Chapter 563 – The Eight Inner Hidden Gates

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After Lin Ming bid Muk Gu farewell, he quickly soared over to the second floor’s city square.

Because of Lin Ming’s arrival, a pall of heavy silence immediately fell over the entire area. Many of the martial artists present now knew who Lin Ming was. As the king of the second floor, his arrival at the city square was like an emperor going out on a journey.

“Young Hero Lin!”

From far away, the fat Fey that Lin Ming was doing business with hurried over, his face covered with smiles. “Does Young Hero Lin have any orders?”

“Have you finished trading for the Blood Demon Crystals?” Lin Ming had left a great deal of treasures here for the fat Fey vendor to exchange for high-grade Blood Demon Crystals.

“I’ve exchanged less than a half. These past days I haven’t been selling any of my own wares; I’ve only been helping to take care of yours!” The fat Fey vendor was doing everything he could to establish better relations with Lin Ming.

He truly had tried his best these past days. All of the treasures that Lin Ming had left to him were scattered and very random. Although every object was valuable, it would be difficult to find a suitable buyer for every item in a short time.

“Mm. I won’t treat you poorly. As for the previous agreement we made, I’ll make sure that you receive the percentage promised.”

“Haha, Young Hero Lin is too polite. Being able to sell treasures for you is my honor.” The fat Fey vendor said as he pulled out a case of Blood Demon Crystals. The inside was packed with high-grade Blood Demon Crystals. “This is what I’ve gathered from the recent trades as well as the exchange of medium-grade Blood Demon Crystals. There should be a total of 400 high-grade Blood Demon Crystals. Please count them.”

Lin Ming casually swept over them; the number was correct. He took 20 out and handed them to the fat Fey vendor. “Here, this is the agreed 5%. It would be best if you could completely trade everything within the month.”

“That is…” The fat Fey looked at the 20 high-grade Blood Demon Crystals in front of him and quietly gulped. “Young Hero Lin, you may rest assured that I will do everything in my power to complete your task in the shortest time possible.”

The fat Fey slapped his chest in guarantee.

“Great. After this matter is complete, I will give you another reward.” Lin Ming received all of the Blood Demon Crystals and then walked away.

After he returned to his practice area, Lin Ming first sat in meditation to relax his state of mind. Then, he took out Xing Tian’s spatial ring. Xing Tian’s spatial ring was a top medium-grade earth-step treasure. As Lin Ming probed it with his sense, he could tell that its inner dimensional space was three to four times larger than Xue Man’s spatial ring. The space inside was also extremely stable; it would be able to function for another 3000 to 4000 years without collapsing.

“Great ring. Just this ring by itself is priceless.”

Lin Ming began to take everything out of the spatial ring. The first thing that caught his eye was a large box of high-grade Blood Demon Crystals. Roughly estimating, there was around 500 to 600 of them.

As for medium-grade Blood Demon Crystals, there were several dozen large cases that were packed to the brim. A conservative estimate was in the tens of thousands.

This was a great amount of wealth.

The Blood Demon Crystals were all separately placed into another spatial ring. This was followed by the pills, jade slips, treasures, and so on.

Because Lin Ming wanted to find some of Skysplit Tower’s secrets from Xing Tian’s spatial ring, he carefully and patiently checked every jade slip for clues. But unfortunately, from start to end, he didn’t find anything of value concerning Skysplit Tower.

These jade slips recorded rare demonic realm cultivation methods, but they weren’t too useful to Lin Ming.

Slightly disappointed, Lin Ming began to examine the pill bottles. With several dozen pill bottles, Lin Ming began to take the pills out one at a time. Most of them were high-level recovery medicines like the Divine Blood Pill – they weren’t particularly special. But as Lin Ming was about to sweep aside the pill bottles, something caught his attention.

He took a pill bottle and gently rolled it in his hand. “This is… a spell?”

Lin Ming was surprised to find that this seemingly ordinary engraved bottle was in fact cleverly concealing a small spell.

Lin Ming had a deep understanding of spells. He studied the spell a bit, and his mouth curved up in a smile. “How interesting. I wonder what’s inside.”

Lin Ming slowly traced a finger down the bottle and carefully injected true essence within. After a while, a black hazy aura began to appear over the originally pure white bottle.

Kacha!

With a light sound, the bottle cracked in half. Immediately, a large metal box flew out of the bottle. For the half fist-sized bottle to contain such a large metal box, this was of course the function of that spell.

“You’ve placed this in your own spatial ring yet you’ve done everything you could to hide it. For you to be so cautious, what can it be?” Lin Ming’s curiosity was aroused. Whatever this was must be extremely important to Xing Tian.

The metal box was a light blue-gray all over. As Lin Ming took it in his hands, he felt the cool texture of metal. Such a small box was actually no less than 100 jins.

He twisted the box’s lock, opened the lid, and saw a fine swathe of yellow silk inside.

As he slowly unwrapped the yellow silk cloth, he finally saw what was inside.

It was a bead the size of a pigeon. The body was jet-black, and there were some faint patterns on the surface. It looked like black glass that was filled with impurities.

Lin Ming took the bead in his hand and traced the cold surface with his fingers. A cold feeling seemed to spread from the surface and into his meridians. It made one feel as if they were connected to the black bead.

“What is this?”

Lin Ming could feel that there was something extraordinary about this bead. It seemed to contain some pure and unfathomable power.

Looking at just how much importance Xing Tian placed on the bead, Lin Ming could guess how important it was.

“This must be a treasure. But… I don’t know how to use it.”

Lin Ming searched through the jade slips in Xing Tian’s spatial ring and couldn’t find anything related to this bead.

