Chapter 828: Peacock King
Chapter 828: Peacock King
The thickness and energy of the barrier were weakening visibly. Once the barrier disappeared, the gathered Inferior Grade Martial Sages could start carving their names on the monument.
Xiao Chen and Ying Qiong both wore cloaks to conceal their identity. They hid within the crowd and looked around.
There were very few of the younger generation here—only four. Of the four, Xiao Chen recognized only one. It looked like Di Wuque, Wang Can, Kong Yuan, and the others had yet to arrive.
The person Xiao Chen recognized was Yan Shisan, who wore black and held the Heavenly Ice Sword in his hand. He stood at a corner with a stern expression as he stared at the Sage Mark Monument.
Yan Shisan had been a half-Sage for many years. It was no surprise that he had advanced to Martial Sage with the opportunity from the Heavenly Dew Divine Spring.
With some introductions from Ying Qiong, Xiao Chen got to know who the rest of the four were. They were all geniuses of other races. The powers behind them were similar to the human race’s Sovereign Noble Clans.
Xiao Chen paid close attention to a bare-armed man. If he was not mistaken, this person became a Martial Sage through body tempering.
This person was a Corpse Race cultivator called Kui Dou. According to Ying Qiong, he had relied on only his physical body to advance to Martial Sage.
Kui Dou’s ancestor was the famous Iron Hand Sovereign of the Profound Domain, a legendary character that had relied on his physical body to cultivate until Sovereign Martial Emperor. However, he had left the Corpse God Palace long ago and set down roots in the Profound Domain along with his clan.
As for the others, they did not leave a deep impression on Xiao Chen. Of course, that was not to say they were not powerful. They just did not have any distinctive characteristics that made them memorable to him.
For these people to advance to Martial Sage before the age of thirty, they were all definitely major characters.
“The descendant of the Peacock King, Kong Yuan, is here,” Ying Qiong said suddenly. “The person with him seems to be the Spirit Fox King’s descendant, Yuan Xu.”
Xiao Chen looked over and saw a handsome man in blue beside Kong Yuan. The appearance of that man had the unique elegance of Silver Moon Spirit Foxes.
This person was even more handsome than Xuan Yu, whom Xiao Chen had met. However, he had a Sovereign bloodline, which diluted the soft and gentle aura of the Silver Moon Spirit Fox Race and made him look more charming.
“I heard that he is stronger than Kong Yuan. When the Heavenly Dew Divine Spring was opened, he happened to be at a crucial point in his breakthrough to his fifth tail, so he could not rush over in time,” Ying Qiong whispered to Xiao Chen.
Of the five major races, the Fiend Race was the most numerous but also the weakest, because they had only two known Sovereign Martial Emperors—the Peacock King and the Spirit Fox King.
When the two descendants of the Sovereign Martial Emperors arrived, all the Fiend Race Martial Sages followed their lead and stood behind them.
The Spirit Fox King and the Peacock King were highly respected in the Fiend Domain. Naturally, their progenies were respected as well. Everyone in their race placed their hopes on them, relying on them to bring glory to the Fiend Race by carving their names on a high spot.
“Whoosh!”
A cold wind blew above. Eight ethereal spirits carrying a white palanquin descended. This would be the top youth of the Ghost Race.
Qing Cheng, the Ghost Race girl who once scared Xiao Chen, walked out from the palanquin. Then, another three youths followed her out.
After some thought, Xiao Chen concluded that Qing Cheng must have given a lift to the demonic geniuses of the Ghost Race’s younger generation. Although the Ghost Race was few in number, four people showed up. In a way, this attendance showed how much stronger the Ghost Race was in comparison to the Fiend Race.
The Inferior Grade Martial Sages of the Ghost Race here all gathered behind these four people and chatted with each other in whispers.
These were not all. The demonic geniuses of the younger generation kept on coming, one after another.
A moment later, the Corpse Race’s and the human race’s younger generations arrived at almost the same time. From the Corpse Race, Xiao Chen recognized only Wang Can, whom he fought before. He did not know any of the rest, although he had seen them once at the Heavenly Dew Divine Spring.
Those on the human side were all familiar to him. As expected, the three Holy Scions had used the opportunity from the Heavenly Dew Divine Spring to break through the bottleneck that had hindered them for many years, advancing to Martial Sage.
Aside from these three, there were members of the original seven giants, the three who soaked in the Heavenly Dew Divine Spring—Bai Wuxue, An Junxi, and Shui Lingling. They had also relied on the opportunity from the Heavenly Dew Divine Spring to advance to Martial Sage.
Xiao Chen heaved a sigh of relief. If not for the Breaking Sage Pill, which allowed him to advance to Martial Sage early, this group of people would have surpassed him.
After all, he had been a half-Sage for less than a year. Compared to An Junxi and the others, who had all remained stuck at half-Sage for at least four years, he had much less accumulation and experience.
Hence, Xiao Chen had not been in a position to rely on the Heavenly Dew Divine Spring, which raised his talent and comprehension abilities, to break through the bottleneck.
