Desolate Devouring Art - Chapter 1267 - Myriad Races Gathered
Chapter 1267 – Myriad Races Gathered
Liu Wuxie’s rise from the eighth level of the Transcendent Realm to the fourth level of the Origin Conversion Realm was unbelievable.
“Senior Brother Hua, didn’t you go look for him?” one of the youths asked, standing beside Hua Haosheng, who would also represent the Heavenly Dragon Sect at the Myriad Race Ceremony.
“That brat rejected me,” Hua Haosheng said, face grim. He had gone to buy the dragon’s blood and the Dragon-Grasping Hand; Liu Wuxie had not only refused him but also disregarded him in public.
“How dare he refuse Senior Brother Hua! He must have a death wish. The Myriad Race Ceremony will be his death,” another youth said with a vicious smile. They had already begun plotting how to kill Liu Wuxie.
“As long as we kill him and refine his corpse, we can extract the dragon’s blood. As for the Dragon-Grasping Hand, we’ll search his soul for it,” a third youth added, smiling cruelly.
Their conversation never reached Liu Wuxie because of the distance between them.
After about fifteen minutes, a powerful wave of aura swept over the martial field. Thirty experts flew in, each radiating pressure that blanketed the sky. Twenty-five were elders at the Void Realm, and five were Earth Immortal Realm grand elders. Silence fell instantly. Under the Earth Immortal Realm’s aura, everyone trembled.
Elder Long stood among them. He would accompany the expedition and take responsibility for the disciples’ safety.
“Elder Zhuge Ming will lead this expedition to White Moon Valley,” Elder Long announced. His gaze settled on an elder whose presence thundered with Quasi–Heaven Gaze Realm might.
Liu Wuxie, like the other disciples, turned to look, and Luo Wuxie’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s him.” Zhuge Ming was the black figure who had kidnapped him to the lesser realm by force to treat his wife. Logically, his wife had just recovered, so someone like him wasn’t supposed to be here. The fact that he was here meant he had to have a proper reason behind it.
Unbeknownst to Liu Wuxie, Zhuge Ming had visited the sect master to request the Oceanheart Iceflame and the Divine Earth Essence from the sect treasury, agreeing to supervise the Myriad Race Ceremony as the price.
The Heavenly Dragon Sect’s treasury stored countless priceless treasures; anyone seeking an item had to exchange something of equal value. Even grand elders followed this rule.
Zhuge Ming swept his gaze across the three thousand disciples. When it reached Liu Wuxie, his brows knit. Although Liu Wuxie had disguised himself as a man in his thirties that night, his eyes hadn’t changed, and traces of the Divine Earth Essence and Oceanheart Iceflame still lingered on him.
After one steps into the Heaven Gaze Realm, one could see through illusions and glimpse fate—the source of the realm’s name—to see through falsehood. Though he hadn’t reached the Heaven Gaze Realm, he was already one step away from it.
Liu Wuxie had just refined the Oceanheart Iceflame and Divine Earth Essence.
Ordinary cultivators couldn’t sense the five elements balanced in his body, but a Quasi-Heaven Gaze expert could. The two men held each other’s gaze for a full three minutes before Zhuge Ming looked away. They both recognized each other, yet neither exposed the other.
When Zhuge Ming returned that night, he had made himself clear—they would not meet again. He did not want anyone to know what happened.
“This trip to White Moon Valley concerns the sect’s honor,” Zhuge Ming declared after letting his eyes pass over Liu Wuxie. “Anyone who achieves a good result will receive rewards on the spot and even greater rewards when we return.”
Rich rewards stoked the disciples’ fighting spirit. As if on cue, a giant warship slowly rose into the sky.
“This is a quasi-immortal artifact, comparable in might to a Heaven Gaze Realm expert!” exclamations erupted. Immortal runes wove across its hull. It wasn’t an actual immortal artifact, but it stood infinitely close to one.
Liu Wuxie narrowed his eyes at the sight. Since entering the Astral Domain, he had never felt so near to the Fleeting Cloud Celestial Realm.
In the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain, forging a quasi-immortal artifact took at least a thousand years and mountains of materials.
Immortal artifacts required tens of thousands of years of polishing and nourishment with immortal energy; they were exceedingly rare.
The internal space of immortal artifacts could contain an entire planet. A quasi-immortal artifact could not match that, but its inner world was still enormous. Housing three thousand people was trivial, and it could even hold three hundred thousand.
“Everyone, form queues and enter the warship. The journey to White Moon Valley will be long, and teleportation arrays would waste too much time,” Elder Long said.
