Chapter 1863: Three Legs of a Tripod (I) |
Li Hao tilted his head back to look at the sky. The entire world seemed to be enveloped by thunder and lightning.
“Chaos tribulations and I have never gotten along,” he sighed. “Ai, this is so troublesome!”
I don’t want things to be like this either. Didn’t I just make everyone experience the tribulations with me? Why target me so much?
He could sense it as well, that a ninth rank tribulation might appear to smite him if he stayed in Thunder Region for too long!
“Digest everything we gained from the last fight with the fastest speed possible. Everything can wait until we’re finished with that. Thunder master… I think I need your help to defend us against this trouble…”
The Thunder master cast a resigned look at the young man, but there was nothing he could do to refuse. Li Hao had been extremely courteous and threw him two major worlds at seeing how pitiable his living conditions were.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to him and should even kill for him at the risk of my own life, to say nothing of defending him against the thunder tribulations. That’s the least I can do!
The most luxurious experience of my life so far was eating two worlds in one gulp!
This is the craziest I’ve ever been in three hundred thousand years. In that case… I’ll take on the tribulations! It’ll help with digesting my own gains too.
And the craziest thing was, it’d worked.
……
Within Thunder Region.
Thunder boomed and lightning sizzled. The Thunder master was hard at work.
Of the tribulation giant army from earlier, some giants had dissipated, some had been struck down, and some had returned to Thunder Region. The latter was now endless tribulation clouds filling the region.
If Thunder World hadn’t been a world of thunder, it would’ve already been pulverized from the latest onslaught. It was beginning to show signs of rising to eighth rank after the Thunder master devoured two major worlds. It wouldn’t have withstood such a fearsome barrage otherwise.
Li Hao, Number Two, Void, and the two dao masters furiously digested what they’d gained. Li Hao had devoured an eighth rank dao universe. This was his first time consuming a dao universe. Prior to this, he’d absorbed some Red Moon strength at most. He’d never gone for a whole dao universe.
Void and Number Two showed marked improvement, particularly Number Two. The cat was now part of this plane of reality and Void was a seventh rank.
Silver Moon’s dao masters, however, did not break through to seventh rank even after devouring a world. There was no chance of that taking place!
Li Hao was well aware of it, so he hadn’t hoped for the world to easily make the ascension. Even when it’d absorbed endless dao origin and seventh rank corpses, as well as an entire seventh rank world, the ascension of twin dao universes was difficult to begin with.
At the moment, neither of the two dao masters were even peak sixth rank. It was clear to see from this how difficult it was for Silver Moon to truly become a major world.
As dejected as the dao chess was, it focused on cultivation and consolidated its seventh rank strength. It’d lost an eighth rank dao universe, but gained a complete seventh rank world.
Of the others, the queen repaired her body and corralled the humans of several major worlds into one world. Li Hao didn’t care if she could bring them all under her sway. She could have her own fun.
What was more pressing was that the queen knew she was in for a harrowing time to come. Black Tiger had gotten away!
The seventh rank knew the particulars of her ability. Once the Dragon master learned that she could sever a seventh rank’s dao, his goal would shift from targeting Li Hao to targeting both of them.
Therefore, the queen hoped that she could grow even stronger.
She’d entered fourth rank very quickly at a pace faster than Li Hao’s, but still assessed herself to be very slow.
Meanwhile, Lin Hongyu was consolidating her hell of death. There were many imperial corpses within, some dead at the hands of others. She was seeing if she could incorporate them into her hell as well.
Yuan Shuo was experimenting with the strength of the five elements, wanting to set foot into fourth rank as soon as possible. He’d fallen one step short before. There should be no issue with this goal, given his creation of a dao domain. He just needed to accumulate sufficient energy.
And with all of the exalted emperors that’d died this time, energy was no longer an issue either. Fourth rank was at hand!
Everyone was cultivating. Their gains were very rich!
There was more to the five worlds other than this—a large amount of world strength was available as well. Panther absorbed it, leaving strength from the dao universes to the rest.
Of the eleven seventh ranks they’d killed, some had seen all of their energy fade away. But some bodies and dao strength had been perfectly preserved.
The bodies of chaos beasts were the strongest weapon. Li Hao gave them all to the Firmament Sword to swallow.
There was only a tiny scrap left of the poor sword. A fifth rank weapon could no longer endure Li Hao’s eruptions of force. Hence, the Firmament Sword devoured the chaos beast bodies with gusto.
Chaos beasts possessed extremely strong skeletons, flesh, and blood. A regular cultivator would be greatly fortified with one, but Li Hao didn’t give any to Silver Moon martial masters. He’d rarely eaten monster spirits or beasts throughout the course of his cultivation. The young man almost never did so!
