Bab 9: Yellow Martial Spirit
Editor: Caron_
"Did I succeed?"
Ye Tian stood in the tub and stretched, naked. An indescribable feeling of comfort seemed to permeate every pore of his body, but he still wasn't sure whether the process had been a success.
Other than the feeling of comfort, nothing else stood out—there was no discomfort but also no other changes—Ye Tian felt the same as he had the day before.
I feel like I've gotten stronger? Ye Tian wondered, casually punching the air a few times. He frowned and tried to decipher what had happened to his body, as well as what was so special about the devouring property.
But to find out whether it had worked, he would just have to try it out. With this in mind, Ye Tian hurriedly dressed and left the house with his eyes sparkling.
"Tian er! You haven't had breakfast—where are you going?" Lin Mei called out after Ye Tian.
"Mom, I won't be back for lunch," Ye Tian called back, waving in reply.
"This kid…" Lin Mei shook her head but didn't pay him much mind. Ye Tian had never liked staying at home, and by this point, she was already used to it.
Hualala!
Soon, the familiar waterfall was before him again, leaping through the air. Ye Tian hurriedly rushed around and dug into the ground where he had buried the Scarlet Guard warriors, revealing the corpses of the powerful warriors.
A corpse lay before him, face pale and eyes wide open, filled with desperate unwillingness and stuck in an eternal glare.
"Amitabha Buddha, why are you glaring at me? I didn't kill you, and now that you're dead, instead of letting your Martial Spirit scatter through the heaven and earth, let me devour it," Ye Tian murmured.
He reached out and shut the Scarlet Guard's eyes.
"I need a quiet place. Who knows how long it will take to devour a Martial Spirit!" Ye Tian peered around, picking up the body and running along a familiar path. If he remembered correctly, there was a little remote cave not too far away.
Soon, the little cave appeared before his eyes, hidden behind a couple of bushes. Ye Tian ran forward.
As soon as he was in the cave, Ye Tian put down the corpse and took out the sheepskin scroll, reviewing the instructions inside on how to devour a Martial Spirit.
"Great Magus Balata, don't trick me or I'll haunt you even in my death!"
Ye Tian murmured to himself as he prepared. He sat crosslegged in front of the corpse and took out the scarlet blade, cutting away the clothes of the warrior and revealing his hairy chest.
Hairy! Ye Tian thought with some shock, but he nevertheless cut downwards and created a long wound. Blood spilled out and quickly covered the Scarlet Guard's entire chest.
"Now!"
At that moment, Ye Tian's eyes glittered as both of his hands grabbed the sharp blade's edge, and pain shot through him as his cut palms immediately began bleeding.
Ye Tian paid no attention to the pain and hurriedly placed both of his bleeding palms on the warrior's chest. A dim black glow appeared from Ye Tian's palms and gradually spread to cover both him and the corpse.
All the light in the cave dimmed as if engulfed, and all that remained was a black cocoon emitting dim light.
Ye Tian was absolutely stunned, and his consciousness seemed to narrow and enter the Scarlet Guard's corpse where he came face to face with a child-sized Scarlet Guard warrior.
There was a confusing meld of spirit and corpse; a bloody heart and thick veins stood right before Ye Tian, unmoving and without vitality.
But also before him was the tiny Scarlet Guard warrior, eyes lifeless but emitting a dazzling orange light all over.
"An Orange Martial Spirit—no wonder he could join the Scarlet Guard!" Ye Tian stirred from his shocked amazement. Excitement bubbled forth. After devouring this Orange Martial Spirit, he would become one of the most gifted talents in the village. Even the strongest people in the village only had an Orange Martial Spirit, and most of the others barely had a Red Martial Spirit.
But there were more than ten corpses buried outside. After Ye Tian devoured all of their Martial Spirits, his talent might even ascend to a Yellow Martial Spirit, and then he would be the undisputed number one talent and finally reclaim his Number One Genius title.
His heart began to pound as he imagined his future, but Ye Tian quickly pulled himself back to the matter at hand, calming himself down and following the method described on the sheepskin scroll to devour the Martial Spirit in front of him.
Ye Tian watched as a black, bloody mist gradually appeared and touched the Orange Martial Spirit, causing the spirit to quiver slightly. Even though it had lost all of its vitality, it could still instinctively sense the approaching danger and wanted to escape.
"You want to flee? Hmph!"
Ye Tian sneered when he saw the Martial Spirit's instinctive reaction. But there wasn't much space here—where could it run? Finally, it was engulfed by the Black Blood Mist.
While the bloody, black mist gradually condensed, the Scarlet Guard's Martial Spirit also began to shrink, while inside Ye Tian's body a tiny orange Ye Tian was slowly growing.
The tiny Ye Tian's glow was somewhat dim. It was nowhere as dazzling as that of the Scarlet Guard's Martial Spirit, but Ye Tian didn't care. He was already ecstatic—he finally had his own Martial Spirit, and it was an Orange one at that!
An hour later, the Scarlet Guard's Martial Spirit was completely devoured, and Ye Tian could no longer hold back his joy, his eyes snapping open as he roared in excitement.
"Finally!"
Ye Tian felt a wave of pride and satisfaction. The happiness in his heart was beyond words, and the heavy suffocating gloom that had hung over him was finally gone.
"Hong!"
With a Martial Spirit finally within his body, Ye Tian's Soul Sense immediately multiplied, and a boundless wave of Spiritual Qi from the Heavens and Earth fell upon him, covering him from head to toe.
