Chapter 17: Two-In-One (Part 1)

Divine Creation Sect, Neverfall Peak.

This was a peak connected to Qionggu Peak. After Divine Creation Sect’s extraordinarily gifted little martial uncle broke through to Golden Core, the sect leader had personally gifted it to him, taking the first two words from “Neverfall.”

Ten years ago, three elders of Heavenly Evolution Sect had visited Divine Creation Sect and discussed the Dao with that little martial uncle on Qionggu Peak. No outsiders had been present at the time. They had only heard from Divine Creation Sect disciples that during that discussion, the little martial uncle, who had entered the Dao only half a year earlier and was merely five years old, had faced three opponents alone without falling behind in the slightest. Every word he spoke was a gem, leaving several Heavenly Evolution Sect elders so ashamed that they freely admitted defeat.

When the result of that discussion first spread, no one in the cultivation world believed it. They only said that Divine Creation Sect must have declined so badly that its disciples had never seen the world.

What kind of sect was Heavenly Evolution Sect? It had a long history and kept itself apart from the world. Every elder cultivated in a different direction, yet all of them were great powers of vast learning. They had studied arrays and talismans to an extremely thorough degree, and rumor had it they could even glimpse heavenly secrets. Even if Divine Creation Sect wanted to boast, boasting about Sect Leader Pei Zhan would have been better than boasting about a five-year-old child.

Who could have imagined that only one month later, the mysterious Heavenly Evolution Sect would actually open an altar and lecture on the Dao? Elder Wenqu, who held the central position among the seven elders, had a rounded and complete Dao intent. When he spoke of that little martial uncle from Divine Creation Sect, his eyes were full of yearning and praise.

“I spoke with Bupo for a long time. His Dao intent is clear and his Dao heart is firm. In the future, his path will surely be smooth and open. Though I have cultivated for many years, I did not realize that I had unknowingly confined myself. Now, after being awakened by a single sentence from Bupo, I have truly benefited greatly. To discuss the Dao with him was our good fortune.”

Black-faced, full-bearded Elder Pojun gave him a thumbs-up.

Elder Tanlang, leaning on his cane, expressed agreement.

Listen to that. Just listen. Elder Wenqu himself could brag even better than the Divine Creation Sect disciples!

From then on, the great name of Lu Bupo of Divine Creation Sect spread throughout the cultivation world. The jade slips he compiled on the laws between arrays and runes were treated as treasures and eagerly passed around. With his strength alone, he broke down the barrier between the two paths of talismans and arrays. Even those with the worst talent could learn a few of the most basic arrays.

Elders from the major sects who had already gone into seclusion, as well as unaffiliated cultivators who had researched the subject, traveled thousands of miles to Divine Creation Sect, hoping only to meet Lu Bupo once and discuss the Dao with him in person.

For a time, the paths of talismans and arrays flourished. It was a rare lively scene since the cultivation world’s decline.

It was only ten years later, when that little martial uncle of Divine Creation Sect broke through to Golden Core at the tender age of sixteen, that everyone dazedly realized that they had only paid attention to his talent in arrays and runes, and had forgotten that his cultivation talent was even more unmatched.

Calling him a heaven-sent prodigy was no exaggeration at all!

Moreover, Lu Bupo had used arrays to build something called the “Cloud Platform.” Its principle was similar to a water mirror. It allowed people to buy Divine Creation Sect artifacts without leaving their homes, and there were even Demonic Cultivators who personally delivered purchases to the buyer’s door!

Good heavens. After the Cloud Platform appeared, unaffiliated cultivators and disciples of small sects without the resources of major sects were so moved they hugged their heads and sobbed. Cultivation was not easy for them. If they wanted to buy a magic artifact, they had to cross mountains and rivers to go bargain hunting, and even then, there was no guarantee they would buy anything good. They were often fooled until they were completely dazed.

Divine Creation Sect was a major sect. It would never do something shoddy and ruin its own future. In addition, the magic artifacts it produced were high quality and extremely practical. Occasionally, there were even pieces personally refined by Lu Bupo, little martial uncle. The numbers were small, yes, but at the very least, they were guaranteed. So every time the Cloud Platform opened, cultivators from all over were more excited than the last.

The sixth day of every month was the time when the Cloud Platform opened.

Martial Uncle Lu Bupo was adjusting the internet speed on Neverfall Peak.

This was an astonishingly deep room. Mithril served as the carrier, densely engraved with arrays and runes. Its top came to a sharp point. Seen from outside, it was taller than any peak in Divine Creation Sect.

Lu Yan was still dressed in white Daoist robes. People in the cultivation world grew relatively quickly. Lu Yan had already looked like this when he established his foundation at fifteen, with little childishness left. Instead, he had grown increasingly steady. His brows were sharp as swords, his eyes bright as stars, and his tall figure stood like jade. He looked exactly the same as he had as an adult in his previous life.

