Tribulation of Myriad Races

Su Yu continued roaming the streets of Bright City. After deciding that he was going to start scamming, he started paying attention to the so-called ancient products in the city. Ancient spatial pockets and collapsed grottos discoveries were quite common in Sea of Stars. Thus, a large number of ancient products could be found here.

Most people would only carry out a small number of useful items after discovering these ancient spatial pockets. It was very rare for anyone to take the more useless objects out of these spatial pockets.

There were numerous stalls in the city. The ape was not the only person selling ancient weapons. But most of these weapons were fake. And it was painfully obvious that the products they sold were fake. At the very least, that was the case for Su Yu. As an earth weaponsmith, he looked at their counterfeiting skills with disdain. He would be a fool to fall for these fake ancient weapons.

While roaming the streets, he also managed to purchase some cheap and genuine ancient products. For example, he bought a cheap cloak that was genuinely a product from the ancient past. Unfortunately, its grade was quite low.

He also bought several ancient cultivation methods. Some were written in the languages of the races they came from, while some were written in the unique language used in the ancient cities. One didn’t even need to know the language to read these texts.

“I can try to learn this as well.”

Su Yu had a pensive look. Most of the cultivation methods written in the language of specific races were mostly quite limited in usability. But the cultivation methods written in the unique language would actually be usable for the various races.

Of course, the few that he bought were actually quite useless. They only recorded some minor tricks that had been rendered outdated by the passage of time. This proved that something wouldn’t be better just because it was ancient.

***

After some shopping, Su Yu asked a random guard for suitable lodgings in the city before heading to the suggested place.

Clearbright House.

This was a rather famous place of lodging in the city. It was an extensive compound comprised of numerous independent buildings with a graceful environment. It was also quite expensive to rent.

One needed to pay fifty drops of source qi liquid per day to stay there. This was not a price an ordinary person could afford. Most of the people staying here were the important figures of the various races.

With five hundred drops of source qi liquid, Su Yu rented one of the units for ten days. He was quite generous in spending. After all, he had a decent amount of source qi liquid on him after killing so many people. And he didn’t even need to worry about anyone suspecting him due to the source qi liquid he was using. After all, source qi would remain the same across the various realms.

Under the lead of a clearbright bird in human form, Su Yu walked into the building he rented. After entering, he shut the door and sat down before sinking into thought.

“I need to start thinking of a way out after the scam…”

His scam would most definitely attract the attention of numerous Sunmoons. As for Invincibles…if he carried out the scam on Ninestar Island, he could prevent the Invincibles from attending his auction. After all, the rulers of Ninestar Island were very opposed to the presence of Invincibles. Nobody wanted to provoke their displeasure and ruin the status quo for no reason.

“I might even need to demonstrate the cultivation method during the auction. I will be exposed to the eyes of many people. Should I get an agent to conduct the auction for me? Maybe the Heavenly Hunt Pavilion can do it for me. But the Heavenly Hunt Pavilion might be able to see through the scam…”

Su Yu sank into deep thought. Perhaps he could work with the Allheaven Treasure House instead. That organization was pretty strong as well. More importantly, that organization was probably founded by one or multiple major races unrelated to the human race. At the conclusion of the scam, the buyers would fail to find Su Yu and direct their anger at the Allheaven Treasure House instead.

“After coming up with preventive measures to protect myself from my prospective partner and coming up with an escape route, I can start carrying out the plan.”

But before that, he had to complete his study on the trident he bought. Soon, the trident appeared in his hand. After inspecting it for a bit, he frowned. It wouldn’t be easy to take this weapon apart.

“It has a seamless surface with the formation hiding inside. Disassembling it with force might ruin the entire weapon.”

At that thought, Su Yu scanned his surroundings. He even checked the area with his tribulation character. After confirming that nobody was spying on him, he entered the cultivation room in the building.

If he had to, he would simply take the weapon apart. Even if he ended up damaging the weapon, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

***

Inside the cultivation room, Su Yu worked on the weapon carefully. He was quite proficient in weaponsmithing. After all, he had learned from two of the best weaponsmithing legacies in the Human Realm, the Heavenly Forge legacy and the Zhao Family legacy. If Zhao Li’s father had not died back then, he would have reached the heaven grade long ago.

After his death, Zhao Li and Zhao Tianbing had further improved the Zhao Family’s weaponsmithing techniques. With the upgraded weaponsmithing techniques, Zhao Tianbing was able to become an earth weaponsmith at a young age.

Summoning his fire character, Su Yu hesitated slightly before he proceeded to burn the weapon. After some time, the weapon melted slightly. Then, he took out his Soul Expanding Hammer and started striking the weapon.

He spent the entire night working on the weapon. Slowly, he dismantled the trident. Eventually, the weapon was split into two main parts. One was the outer shell while the other was the inner components.

The most unique part of the weapon was the formation hidden within it. After dismantling the weapon, Su Yu was able to get a rough understanding of how the formation worked. It was meant to help the weapon recognize its owner.

In principle, it worked slightly differently from modern weapons. Because of the formation, only the original owner could make use of this weapon. The outer shell of the weapon could be used normally.

After taking the core formation out of the weapon, Su Yu started fiddling with the outer shell. After a while, a brand new trident was made.

Without the formation, Su Yu was able to easily channel his source qi into the weapon. Ninety-seven golden stripes appeared on the weapon. But over twenty of them had cracked.

