Chapter 116 - Hao Yue’s Evolution: Third Head! (I)
Chapter 116: Hao Yue’s Evolution: Third Head! (I)
Long Hao Chen was seated cross legged on the ground and, as before, using [Divine Light Mantle] to protect his body. Isolated from the external world’s harmful air, he took breath after breath of filtered air filled with light elemental essence.
To Long Hao Chen, this world wasn’t any kind of good place because the light elemental essence was present in such a small proportion. It did not hold even 1% of the quantity of light essence in Shengmo Dalu. He had to unceasingly filter the surrounding air from the heterogeneous essence filled with magic power, to finally inhale it safely.
Long Hao Chen took out two bottles from his bosom. The first one contained the pill that could restore 200 units of spiritual energy, that Long Hao Chen named the Restoring Spiritual Pill. The ones contained in the other bottle could instantly arouse his potential and increase his physical strength by 20% for 30 seconds. After use, 12 hours had to pass before taking another Bursting Spiritual Pill.
In this place with a great lack of light elemental essence to absorb, one could well imagine the utility these two pills would have. Calmly standing in the cave, Long Hao Chen began to feel everything around him, cautiously, uninterruptedly gazing at the four directions.
But at this moment, suddenly, a wave of spiritual energy undulated, creating mysterious ripples made of spiritual energy in the air.
A drizzling purple-colored ring scattered in the next instant, not only spreading throughout the whole cave, but going as far as to spread to the surrounding rocks and the rest of the air of the external world.
_Hao Yue is breaking through!_ Long Hao Chen felt nervous, because Hao Yue told him previously that in case he were to break through the last bottleneck, the aura released by his body would be likely to attract powerful magical beasts. This was the most dangerous stage of his evolution.
As soon as this purple-colored aura appeared, Long Hao Chen suddenly felt to his astonishment that a scorching feeling reached his very own body. Lowering his head, he took a look and saw that the veins behind his own skin turned into a faint purple color. An immense force was uninterruptedly filling his own body, continuously strengthening his physical body. All Long Hao Chen could feel was that his own external spiritual energy was boiling, and in a strengthening process. Moving his body around, he felt that his strength had tremendously increased.
_Hao Yue’s evolution also has an effect on the cultivation of my own external spiritual energy?_
Long Hao Chen calmly pondered what was happening to him. Without the slightest doubt, this promotion was due to the blood contract. He and Hao Yue had some blood of the other in their own body, so in addition to their regular contract’s uses, it implied that their blood vessels were genuinely interlinked. As a result, when Long Hao Chen increases his cultivation level through his training, Hao Yue could benefit from it to some extent. Similarly, when Hao Yue evolved, Long Hao Chen could feel an enhancement to his own body as well.
Apparently, at that time, when Hao Yue had an abnormal thirst for that stone orb, it was because he needed it to make his body evolve.
Right when Long Hao Chen was in the middle of his thoughts, suddenly, he felt that in the air, the numerous magical elemental essences turned frantic. In particular, the dark elemental essence, just as it was flowing out from the galaxy, frantically headed towards the inside of the cave at his back. No matter how frantic this elemental spiritual energy was, it seemed to have a single target this time, the cave at his back.
Long Hao Chen could vaguely see that a spiral shaped black cloud had started to form, attracted by this cave, sucking in all the surrounding elemental spiritual energy.
Such a huge activity, it’s no wonder that Hao Yue was worried about magical beasts coming to attack.
Long Hao Chen was even more on the alert as he observed his surroundings. What he didn’t realize was that on his forehead, the mark of contract had appeared once again.
This mark was formed of a total of nine purple-colored veined patterns. Among these nine original veined patterns, the first two were bright; in this moment, a third rune started to brighten as well.
After breaking through the third step, to keep advancing, what practitioners of all vocations needed was internal spiritual energy. No matter how the external spiritual energy increased, it didn’t affect the advancement of the vocation. In other words, even if your external spiritual energy reached 2000, as long as your internal spiritual energy didn’t reach 2000, there was no way for you to break through the fifth step.
Long Hao Chen felt an intense and warm power constantly rising in him, but he didn’t know which level his external spiritual energy had reached. Nevertheless, in his chest, the golden drops of liquid surrounding his Saint Spiritual Stove were unceasingly revolving, not showing the slightest change. It was the symbol of the barely reached level of having liquid spiritual energy, as well as having entered the fifth step.
After entering the fifth step, Long Hao Chen clearly discovered that his cultivation speed had lowered by a wide margin. To gain a spiritual energy level, he needed to spend at least ten times more effort than in the past. After a day of bitter training, the limit of what he could gain was at most one or two spiritual energy levels.
Even as a knight, what he had no way of knowing was that if he told others about his cultivation speed, it would absolutely shock anyone. After breaking through the fifth step, who would imagine that someone who could raise his spiritual energy level every day could exist? If everyone had this ability, then only by continuing to cultivate, everyone would sooner or later break through to the sixth step.
Together with the enhancement of his physical strength, Long Hao Chen could even more visibly benefit from his advantageous physique of a Scion of Light.
