Soaring the Heavens

Chapter 152: Refining Artifacts (9)

Translator: Kelaude Editor: - -

One month later.

Standing in front of the treasure basin, Yao Ruoxian was in full concentration as he constantly moved the fingers of his hands towards the hole located at the core of the furnace. His hair and clothes flitted about without the aid of a breeze, and countless silver globules could be seen flying out in rapid succession from inside the furnace.

Miao Yi was currently sitting cross-legged in a corner of the pit, quietly cultivating.

To be more accurate, he had originally been cultivating, but now he was experiencing a very strange turn of events.

When he first cultivated using the Fiery Star Technique, he had to use his arts to guard his body against the surrounding heat, and ultimately discovered a very strange occurrence.

When he matched the arts he used to deter the surrounding heat with his own cultivation method, he realized that he could actually control the changes in temperature around him through the surge of his transcendence energy.

He couldn’t help but stop cultivating for the moment, and persistently tried to manipulate the high temperatures around him. The more he tried, the better he was.

Under the surge of his transcendence energy, the high heat that struck forth fluctuated following the changes in his transcendence energy. It would at times shift to the left and sometimes to the right; sometimes floating upwards and sometimes descending downwards; sometimes backing away and sometimes circling around his body; and sometimes, it would coalesce together.

When he tried to not guard himself against the heat and let it approach him, to his surprise, he discovered that the art source circulating inside his body was actually absorbing some kind of spiritual essence from within the heat, similar to the time when he had extracted the True Fire of Supreme Yang and first created his art source.

What was most astounding was that after the spiritual essence had been absorbed into his art source, tiny red lights actually began to appear within his originally formless, circulating art source, adding a new color into the mix.

Miao Yi was shocked. Lao Bai had never mentioned such a possibility to him before. It couldn’t be there was something wrong with his cultivation, could it?

At first he wanted to stop his attempts, but he soon discovered that the art source inside his body had actually become more vigorous with the addition of these little red lights; it felt as though a muddle-headed person had suddenly became energetic. It was a very odd feeling.

Miao Yi faintly realized that absorbing the spiritual fire essence from the burning Red Blaze Resin seemed to be beneficial to his own art source. He was hesitant to confirm if it was truly beneficial or not, as he didn’t want any trouble. However, it seemed the excited art source inside his body was very interested in absorbing them, to the point where it affected his own mood and invoked feelings of pleasure.

He was born with a tendency to take risks, otherwise he wouldn’t have headed to the Sea of Constellations and raised a ruckus there. After some hesitation, he ultimately decided to try it out slowly.

He hardened his resolve and decided to carefully absorb the spiritual fire essence. He was prepared to immediately stop absorbing the second he discovered anything wrong.

“Mastery of fire requires perfection of the true body. One who has surpassed fire shall be able to roam the endless universe without inhibition!”

A gloomy sigh resounded. The graceful figure that was Lao Bai, had unknowingly appeared beside Miao Yi. Looking towards the transcendent artifact that was being refined atop the large treasure basin, he lightly shook his head and said, “Could this be fate?”

He had passed the cultivation method of the Fiery Star Technique to Miao Yi, but he hadn’t yet told Miao Yi the true purpose of cultivation behind the Fiery Star Technique.

The true purpose of the Fiery Star Technique lay in the two sentences that he had just spoken…., mastery of fire requires perfection of the true body, and one who has surpassed fire shall be able to roam the endless universe without inhibition!

He naturally had his own reasons for not passing this down.

Firstly, he was afraid that Miao Yi would become corrupt and greedy. He felt that Miao Yi’s current cultivation was still lacking, so he wanted him to prioritise raising his own cultivation stably, and not go running around everywhere if he didn’t have to.

Secondly, it was because he wanted to continue watching Miao Yi for the time being, as the hardest thing to grasp in this world was the heart of man. Even Lao Bai himself couldn’t be sure that Miao Yi wouldn’t change in the future. He wouldn’t easily reveal his trump card until the time was right.

But he never would have thought that Miao Yi could actually begin to grasp the true purpose of the Fiery Star Technique as a result of this chance meeting.

A small gap had already been pushed open on this door, and Lao Bai knew that Miao Yi would continue to push it open and investigate what lay behind it if he ever had the opportunity. Thus, he could only sigh deeply…...

‘BOOMMM!’

A familiar sound once again echoed forth from the great ocean outside.