Since looking at this bead wouldn’t produce any more information, Lin Ming put it away.

Through his conversation with Muk Gu, Lin Ming came to understand that Skysplit Tower’s third floor was the final level for the tower challengers. Although he was confident in his ability, he didn’t dare to act too rashly.

In his battle with Xing Tian, Lin Ming used every skill in his repertoire besides the blood of the Ancient Phoenix. But Xing Tian’s strength could only be arranged in the middle ranks of Skysplit Tower’s third floor.

This meant that there were a considerable number of people on the third floor that Lin Ming was not a match for.

In this situation, Lin Ming couldn’t recklessly provoke the powerhouses of the third floor.

Right now Lin Ming was only 18 years old. He had a great amount of time to grow, so he wasn’t in too much of a hurry.

He was prepared to go into closed-door seclusion for a long period of time. It could be a few months, or it could even be a year.

Lin Ming had just broken through to the middle Xiantian realm. If he wanted to step into the late Xiantian realm, it would be difficult. Not just that, but even if he did reach the late Xiantian realm, his strength wouldn’t grow that much.

However, Lin Ming had another plan.

That was to practice the body transformation system!

After reaching 100% Tempering Marrow, Lin Ming didn’t have time to further progress in the ‘Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians’. But now, he planned to calm his heart and practice the ‘Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians’ in an attempt to open the elusive Eight Inner Hidden Gates.

After Tempering Marrow was the Eight Inner Hidden Gates, and above the Eight Inner Hidden Gates was the Nine Stars of the Dao Palace.

Once the Realm of the Gods’ body transformation system was cultivated to the extreme limit, one could reverse the universe and split apart creation.

Of course, the price one had to pay for cultivating the body transformation system was horridly terrifying. This was also the reason why many martial artists within the Realm of the Gods chose the essence gathering system.

As for the Holy Demon Continent, even the geniuses of ancient times saw the body transformation system as weak and useless. It needed a massive investment of materials and yet the return was so little. Over time, humanity’s body transformation system was eliminated. These cultivation method legacies were also annihilated in the endless dust of history, disappearing without a trace.

Lin Ming took out 100 Blood Demon Crystals from his spatial ring at once. A Blood Demon Crystal’s advantage over a true essence stone was in its ability to enhance one’s blood vitality. It could help refine the body and nourish the soul.

The Giant Demon race’s body transformation law formulas were dependent upon these Blood Demon Crystals.

On the same side, a Blood Demon Crystal had a similar effect to a human’s body transformation technique.

“I will rely on these high-grade Blood Demon Crystals to cultivate the ‘Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians’. I won’t leave closed-door cultivation until I have passed the bottleneck!”

Lin Ming set firm his resolve. After swallowing several fasting pills, he let the true essence flood out from his marrow, and then began to revolve it with the ‘True Primal Chaos Formula’. Quickly, Lin Ming entered the ethereal martial intent state, losing control of his consciousness. The true essence within his body began to revolve in a completely autonomous manner; it could be called the most perfect route…

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On the fourth floor of Skysplit Tower, within a magnificent and dimly lit hall, the sounds of heavy footsteps resounded as a black-cloaked 12 foot tall Giant Demon man walked towards the door.

“Xing Tian died!” A voice suddenly sounded out from the hall. However, one could not see the figure of the one who spoke; the words echoed out as if spoken by a phantom.

“I know!” The Giant Demon’s footsteps slowed. He, like many other Giant Demons, had blue skin. But his appearance wasn’t as blocky or rough as other Giant Demons’. Rather, he was very elegant and refined; he was an astoundingly handsome individual.

“Although we already noticed Lin Ming early on, we’ve underestimated him. I originally was thinking of allowing Xing Tian to handle him, but I never imagined that he would reverse the tables and kill Xing Tian instead. He is not some low level trash. Even if he is an Emperor level talent, he is also an upper level Emperor talent. If he is allowed to freely grow, he might one day become a Divine Sea powerhouse in the future, and not just that, but an extremely strong Divine Sea powerhouse.” The voice sounded out once more. Within the main hall, a distortion appeared in the air. Infernal energy began to gather together, slowly condensing into the drifting shade of a Goliath.

The was another use of a battle array disc. Through two linked arrays, one could transmit a phantom image along with sounds in order to speak directly. If one wanted to use sound transmitting talismans to do the same, it would require a great deal of sound transmitting talismans to be used one after the other; it was unnecessarily troublesome.

“Him reaching the Divine Sea has nothing to do with my Blood Slaughter Steppes.” The Giant Demon casually said. The Blood Slaughter Steppes were known as a restricted land for Divine Sea powerhouses. Let alone the Divine Sea, even a high level Life Destruction powerhouse would not dare to set foot in this land, otherwise they would be killed by the strange curse that existed here. Whether Lin Ming reached the Divine Sea realm had nothing to do with them.

“That’s true. But before he reaches the Divine Sea, he will become the 13^th ten-winged Heavenly Demon. I don’t want someone to rise up and take a share of our power, especially when they are a human.” The voice slowly said after a deep silence.

At this moment, within the dark hall, another floating phantom shined in the air. This floating phantom was that of a Fey man. He had a beard, making his originally handsome face appear a bit pessimistic.

The Fey man faintly smiled and said, “This fellow called Lin Ming has gone into closed-door seclusion on the second floor, he’s quite the smart one.”

The Goliath High Lord thought for a moment and smiled. He said, “When he goes through closed-door seclusion, he will inevitably meet a bottleneck if he doesn’t experience true combat. It’s impossible for him to stay there for too long. After he leaves, I will find someone to deal with him!”