To any vocation, the fifth step was the threshold to the appellation of powerhouse. However, to be considered as a real powerhouse, one needed to step across the threshold of the sixth step. This was because, it was only when the sixth step was reached, that the might of the liquid spiritual energy would really come out; it was the key to the spiritual might, enabling the speed of cultivation of the liquid spiritual energy to really accelerate.
_ANG-DANG!_
A fierce rumbling sound reached Long Hao Chen’s consciousness, making him lift up his head to look towards the bottom of the mountain
As soon as he saw what was at the bottom of the mountain, he instantly gasped in astonishment. What he saw was a human skeleton; a wide, very wide human skeleton, advancing at great speed toward the top of this mountain. The previous rumbling sound was coming from one of its bones carelessly smashing a huge rock.
There were countless skeletons coming. It was impossible to discern just how many there were with the naked eye, all covered in black and different in height; however, they were all human-shaped. They quickly climbed up the mountain, with only the cave behind Long Hao Chen as their goal.
Taking a deep breath, Long Hao Chen took half a pace back, blocking the cave entrance. Thus, he would not have to face opponents from many directions at once, and only needed to face those at the front.
Without time to think about the reason why so many skeletons were coming, the only thing he could do was to resist the skeletons’ advance, giving Hao Yue enough time to finish his evolution.
Inside the cave, Hao Yue was trembling violently, his scales already splitting open: the effects of [Holy Mantle] from before were already disappearing.
But no matter whether it was Little Light or Little Fire, they were both biting the bullet, refraining to scream, because they didn’t want to disturb Long Hao Chen with their cries.
The bulge on Hao Yue’s third neck protruded outwards, and Little Light as well as Little Fire’s neck was growing, brilliant green light unceasingly glittering on top. Despite Hao Yue’s body being badly mangled, purple stripes of light were slowly appearing on his body.
Large amounts of spiritual energy were violently pouring into his body from the outside. Crackling sounds and growth was happening all over his body, and that mangled piece of flesh was continuously expanding, causing him to grit his teeth. The unstable spiritual energy in his body frantically wreaked havoc in him. An ancient and desolate terrifying aura was emitted from his body, as Little Light and Little Flame’s eyes once again turned purple-colored, appearing heartless and ice-cold, emitting a monstrous presence. His mutilated body was also undergoing an uninterrupted process of expansion.
_Bang._ Long Hao Chen leaned slightly on the Radiant Shield on his left hand, sweeping away a black skeleton with one strike, and with the Light Sword on his other hand, he struck a skeleton right in the stomach.
Drawing closer, Long Hao Chen further understood the terrifying aspect of these skeletons. Although only bones remained of them, these bones were as hard as steel, and their strength was equal to that of ten men. Their eye sockets also contained a dimly lit flame.
As he kept immersing himself in battle with these skeletons, Long Hao Chen discovered their bones were not originally black in colour. Their bones had that colour because of the sheen given off by being covered in a spiritual energy of the dark attribute. With unceasing violence, they continued to attack.
Long Hao Chen right now rejoiced at the fact that he had the holy attribute. Although these black skeleton’s bodies were incredibly tough, when the holy essence coming from his Light Sword and Radiant Shield landed on the skeleton’s bodies, they were clearly very fearful of it. Immediately, there would be white smoke coming from where they were hit. Obviously, light elemental essence had a very strong restraining effect on the black skeletons.
_Snap._ [Light Thrust] was released. Three skeletons were immediately struck down by Long Hao Chen, obstructing the advance of further skeletons. After obtaining liquid spiritual energy, there was a clear increase of strength in all of his abilities.
Taking a short breath, Long Hao Chen consumed a Restoring Spiritual Pill. His consumption of spiritual energy was not that large, but in the current situation, how could he dare to wait until his spiritual energy was completely exhausted before replenishing it? Maintaining the optimal amount of spiritual energy was the best choice here.
In front of this large skeleton army, he was not using too many abilities, preserving his spiritual energy as much as possible. It was certainly not some one on one battle nor some sort of competition, it was a life and death situation. If he was even a little bit careless, he could be stuck in this world forever.
One skeleton after another fell, and even though Long Hao Chen could hold against ten thousand of these skeletons, there were simply too many skeletons coming at him. He could not even see a shred of hope.
In light of this battle, Long Hao Chen gradually discovered the advantages of being a Guardian Knight. Even though Retribution Knights had more tyrannical attack power, in a sustained battled, a Retribution Knight simply couldn’t measure up to a Guardian Knight in terms of endurance.
After using several guardian knight abilities to enhance himself, Long Hao Chen only used a little spiritual energy every time he took down a skeleton. Also, his objective wasn’t to annihilate the entire skeleton army, since it was simply impossible to do so. He only needed to buy enough time for Hao Yue.
The greatest weakness of these black skeletons was that they were dumb and could not use any abilities. They only knew how to advance forward. In this situation, Long Hao Chen used his advantageous terrain as well as his Restoring Spiritual Pills to prolong the battle.