Chapter 156 – The First Rune (1/2)

Chapter 156 – The First Rune

Ye Wei frowned, although the question seemed simple, he didn’t know anything about the Vermilion Essence Runes, after all these seven runes were created, named and categorized in a system that he had minimal knowledge on.

Rumors had it that the seven Vermilion Essence Runes were created by a prime while observing the Mystic Mountain. He was surrounded by demons but managed to escape. He was gravely injured in the battle and didn’t survive, but before he took his last breath, he managed to write down the seven Vermilion Essence Runes, inspired by the demons’ strength.

The book he wrote in was the ancient book of life, that kept record of more than sixty thousand basic runes, contained more than ten million pages with detailed description of each rune and respective sequence. Looking for just seven runes in the sea of shapes was completely intangible task.

It was known, though, that the power of these seven essential runes were exceptional. They could greatly enhance any stance, thus making their significance truly remarkable, and therefore they meant a lot to the human race.

‘I can read the whole volume from the badge, but I’m guessing it won’t be simple to find seven specific runes from the large collection…’ Ye Wei stared at the image of the book on top of the runic badge, caught in a deep thought.

‘I can receive five million contribution tokens just for finding the first essence rune and proving its existence! The second one will grant me ten million contribution points! If I will be able to find them all I can receive a total of two hundred and ten million contribution tokens!’

Ye Wei was enthusiastic, but he was soon going to find out the difficulty of excuting this task, having to isolate seven runes from a pool of sixty thousand. The question had been listed on the fifty-sixth wall for sixty years now. There were many Runemasters and Grand-Runemasters that read the book of life everyday for referencing purposes, who knew the existence of the question but none of them was able to answer it.

“Seven Vermilion Essence runes, where are you?” Ye Wei’s eyes were closed, dug deep into his mind, the Mystic Mount presence in his Sentient meant that he had an enormous library of runes in his head, but they were not necessarily arranged nor named.

Ye Wei was not particularly looking to find all seven, he was just interested in getting enough tokens to heal his Sentient, but the challenge itself was becoming interesting for him.

‘The question is – how do I identify them? How am I going to differentiate them from the rest?’ Ye Wei realized that it would take a lot of time and effort to study the runes and even then he would struggle to answer the question without a clear definition.

‘Maybe he left clues when he jotted the runes down…’

Ye Wei kept flipping through the pages, tried to search for clues, imagining where the creator of the runes would place the, trying to think alike.

‘The first of the seven… It shouldn’t be too far back in the book, right? Unless he didn’t want anyone to find it…’ Ye Wei was getting frustrated, and decided to take a closer look at the beginning chapters. He never thought looking at runes would be such a confusing thing to do.

Behind every existent rune there was an inspiration, they could be from other runes, nature or even philosophy.

Countless cultivators dedicated their life and wisdom on runes theory and its application. It was said that their effort, the stances and runes they created, would eventually become a part of enlarged Mystic Mount, in return, they would be given cosmic energy stored in the mountain that was now nowhere to be found.

Few pages into the book, Ye Wei was still struggling to identify anything even slightly related to what he was looking for. He could only find description and record of a lot of basic runes that were used for low-level Spirit stances.

Ye Wei’s hope was diminishing with the flip of each page.

‘I cannot find anything… ‘ Ye Wei thought sadly after looking through more than seven hundred runes. More than seven hundred runes were now deeply engraved in Ye Wei’s mind, however there was still no trace of the vermillion essence runes.

“Seven vermilion essence runes, seven runes…” He murmured.

Ye Wei thought for a moment to continue searching through the pages. He wasn’t someone who would give up easily. However, a thought crossed his mind, what if he would try to explore his mind and see if the Mystic Mount would be of any help, as any runes he sees or learns will be engraved in his mind forever. It was just a matter of getting to it.

Thousands of runes flashed in Ye Wei’s mind. An idea quickly passed through but his mind was too slow to react to it, to get hold of the knowledge deep inside.

‘It’s still not enough!’ Ye Wei thought in disdain and kept looking through the pages, trying to remember as many runes as he could. By the time he made another break from reading, he was able to learn eight thousand new runes.

The eight thousand runes continuously reassembled, sparks of inspiration and imagination rose and died, Ye Wei was drowning in this mysterious sensation. He didn’t even notice that two days had passed.

The Mystic Mount presence suddenly shone bright gold, different combinations of small parts of the eight thousand runes throughout the first chapters had now formed seventy-six thousand low-level Spirit stances, Ye Wei was surprised to discover that there was a rune that repeated itself ten thousand times in the strongest stances that was formed in his head.

“This rune is very special!” Exclaimed Ye Wei, excited about what he discovered. He could see the energy within this rune was far more intense than in an ordinary rune, and its simplicity doubled the stronger Spirit stances’ effectiveness.

‘Although only a basic rune, its effect is far from simple…’ Ye Wei began to think that only an extremely skilled and experienced Grand-Runemaster could have created this.