Cave Master, are we all going? Do we need to leave someone behind to guard the place?”
“No need to leave anyone behind, everyone is going.” Zhang Julai waved his hand. This even excited the few Spirit Creek Realm Blood Race members, who had a posture of not fearing death. One wondered what role they could play after going.
Letting all the Blood Race members go was naturally Lu Ye’s idea. To him, there would definitely be losses in this battle, especially for those in the Spirit Creek Realm; they probably wouldn’t make it back alive.
Anyway, as long as Dao Thirteen followed Zhang Julai, he could control the situation of the battle. As for how many died or lived, it depended on how Dao Thirteen handled it.
Lu Ye naturally wouldn’t feel heartache over the death of Blood Race members. On the contrary, to him, the more who died, the better, because every Blood Race member had their own Blood Crystal, and their quality varied.
What he lacked now was Blood Crystals.
Of course, not too many could die; he even needed to gather more manpower than he currently had, because his goal was not just the Hundred Leaps Cave Dwelling.
He had more ideas to implement, and all of this required a sufficiently powerful force as a foundation. Fighting alone would make it difficult to achieve anything.
The night passed without incident. The next morning, under Zhang Julai’s leadership, the Blood Race members of Bright Moon Cave headed out aggressively.
Dao Thirteen followed.
Lu Ye stayed behind to guard the place. Ostensibly, it was Zhang Julai’s order for him to guard the cave dwelling, but in reality, Lu Ye didn’t want to waste time. The strength he could exert now was limited, so the matter of attacking the Hundred Leaps Cave Dwelling could be left to Dao Thirteen.
The entire Bright Moon Cave now, except for him, was left with only the humans who had been abducted. Most of them were women, and there were only a few men.
Without any Blood Race members guarding, they didn’t know how to run away, mainly because they couldn’t escape.
The entrance of Bright Moon Cave was suspended on a cliff, and these humans with little cultivation base couldn’t leave at all.
Lu Ye set up a warning array at the entrance and stayed in his own cave dwelling.
He didn’t need to worry about those humans, mainly because he didn’t know how to handle them. He didn’t have to worry about their survival; Bright Moon Cave had beasts captured by the Blood Race, and Spirit Rice brought back from nearby villages, which was enough for those humans to survive.
They just needed to take care of themselves.
Sitting cross-legged in his cave dwelling, Lu Ye sank his mind into observing the new Spirit Patterns on the Tree of Glyphs.
Previously in the Nameless Hidden Realm, he only obtained two Spirit Patterns. One was “Soul Control,” which had played a big role; whether it was Dao Thirteen or Zhang Julai, they could be considered his soul slaves.
Under the Soul Control Glyph, he had absolute control over his soul slaves, so there was no need to worry about them harboring any ulterior motives.
There was another one called “Common Breath, Shared Branches.”
This Spirit Pattern was somewhat similar to “Double Flying Phoenix,” both used for borrowing power. However, it was easy to activate but difficult to maintain.
Unlike “Double Flying Phoenix,” once the “Double Flying Phoenix” Spirit Pattern took shape, it would be branded onto the position where Lu Ye and the other person were in contact. With Lu Ye maintaining it, there was no possibility of it dissipating.
But “Common Breath, Shared Branches” did not have such strong stability. Once the Spiritual Power fluctuated, the Spirit Pattern might collapse.
And because this Spirit Pattern acted on more than two people, there would be even more uncontrollable factors at that time.
When he first obtained this Spirit Pattern, Lu Ye didn’t think much about it, but now that he was calming down to contemplate it, he discovered that this Spirit Pattern was a killing weapon!
A killing weapon that could play a huge role in certain situations.
For example, when two armies were at war, if the cultivators on one side were each in their own formations, even if there was some coordination between them, they couldn’t borrow each other’s strength. If the other side’s cultivators were linked by “Common Breath, Shared Branches,” their auras interacted, and who was stronger and who was weaker would naturally be clear at a glance.
Furthermore, one could use this Spirit Pattern as a core to set up an unprecedented large-scale formation, concentrating the power of all the cultivators in the formation together. If one could achieve that, the role it would play would be unimaginable.
It wasn’t until this moment that Lu Ye discovered he had underestimated the use of this Spirit Pattern.
He had borrowed many books on Spirit Patterns from his master’s library and had learned many Spirit Patterns from the books, but this Spirit Pattern was something he had never heard of before.
Including Soul Control, Double Flying Phoenix, and Point of Consonance, Lu Ye had never imagined that there were such profound Spirit Patterns in this world before they were activated in the Tree of Glyphs.
The Way of Spirit Patterns was truly vast and profound!
The use of the “Common Breath, Shared Branches” Spirit Pattern still needed to be studied in detail.
However, he could first use this Spirit Pattern as a core to refine a formation plate. In this way, those who held the “Common Breath, Shared Branches” formation could activate the efficacy of this Spirit Pattern at any time, allowing nearby companions to borrow strength from each other. In this way, they would be able to exert even more powerful strength.
This would be helpful for some of the plans he had in mind.
Thinking of doing it, he did it.
Lu Ye had followed Kong Kong for two months to learn artifact refining in the Sword Artifact Sect’s Hidden Realm, and he was already an initiate in the Way of Artification. It was only because he didn’t have the energy to distract himself that he didn’t study it deeply.
But for him, even if he didn’t have the right tools, relying on his own Fire Attribute Spiritual Power, refining a formation plate wasn’t difficult.
At most, because his current cultivation was restricted, it would take a bit of effort.
He sorted out some materials from his storage sphere, wrapped them in Spiritual Power, and began to incinerate them.
Time passed. Lu Ye spent half a day refining a formation plate containing the “Common Breath, Shared Branches” Spirit Pattern, but because his cultivation was currently only at the First-Order Cloud River Realm, the formation plate wasn’t refined very exquisitely.
He infused his spiritual power into it, and the formation plate hummed, a halo of light spreading out. Looking at it, the halo was clearly constructed from small Yin and Yang elements, radiating from the formation plate as the center, covering a radius of three meters.
Lu Ye frowned.
That seemed to be different from what he expected…
The range of three metres meant that only cultivators within this range could borrow strength from each other. Once they exceeded this range, it wouldn’t work.
(End of chapter)