It didn’t matter that these were highly nutritious forms of sustenance. Li Hao partook so rarely that one could say he’d almost never tasted them.
It wasn’t that he was wary of eating something intelligent, but that whether it was chaos beasts or monster spirits, they often ate humans. Whenever the urge to try something new struck Li Hao, his appetite faded when he thought of this.
He didn’t feel anything about killing people and monster spirits to seize energy, but eating them… when they might contain large traces of human flesh…
The possibility immediately dulled his curiosity.
He didn’t voluntarily offer it to anyone else. While he wouldn’t stop anyone from partaking, he wouldn’t offer it either. It all served to benefit the Firmament Sword.
So many exalted emperors had died this time, and some of them seventh ranks. Some of the seventh rank corpses were fully preserved.
It was an immense stroke of luck that the Firmament Sword could devour this feast. Not even the dao chess had a similar chance.
……
In the upper skies.
The Thunder master digested recent gains while he defended against the thunder tribulations. There were less than twenty exalted emperors left in his world. All of them stood around him to help defend against the tribulations.
They benefited from their proximity since the world master had taken in two major worlds. The impoverished Thunder dao universe was now awash in riches!
And the key was, there were only twenty or so exalted emperors in a world about to enter eighth rank. The typical count was at least one hundred!
Thunder World truly had a pitiful amount of exalted emperors. They fell far short to Silver Moon in this regard.
The Thunder master couldn’t absorb all of the energy by himself, which meant that the rest of the Thunder exalted emperors benefited enormously. They grinned with delight, replenishing long barren reserves. But when they happened to glance at the group of people on the ground, they did so with fear, wariness, admiration, and worship!
Thunder World had eked out a miserable existence for hundreds of thousands of years. They’d been blockaded and suppressed all this time. They weren’t a seventh rank world at all!
Not even the Thunder master could break free of the stalemate.
Even this time, his primary thoughts had been to flee and not strike back.
But now, the world that’d been on the verge of perishing had killed double digits worth of seventh ranks and more than one hundred regular exalted emperors!
With the world now in Thunder Region, it even appeared to be ascending to eighth rank…
The Thunder exalted emperors were both agitated and reverent. Some were also apprehensive.
“World master, will they… possibly not leave?”
They won’t want to take our world, will they?
A small undercurrent of worry ran through their words. If the visitors wanted their world… Truth be told, no one present had the slightest bit of confidence that they could overpower this group, even if their world master entered eighth rank.
“What are you guys thinking of?!” transmitted the Thunder master. “The Silver Moon king has his own world. If he really wanted another, would he give up so many seventh ranks dao universes for me and others to devour? He can take any one he wants, why wait until now to make a bid for it?”
He finally understood that the Silver Moon king didn’t care about any dao universes. He had great ambitions!
One thousand worlds!
The moment those worlds surfaced, the Thunder master understood that the young man might have his own enterprise in mind. Perhaps he wanted to create his own world, and an extraordinary one at that. If Li Hao succeeded, it would be a terrifying world indeed!
His one thousand worlds were still one thousand worlds after devouring an eighth rank dao universe. But some of them showed signs of evolving toward mid world. That was astounding!
The scattered one thousand worlds had congregated together due to the presence of a dao universe. That was how Li Hao had become so domineering and killed the Treasure Seeker Rat with one blow.
This guy is probably a seventh rank world master in the true meaning of the notion.
If a power hierarchy was applied to seventh ranks, the first echelon would be those such as the Human King. They could fight eighth ranks and suppress premier existences. Seventh ranks like that were few and far in between.
The second echelon would be peak seventh rank chaos beasts with a dao universe, or peak seventh rank world masters who happened to be dao masters. They were powerhouses with a significant advantage from their dao universes.
The third echelon was chaos beasts without a dao universe, or wandering seventh ranks who ascended through creating a dao domain. Wandering cultivators were in actuality very strong. Those who broke through on their own merits were wandering cultivator seventh ranks.
The fourth echelon was seventh ranks in eighth rank dao universes. They typically specialized in one dao, but were decent enough when bolstered by a major world.
The fifth echelon was seventh ranks seceded from an eighth rank world. These were the weakest seventh ranks in the entire chaos. Li Hao was yet to meet one. Even when Fog Mountain seceded, he did so as a peak seventh rank. Otherwise, he would’ve been very weak.
Li Hao was between the second and third echelon after he swallowed an eighth rank dao universe. He was similar to the Sword Sovereign. Void would be part of this echelon once he ascended. An exalted emperor in command of six daos of the extremities was quite a powerhouse indeed.
The Phoenix master had been of the second echelon, but the other chaos beast world masters were slightly worse than that. Since they weren’t peak seventh ranks, they were only of the third echelon.