Star Odyssey

Chapter 1426: Efficiency

In a certain corner of the Voidsoul Palace, a figure flew in from outside and smashed against a pillar so hard that an indent of the person's body was left in the pillar.

This figure was wearing a suit of armor, and it immediately stood up after falling to the floor. The figure started moving away from where they had landed, all the while studying the surrounding area.

Naturally, this figure was Lu Yin. When he had first seen Bai Shaohong and Nong Sanniang fighting, he had not expected to get dragged in, but he had still put on his universal armor. He had a very strong survival instinct.

He was not inside the Voidsoul Palace! The fighting outside must have grown too loud and triggered a reaction from the palace, which was why they had been sucked in.

Lu Yin heard a low roar from a corner. The sound startled him, and he turned to look, only to see a pair of scarlet eyes with vertical pupils.

The Voidsoul Palace was enveloped by the huge Voidsoul Umbrella, but it was possible to see tiny red dots appearing on the umbrella. There were places where these dots were densely packed, and they slowly moved. Once everyone had been sucked into the palace, one particular little red dot started to disappear.

Bai Shaohong stood in another corner of the Voidsoul Palace. Every step he took left deep footprints on the floor. He was also faced with a red-eyed corpse king, but the Junior Progenitor just raised a hand and mercilessly slapped down, smashing the corpse king's head.

The moment the corpse king died, one of the red dots on the Voidsoul Umbrella disappeared. Also, Bai Shaohong was able to sense the umbrella's energy, and it felt like he was able to control the umbrella.

He thought of something, and suddenly his body was pulled, and he disappeared. When he next appeared, he was in another part of the palace. He did not know where he was, just that there was another corpse king in front of him. This corpse king was about as strong as the first one he had faced, and was only a mere Explorer. He easily killed this corpse king as well, and he then felt a bit more of the Voidsoul Umbrella's energy.

He understood. The Voidsoul Umbrella had detected the energy from his battle with Nong Sanniang, and had then dragged everyone nearby into the Voidsoul Palace to clear out the remaining corpse kings. The reward for whoever destroyed the most corpse kings would be the Voidsoul Umbrella itself. There were many corpse kings to destroy, but the final winner would gain control of the Voidsoul Umbrella.

Bai Shaohong's eyes lit up at this thought. His demeanor grew confident and arrogant; the umbrella had to go to him.

The Voidsoul Palace was huge. After all, Progenitor Ku had lived in it with his Voidsoul Army. Many corpse kings had stayed in the place since ancient times, but given the size of the place, it was difficult to encounter any of the corpse kings, let alone the other people on the Junior Progenitors' teams.

Long Tian retracted his hand and looked up. Even though he could not see the Voidsoul Umbrella, he was able to feel it more strongly as time went on. At the same time, he was also able to sense other energies appearing, trying to compete with him for control of the Voidsoul Umbrella. Unfortunately for those other people, he had already killed far more corpse kings than any of them.

As another corpse king fell to the ground in front of Long Tian, his body disappeared, only to reappear a ways away. He sensed a powerful aura, and he reflexively used the White Dragon Transformation and took out a strange power vessel. He thrust his spear forward, but the shaft was grabbed by a corpse king. The creature had a physical strength that was practically on par with an Envoy.

Corpse kings had an innate advantage when fighting humans. The creatures felt no pain, had no desire for life or fear of death, they had incredibly robust bodies, and were able to freely use their innate gifts. Once they started cultivating, they would be able to improve leaps and bounds. It was because of these advantages that the humans lost most of their battles against them, and they could only employ the strategy of self destruction to eliminate these monstrosities.

Even if Long Tian was a Junior Progenitor and was able to defeat anyone beneath the Envoy realm, he would still struggle terribly to fight against a corpse king that was on the verge of reaching the strength of an Envoy.

Elsewhere, Lu Yin had come to the same realization as the two Junior Progenitors from the moment he had killed his first corpse king. He had sensed the energy of the Voidsoul Umbrella and had realized that the umbrella was intending to use the youths' power to clean out the Voidsoul Palace.

Ancient Progenitors were incredible. Even after they died, they left behind a power that still tried to deal with the monsters.