"Spiritual Qi Irrigation!" Ye Tian paused, and his already ineffable joy increased. He hurriedly calmed down and gathered his thoughts, focusing on the changes being wrought upon his body and controlling his newborn Martial Spirit to absorb the Spiritual Qi.
An Orange Martial Spirit was far more effective than a Red Martial Spirit, and it absorbed the Spiritual Qi at a very fast rate. Ye Tian finally made a breakthrough in his stalled Peak Martial Apprentice cultivation and he pushed into the realm of Martial Warrior, Level One.
But his cultivation didn't stop, and all of Ye Tian's accumulated progress pushed him forward, pushing him all the way to Level One Middle Stage — quietly and in one go, breaking through a small barrier.
"I'm finally a Martial Warrior!"
Ye Tian once again opened his eyes, and a breathtaking gleam seemed to fly out with his gaze. A powerful Qi burst forth from his body, sweeping aside dust and air.
All the difficulties associated with entering the Martial Warrior path were finally resolved. The gate to the Martial path had opened wide, and he had his feet solidly on the road towards becoming an expert and master. His future lay open ahead of him, and the road awaited.
"Tingting, wait for me!"
"Ye Wei, Lin Jiaojiao, you two can wait as well, hmph!"
Ye Tian's gaze was sharp like a blade, and when he clenched his fist, a thick and powerful stream of True Qi flowed through his body, multiplying his body's great strength. The current Ye Tian was incomparable to the one who had woken up this morning.
The distance between Martial Apprentice and Martial Warrior involved a fundamental change; the two could barely even be compared.
Ye Tian felt as if he had become a dozen times more powerful, and he could now feel the true power of a Martial Warrior. It was no surprise now that Ye Wei had so easily defeated him the day before.
"Orange Martial Spirit … still isn't enough. I want to become even more powerful! Compared to the boundless Shen Zhou Continent, the Ye Family Village is way too small. Sooner or later, I will need to leave this remote mountain home!"
Ye Tian's eyes sparkled. With his wealth of memories from a different world, how could he be satisfied with living on this remote mountain for the rest of his life? He wanted to leave the Ye Family Village and walk across the Shen Zhou Continent. The path lay before him. He would follow where it led and test himself at its peak.
His mind made up, Ye Tian exited the cave and retrieved the other Scarlet Guard corpses one by one, devouring each of their Martial Spirits.
He soon discovered why these people had joined the Scarlet Guard—all of them were gifted powerhouses, and every single one had an Orange Martial Spirit.
There were a total of twenty-one Scarlet Guard corpses and a total of twenty-one Orange Martial Spirits. After Ye Tian had devoured them all, his own Martial Spirit had begun to change, darkening from light orange to dark.
Finally—
The darkness transformed once again into light and a light yellow glow appeared, seemingly illuminating Ye Tian's Dantian and all the meridians in his body.
"Yellow Martial Spirit!" Ye Tian's heart could barely contain his joy, and for a moment, his excitement was all-consuming.
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Indigo, Blue, and Purple. The higher the grade of Martial Spirit, the faster it could absorb Spiritual Qi and the less time needed to cultivate and advance. The difference between even a single Martial Spirit grade spanned the distance between heaven and earth.
If the Spiritual Qi absorption speed of a Red Martial Spirit was "One," then the speed of an Orange Martial Spirit was "Ten," and the speed of a Yellow Martial Spirit was "One Hundred."
This simplistic comparison completely illustrated the difference between different grades of Martial Spirits and the gap between mediocrity and genius.
There was no question that this Yellow Martial Spirit would now enable Ye Tian to cultivate at a breathtaking speed, outpacing the entire Ye Family Village including their Village Chief.
"In all of White Cloud Town, only the Wang Family Village Martial Master has a Yellow Martial Spirit. Now that I have one as well, it will only be a matter of time before I ascend to Martial Master." Ye Tian's eyes burned.
The reason why the Wang Family Village was the most powerful in White Cloud Town was simply because of their founder's unique status as the only Martial Master Realm expert in the entire area. He had a Yellow Martial Spirit; thus he was able to found the Wang Family Village.
Even though both the Lin Family Village and Ye Family Village were also powerful, neither of them had a Martial Master Realm Martial Warrior, so the two villages were overtaken in every dispute and that was why they had decided to bind their villages together with marriage alliances to resist the powerful Wang Family Village.
As long as Ye Tian entered the Martial Master Realm, all of White Cloud Town would lay at his feet, and if he joined the Scarlet Guard in the future, he would be highly valued.
Ye Tian couldn't keep the grin off his face. With his Yellow Martial Spirit, the Martial Master realm was only a matter of time.
The reason the old Village Chief was still stuck as a Peak Stage Level Ten Martial Warrior was simply because his talent was lacking. With an Orange Martial Spirit, he had already reached his limit as a Level Ten Peak Martial Warrior. Without a chance miracle, progressing forward would be incredibly difficult.
But Ye Tian didn't have this problem. With his ability to devour other Martial Spirits, he could constantly upgrade his Martial Spirit, and as he grew more powerful, he would be able to devour more powerful Martial Spirits. Ye Tian saw no impediments in his Martial Dao.
I'm done devouring all these Martial Spirits, and now I just need to cultivate as diligently as I've always done to become an expert, Ye Tian thought to himself, his eyes filled with confidence.
No one knew that at that moment, in a little cave in a remote backwater, a powerhouse who would one day shock the entire continent had been born.
Ye Tian reburied the Scarlet Guard corpses, and with extreme confidence, he ran back to the Ye Family Village.
-- Hadiah diterima