Chapter 854
Chapter 854: Arrival of the Union
“Hahahahaha, kiddo Jian Chen. You’ve finally come out. If you didn’t come out, I, the great Nubis, would’ve gone into the Fantasy Star Ocean in search of you.”
The golden light around Nubis was dazzling, radiating far and wide like a sun. The surrounding space trembled greatly due to the vast and boundless energy emitted from his body.
Jian Chen stared at the shining Nubis in interest and laughed softly. “Nubis, looks like you’ve reaped quite the harvest from secluded cultivation in the past few years. I can feel that your strength has completely exceeded the Seventh Heavenly Layer.”
The light around Nubis slowly faded and revealed the figure beneath. Perhaps it was due to his great increase in strength but the golden robes on Nubis seemed even shinier. It vaguely seemed to be covered by a golden glow.
Nubis’s face was filled with joy. He traversed several hundred meters in a single step and arrived before Jian Chen and directly threw a punch at his shoulder. Nubis laughed. “Jian Chen, I never thought that just from a mere trip to the Fantasy Star Ocean, you’ll come back without your purity. Tsktsk tsktsk, looks like the harvest you reaped from the journey is quite great too. Tell me honestly, did you hook up with that demoness?”
As a beast of antiquity, Nubis’s senses were much more powerful compared to humans. He could tell with a single glance.
Jian Chen purposefully avoided this question and said, “Nubis, let’s not talk about this. Let’s talk about you instead. How is it? You must have improved greatly with a few years of secluded cultivation.”
“Of course.” Nubis was excited. “I’ve absorbed around seventy percent of the hidden essence in that old snake. That hidden essence contained the old snake’s comprehension of the mysteries of the world. I’ve fused with them completely, turning it into my own power. Right now, I’m a peak Class 7 Magical Beast. In the words of you humans, I’m equivalent to a Ninth Heavenly Layer Saint Ruler. I’ll be able to break through to Class 8 in one go if you give me some more time and I absorb the remaining hidden essence from that old snake.”
When he heard this, Jian Chen jumped in shock even though he had mentally prepared himself beforehand. Nubis had increased his strength from the Third Heavenly Layer to the Ninth Heavenly Layer in four short years. This speed of improvement was so great that it even made him tongue-tied. His improvements in this time paled in comparison to Nubis.
“Jian Chen, I can feel that you’ve grown much stronger too. Looks like you’ve gotten your hands on quite some stuff from this trip to the Fantasy Star Ocean.” Nubis stared at Jian Chen deeply and sniggered.
“Alright, let’s not talk about this for now. Nubis, we’ve stayed here for quite a long time already. The people on the Tian Yuan Continent should be expanding their search into the ocean soon. We should leave here quickly. The earlier we get to the location of the Sea race, the earlier we get to safety,” Jian Chen said.
“Alright, let’s go to where the Sea race is first. If that other powerful old snake on the Beast God Continent calls on a great group of people to deal with me, I, the great Nubis, will be in danger.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Nubis’s face froze. A light immediately exploded from his eyes and he glared up ahead.
The space where Nubis was looking at began to distort violently before it was ripped open. A Space Gate suddenly appeared and an old man in simple clothes stepped out.
The moment Jian Chen saw this old man, his gaze froze. He was not unfamiliar with him; it was the old man he had first seen wiping the tables in the Radiant Saint Tower.
Behind the old man, figures constantly stepped out. First, there were fighters in various attires, a total of eight Saint Rulers. Only afterward did a group of white-robed Radiant Saint Masters appear, totaling at over twenty people. All of them bore a shiny purple badge on their chests. They were actually all Class 7 Radiant Saint Masters and among them was the president of the Radiant Saint Master Union and the great elder.
Only after great difficulty had the union found Jian Chen’s whereabouts. In order to retrieve the saint artifact successfully, they had basically come with their full force.
“Yang Yutian, I’ve finally found you.” An old voice boomed from the group. A white-robed old man walked out at this time; he was the president of the union.
Compared to a few years ago, the president seemed much older. His face was filled with wrinkles while his expression was haggard. In these years, the matter about the saint artifact had tortured him quite some bit.
The president looked toward Jian Chen with extremely mixed emotions. His heart was filled with bitterness. Once upon a time, he had accepted Jian Chen as his disciple without the slightest hesitation after he found out about his talent. He even planned to choose a successor for the union between him and Yun Tian.
