MARTIAL ADVERSITY, VOLUME 7 - Season 9 Episode 97

“You’re really heartless…” An Ling’er had at some point appeared and said as she stared towards the direction Yun Xuan left, “With her like that, even if both of you could not accept each other, couldn’t you have at least said a few sweet words to her?”

“That would only make things worse,” Yang Kai shook his head.

“I get that… but…”

Yang Kai glanced over at her, “That’s why I don’t talk to you about love, or else you’ll just end up like this in the future!”

“I, I won’t…,” An Ling’er turned bright red before hurriedly running off.

Turning around, Yang Kai headed back to the Holy Master Court to continue his Alchemy.

The five Grandmasters were keenly aware that Yang Kai’s mood seemed to have undergone some subtle changes and he was even making more mistakes as he was practising Alchemy, nearly ruining several batches of good materials and causing cold sweat to leak from their brows.

However, his dampened mood was soon swept away and Yang Kai regained his focus, flawlessly performing Alchemy and raising each of the Grandmasters’ expectations.

The sun rose and the moon set, in a blink of an eye, a few months had passed.

Nine Heavens Holy Land’s Alchemy Grandmaster’s reputation had now spread throughout the entire mainland, riding a seemingly unstoppable wave of popularity and worship.

Every day outside the nine peaks was incredibly lively, with a now seemingly endless river of people waiting in line for Alchemy services.

The Holy Land had gained an unimaginable amount of wealth and rare cultivation materials, enough to make even the richest of merchants jealous.

Xu Hui and the other Elders spent all day long laughing raucously.

Yang Kai and the five Grandmasters had now been sitting inside the Holy Court’s pill room for a few months without once leaving.

Every day, Yang Kai would refine exactly twenty pills, allowing the Grandmasters to observe everything from start to finish.

Shocked by the speed at which Yang Kai performed Alchemy, the five of them soon became obsessed with his exquisite techniques.

Refining twenty pills in a single day wasn’t a feat any of the Grandmasters here could achieve.

If it was just Spirit Grade Top Rank pills, each of the Grandmasters present could perhaps refine seven or eight in a day.

But refining Saint Pills consumed far more Spiritual Energy and True Qi, as well as mental and physical stamina, so each of the Grandmasters here estimated that even if they went all out, two would be the maximum they could produce before collapsing from exhaustion!

Yang Kai, however, only needed to spend seven or eight hours each day, to refine all twenty pills, sometimes even less.

The rest of the time was used by him to digest his accumulated insights as well as restore the strength he consumed in the Alchemy process.

The Grandmasters were now acutely aware of just how astonishing a role a Conflagrated Knowledge Sea could play in Alchemy.

When Yang Kai performed Alchemy, they observed and emulated, and when he was resting, they would gather around and discuss their various harvests, often getting into heated debates about the optimal use of different techniques or Spirit Arrays, nearly coming to blows at times.

Yang Kai did not interfere with them or even express his own opinions.

The entire reason he could perform Alchemy so quickly was because of his Conflagrated Knowledge Sea, so many of the methods and insights he obtained and implemented were not suitable for the Grandmasters to use.

After many days of noisy discussion, each of the Grandmasters felt their understanding of the Alchemic Way and their Alchemy skills had undergone a significant improvement.

There were even times when the Grandmasters couldn’t endure just sitting idle and would ‘borrow’ materials from some of Yang Kai’s clients to practice with.

With the assistance of the five Grandmasters, Yang Kai’s job became even easier.

Now, Yang Kai basically did not ever need to personally condense medicinal liquid, as the five Grandmasters were constantly doing so in order to verify their new insights, all he had to do was combine the various purified medicinal liquids and form them into pills.

It was almost as if these Grandmasters had become Yang Kai’s assistants, but the Grandmasters themselves showed no signs of displeasure and were instead more than happy to repeat these menial tasks day after day.

Being able to have five Saint Grade Alchemists as assistants, in this world, it was likely no one had even imagined such a possibility.

As the reputation of its Alchemy Grandmaster rose, so did the reputation of Nine Heavens Holy Land.

Coming here allowed any cultivator to obtain a high-quality pill at a reasonable price, creating an immense amount of gratitude towards Nine Heavens Holy Land, especially because the time one had to wait for their pill as incredibly short.

By coming to Nine Heavens Holy Land, at most one would need to wait a month or two to obtain the pill they wanted; if they went anywhere else, the wait time would be at least ten times as long.

Once the news that five Saint Grade Alchemists, such as the famous Du Wan, had come to visit the Holy Land’s Grandmaster and had yet to emerge from the nine peaks, many people mistakenly began to believe that the mysterious Grandmasters in Nine Heavens Holy Land was the legendary Old Man of Heaven’s Keep himself.

Such rumours only further fueled Nine Heavens Holy Land’s rise.

It could be said that the current Nine Heavens Holy Land, besides not having a Third Order Saint Realm master to assume command, had become the most prestigious force in the land.

The name of Yang Kai, the Holy Master of the Holy Land, had also become world renown.

The Holy Land being revitalized and rising to even greater heights filled Xu Hui and the other Elders with an indescribable sense of pride. Just a few years ago, Nine Heavens Holy Land had been on the verge of collapse. The old Holy Master had passed away while the new Holy Master had yet to be found, and at the same time, Saintess Nan was causing great trouble outside, drawing the anger of countless masters towards the nine peaks.

At that time, Xu Hui thought that the Holy Land’s foundation would be destroyed in his generation and was thus feeling incredibly depressed as well as ashamed, ashamed to have ruined the tireless efforts of his ancestors.

Yet in less than half a decade, Nine Heavens Holy Land had risen to become the centre of attention for the entire world!

