God Emperor

The Saint Lady lowered her regal head. She was troubled and indecisive. “I have a question for you.”

“What question?”

Zhang Ruochen was surprised. This was his first time seeing the Saint Lady so uncertain.

“Did you come to save me or to search for the secret of the blood beasts?” the Saint Lady asked.

“Both!” Zhang Ruochen said matter-of-factly.

Which one is more true? The Saint Lady really wanted to ask this, but after thinking, she felt like it was too obvious. She swallowed her words.

She was the Saint Lady—representative of the Confucius Way and a Spiritual Saint. How could she ask such an immature question?

Zhang Ruochen didn’t sense the Saint Lady’s odd expression. “Actually, I felt quite guilty when I heard the news of you dying. At the same time, I didn’t think that you’d really died, so I thought to come to the Bottomless Abyss.”

“Why did you feel guilty?” the Saint Lady asked.

“If I didn’t tell you that the ancestor of the Shangguan Clan had written the Vampire Secrets, would you have gone? If you didn’t go, you wouldn’t have run into trouble.”

“I see.”

The light in the Saint Lady’s eyes dimmed and lost its luster. So Zhang Ruochen had only come to the first tier to save her because of guilt.

With Zhang Ruochen’s personality, he would probably have come no matter what, even if it was another Monk in trouble.

He was this kind of person.

The Saint Lady wasn’t as important to him as she’d thought.

Zhang Ruochen’s expression was quite serious. “Lady Nala, did you get the Vampire Secrets from the Shangguan Clan or not? Why did you come to the Bottomless Abyss? What exactly happened one month ago?”

The Saint Lady put away her low spirits and shook her head softly. “I didn’t see Saint King Que, but he had someone send me a slip of paper with the two words ‘Bottomless Abyss’ on it. I couldn’t guess his meaning, so I decided to check personally.”

“However, soon after I left the Shangguan Clan, I was attacked by several Immortal Vampire Saints. I guessed that they have a spy in the Shangguan Clan and that he has a very high status.”

“That’s impossible,” Zhang Ruochen said. “With Saint King Que’s cultivation and knowledge of the Vampires, how can there be a spy right before his eyes without him realizing?”

“I don’t know what happened either, but the Shangguan Clan definitely leaked my information. Only a few people knew that I went there. It won’t be hard to find them if I can return alive.”

Zhang Ruochen had wanted to resolve some confusion through Saint Lady. After talking to her, he discovered that he had more questions.

Saint King Que hadn’t given the Saint Lady the Vampire Secrets and instead sent her to the Bottomless Abyss?

Did this mean that the Vampire Secrets was in the Bottomless Abyss or something else?

More importantly, since Saint King Que could send someone to give the Saint Lady a slip of paper, why didn’t he meet her personally?

Did he fear something and couldn’t say it aloud? Or was Saint King Que even the one who gave the Saint Lady the message? It was still a mystery if he was even alive or not.

No matter what the truth was, the Shangguan Clan and Bottomless Abyss must hide a very big secret.

Zhang Ruochen could feel that the secret must have something to do with the Sacred Central Empire’s coup 800 years ago.

This region was very hidden. Even if King Xianlan was able to escape, it wasn’t easy to find this place.

Zhang Ruochen found a natural triangular grotto between two mountain walls. It was a few dozen feet deep. He could stay in it for now.

He cleaned up the place and took some everyday necessities out of his spatial ring. This included clean clothes, fresh water, medicine and more. He gave it all to the Saint Lady so she could rest in the grotto and recover her Spiritual Power.

Zhang Ruochen didn’t go far. At the cave entrance, he took out the box he’d taken from Mei Lanzhu and checked it again. He still couldn’t open it, so he had to give up and put it back.

He’d only reached the Third Level of the Half-Saint Realm. He couldn’t try for the Fourth Level any time soon.

If he wanted to improve his abilities, he had to think of other ways.

Zhang Ruochen took out the Time and Space Secret Guide and started studying the second level of the Sword Technique of Time—Scales Sword Technique.

There were eight moves in total and were also known as the Eight Scales of Change.

The first level of the Sword Technique of Time, the Instantaneous Sword Technique, only had 900 simple techniques and weren’t connected. Instead, each move only had a time print melded into it. Its power was naturally limited too.

