Chapter 310: Changes in the Outside World (2/2)
From the Heaven Palace Sect’s perspective, Nie Tian had disappeared for a long time. If he was still alive, he must have studied and refined part of the fragmentary star marks.
This meant if they didn’t wish to move out of the Realm of Mystic Heaven, and didn’t want the Realm of Mystic Heaven, the Realm of a Thousand Devastations, and the Realm of Flame Heaven to suffer from the poisonous Demon Qi, they would have to place their hopes on Nie Tian.
However, just as the Heaven Palace Sect’s senior members had reached the decision to take away Ning Yang’s fragmentary star mark, he mysteriously disappeared.
“Ning Yang has always been smarter than others since he was boy. Perhaps he sensed the strange atmosphere in our sect, and thus left in advance.” The elder’s face grew sullen. “For such a smart young man, he doesn’t understand the greater good! He actually hides himself when the sect needs him to give up the fragmentary star mark. I’m so disappointed in him!”
Su Lin smiled bitterly and said, “Elder Huang, with all due respect, if you were in Ning Yang’s shoes, and it was you who had obtained the legacy of the Ancient Fragmentary Star Palace, would you be willing to give it to others, even if you couldn’t study it for the time being?”
With a complicated expression on his face, the elder pondered in silence for a while, and then let out a sigh.
He asked himself that very question, and he thought to himself that he also wouldn’t simply give away such great fortune.
A few days passed…
Nie Tian, Cai Yuan, and Li Ye rode the metal war chariot across the boundless wasteland, and eventually returned to Shatter City.
Ever since the Blood Skull had started their operation, peace had been restored to the wasteland. All the Hunter organizations in the region had fled in panic, and none had dared to stay and hunt.
Therefore, many explorers from Shatter City took advantage of the opportunity and went on exploration trips to the Void Illusion Mountain Range.
None of them encountered any obstacles or saw any Hunters on their way back to the city.
Some of them saw the Blood Skull’s metal war chariot while exiting or entering Shatter City. Either way, they would usually stop to observe the war chariot.
Many of them recognized Cai Yuan and Li Ye. Only Nie Tian’s face looked strange to them.
As he was associated with the recent incident that had provoked widespread discussion, they soon guessed that he was none other than the Hua Tian who was wanted by all the Hunters.
They all secretly memorized Nie Tian’s apparence, and were in awe of him.
After returning to Shatter City, Nie Tian and Li Ye bid farewell to Cai Yuan.
Cai Yuan went back to the Blood Skull’s headquarters with Nie Tian’s large pouch of bracelets of holding, where he would convert the items within them into spirit stones and tally up Nie Tian’s contribution points.
After recuperating for a few days straight, Nie Tian’s dried spiritual sea was refilled to the brim.
However, his vortexes of flame power, wood power, and star power were still the same as before, since he hadn’t had the time to recover with spiritual materials that contained power of the relevant attribute.
As soon as he had gone back to his residence, he had begun gobbling down spirit beast meat. Therefore, at this moment, his physical injuries were already healed.
On this day, Li Ye came to Nie Tian’s room. “Follow me!” he said. Without waiting for Nie Tian to answer, he walked away, high-spirited and vigorous. Soon, the two of them arrived in front of his personal equipment forging lab.
Inside the room, a variety of strange-looking materials could be seen everywhere. There were stones that could be used to test the attributes of a person’s spiritual power, tools that could be used to examine the speed at which a person’s spiritual power circulated, and even special tools that could be used to detect the strength of a person’s life aura.
As soon as Nie Tian entered the room, Li Ye asked him a few questions first, and then used a number of strange-looking tools and instruments to measure the strength of his spiritual sea, his physical body, and his psychic power.
“Such monstrous strength! This is unbelievable! You’re such a freak!
“You don’t have an innate cultivation attribute, so you picked fire power and wood power out of the Five Elements to practice. Other than those, you’re also practicing star power, which is very rare among cultivators.