This place was the Cloud Platform. Lu Yan had built it together with several elders of Heavenly Evolution Sect. When activated, it could connect to any water mirror in Central Continent and achieve synchronization. At first, Lu Yan had wanted to make something with the feeling of a certain treasure-shopping app, but the result had not been entirely satisfactory. Besides, the sects of Central Continent were mixed and complicated, and no one dared deposit their spirit stones inside Divine Creation Sect. In the end, he could only make it into something similar to a livestream. After an item was claimed, payment and goods were exchanged on the spot, counted clearly face-to-face. Apart from after-sales service, they took no responsibility.

Lu Yan used the Buwang Brush to fill in several arrays and replaced the shattered spirit stones whose spiritual energy had already been drained with new ones. Without turning back, he asked, “What time is it?”

Jiao Ruyan was tidying his hair in front of a mirror and admiring himself greatly. “A quarter of an hour until seven.”

At seven in the evening on the sixth day of every month, the Cloud Platform opened.

Jiao Ruyan wore a ruqun. His long sea-blue hair had been dyed flame red. From his nails to the tips of his hair, every curve strove to be alluring.

He Nian watched from the side until his teeth ached. For who knew how many times, he asked himself what exactly he had seen in this fish back then. Disdainfully, he said, “Little ancestor, don’t you think letting Jiao Ruyan dress like that affects your glorious and magnificent image?”

Red hair, blue eyes, a green ruqun, golden hair ornaments, and a huge purple pearl necklace hanging from his neck.

Even a rainbow was not as dazzling as Jiao Ruyan.

Hearing this, Lu Yan turned around and very seriously looked Jiao Ruyan over from head to toe. Jiao Ruyan spun in place, and only then did He Nian discover that there were other colors beneath the pleats of that green ruqun.

He Nian: “My eyes!”

Lu Yan: “Not bad. It looks good.”

He Nian: “…”

He Nian’s face filled with horror. “What the beep about this looks good!”

Lu Yan thought for a moment and said, “It has quite a retro flavor.”

For example, rainbow Mary Sue.

After receiving praise, Jiao Ruyan swelled up even more. He seized the time to familiarize himself with the various descriptions for today’s magic artifacts, waiting only for the Cloud Platform to open.

At seven o’clock exactly, Lu Yan activated the array. On the mithril, complex lines were lit one by one by spiritual energy until they gathered at the dome. The spiritual energy condensed into a huge sphere, glowing softly.

Ding ding ding ding.

One water mirror after another appeared within the Cloud Platform. The cultivators who successfully connected grinned, impatient to see today’s new products through the water mirror.

Newly minted host Jiao Ruyan flicked his hair and smiled slightly. “Welcome, everyone, to Divine Creation Sect’s Cloud Platform.”

“So it’s Miss Jiaojiao.”

“Miss Jiaojiao is even more radiant than before.”

He Nian rolled his eyes hard from the side.

Everyone knew Jiao Ruyan was one of the Merfolk, but not many knew that Jiao Ruyan was not a girl at all, but a male merfolk.

Merfolk were best at using their voices to charm others, weave illusions, and lure people into prepared traps. Later, Lu Yan recorded Jiao Ruyan’s voice and used it to study the composition of illusions. He even reverse-engineered Jiao Ruyan’s voice to develop a set of anti-illusion equipment, making Jiao Ruyan rather famous.

The last to enter was a cultivator who looked unkempt and dusty. His full beard had been tied into a little tuft at the bottom. His water mirror kept cutting in and out. He tried hard to stretch his arm straight and barely kept the image in the water mirror in a relatively stable state as he cursed, “What kind of garbage signal does Houtu City have!”

Seeing that familiar face, Lu Yan said in surprise, “Martial Uncle Pojun?”

After the Dao discussion ten years ago ended, Pojun had taken the initiative to leave the protection of his sect and travel through Central Continent. His temper was bad, but his nature was not. A homebody’s fragile glass heart had been tempered through hard knocks until it became indestructible. In the past, when he cursed someone, he would still throw in a few lines of classical prose. Now, if his curses were written out, they would have to be censored.

Everyone else in the water mirrors accurately captured the keyword “Houtu City” and began chattering all at once.

“I’ve been to Houtu City. Their city lord is pretty good.”

“He just looks a little too bitter.”

“Houtu City values bitter cultivation, after all.”

“If the swordsmithing master didn’t reside in Houtu City year-round, who would go there to suffer?”

The swordsmithing master referred to Lu Yan’s own martial uncle, Daoist Yiyue.

Lu Yan gave a look. Jiao Ruyan understood and proactively pulled the topic back. “It’s getting late, everyone. Why don’t we get to the main point?”

“Of course!”

“What’s the first item?”