A Vacuum Palm shot out, striking a corpse king, Lu Yin clenched his fist; it was time for him to finally release his full strength, as he wanted to be the one to get the Voidsoul Umbrella that held the power of resurrection.

The power of a Vacuum Palm lay in its speed and power. Lu Yin killed another corpse king and quickly appeared in another location. Every time he saw a corpse king, he would attack it with a Vacuum Palm. His strength far exceeded what it had been during ZENITH, and he had also completed his nineteenth cycle as a Hunter and had even opened his lower meridian point. If he had possessed such strength during ZENITH, Wang Yi would not have been able to endure one of Lu Yin's Vacuum Palms.

His domain had been fully unleashed, and he was liberally attacking with his Vacuum Palm. Lu Yin was actually clearing out the corpse kings faster than Bai Shaohong or Long Tian, at least until he came across a corpse king that was approaching the strength of a Envoy.

With a bang, the full-powered Vacuum Palm was only able to knock the corpse king back 100 meters. The attack was not able to cause any sort of severe damage to the beast.

The corpse king looked at Lu Yin with its scarlet eyes and then charged towards the youth.

After the passing of countless years, even if the corpse king had once possessed any semblance of sapience, the creature was nothing but instinct at this moment, which made it the perfect target for Lu Yin to attack, as no matter how strong the corpse king was, without intelligence, it could only serve for target practice.

However, the beast's body was too tough. Lu Yin repeatedly attacked with countless Vacuum Palms, but only was able to leave some marks on the corpse king's body and was unable to penetrate the creature's defenses. It would take a great deal of time for him to whittle this corpse king down and defeat it.

Lu Yin was able to feel the Voidsoul Umbrella's energy growing stronger and stronger. He frowned. After a moment's thought, his die appeared. It was time to Enhance some items.

As soon as he tapped it, the die began to rotate. Four pips: Timestop.

The scenery changed before Lu Yin's eyes, and he appeared within the gray space. He immediately began to roll his die again.

As long as he was able to enter the Timestop Space, he was guaranteed to be able to roll a three, so first rolling a four was the best result.

Lu Yin rolled the die five times, and finally, on his sixth attempt, he rolled a three.

As soon as he saw the two screens of light, Lu Yin threw out the orb that he had stolen from Madam Lan.

When Lu Yin had attacked the Blaze Realm, Madam Lan tried to use this orb to annihilate Lu Yin's forces, but he had stolen it from her with the Yu Secret Art. The orb held a powerful flame, and when he had seen its runes, he had almost matched up to those of an Enlighter. At this moment, Lu Yin hoped to Enhance the orb so that he could use the flame it held to kill the corpse king much faster.

After throwing out the orb, Lu Yin began to feed the screens with star essence.

While the flame within the orb could be used as a weapon, if Lu Yin was not careful with it, he could also hurt himself. He did not want to go overboard, so he only enhanced the orb three times.

The third upgrade cost him nearly 8 million star essence. Lu Yin could feel the surging temperature of the flame within when he held the orb. The heat of this flame far surpassed the dark magma he had used to train on the Junior Progenitor Planet. The orb contained a temperature that was beyond what Lu Yin could endure at this time, though he felt he would be able to do so after becoming an Enlighter.

Lu Yin checked his remaining time, and then soon calmed himself down and began to silently recite the complete Stonewall Scriptures.

Finally, the scenery changed, and Lu Yin returned to the real universe. No matter how much time he spent in that gray and white Timestop Space, no more than a second had passed in the real universe. Still, a second was a significant amount of time for a powerful cultivator, and the corpse king was already close to Lu Yin. It slapped out a hand and sent Lu Yin flying.

Luckily, Lu Yin was unharmed, as he was still wearing his universal armor. If he had not, the monster's attack would have easily caused him heavy injuries.

The corpse king charged Lu Yin once again, but this time Lu Yin raised the upgraded orb and attacked the corpse king with it. Only a small amount of the contained flames were released, and yet still the corpse king was reduced to ashes the moment it came in touch with the flames.

Lu Yin felt a bit hot as he held the orb. He was guessing that the flames the orb held could compare to an attack from an expert with a power level of 600,000, while the corpse king had merely been close to the power of an Envoy.