“Furthermore, the intensity of your physical strength is even comparable to the mutated spirit beasts in the Void Illusion Mountain Range! Whatever non-lethal wound you sustain, you are able to recover within a short period of time. I even doubt that a low-grade spiritual tool can pierce through your skin!
“Superb healing ability, amazing explosive power, and spiritual power with three attributes…”
After running a series of thorough tests on Nie Tian, Li Ye managed to uncover almost every secret Nie Tian had.
He couldn’t help but sigh nonstop in amazement at Nie Tian’s uniqueness.
Nie Tian, however, had an uncomfortable feeling, as if he was completely exposed to another person; various expressions flashed across his face.
Sweeping through the strange tools and appliances in this equipment forging lab with a examining gaze, Nie Tian felt very impressed.
Seeing Li Ye use them to unveil so many of his secrets and gain such a thorough understanding of him by simply running them around him, Nie Tian felt both surprised and uneasy.
As of now, aside from the green bloodline aura in his heart and the seven fragmentary stars in his soul, Nie Tian no longer had any other secrets hidden from Li Ye.
Li Ye had even managed to determine that he was practicing star power by using a ball-shaped sensing instrument
Fortunately, it wasn’t the rarest thing to practice star power in the other nine realms of the Domain of the Falling Stars, so Li Ye didn’t connect the fact that he had a vortex of star power in his spiritual sea with the Fragmentary Star Incantation.
After a very long time, his eyes fixed on a tool that was glittering with a strange light, Li Ye said to Nie Tian, “Alright! Your part is over. I’ll spend some time to forge a spiritual tool that matches your cultivation features according to the data I just collected!
“However, I must tell you bluntly that your situation is very special and complicated. It will take a lot of precious materials to forge a suitable spiritual tool for you.
“I’ll contact Cai Yuan as soon as possible, and tell him not to convert all of your battle gains into spirit stones, since I suspect that, in order to forge that spiritual tool for you, I might have to use all of the spiritual materials you looted from your battles. You should be prepared.”
“No problem, just do it.” Nie Tian said.
“Straightforward. I like it!” Li Ye laughed loudly. “Three months. Give me three months, and I’ll present to you an extraordinary spiritual tool. I guarantee that you’ll like it.”
Chinese New Year:
Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival (simplified Chinese: 春节; traditional Chinese: 春節; pinyin: Chūn Jié) in modern China, often called the Lunar New Year in Asia, is an important Chinese festival celebrated at the turn of the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. Celebrations traditionally run from the evening preceding the first day, to the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first calendar month. The year of the Dog starts on Friday, 16 February 2018.
It is one of the world’s most prominent and celebrated festivals, with the largest annual mass human migration in the world. It is a major holiday in China and has had strong influence on the lunar new year celebrations of its geographic neighbours, including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Mauritius, Australia, and the Philippines.
The New Year festival is centuries old and associated with several myths and customs. Traditionally, the festival was a time to honor deities as well as ancestors. Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the Lunar New Year vary widely. Often, the evening preceding Lunar New Year’s Day is an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly clean the house, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune and to make way for incoming good luck. Windows and doors are decorated with red color paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of “good fortune” or “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity”. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes. In about one third of the Mainland population, or 500 million Northerners, dumplings feature prominently in the meals celebrating the festival.
Hand-written Chinese New Year’s poetry pasted on the sides of doors leading to people’s homes, Lijiang, Yunnan
According to tales and legends, the beginning of the Chinese New Year started with a mythical beast called the Nian. Nian would eat villagers, especially children. One year, all the villagers decided to go hide from the beast. An old man appeared before the villagers went into hiding and said that he’s going to stay the night, and decided to get revenge on the Nian. All the villagers thought he was insane. The old man put red papers up and set off firecrackers. The day after, the villagers came back to their town to see that nothing was destroyed. They assumed that the old man was a deity who came to save them. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the color red and loud noises. When the New Year was about to come, the villagers would wear red clothes, hang red lanterns, and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. From then on, Nian never came to the village again. The Nian was eventually captured by Hongjun Laozu, an ancient Taoist monk. The Nian became Hongjun Laozu’s mount.