Jiao Ruyan took out a book. The book had a pitch-black cover sealed with silver thread. Jiao Ruyan carefully opened the first page and said, “This book is called the Book of Inscriptions. Every page is a rune, and each one is different, with no repetitions. They are roughly divided into three sections: attack, defense, and spirit gathering. There are one hundred pages in total, with a table of contents to guide you. Tear a page out and it can be used.”

Lu Yan called this book a disposable portable hard drive. It could not be reused, and making it took a great deal of time.

“There are five copies of the Book of Inscriptions in total. Each is priced at thirty thousand high-grade spirit stones!”

One hundred pages of runes!

Runes had a monopolistic nature. Although they had slowly become more widespread over the past ten years, they were not something that could be learned overnight. Now there were one hundred pages of runes before them. Perhaps one of them could save their life at a crucial moment.

Thirty thousand spirit stones to buy a life. A guaranteed profit!

The cultivators in the water mirrors hurriedly raised their placards. The Cloud Platform automatically identified the first five people to claim them, and everyone else who was a step slower beat their breasts and sighed.

Jiao Ruyan noted down the appearances of those five cultivators, then smiled as he stretched out a hand. A tray appeared in his palm. On the tray’s red velvet cloth lay a small platinum-colored ring, slightly wider than an ordinary ring. When one came close, they could sense an ancient aura from it.

There was no need for Jiao Ruyan to say anything more. The cultivators’ eyes heated, and they said in unison, “Extreme Element Space!”

Lu Yan had developed many spaces. Among them, the hardest to make was the Extreme Element Space.

Inside, everything was filled with extreme elements that could be found between heaven and earth. If a cultivator with a corresponding spiritual root cultivated in this kind of environment, they could achieve twice the result with half the effort. Not only that, extreme elements could purify spiritual roots. After cultivators with three spiritual roots or mixed spiritual roots chose a direction, they could use extreme elements to stand on the same starting line as dual-spiritual-root cultivators.

If the Book of Inscriptions bought one’s life, then the Extreme Element Space bought one’s Dao path.

It was even that infinitesimal possibility of ascension!

The first extreme space Lu Yan made was metal element. Fuyi had brought him on a forced charge into the Far Northern Snowfield to search for meteoric iron. During that period, Fuyi had watched in physical pain as Lu Yan wasted one hard-dug piece of meteoric iron after another before finally making one tiny ring, which was filled with the sharpness and ferocity of Geng Metal Element.

In the end, Lu Yan gave that ring to Fuyi. Fuyi could not bear to use something that expensive at all, so she threaded a cord through it and hung it around her neck. Last year, she ran into a bottleneck and only then remembered the ring. She had gone into closed-door cultivation and still had not come out.

The second ring made Lu Yan famous all over again. It was an extreme wood element ring, which Lu Yan sold to Medical Valley at a friendship price.

Medical Valley had a special nature. It required an extremely abnormal affinity with plants and trees, which meant that Medical Valley’s successor had to possess a single wood spiritual root. But the successor favored by the Medical Valley Master had dual wood and metal spiritual roots. Metal restrained wood. After the Extreme Element Space was delivered, that disciple underwent a complete transformation in a short half year, directly cleansing away the metal spiritual root and becoming the next Medical Valley Master beyond all doubt.

From then on, the cultivation world knew that Lu Bupo had abilities that could reach heaven and earth.

The ring Jiao Ruyan wore on his hand was the first Extreme Element Space to be publicly sold.

“That’s right, an Extreme Element Space.” Jiao Ruyan did not touch the ring at all, not because he was afraid of damaging it, but because he did not dare touch it. “The extreme element inside is tribulation lightning!”

“Boom.”

As though a bolt of tribulation lightning had truly fallen from the heavens, everyone’s fingers trembled slightly. The first thought that flashed through their minds was actually, Impossible!

That was tribulation lightning sent down by the Heavenly Dao. It could temper the physical body, solidify Dao intent, and allow one to comprehend laws. No one had ever dared collect tribulation lightning. It was as if merely thinking of it carried the meaning of offending the Heavenly Dao.

Only after this thing truly appeared did they suddenly realize that this extreme element applied to everyone!

Pojun reacted extremely quickly. While everyone else was still blasted senseless, he hurriedly said, “I want it!”

Treasures invited much ill-intentioned coveting.

Pojun snorted coldly, and killing intent suddenly appeared in his eyes. “Let me offer all of you a few words of advice. Whoever dares mess around on my side, neither I nor Heavenly Evolution Sect are vegetarians. I’m afraid you’ll have the life to steal it, but not the life to use it!”

Lu Yan turned a deaf ear to the tense, cross-dimensional atmosphere within the Cloud Platform and replied, “Ten thousand Supreme-grade spirit stones. I will have Xuncang personally escort it.”

Heavenly Evolution Sect.

The wolf king Xuncang.

With these two names added together, anyone would have to weigh the matter carefully.

After seeing the first two items, the following items held no particular surprises, but they were enough for the cultivators who had prepared well to return with full loads.

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