If the corpse king had managed to undergo a corpse king transformation, things might have turned out different, as the flames might not have been enough to destroy such a creature.

Lu Yin disappeared, and when he reappeared he was close to another corpse king. Each successive corpse king was slightly stronger than the previous, and Lu Yin's current opponent was another corpse king that had a level of strength that almost reached that of an Envoy.

Lu Yin just incinerated the creature with the flames within the orb without saying a single word.

One victory, two, three. Lu Yin did not know how many corpse kings were within the Voidsoul Palace, but he did know that the flames within his orb were starting to run out, though he was also gaining more and more control over the Voidsoul Umbrella, and he had already surpassed everyone else.

Bai Shaohong was able to feel that someone else was slaughtering the corpse kings even faster than he, despite the fact that he had already used a power vessel. Each successive corpse king was progressively more powerful, and even though Bai Shaohong was using a power vessel, he still needed at least 15 minutes to defeat each corpse king. How could anyone be even faster than him? Could it be that the others had only encountered weaker corpse kings?

That should not be the case, as the Voidsoul Umbrella was not a person and it had no intelligence, so there should not be any sort of difference in the treatment of the different people. The strength of the corpse king a person would be sent to face was related to the number of corpse kings a person had already killed, as well as their speed. The faster a person killed the corpse kings and the more corpse kings a person defeated, the stronger the corpse king they would be paired with. Given this pattern, there was no way for anyone to be faster than Bai Shaohong unless they had a more powerful power vessel than he.

Bai Shaohong's eyes flickered. Not just anyone was able to use such power vessels. The stronger the power vessel, the greater the burden placed on the user. Otherwise, given the Celestial Frost Sect's support, Bai Shaohong would have been able to use power vessels with the strength of a Semi-Progenitor without any scruples and breeze his way through everything.

Who could it be? Long Tian? Wang Su? Xia Shenfei?

At this moment, Long Tian was also trying to guess who was progressing so rapidly. Long Tian had entered the palace earlier than the others, and yet someone had killed more corpse kings than Long Tian. How could anyone defeat these beasts so fast? Could they only have been facing corpse kings with the strength of an Explorer? That should not be the case!

Given the situation, Long Tian had no choice after giving the matter a bit of thought. He brought out another power vessel.

Both Bai Shaohong and Long Tian had started to use their strongest power vessels. For a time, the Voidsoul Palace shook without stopping, and the red dots sprinkled across the Voidsoul Umbrella started disappearing faster and faster. Three people continued to fight for first place, and the top position kept rotating between them, and everyone else was left just watching the fun.

Two days later, the last corpse king was destroyed. With that, the orb in Lu Yin's hand finally shattered, as the flame inside had been utterly exhausted.

At the same time, his perspective shifted, and Lu Yin was suddenly looking at the entire Voidsoul Palace. He saw a place where tribulation crystals were stored. Excitement filled his eyes; could that be the inheritance Progenitor Ku had left behind?

After only a moment, Lu Yin's perspective returned to his body, but he already knew where Progenitor Ku's inheritance was stored.

Lu Yin was not the only one to be given this information, as Bai Shaohong and Long Tian had seen the same scene. All three had seen the same location, and all three had already made the same decision to grab the inheritance.

At this moment, it was a speed race. However, it did not matter how fast Bai Shaohong or Long Tian might be, as they could not compete with Lu Yin. This was simply because Lu Yin was already extremely close to where the inheritance had been hidden.

After only a quarter of an hour, Lu Yin had found the inconspicuous secret room. He had seen Wen Diyi on the way while rushing towards the inheritance at top speed. Lu Yin had badly startled Wen Diyi, as he had assumed that another corpse king had appeared.

Lu Yin grabbed the tribulation crystals the moment he entered the hidden room. There was also a box on either side of where the crystals had sat, and Lu Yin instantly appeared in front of one and stored it in his cosmic ring. By this time, Bai Shaohong and Long Tian had both arrived outside the room, and only a wall separated them from Lu Yin. Normally, Lu Yin would be trapped and sealed within the room, but he had the Ce secret technique.