If he had another year, he would have been able to break through to Martial Sage without the Breaking Sage Pill, no inferior to this group of people. However, by then, it would have been too late. The Sage Mark Monument would activate again only ten years later.
“Hu chi!”
A golden light flashed. Di Wuque and that white-haired girl led thirteen Inferior Grade Martial Sages of the Deity Race to descend on the scene.
The flickering light drew everyone’s gazes.
The leftover Deity Race cultivators all revealed fervent expressions as they quickly gathered behind Di Wuque and the other Deity Race demonic geniuses.
Xiao Chen felt astonished. The Deity Race was truly ridiculously strong. Di Wuque and the white-haired girl had long been Martial Sages already and were now peak Inferior Grade Martial Sages.
Aside from these two, the other thirteen people who soaked in the Heavenly Dew Divine Spring were now all Martial Sages as well.
Furthermore, the Deity Race obviously had more people than any of the other races.
“Strange. Wasn’t it said that a descendant of the human race’s Azure Emperor appeared? Why do I not see him? Is he not a Martial Sage yet?”
Several people started mumbling in doubt when they failed to see Xiao Chen, even though the golden barrier before the Sage Mark Monument was weakening and all the various demonic geniuses had gathered.
Naturally, Xiao Chen, who was keeping a low profile in the human group, did not hear these discussions taking place in the surrounding peaks. At such a distance, he would need to send out his Spiritual Sense before he could hear them.
He wore a cloak mainly because he wanted to avoid trouble. He did not want the three Sovereign Noble Clans to know of his movements.
As for what Ying Qiong was thinking, he did not know and could not be bothered to think about it.
However, Xiao Chen listened carefully to the discussions of the Martial Sages around him. After a while, he had gained a much better understanding of the Sage Mark Monument.
As long as cultivators got within a hundred meters of the Sage Mark Monument, they would feel a strong pressure, which came from the mysterious power inside the stone monument.
This pressure was not a generic pressure. Not only would it affect a cultivator’s mental state, but it also placed restrictions on flight. The higher one flew, the more pressure one would feel.
The higher one carved his name, the more outstanding one was.
However, one might also fail to carve one’s name at the height they could reach. Inscribing one’s name was not simple, either.
When the Sage Mark Monument activated in the past, many ambitious people wanted to carve their names as high as they could. So they blindly flew as high as they could manage.
However, as these people carved their names, they could not endure the pressure. Before they finished, they got repelled and lost their chance to leave their names.
Furthermore, the name carved on the stone monument would not necessarily last forever. If a cultivator did not become a Martial Emperor, the name on the Sage Mark Monument would disappear after a thousand years.
If one managed to become a Martial Emperor, the carved name would turn purple, disappearing only after five thousand years.
Only when one became a Sovereign Martial Emperor would one’s name turn golden and last forever, never to disappear.
Under the hood, Xiao Chen gazed at the indistinct stone monument obstructed by the barrier, an expression of interest in his eyes.
The stone monument was slightly more than three kilometers tall. If it had not been erected on this plateau, its height would look very ordinary among the many peaks of the Kunlun Mountain Range.
However, this stone monument recorded all the famous experts of the Martial Epoch.
One stone monument for the entire Kunlun Realm.
Just at this moment, the barrier vanished. The slightly-over-three-kilometer-tall Sage Mark Monument revealed its true face. From where the cultivators stood, they could see the names on it clearly.
The most eye-catching ones were the golden names high up. These names glittered in the sunlight.
Each name was a legend. When the cultivators saw a golden name belonging to their race, no matter who was it, they felt anticipation, reverence, respect, and pride.
These golden names also attracted Xiao Chen’s first glance. However, his second glance shifted to the bottom of the stele.
Compare to the golden names above, these names below did not stand out at all.
These names were far more cluttered, at least a few hundred times more so. They were like the base of a pyramid.
As one’s gaze rose, the clutter decreased. At the height of one kilometer, each row had only ten names at most.
The middle of the over-one-meter-wide stele appeared extremely sparsely inscribed. This one-kilometer height was a separation point. Only after this point would one start to see some purple names.
At two kilometers was another separation point. From there on, most of the names were purple leavened with the occasional golden name.
Golden lights flickered. Even amid the purple names, the golden light stood out very clearly. When it appeared, one would notice it right away, forgetting about the names around it.
Xiao Chen continued to raise his gaze. Then, he fixed it at the three-kilometer height, where there were only two names. One was the Thunder Emperor’s and the other, the Azure Emperor’s.
There were still another three hundred meters above this point, to the top of the stele. However, the hundred meters above the Azure Emperor’s name was blank.
No names appeared there. However, past these hundred meters was a large number of glittering names densely packed together.
Each row had at least twenty names, just as packed as the bottommost row of the stele.
Someone who understood the history of the Kunlun Realm and the Martial Epoch would not find this sight strange.
The stele represented the entire Kunlun Realm. There was no falsehood to this. Those densely packed names one hundred meters above the Azure Emperor represented the peak of the Ancient Era, when there had been as many Emperors as the clouds, when Sages filled the streets. It had been a glorious period rife with Sovereign Martial Emperors.