Chapter 240.3: One Palm Sends a Martial Saint Flying! Every Sacred Land Shaken! (III)

Time slipped by, and at last, the Exchange Convention commenced.

On the martial grounds of the Azure Mountain Sacred Land, the Martial Saint elders of every sacred land were seated in high places, and the several most powerful Martial Saints among them had been invited to the principal seats.

Lu Changsheng now sat among them, directly beside the sect master of the Azure Mountain Sacred Land. It was proof enough of how highly they regarded him.

However sour relations between the Azure Mountain Sacred Land and the Heavenly River Sacred Land were, their treatment of Lu Changsheng was courtesy of the highest order.

Lu Changsheng understood why that was. He was, in fact, an outsider within the Heavenly River Sacred Land; a titled elder could leave whenever he wished. If one day he actually left the Heavenly River Sacred Land, would it be possible for him to join the Azure Mountain Sacred Land?

The possibility certainly existed, which meant the courtesy extended to him now was a future investment. Naturally, there was no harm in befriending someone like Lu Changsheng, just in case they crossed paths again.

The sect master of the Azure Mountain Sacred Land was surnamed Xu and seemed an affable sort.

"Fellow Daoist Lu, the sacred land disciples below us are the cream of every sacred land, the finest they have to offer. Set beside you, however, they're not even worth mentioning. Most of them are a good deal older than you are, and yet not one has managed to forge a Saint Body...

"Had I not met you today, I would have found it hard to believe that a talent as dazzling as yours could arise outside the sacred lands at all. With geniuses such as you, the Martial Dao of the Sacred Earth is certain to flourish."

Sect Master Xu glanced at Lu Changsheng, then out at the disciples on the martial grounds.

Sacred land disciples were proud heaven-chosen, monstrous prodigies. Without Lu Changsheng, Sect Master Xu might genuinely have thought them a fine crop of talent. Those disciples were objectively good.

However, Lu Changsheng had come into the picture. Set against him, even the top prodigy of the sacred lands hardly merited mention. There was simply no comparison to be made. Set beside him, even the sacred land disciples looked thoroughly commonplace.

Lu Changsheng knew better, of course. The sacred lands' foundations ran deep, and the finest disciples were certain to be found within them. This could be seen from the sacred land disciples fighting below right now.

Drop any one of these disciples into the wider Sacred Earth and they would stand among the very best a great power could produce, a top-tier talent. Any major faction would be joyous to produce a disciple like that.

Judged purely as Divine Ability Realm martial artists, their strength was genuinely formidable, enough to crush most Divine Ability martial artists in the Sacred Earth.

But Lu Changsheng was something else, an anomaly.

If an ordinary martial artist of the Sacred Earth counted as one, these sacred land disciples counted as ten and better. Twenty, thirty even. They were peerless prodigies and geniuses worthy of the names!

Lu Changsheng was not twenty or thirty. He was not in the double digits at all. He was in the triple digits, past a hundred outright. There was simply no comparison to be made.

The once-in-a-decade Sacred Land Exchange Convention was a genuinely dazzling affair. Prodigies emerged one after another, and a great variety of divine abilities was being displayed, combined and stacked on top of each other. At this convention, one could witness ingenious techniques crafted from nothing, or ten divine abilities being unleashed at once.

The fighting on the martial grounds was fierce, yet from beginning to end, the eyes of the Martial Saint Elders of every sacred land kept drifting back to Lu Changsheng.

The more they looked into him, the more astonished they were. Perhaps the most shocking thing was Lu Changsheng's age. Rumors put Lu Changsheng under forty, with some speculating he was merely in his early thirties. No one was sure about his exact age, but everyone could tell he was very young.

To reach the Divine Ability Realm before even turning forty was downright shocking. Most who managed to reach that stage were over a hundred years old. Those under forty were not rare; they simply did not exist. Even though Divine Ability martial artists lived long, reaching that realm within the first century of one's life marked one as a supremely gifted individual.

In that sense, Lu Changsheng truly was an anomaly. Now, he had roughly three millennia to keep following the path of the Martial Dao. Where his journey would take him, not even Lu Changsheng himself could say yet. Still, one thing was certain: his journey was bound to be formidable.

Indeed, Lu Changsheng was, beyond any doubt, Heavenly Saint material!

Some sacred lands had even begun to wonder whether they ought to court him. After all, he was not a disciple of the Heavenly River Sacred Land. He was only an outside Martial Saint who had joined them, which left the door open to certain possibilities.

The days had passed, and at last the Sacred Land Exchange Convention drew toward its close. The ten strongest experts among the sacred land disciples had essentially been decided.