A quasi-immortal artifact could travel through space and even cross from the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain to the Laman Astral Domain without an interstellar teleportation array.
White Moon Valley lay in the west of the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain; teleportation arrays would take days. The warship would make the trip in half a day.
The disciples filed aboard with eagerness. Liu Wuxie boarded with the latter group; he had waited at the edge of the martial field and let others go first. Elder Long spotted him and gave a slight nod as a quiet greeting.
It didn’t take long for all three thousand disciples to enter. Inside, they discovered a vast internal space that the owner had developed into a miniature universe, populated with mortals whose sole purpose was to generate faith for the warship’s owner. When Liu Wuxie stepped in, a valley landscape stretched before him, while the three thousand disciples spread out and looked around with curiosity.
After the thirty elders boarded, the warship turned into a streak and vanished into the sky.
“Radiant, do you think he can create a miracle?” Hua Feiyu murmured as his eyes snapped open, speaking to the Radiant Mirror before him. When Elder Long reported that Liu Wuxie planned to register for every event in the Myriad Race Ceremony, Hua Feiyu was shocked. Others might not know what happened in Mount Dragon City, but he had witnessed everything.
“He can,” the Radiant Mirror replied, transforming into a playful girl of twelve or thirteen with a skyward braid.
“What makes you say that?” Hua Feiyu asked, studying the manifestation. In terms of cultivation, the Radiant Mirror stood above him; she had served three generations of sect masters.
“I can sense a similar aura coming from him,” the Radiant Mirror said. She had lived for eons and still kept a childlike spirit.
“I can sense it, too,” Hua Feiyu said with a nod. “There’s a powerful energy concealed within him, and even I can’t stop it once it explodes.”
He closed his eyes and sank into meditation. In his realm, absorbing spiritual energy no longer advanced cultivation; only comprehension of the dao could.
Above White Moon Valley, quasi-immortal artifacts clustered like stars. Many pseudo-immortal artifacts drifted among them—one tier beneath quasi-immortal artifacts, corresponding to the Earth Profound Realm.
The difference was fundamental; no one could ever upgrade a pseudo-immortal artifact, while a quasi-immortal artifact could eventually grow into an actual immortal artifact.
Differentiating truth from falsehood was the ultimate secret of the Heaven Gaze Realm, and artifacts followed the same rule. Those unable to discern truth counted as pseudo-immortal artifacts; those capable of it counted as quasi-immortal artifacts.
More people poured in from every direction. Whether pseudo or quasi, the artifacts hung in the sky. Some quasi-immortal artifacts took the form of divine palaces whose massive plazas teemed with people; others took the shape of swords that ferried their disciples.
The Heavenly Dragon Sect’s warship expanded and unfurled like a sect in the clouds, and the disciples gathered across its decks. With faces lifted to the heavens, they stared in shock at a sky teeming with pseudo- and quasi-immortal artifacts.
Liu Wuxie looked into the distance at the vast mountain range that curved like a crescent moon across hundreds of millions of miles. This, surely, was the source of White Moon Valley’s name.
“Look, the Profound Azure Gate and the Nine Dragon Palace are here, too!” a disciple exclaimed.
Within the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain stood peers to the Heavenly Dragon Sect: the Grand Unity Sect, the Profound Azure Gate, and the Nine Dragon Palace. None was inferior in status.
With a single glance, Liu Wuxie spotted countless other races. Beyond humans, he saw the demon clan, the ghost clan, the rakshasa clan, the dwarf race, the oceanic clan, the giant race, the abyssal race, the elven race, and more.
The faceless clan shocked him most.
The faceless clan resembled humans, except for their smooth, featureless faces, which had mouths located in their bellies. Tales said the faceless clan originated in ancient times, second only to the witcher clan and the divine race.
At birth, they had not yet developed the five orifices; when a great upheaval struck, the upheaval halted their evolution, and the faceless clan emerged.
The disciples stared at the faceless ones in fascination and at the giants in awe.
The shortest giants stood under five meters; the tallest reached ten or even thirty, each like a moving mountain. The giant clan excelled in physique at the cost of other strengths. They could not produce true essence, yet their sheer might let the strongest kill immortals with a single punch.
Beastkin and undead drifted through the air, drawing wary glances. The dwarves were the giants’ opposites in stature. These races had come from other planets, crossing billions upon billions of miles to reach White Moon Valley for the Myriad Race Ceremony.
The oceanic clan, fishmen from the depths, excelled in underwater battles.
Liu Wuxie had encountered them on Blood Sea Abyssal Island, where they had yet to fully evolve and could not survive on land. This branch differed; they could transform at will and live on land as easily as in the depths of the ocean.
