Bachelor [EN]: Chapter 739

The Beast Tide

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“With that kind of spending, he can’t be a poor body refiner. But he definitely bought the Earth蛟 [Earth Dragon] tendon, didn’t he?”

“Brother Shin, how can we know if he’ll use it as a weapon or to make a special artifact? There are many body refiners from out of town in Anwon City, and some of them are quite skilled! We’re not weak, but acting rashly isn’t the way to stay alive.”

“You’re right, Brother. It’s just that I’m impatient because we don’t have enough spirit stones. If we don’t have enough mid-grade spirit stones when the beast tide starts, won’t we be in danger?”

The scarred giant, Shin, seemed to regain his composure at the thin man’s words and looked troubled.

“What is there to fear? When the beast tide starts, the lord of Anwon City will hire body refiners and pay with spirit stones! If we save them, it will be enough.”

The thin man replied confidently, as if he had already thought it through.

“That’s true. According to the agreement between the Three Sovereigns and the Seven Demon Kings, cultivators above the Core Formation stage can’t help with the beast tide. If they want to protect the city, they have no choice but to rely on us body refiners.”

“Good that you understand. In fact, that agreement binds everyone, so there are no high-level demon beasts above level 5 among the beast hordes. It’s hard to say which side benefited from that agreement.”

The thin man sighed, and the scarred giant also closed his mouth with a troubled expression. After a while, the two packed up their goods again and went out into the street.

* * *

Han Li left the alley and began to wander the streets again. Soon, he entered a bookstore that sold various classics.

There were quite a few bookstores, and they sold a variety of books on astronomy, geography, and miscellaneous subjects. They were bookstores for ordinary people, so there were no jade slips or books related to cultivation.

Han Li’s eyes were drawn to books that explained the environment and customs of the Spirit Realm. He needed to learn about the Spirit Realm somehow, as he couldn’t just wander around without knowing anything. He picked out a few thick books and also bought a map of the surrounding area.

Han Li didn’t have any gold or silver, but spirit stones were precious even to ordinary people, so when he paid with low-grade spirit stones, the bookstore owner was very happy and gave him some silver coins in change.

He went into a tavern, took a seat in a corner, ordered some food, and began to read the books.

Although he couldn’t release his spiritual sense [a cultivator’s ability to perceive their surroundings] outside his body, his excellent memory, which allowed him to remember everything he saw, was still intact, and he read the thick books with astonishing speed. He appeared calm on the outside, but in his mind, he was memorizing all the contents of the books.

In doing so, he was able to learn about the environment and geography of the Spirit Realm. The Heavenly Origin Realm that the people of the Cheondong Merchant Guild had mentioned was, unexpectedly, the territory of the human race ruled by the Heavenly Origin Sovereign, one of the Three Sovereigns.

In addition, humans lived in the Xuanwu Realm, ruled by the Xuanwu Overlord, and the Heavenly Spirit Realm, ruled by the Heavenly Spirit Sovereign.

They were commonly called Overlords or Sovereigns, but only the Heavenly Origin Sovereign, who was originally a human body refiner but later learned the Confucian cultivation method, was called a Sovereign.

The Heavenly Origin Realm, ruled by the Sovereign, was the most similar to the human world. For him, it was very fortunate.

The land where the three human races lived was vast, and there were hundreds to thousands of human cities. According to the books, Anwon City was a small city in the Spirit Realm with a population of less than 100 million.

The Heavenly Origin Sovereign resided in a place called Heavenly Origin City, which was about the size of a decent country in the human world.

The Overlord’s Xuanwu City was built on the back of an ancient giant turtle called Chamryeong and slowly moved with the ocean currents, while the Sovereign’s Heavenly Spirit City was built on a giant tree that was said to be connected to the legendary divine realm, with a thickness of a hundred miles.

Han Li was shocked by this information. But even more surprising stories were in the back of the book. According to the book, in addition to the three human-inhabited areas, there were lands of the demon race ruled by the Seven Demon Kings nearby.

The demon race and the human race had an ambiguous relationship, sometimes like enemies and sometimes like friends. The reason was that the territories occupied by the demon race and the human race were only a part of the Spirit Realm.

Outside the areas ruled by the two races, there was the realm of other alien life forms.

Among them were the natives of the human world, the ancient demon beasts of the primordial era, and the ancient giants. There were also many alien races that had crossed the boundaries, just like the human race.

They were powerful races comparable to the human and demon races and possessed unique divine powers.

But not only that, there were also beings in the Spirit Realm with powerful bodies comparable to the immortals of the True Immortal Realm. Among those Han Li knew were Rahu, Kunpeng, and True Dragons, who ignored the pressure between realms.

Despite the many threats, the human and demon races were barely surviving in the Spirit Realm by producing capable cultivators.

They usually opposed and fought each other, but when a strong external enemy appeared, the human and demon races had no choice but to unite. This situation had improved considerably after the areas of the Three Sovereigns and the Seven Demon Kings were established.

This was because the first Three Sovereigns and Seven Demon Kings gathered human and demon cultivators with outstanding divine powers at the time and deployed a super-large formation to protect the Three Realms and Seven Lands.

It was said that the formation was created by immortals from the True Immortal Realm and was designed to target powerful alien life forms, so the stronger their bodies, the more they were affected by the restrictions.

Conversely, alien races with mid- or low-level power were less affected. The super-large formation had ten formation eyes, each divided into the Three Realms of the Three Sovereigns and the Seven Lands of the Seven Demon Kings.