This time the Heavenly River Sacred Land had not fallen flat. Their performance was respectable enough, and one of their disciples made the top ten to stand among the ten great experts.

A lone shoot, admittedly. Besides him they had not even placed in the top twenty. But someone had made the top ten, which bettered their showing at the last several conventions.

Lu Changsheng had led the delegation without disgracing himself or the people who had placed their trust in him. The Heavenly River Sacred Land had gone through this convention without losing any face. By any measure, the mission was a complete success.

Still, the disciple of the Heavenly River Sacred Land hadn't gone further than top ten, eliminated in the first round among them.

First place went to the Dragon Region Sacred Land, whose disciple was formidable indeed. He commanded a full six supreme major divine abilities, all of them complementing each other; stacked together, their power could shake heaven and earth. Among all the sacred land disciples, his was the undisputed first strength.

Lu Changsheng came away somewhat disappointed, in the sense that, throughout this whole convention, he had not seen a single sacred land disciple with an immeasurable divine ability.

After all, it was said that the sacred lands harbored formidable disciples, the kind one would see once every few centuries, geniuses who had attained the immeasurable divine ability. Whether that was only rumor or not, Lu Changsheng had yet to lay eyes on one.

In the end, Lu Changsheng decided to ask about that directly.

"Sect Master Xu, I have heard that the sacred lands hold once-in-a-generation peerless geniuses, who have condensed immeasurable divine abilities, and could dominate the whole of the Sacred Earth the moment they stepped outside. How come I haven't seen one such individual during the Exchange Convention?"

Faced with the question, Sect Master Xu could not help showing a wry smile. "Fellow Daoist Lu, the sacred lands have indeed produced martial artists who condensed immeasurable divine abilities.

"But they are extremely rare, so rare that you could probably count them on one hand. You can't seek them out, only stumble upon them by chance. Sometimes, it takes a thousand years for one to emerge. Sometimes, we can go several thousand years without such a genius. The sacred lands can go that long without having any disciples with immeasurable divine abilities."

Lu Changsheng nodded in understanding.

So these so-called peerless disciples are basically just a rumor that's passed around until it eventually becomes true. Or rather, the outside world just has the wrong impression about the sacred lands. I guess there's no way to know about the circumstances of these lands from the outside.

At last, he understood too why the martial artists of the sacred lands had changed their attitude so sharply, all of them shaken, upon learning that he had condensed immeasurable divine abilities. Indeed, that feat was considered by many to be impossible. Any sacred land disciple with a scrap of ambition had tried, and the sheer difficulty of the endeavor had driven many to despair.

"Fellow Daoist, you joined the Heavenly River Sacred Land to borrow its momentum of the masses for cultivating your Saint Body, did you not?" Sect Master Xu asked suddenly.

"Yes." Lu Changsheng nodded.

It was hardly a secret. Nearly everyone knew it.

"It's quite difficult for a martial artist outside the sacred lands to obtain enough momentum of the masses. Only a sacred land's momentum of the masses can sustain cultivation at the Human Saint Realm, and offer even a thread of hope of advancing to Earthly Saint.

"However, a sacred land cannot offer you all of that momentum. In reality, you only get a small portion.

"Has it occurred to you to join the Azure Mountain Sacred Land and gain some of our momentum as well? With momentum from two sacred lands, would your cultivation not advance leaps and bounds?"

The words stirred something in Lu Changsheng. In truth, he was startled. He had only just started considering that possibility, and here was Sect Master Xu bringing it up himself.

Momentum of the masses could be too vast to bear; it could crush a Martial Saint outright. More was not always better. If a Saint Body lacked the strength to withstand it, the excess actively harmed one's cultivation.

But Lu Changsheng was different. Given how formidable his Primordial Chaos Saint Body was, simultaneously gaining momentum from two sacred lands would be nothing to him. Even ten more on top of that would pose no problem. His only requirement in regards to momentum of the masses was that he needed as much of it as possible.

The true difficulty lay in being part of two sacred lands at once. In a sense, was that not playing both sides?

Moreover, this was about the Azure Mountain and Heavenly River, two sacred lands with plenty of bad blood between them. Would the Heavenly River Sacred Land actually consent to his joining the Azure Mountain Sacred Land as well? And if the two sacred lands ever came to blows, whose side was Lu Changsheng supposed to take?

The problems that could arise were evident, and Sect Master Xu could not have overlooked them. Still, he had raised the offer anyway.

Is he trying to sow discord between the two sides? No, that can't be it. A sect master like him would not stoop so low.

So what was Sect Master Xu really after?