Tribulation of Myriad Races

Wu Lan nodded, “Or I might turn into a prisoner forced to become the willpower battery of some expert.” Kong Yuxian smiled, “There is such a possibility, but only if the chaos has escalated to a high enough level. Of course, even at that point, you would still have the ability to protect yourself. Everyone would be reluctant to kill you. You’re not useless. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get yourself a bunch of experts voluntarily serving as protectors.”

“The Willpower Grotto is a lot more valuable than the Source Qi Secret Grotto. You came from the Great Xia Cultural Research Academy, so you should know this. If the Willpower Grotto could remain open at all time, which among the two would be the more popular grotto?”

“The Willpower Grotto.”

“Exactly.” Kong Yuxian nodded, “Furthermore, a weaker cultivator of the multiple character faction might not necessarily be weak compared to the cultivators of the other factions. Xia Chen once climbed to the ninety-ninth level of the pagoda. Was he weak?” “Not at all. He only appeared weak because the fifth principal was too strong. In truth, he was very strong. He was as strong as the current Zhou Polong.

“At your current pace, further growth will be difficult. You might be able to become a Cloudbreach or even a Mountainsea. But it will be very hard for you to go further.

“You need to grab any opportunity you find. If you can become the willpower supplier of the world, you will receive a lot of willpower texts and resources. And as the extractor and purifier, you can charge them fifty percent of the willpower. Everyone will gladly accept that price. This will be your chance to gain more resources for your cultivation.

“Child, back then, I missed out on a similar opportunity. Slowly, I drifted apart from some people as they continued moving ahead. I don’t want to see the same thing happening to you. Even if you’re not strong enough in combat, you need to still play an important role. You need to let the others know just how much they need you.”

Wu Lan sank into contemplation. After a while, she nodded solemnly, “I understand. Senior Sister, you mean that Bastard Su Yu, is about to kick me away after using me, right?”

“…”

Kong Yuxian was at a loss for words. Was that even what she was talking about? Whatever. So be it. This lass could believe whatever she wanted. Kong Yuxian thought that Wu Lan had not come so far just for research. Wasn’t she here for Su Yu? Did the lass not understand her hidden meaning?

Su Yu would definitely grow into an expert if he did not die early. And he would be no ordinary expert. Instead, he would be an extremely famous expert. Meanwhile, Wu Lan was merely a little genius at the Mental Tempering Stage. She might be good at research compared to those in Great Xia. But she really wasn’t anything in Great Ming. How could she avoid being left behind and forgotten? By improving herself!

She might not be able to keep up with Su Yu in strength, but Su Yu was not omnipotent. Could he extract willpower? Did he have enough willpower? How had he been growing his characters and willpower? By killing Sunmoons and absorbing the energy from the broken characters. By milking the Hundred Dao Pagoda and the Willpower Grotto. But none of these could be done forever.

If Wu Lan gained the ability to extract and purify willpower, she would become irreplaceable. She would remain important to Su Yu even if Su Yu was an Invincible.

Wu Lan curiously asked, “Senior Sister, can’t you extract willpower?”

“I need to rely on riversand for that. And I’m not a part of the multiple character faction. Regular combination of characters can’t accomplish what a character technique can.”

Kong Yuxian said, “Furthermore, you will be needing Su Yu’s help with this. Generally, you won’t be able to pick whatever character technique you want. The better a character technique is, the rarer it is.

“The templates in the various steles were left by the top experts back in the days. I’m afraid only the stele in Su Yu’s possession has one such template. The template left behind by Xia Chen will be gone after a single use. It will only be available again after a second expert with the same character technique leaves another template behind.

“Since the stele is in Su Yu’s hands, he might have a method of allowing you to inherit specific character techniques. I know that kid well. If it’s you, he might agree to help.”

As for anyone else…dream on. Thus far, Su Yu had not even mentioned the Character Technique Stele to anyone. Clearly, he did not intend to grow the multiple character faction at this point. The stele was valuable, and it had limited uses. As more and more multiple character faction experts died before imprinting their character techniques into the stele, more and more character techniques were lost. As a result, the steles in the various academies were left with a very small number of character techniques.

In fact, some of these steles had been rendered completely useless. Great Xia was the sole exception as it was the origin of the multiple character faction. Back then, they had produced too many experts, resulting in a large number of templates in their stele.

Without such a stele, one would have to rely on talent and luck to form a character technique. That was too difficult.

Even people like Xia Chen had formed his character technique through a ruin inheritance back then. Even the Character Technique Stele of Great Xia had been obtained from a ruin. It came with numerous existing templates.

Meanwhile, the steles of the other academies were something they had made themselves after the founding of the faction. Nobody mentioned the stele during the struggle for control over Great Xia Cultural Research Academy’s books depository. But in truth, a lot of people were targeting the stele.