The cultivators of Nine Heavens Holy Land, from the Great Elder all the way down to the most common disciple, now held their heads up with pride.

This kind of pride in turn brought about a positive feedback, causing many disciples to cultivate even more assiduously, for fear that if their cultivations appeared weak, it would damage the Holy Land’s face.

Seeing the Holy Land thriving, Xu Hui felt that even if he died right this instant, he would do so without regret.

…..

One day, as Yang Kai was immersed in Alchemy, his expression suddenly twitched, as if he had noticed something odd, hastily stopping the motion of his hands.

Du Wan did not miss this change and quickly asked, “What happened?”

Hearing this, the other four Grandmasters also hurriedly cast their attention towards Yang Kai.

Yang Kai smiled and shook his head, “Nothing. A few months ago I refined an artifact, but it wasn’t until just now that it produced a resonance. I was just a bit anxious to explore the mysteries of that artifact a moment ago.”

“I see!” Chang Bao nodded in agreement, “Then examine it all you want, the rest of us will help you finish up the pill refining here!”

“Is that okay?” Yang Kai was stunned. He had wanted to wait until he had finished the day’s pill refining quota before carrying out a thorough investigation of the artifact, but unexpectedly Chang Bao had made such a proposal.

“Of course it is,” Chang Bao grinned meaningfully, “We’re all Saint Grade Alchemists as well, or what, do you no longer have any interest in seeing our skills, little boy?”

“Nonsense, several Grandmasters offering their assistance is something I only feel grateful for, I was never concerned about the lack of you Grandmasters’ skills,” Yang Kai smiled.

Although during this time these five Grandmasters would occasionally refine a pill or two, they had never overstepped their roles as guests and actively provided Alchemy services for Nine Heavens Holy Land. Most of the time they would simply be observing, meditating, and discussing amongst themselves while refraining from actually performing Alchemy as much as possible.

Today’s Alchemy work had just begun, and in addition to the few pills Yang Kai had already refined, there were still more than a dozen left to finish. Even splitting them evenly amongst the five of them, each of the Grandmasters would need to refine at least three pieces.

Most of which were Saint Pills.

If they were to each refine three such pills, the five Grandmasters would likely thoroughly exhaust themselves.

“Seems you still know how to speak right, kid!” Chang Bao laughed, apparently quite satisfied.

“Good, we’ve been observing and studying for many days now, it’s time we truly test out what we’ve learned, always squabbling with these old fogies about what the correct path forward isn’t going to bring us any conclusions, so we might as well just start refining pills to see who among us is right and who is wrong,” He Feng also agreed with Chang Bao’s proposal.

“And that’s how it is, Yang Kai, just leave these dozen or so pills to us. We’ll help you refine them, just take your time and carefully examine that artifact of yours,” Du Wan waved to Yang Kai lightly.

“Good, then I’ll have to trouble several Grandmasters with this!” Yang Kai no longer objected and passed the task of refining the day’s pills to the several Grandmasters. Although the possibility of failure would go up like this, with the Holy Land’s current wealth, providing compensation was a simple matter.

After cleaning up what he was currently working on, Yang Kai stood up and went to another room.

Sitting down cross-legged, with a single thought, Yang Kai summoned out the small, long, shuttle-shaped artifact he had found in the Starry Sky and sank his consciousness into it, preparing to perform a thorough investigation.

It was this long shuttle artifact that just resonated with him.

Since he finished refining and taking it into his body, an entire half a year had passed. During that long time, with his mind immersed in Alchemy, Yang Kai had no longer paid any attention to this long shuttle artifact, but that did not mean his True Qi and Spiritual Energy had ever stopped nourishing it.

Taking so long to produce a resonance with this artifact greatly surprised Yang Kai.

Yang Kai still remembered how it took him only three months to refine, nourish, and examine the various uses of the Silver Leaf artifact.

The Silver Leaf artifact was a Saint Grade Top-Rank artifact though.

From this point alone, it was obvious that this long shuttle artifact was either far more complex in structure and function than the Silver Leaf artifact, or was of an even higher grade.

If that was not the case, it would not have taken so long to finish nourishing.

Today, if it had not produced a resonance with him, Yang Kai would likely have completely forgotten about it altogether.

Probing with his Divine Sense, Yang Kai immediately became clear about the internal structure of the long shuttle artifact.

Yang Kai’s expression soon became strange.

He found that the inside of this artifact was very different from what he had imagined. The Spirit Arrays portrayed inside it were not only not complicated, but actually appeared quite simplistic, even somewhat crude.

Even with the traces of erosion caused by the long passage of time, Yang Kai could still make out these Spirit Arrays fairly clearly but was unable to recognize them or what they were for.

After all, he didn’t know much about Artifact Refining.

The Spirit Arrays used for Artifact Refining and the Spirit Arrays used for Alchemy were completely different.

Vaguely, Yang Kai could guess the use of this artifact, but he could not be certain of anything without actually using it.

Pouring his True Qi into it, the long shuttle artifact, which was currently resting on his palm, suddenly emitted a golden glow, floated up from Yang Kai’s hand, and flew to the other side of the room.

Yang Kai’s expression immediately filled with excitement.

In that instant, he had nearly lost track of the long shuttle’s position.

This artifact already had Yang Kai’s Soul mark engraved inside it and had formed a connection with him, so in theory, he should be clearly aware of any of its movements like it was a part of his body.

But just now, he still felt like it had nearly disappeared.

The only explanation was that this artifact was incredibly fast, so fast, that Yang Kai’s senses were simply unable to completely follow its movements.

Looking at the long shuttle artifact which was hovering on the other side of the room, Yang Kai wrinkled his brow and tried using his Divine Sense to command it to move.