Miao Yi abruptly opened his eyes, quickly retracted his arts and jumped out of the pit. After, he immediately honed in on the spot where white mist appeared on the surface of the sea and dashed forward, diving straight into the ocean.

During this period of time, he had already become addicted to picking up artifacts, and became extremely proficient in it as well.

It didn’t take long for him to burst out of the waves. He carried a silver helm in hand as he leaped onto shore, grinning widely.

He didn’t need Yao Ruoxian to instruct him anymore. He immediately set away a thread of his art source and imbued it into the helm, letting the ownerless helm acknowledge his ownership.

He tossed the helm in his hands. It shot to the skies and exploded into the illusion of a silver lion.

As he spread both his arms, clouds of silver mist shot out and rose to the skies from inside his storage ring.

Afterwhich, illusions of lion, tiger, leopard, octopus, wolf, python and rhinoceros descended from the sky in quick succession, and charged downwards onto Miao Yi who stood with his arms wide open.

The lion descended on his head and coalesced into a helm that shielded his brows, ears and neck; where the lion opened its mouth was Miao Yi’s face.

The eight tentacles of the octopus wrapped around his body, and solidified into a tough yet tensile armor that hung on his shoulders and covered his chest and back; engraved on the front and back of his armor was the pattern of a mighty wave. Below his waist hung a soft plated drape, and on the outer edges of his thighs hung two half pockets. Half of his lower body was protected, front and back.

The two tigers landed on his shoulders. Their hind legs wrapped around half his arms, and their front legs lay perched on his shoulder, whereas the jaws of the two tigers faced outwards with bared fangs. The tigers protected his upper arms and shoulders, and were refined with an intricacy as though they were alive.

Around his forearms were two leopards; the slightly elevated heads of the leopards shielded his elbows, as their bodies extended towards the back of his palms, turning into a set of awe-inspiring vambraces.

The python wrapped itself around his waist; as it laid its head on his abdomen, it opened its jaws and flicked its tongue out, swiftly turning into a snake-scale belt. Thus, it held in place the soft armor around his waist, preventing it from loosely shaking around, and at the same time protecting his waist from harm.

The two wolves hugged his legs, shielding his knees and guarding his feet, immediately becoming a pair of bright silver greaves. Just behind his legs were two half-raised wolf heads revealing a set of vicious-looking teeth.

The rhinoceros fell into Miao Yi’s palm, and instantly solidified into the Inversed-Scales Spear!

Even though this set of armor was not a single full-body set, some parts were still intricately linked together. The design was elaborate and complex with great attention paid to the minor details, especially at the joints - there was virtually no awkwardness when moving around. It was indeed the work of a skilled artifact artisan. One would need a great amount of insight and experience to be able to produce such a heavenly creation.

However, this armor couldn’t be put on through normal means. If one did not invoke his arts, it would be impossible to forcefully put it on, or take it off.

On his temple rested a valiant lion, on his shoulders lay two ferocious tigers, around his arms perched two vicious leopards, and a large python circled his waist. His legs stood atop savage wolves, his chest and back shielded by eight tentacles; and finally, in his hand was the Inversed-Scales Spear. Miao Yi stood on the shore, wrapped in a resplendent white glow. His aura was nothing short of imposing, and as he waved the mighty spear in his hand, he projected an image of dignity and unfaltering strength alongside his overwhelming aura of violence, as though he were a divine god that had descended onto the mortal realm!

Taking another look at his full set of equipment, Miao Yi was brimming with joy, feeling as though he had just struck gold.

This whole set of equipment was composed of ten first grade transcendent artifacts, which meant he had spent ten First Grade Yao Cores, and that wasn’t including the other materials that he had used.

Looking back to before he had gone to the Sea of Constellations, the Great Cave Master Miao had still been worried about a few low-grade Orbs of Will, deciding to run all the way to the Sea of Constellations to go hunting, in order to obtain more Orbs of Will. He never thought about getting any transcendent artifacts, but who would’ve known that he would come to own a luxurious ten-piece set of transcendent artifacts in the blink of an eye.

Even though their net value may not be higher than a single piece of second grade transcendent artifact of Yang Qing’s, but what he had was a complete set that had four or five more pieces than Yang Qing.

Not to mention, his own set of armor was obviously much better than Yang Qing’s aesthetically. If he had to compare the two based on looks, Yang Qing’s armor was trash compared to his.