Supreme Emperor of Swords

Chapter 414 Black Serpent Ring, a Windfall

That was the first time he tried to hit two acupoints in succession. Fortunately, he was amply prepared. The fight with the two demon kings greatly benefited him, as he gained a lot of martial arts experience that was impossible to be obtained from theory. That was why he could succeed in one fell swoop.

Next, it was to achieve gradual stability in his performance.

Ding Hao opened his eyes only to find it was almost sunset without knowing. Only half of the fiery sun was left hanging in the sky. Its light shed over the mirror-like surface of the lake, under which the water turned red, rippling away like blood, making a spectacular view.

The disciples of the villa had already delivered dinner to the door.

Ding Hao took in the dish. He leaned in front of the wooden windows of the pavilion and enjoyed the lakeview while eating, oblivious to what was going on. He suddenly remembered Li Yiruo, the young girl from the Swordsmanship-seeking Sect. Although that spicy minx could only cook weird-tasted dishes that were hard to swallow, at that moment, Ding Hao somehow missed the bitter taste.

It took him a long time to finish the meal.

When Ding Hao was done, he realized that the red sun in the distance had completely sunk below the horizon.

Having hastily packed the tableware, Ding Hao practiced Mind Essential for a while, comprehending the magical use of the fifth phase of Body Over Realm, and released his Divine Awareness. The impact extended close to six kilometers like a tidal wave. He observed for a while, nodded slightly, and smiled a little.

At that moment, Ding Hao suddenly remembered another thing. A thought flickered through his mind. He rummaged through the storage rings and picked out a quaint black one.

That storage ring was in the shape of a serpent with visible lines of scales. The serpent coiled into a circle with its mouth wide open and fangs sticking out. An unknown lusterless black gem was set between the two fangs, giving this ring a grotesque look. Judging from the mottled mounting of the ring, it must have been there for years.

That serpent ring was picked by Ding Hao from the dead body of someone from the Human Tribe when he fell into the ice-capped cracks of Snow Dragon Mountain.

For unknown reasons, countless superiors from the Demon and Human Tribes died among those ice-capped cracks, including the sealed phoenix. Ding Hao and Evil Moon, one person and one cat, picked up quite some treasures from there. Unfortunately, many of them were not of use at that time, especially some of the storage rings. Given Ding Hao’s Spiritual Power at that time, it was impossible to open them.

Ding Hao counted up the storage rings he found. There were nine in total.

Since he had the Spiritual Power obtained from practicing Mind Essential and reached the fifth phase of Body Over Realm, Saber Master and Sword Master suggested that he could try to open the lowest of the nine rings, the Black Serpent Ring.

“I hope there are good things in it.”

Ding Hao slowly summoned his Spiritual Power and broke into the Black Serpent Ring’s restriction little by little.

The owner of the Black Serpent Ring must have been a giant figure in the Northern Region. Leave aside the extremely delicate casting of the ring itself, the restriction inside the ring was still extremely powerful after so many years’ weathering. Ding Hao only managed to break into it a little bit, then his Divine Awareness was lost, as if it were drowning into an unfathomable ocean.

Ding Hao had to attempt deciphering the mini restriction formation a little at a time, and remove it in the correct order.

If forcibly broken, the ring’s internal storage space would be directly damaged, and the various treasures inside would be lost into the unknown space.

“Quite interesting. The formation of this ring was made by adopting techniques of antiquity times. Don’t worry. I’ll tell you what to do.” Sword Master snorted and started instructing Ding Hao proudly. Meanwhile, Saber Master closed his mouth tightly. He was unfamiliar with this, so he simply remained silent so as to avoid the ridicule from Sword Master.

Under the guidance of Sword Master, Ding Hao cautiously wielded his Divine Awareness, sometimes light as a gossamer, sometimes dense as Mount Tai.

Half an hour passed.

Suddenly, the Black Serpent Ring, which had been a dead object, burst into a dazzling black flame as if coming alive. The ring gleamed, and from the head of the serpent, a faint red light flashed through its eyes. Ding Hao, if not with his acute Divine Awareness, might have mistaken it for an illusion.

This Black Serpent Ring’s origins were definitely not simple.

As Ding Hao sank into the inner space of the ring using his Divine Awareness, what he saw surprised him.

The space was at least ten times larger when comparing to Ding Hao’s self-made ring. The first things that caught his eyes were five stacks of glowing black spinels neatly piled in the corner, each representing one of the five elements: gold, wood, water, fire, and earth. Any random stone was of the highest quality. Ding Hao only made a rough calculation. Each stack was of at least three thousand spinels, which meant that there were at least fifteen thousand top-quality black spinels in that ring.

Ding Hao’s heart pounded.

He felt he had just hit the jackpot.

Those black spinels alone were considerable wealth. What the Swordsmanship-seeking Sect had accumulated for thousands of years could add up to just hundreds of thousands of superb black spinels. Those stacks were equivalent to more than a seventh of what the Swordsmanship-seeking Sect had.

He instantly became an eligible bachelor, the tall-rich-handsome.

Ding Hao swallowed hard; he moved away his eyes from the black spinels, and saw a long saber floating in the space.

It was a quaint-looking long saber, a bit like the podao used by the army of the cold weapon era in his previous life. The saber had a broad spine and a long edge, molded in a soft streamline. Three blood grooves were carved along the blade, like sprawling dragons and phoenixes. The blade was slightly narrower towards the handle, and the hilt was extremely long, which was more than enough for both hands to grasp. The entire saber, with no complicated pattern or engraving, looked extremely simple.

However, Ding Hao instantly felt a rare saber intent.

A thought flashed through his mind. With a fleeting gleam, the long saber was taken out of the Black Serpent Ring and came into Ding Hao’s grip.

The long saber was slightly heavy but comfortable to hold. With a wave of the hand, the blade cut the air into two, leaving traces of waterline-like layers. The air seemed to automatically separate before the tip of the blade had even reached it. Ding Hao bent his fingers and sighed. The blade screamed like the lingering roar of a dragon. The saber trembled violently, and the edge flashed across, emitting light as flickering as water spheres.

“Great saber,” Ding Hao couldn’t help but acclaim.

He was proficient in refining and casting, already being qualified as a fourth-rank weapons refiner. Naturally, his eyes were sharp enough to tell the quality of that saber. By quality, that simple long saber could be counted as a Level Six magical weapon. The blade as a whole was pale yellow, but the edge of it, tinted with unknown magical material, was reddish blue. Quite a peculiar color; it was like the lips of the beauties.