In fact, some experts had been raising their own multiple character faction cultivators in secret and they greatly needed that stele. Chen Yong had mainly stayed in the books depository for so many years to guard the stele.

Now, Chen Yong was gone. Before leaving, he claimed that the stele had been missing for decades. Nobody would believe that. Everyone believed that either Chen Yong or Su Yu had taken that stele away. It was very likely that Su Yu was the one with the stele.

Recently, Hong Tan had been busy with the reopening of his Multiple Character Faculty. There were rumors that he had to borrow Nine Heavens Cultural Research Academy’s stele, confirming that their stele was really not in Great Xia anymore.

It was impossible to reopen the faculty without a Character Technique Stele. This was how Kong Yuxian had ascertained that the stele was in Su Yu’s hands.

***

Middle of March.

The long-awaited immortal blood essence had finally been delivered to Great Ming through a secret channel. Yes, even Great Qin would only attack the immortals secretively instead of openly. If news about this leaked, it would be a lot more troublesome than killing the members of some neutral races.

With the high casualties the divines, devils, and humans had suffered in their wars against each other, the immortals had taken the top spot among the myriad races. That was one of the main reasons why the divines and devils had halted their attack against the humans.

Thus, when one wanted to kill some immortals, one had to do it in secret. A Sunmoon of Great Qin had personally delivered the blood essence to Zhu Tiandao. And Zhu Tiandao had also personally delivered it to the academy. This thing must be kept secret, so they tried to use as few intermediaries as possible.

Meanwhile, Su Yu had just bid Zhu Tiandao farewell. He was about to test out the newly obtained immortal blood essence when Wu Lan came over and solemnly said, “I wish to learn a character technique. The one used by the first principal. Is that possible?”

“Character technique?”

Su Yu was stunned. Why the sudden choice? This wouldn’t be easy to learn. He also knew a little bit about the first principal. The strongest expert to have emerged from the multiple character faction was the fifth principal, someone with twenty-two characters. Close behind him was the first principal with twenty characters.

And third after that was Liu Wenyan with eighteen characters. The third principal who had left the Devil Battling Field behind had either sixteen or eighteen characters. It was unclear since the third principal had maintained a low profile.

“Why do you want to learn the first principal’s character technique? If you really want one, I can pick one that is more suitable for you. Something with ten characters, perhaps?”

“Are you looking down on me?”

Wu Lan was unhappy. But Su Yu merely nodded. Yes. He was looking down on her. He really doubted her ability to learn the first principal’s character technique. That required twenty characters. Without the disassembly method, Wu Lan would probably be stuck below the Skysoar Realm for life.

But even with the disassembly method, it would still take her many years. Perhaps she would reach old age before completing the character technique.

Also, that wasn’t something one could learn just because one wanted to. Su Yu had not studied the Character Technique Stele much. But from his past experience, he knew how hard it would be to pick a specific character technique from the stele.

First, one had to locate the character technique in that boundless space. And even after finding it, the character technique might refuse the person. Thus, this wouldn’t be so easy.

Wu Lan spent some time sulking before saying, “I want to learn it. After learning it, I’ll be able to extract willpower. I will become the grandmaster loved by the masses.”

“Willpower extraction…”

Su Yu blanked out slightly. He had completely forgotten about that. That was something that had been troubling him for a long time. In fact, he had given up on looking for a solution.

He had his gaze set on the Hundred Dao Pagoda and the Luminous Domain Mansion. With the riversand from the Luminous Domain Mansion, he would be able to extract willpower from either willpower texts or Great Xia’s Willpower Grotto.

The Willpower Grotto was a perfect grotto with the ability to filter, preserve, and gather willpower. Without that ability, just using the riversand alone would not be enough to provide the required willpower for dozens of cultivators at a time.

Su Yu rubbed his chin and asked, “How did you think of this?”

“Senior Sister Kong said that you’re planning to kick me out. Is that true? I need to focus on upgrading myself so you can’t do that. The aperture fusion art hasn’t even been completed. You promised to name it after me. Are you going to go back on your words?”

Kicking her out? Su Yu was speechless. When did he think about that? Clearly, she was the one who had thought about that herself. No, it was Senior Sister Kong. It would seem like age would not be enough to stop some people from thinking nonsensical thoughts.

Since Su Yu was still in a rush to test out his immortal blood essence, he said, “How about this? When I’m done with my current task, we can give it a try. But I’ll be honest. It won’t be easy. Firstly, you might not be able to capture the template.

“Secondly, you only have a few characters while this technique requires twenty characters. The difficulty is too high.

“Thirdly, I don’t even know if the template is still there. When I formed my character technique, I did not notice anything with twenty characters. If even someone with my talent failed to attract that template, I doubt you will succeed…”

He was speaking the truth, but Wu Lan clearly did not enjoy listening to the truth. She faced him with her nostrils as she said, “I’m very talented.”

This was her final struggle. She was still quite confident in her talent.