Su Yu was very surprised.

“Ninety-seven golden stripes!”

Back then, this weapon was a high-tier earth weapon. This was truly surprising.

“This is quite an amazing trident…”

At seventy-three stripes, a weapon would enter the earth grade. At eighty-two stripes, a weapon would enter the middle tier of the earth grade. At ninety-one stripes, a weapon would reach the high tier. And at a hundred stripes, a weapon would reach the peak of the grade.

This trident was actually a weapon near the peak of the earth grade.

“This is actually a treasure. It is a weapon good for even a middle-stage Sunmoon.”

Mountainseas would mostly use early-stage earth weapons, and even that was only applicable to rich Mountainseas. Early Sunmoons would start using middle-stage earth weapons. And middle Sunmoons would start using high-stage earth weapons. Late Sunmoons would most likely start using peak earth weapons. Of course, the premise for all that was being wealthy enough to afford the weapons.

“If I can repair this trident and spend some time taking care of it, there is a very high hope of restoring it to its previous state. But…that will be quite troublesome to accomplish. I will probably need some ancient materials as modern materials might not be enough. This weapon has probably been out of care for tens of thousands of years. It is even starting to rust…”

Su Yu shook his head. It was not worth restoring. It would be too expensive. If he wasn’t a weaponsmith, it would probably be worth it to get an earth weaponsmith to help with the restoration. But since he was an earth weaponsmith himself, it was pointless to do so as he could do so much more with it.

“The original grade is quite high. This is good for me.”

Su Yu was still quite pleased with this. A shell near the peak earth grade. Even if it was slightly rusty, it did not matter. The usability of the weapon did not matter. He only needed it to look good.

“This makes things easier. When I graft this weapon with a different weapon, I don’t even need to add that many stripes to it. That will make things less suspicious. I only need to add one fake stripe for every ten stripes.”

According to his judgment, this was doable. Soon, he tossed the shell aside. Just this shell alone was worth ten times what he paid for the weapon. Or even more than that. But this wasn’t even the main reason he bought this weapon. A small shining sphere was in front of him. That was the core he had taken out of the trident, a micro formation.

When Su Yu sent a strand of his willpower over, a ray of light shot out with a rumble.

Su Yu’s eyes flickered in excitement. Indeed. This formation was still active. It was probably stronger in the past. But now, its strength had dropped to the Skysoar Realm.

“Where is the energy source?”

Su Yu did not detect any absorption of the surrounding source qi. Something must be powering this formation. He took a closer look at the formation. He didn’t know formations too well. He was worried about damaging it if he tried taking it apart. He wanted to put more use to this formation, so he couldn’t ruin it.

“Formation…in theory, there are a lot of similarities between formations and character techniques. Each formation operates through the various nodes in it. Perhaps I only need to remove one of the nodes.”

Eventually, he decided that if he failed…so be it. This was too tempting. He really wanted to know the energy source of the formation. Was it blood essence? Or was it a character? Those were the only probable options for this formation to last this long. And the energy source would most likely be related to the original owner.

The likelihood of the energy source being blood essence was quite low. Blood essence extraction was a process that would harm the owner of the blood essence. It was more likely for the energy source to be a character. After all, that was something Old Zhao had done as well.

Su Yu sent strand after strand of willpower over, and the formation kept resisting with numerous rays of light.

***

After a few hours of hard work, Su Yu’s brows were beaded with sweat. Suddenly, he laughed. At that moment, a strand of willpower shot toward the formation and deactivated one of the nodes in it.

A series of rumbles rang out. Then, the formation faded away. The object hidden behind the formation revealed itself.

Character.

Yes, it was a character.

Su Yu’s guess was finally verified. It was a character. A character that was both powerful and weak. It was powerful because it felt comparable to Ye Batian’s characters.

“It’s at least a seventh-stage Sunmoon…”

Suddenly, Su Yu shook his head, “Too weak.”

After so many years of exhaustion, he felt like this character would crumble apart at the weakest of impact. At that realization, he took out some heavenly source qi and wrapped the character with it.

The character hurriedly absorbed the heavenly source qi and started regaining some of its strength. Prior to this, its actual strength had probably dropped to a level below Skysoar characters.

While waiting for the character to repair itself, Su Yu took a closer look at it. He was surprised. It was actually a character written in the divine language.

Holy shit!

If this was a human character, he could further restore it and use it in a similar manner as the Ye Batian’s characters he received. But since this was a divine character, it would be crushed right after entering his sea of willpower.

And since it was in such a bad state, it would only be useful for providing some nourishment to his characters. Counter. This was a counter character. It was meant for counter-striking. This was the origin of the rays of light that would appear each time he tried to study the formation.

“Owner recognition is probably not its main function. Rather, its main function is reflecting damage.”

Su Yu’s eyes sparkled. The original owner of this weapon was quite a creative person.

Reflecting damage.

In a fight, it was natural for weapons to clash with each other. With every clash, the character would reflect the attack back to the attacker. Back then when this high-stage Sunmoon character was at its peak, the reflective force was probably incredibly powerful. When fighting an opponent of the same level, the opponent would probably receive double the damage thanks to this character.

“What an interesting character.”

It didn’t matter that this wasn’t a character he could directly use. He could still learn from it. Furthermore, he also wanted to see if there was any difference between ancient and modern characters. He had seen divine characters before. There were samples in Hong Tan’s laboratory in the Human Realm.