Although it was not mentioned in detail what was in the demon beast lands, the formation eyes in the Three Realms were said to be on the Heavenly Origin Star Mountain where Heavenly Origin City was located, on Chamryeong located in Xuanwu City, and on the giant spirit tree in Heavenly Spirit City.

As long as the Star Mountain, the ancient turtle, and the spirit tree were not damaged, the restrictions controlled by humans could be considered safe. Since the formation eyes in the Three Realms were protected in this way, those located in the Seven Lands of the demon race must be in equally secure places.

However, no one knew how big the Spirit Realm was. It was simply described as vast, with no end in sight. After reading this far, Han Li had a question.

‘If the territory controlled by the human race is only a part of the Spirit Realm, how do they control the cultivators who come up from the lower realms to fall here? If they fall outside the super-large formation, they won’t survive.’

He was curious, but since it wasn’t written in the book, he had no choice but to move on.

The book said that the overall power of the demon race in the Spirit Realm surpassed that of the human race, and that in terms of high-level cultivators, human cultivators were superior to demon cultivators. This strange balance was maintained, and after the first Three Sovereigns and Seven Demon Kings took their places, an agreement was made to protect each other’s interests.

Within the human territory, high-level cultivators were not allowed to indiscriminately slaughter low- or mid-level demon beasts living in the outer regions, and they were not allowed to intervene in the beast tides that occurred on schedule. Within the demon territory, humans were not allowed to be indiscriminately slaughtered, and they had to be guaranteed a place to live.

The reason for this agreement was that there was great chaos when the two races divided the Three Realms and Seven Lands.

High-level human or demon cultivators could simply move their residences, but low-intelligence demon beast hordes or ordinary people could not leave their homes and travel long distances, so they had no choice but to stay where they were and be ruled by other races.

So, at first, large-scale purges took place everywhere, and many bloody incidents occurred. After several large-scale battles and twists and turns, they decided to make this agreement. Of course, only a few important points were written in the books for ordinary people that Han Li was reading.

The beast tide was explained in detail in a separate book he had chosen. The beast tide was caused by the extraordinary breeding power of ordinary beasts.

Because high-level demon beasts could not subdue the beasts due to the agreement between the Three Sovereigns and Seven Demon Kings, the increased number of beasts had to fight each other for habitat.

However, if there were human cities nearby, low-level demon beasts would lead their kin as if they had made a promise and launch attacks that were close to suicide.

Therefore, except for particularly large cities, most cities experienced beast tides, and small and medium-sized cities in remote areas experienced them even more frequently.

So far, not many cities had been destroyed by beast tides, but many low-level human cultivators or ordinary people were injured and killed each time. However, strangely enough, in moments of life and death, body refiners or cultivators would suddenly gain enlightenment, overcome the crisis, and improve their cultivation.

Even though ordinary people were dying in large numbers, the benefits of the growth of body refiners and cultivators were so great that the power of the human race was growing stronger day by day.

Therefore, the high-level human cultivators of the Three Realms condoned the beast tides and did not try to revise the agreement.

The timing and types of demon beasts that rampaged in each city were different, but the most frequent were two: the wolf tide caused by the wolves of the grasslands and the snake tide.

The two beast hordes had strong breeding power and exploded almost every hundred years.

If the beast tides happened to overlap and a horde of beasts attacked, it was called a ‘Great Beast Calamity,’ and the people of the city would be in danger. The reason why some cities had collapsed in the past was all because of the Great Beast Calamity.

When there were signs that the demon beast hordes around the city were about to riot, the high-ranking officials would tremble and do their best to gather body refiners and low-level cultivators from the surrounding area and do their best to defend.

Han Li read this far, sighed softly, and finally closed the last book.

Anwon City was about to experience a beast tide, and since it was close to the great grasslands, there was a high possibility that the most ferocious wolves would attack. However, judging from the atmosphere in the city, it didn’t seem like a Great Beast Calamity would occur.

He silently drank a glass of wine and fell into thought.

He was more concerned with recovering his magic power and releasing the restrictions of the Ice Phoenix than with the beast tide. According to the Heavenly Orchid Tree clone, cultivators at the Nascent Soul or Soul Transformation stage in the Spirit Realm experienced a minor heavenly tribulation [a trial by the heavens] once every 300 years. He had no magic power, but his cultivation was still intact, so if the heavenly tribulation came, it would be the end.

‘How can I overcome the Soul Transformation heavenly tribulation with only the fourth level of the Vajra Body [a powerful body refinement technique]?’

The thought alone made his heart heavy. The best solution was to find the Ice Phoenix and release each other’s restrictions.

The Ice Phoenix had used her spatial divine power at the spatial junction to escape before Han Li. So, she must also be unable to use her magic power due to the restrictions.

Han Li knew the terror of the restrictions he had placed, and he thought that the demon woman’s situation was probably no better than his, if not worse.

Even if he could use magic power in the Spirit Realm, it would not be easy to find her. It was impossible to guess how many beings in the Three Realms and Seven Lands had reached the Soul Transformation stage.

It was impossible to search for her without the ability to protect himself, and it was also unreasonable to cultivate again in a situation where he could not absorb magic power.

Also, seeking help from other high-level cultivators was the same as going to his death. Han Li’s expression darkened as he sat in his chair.

“It seems I have to go the way I was going.”

At some point, he muttered with a glint in his eyes.

While coming to Anwon City, he had been constantly thinking about how to recover his divine power. He had repeatedly thought of various plans, but only one was useful.

However, he was hesitant about how to proceed because he didn’t know anything about the Spirit Realm. But after learning the general information today, it was still the only way.

That was to fully master the Vajra Body and reach the Great Accomplishment.

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