The Scales Sword Technique was much more powerful. It contained more time prints and more complicated changes. Each move was advanced. Every move that he learned would improve the strength of his sword technique.

The first move of the Eight Scales of Change was the Four Changes of Scale One.

According to the Time and Space Secret Guide, he could affect the flow of time within 300 feet after completing this technique. If he completed the eighth move, Life and Death of Scale One, he could make time stop entirely for a short while.

The true mystery of the Scales Sword Technique wasn’t only in changing the speed of time. The precision of the techniques was equivalent to a saint technique.

Each technique had 25 moves and 125 variations.

It wasn’t Zhang Ruochen’s first time studying the Scales Sword Technique. He’d already cultivated it for a long time, but he just couldn’t complete the first technique.

It wasn’t easy to combine five time prints into a sword technique.

I can already combine four time prints into the technique. There’s only one more step before success.

Zhang Ruochen put the Time and Space Secret Guide away. He picked up the Abyss Ancient Sword and closed his eyes, sensing the serenity around him.

“Time and space are not alone. The world surrounds it.”

Zhang Ruochen caught a time print and added it to his sword technique. He stabbed his sword forward and faint ripples spread out.

Whoosh, whoosh.

He kept practicing without stop.

He stabbed at least 1,000 times the entire day, but he couldn’t complete the first move successfully.

The second level of the Time and Space Sword Technique was much harder than he’d thought.

Next, he continued studying the Time and Space Secret Guide. He felt like he was at the brink of a breakthrough.

Roar!

A blood beast’s roar hurt his eardrums. It traveled from deep inside the gully. The black mountains on all sides were shaking.

Zhang Ruochen’s ears hurt and it was pitch black before him. Blood Qi rumbled within him. If his body wasn’t so strong, he probably would’ve been heavily injured already.

How could there be such terrifying blood beasts in the first tier?

He immediately closed the Time and Space Secret Guide. Jumping, he stepped off the wall and rushed up a few hundred feet as if it was flat ground.

Whoosh!

The Abyss Ancient Sword stabbed into the wall, burying itself halfway in. Zhang Ruochen grabbed the hilt and pressed against the wall. He looked in the direction of the beastly roar.

A large mass of bloody light shone from the distance, surging from the bottomless gully. Hundreds of miles in radius turned dark red.

Thick bloody mist transformed into a cloud of Qi and rolled in the gully. He could faintly see huge wings flapping in the mist.

He was standing at such a distance but could still see the two wings. It was evident just how huge the blood beast was. Zhang Ruochen could also see a tiny black dot on the beast’s back.

The black dot seemed to be…a person.

They were so far away, but the blood beast’s roar had almost heavily injured Zhang Ruochen. It was probably countless times more powerful than the Cloud Gold Beast.

How could someone be standing on such a powerful beast?

Who was it?

The beast flew out of the gully, transforming into a blood-red spark that shot into the air and disappeared into the darkness. The blood light within the gully gradually dissipated.

Zhang Ruochen gasped. “Is that the entrance to the second tier? Who was standing on the blood beast?”

Zhang Ruochen estimated the distance. The gully with the blood light was more than 1,000 miles away.

“Oh, no. That blood beast’s cry traveled at least a few thousand miles. It may attract King Xianlan.”

Zhang Ruochen immediately pulled out the Abyss Ancient Sword and walked down the wall to return to the ground.

The Saint Lady had been shocked by the beast’s roar too and came out of the grotto. She’d washed off the bloodstains and changed into a pure white silk dress. The jade belt showed off her thin waist.

She’d washed her black hair too. It tumbled down her face gently, hanging at her waist.

Soft, delicate, pristine, elegant, pure… No type of praise was enough to describe her beauty. Compared to the pathetic look of yesterday, she was like a whole other person.

Zhang Ruochen stared at her face and was dazed for a bit. After all, it was rare to see the Saint Lady in a dress. She was shockingly beautiful each time and gave off a different aura.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Just now, there was an eerie blood-red light,” Zhang Ruochen said. “It spread for hundreds of miles. That light might have come from the second tier and may be the Blood Qi that the Blood Empress left behind.”