In the days that followed, Jian Chen’s behavior only became more outstanding. He grasped the forbidden arte God’s Descent with his power as a Class 6 Radiant Saint Master and slaughtered over thirty Heaven Saint Masters all by himself on Fragrance River. It shook him greatly and at the same time, it consolidated his idea of raising Jian Chen to be the future successor of the union. He had even begun to view his other disciple, Yun Tian, as a chess piece to temper Jian Chen.
He was filled with hopes toward Jian Chen.
However, he never thought that the Jian Chen he had placed high hopes on possessed another identity. Not just that, he even took away the saint artifact of the union, almost causing the entire union to come crashing down, falling into a state beyond recovery. This pained him to the extreme.
Right now, he saw his disciple who had bore his high hopes once again. The president’s heart experienced both love and hatred; he loved Jian Chen’s unprecedented talent and hated Jian Chen’s following actions, as well as the fact that he had almost brought the union to utter damnation.
“Yang Yutian. Jian Chen. Changyang Xiangtian. I don’t know how I should refer to you.” The president sighed gently. His face was filled with exhaustion.
“President, it’s best if you call me Jian Chen,” Jian Chen said.
“Alright, I’ll call you Jian Chen. Jian Chen, is the saint artifact on you?” The president asked.
After some deliberation, Jian Chen replied, “President, the saint artifact is indeed on me but I can’t give it to you right now.”
“Yang Yutian, the saint artifact belongs to the union. You actually tried to take it for yourself. So much for the union treating you the way we did in the past, for you to do something like this. We really have been treating you too nicely!” The ninth elder could not help but curse.
“Jian Chen, the saint artifact is extremely important to the union. Think about how we once treated you. You really should return it to us,” said the grand elder. His voice carried the trace of pleading.
“Grand elder, president, it’s not that I don’t want to return the artifact but the artifact has a spirit and it’s already taken me as its master.”
“What!? The artifact has taken you as its master? How is that possible?” The president paled from shock. He clearly knew about the artifact spirit’s existence.
A golden light shot from the center of Jian Chen’s eyebrows, landing directly in the middle of his palm. It formed a golden, palm-sized tower.
When they saw the golden tower, skepticism appeared in the eyes of the group. Although the artifact had been with the union for countless years, there were not many people who had seen its true form. None among them had seen it. Even the president was no exception.
“Artifact spirit, explain it to the president yourself,” Jian Chen said to the artifact spirit.
The artifact spirit abided to Jian Chen’s words, immediately communicating with the president through a sliver of a thought.
The president’s expression immediately became courteous. As the president of the union, he knew extremely clearly just what the artifact spirit was. It was equivalent to a Saint Emperor; even though that was only the case in the artifact space, it still carried a great force of deterrence.
A while later, the president’s courteous expression disappeared. He sighed at the sky while his face was filled with helplessness. Afterward, his gaze toward Jian Chen became even more complicated, with deep shock sandwiched in between.
“Grand elder, president, I know exactly how important the artifact is to the union. Without it, the union will not have any more origin energy. But I can help you solve that problem.” Jian Chen pulled out a purple medallion from his Space Ring and continued, “Grand elder, this was the medallion you gave me all those years ago. I’ve stored several dozen strands of the origin energy of Radiant Saint Force within it. It should be able to deal with the imminent problems the union faces.”
As he spoke, Jian Chen tossed out the purple medallion. It stopped before the grand elder and he took it up and sensed it. A sliver of joy immediately sprang up on his face and he said, “There really are several dozen strands of origin energy inside.”
With that, slivers of joy appeared on the faces of the elders too.
Jian Chen continued, “I know this won’t work out in the long term. There will be a day where the origin energy will be consumed entirely but fifty years in the future, I will fill up the purple medallion again. During this period of wait, I hope you can collect some more objects that can store origin energy.”
“Jian Chen, since the saint artifact has already taken you as its master, you should go. My union will not be troubling you, though I hope in fifty years’ time, you will do as you have promised and replenish the union’s supply of origin energy.” sighed the president. Since the artifact had already accepted him as its master, this was the president’s only choice.
If the artifact had not done that, they could still restrict Jian Chen’s actions and search through his Space Ring for it. But now, this was impossible. Once the artifact took a master, they could only kill Jian Chen to get it back. However, they did not have the courage to do that at all.
This was because if they killed Jian Chen, it was equivalent to the union completely offending the Changyang clan and the Pure Heart Pavilion of the ten protector clans, as well as the Arctic Ice God Hall that even the protector clans feared very much.