The Protagonist Is in the Right Position to Get Along With the Villain
Chapter 64
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The voice echoed three times in the hall, and as soon as the words fell, the floor tiles of the palace emitted beams of light in four muted colors: red, orange, yellow, and green respectively. The four colors divided the entire palace into four sections, and the cultivators standing in those were very conspicuous.
That old voice rang again, “Red is for the Nascent Soul cultivators, orange for the Golden Core cultivators, yellow is for the Foundation Building cultivators, and green is for the Qi Refining cultivators.”
The cultivators in the palace hall heard what was said and did not hesitate to choose the area to occupy according to their own cultivation base. Since they were moving crosswise, it was not crowded either.
Li Jinzhi and Ye Yu stood still in the yellow area, and then looked at the situation around them. At this time, the cultivators were already standing separately: the red area was empty; a dozen people were in the orange area; the yellow and the green areas were evenly matched.
“As expected, the Nascent Soul cultivators were either rogue or outstanding personages nurtured in the sects and schools. It was naturally impossible for them to participate in such selections.” Li Jinzhi transmitted in a whisper. While speaking, he had imitated the cultivators around him, placing a praying mat in a square floor tile and sitting down.
“Even if there was a rogue cultivator who wanted to join, how could a proud and arrogant Nascent Soul cultivator be willing to be selected here along with all the other cultivators?” Ye Yu sat cross-legged beside Li Jinzhi.
Although the two of them didn’t know anything about the rules of how the initiate disciples were tested, since they had come here, and got this opportunity, all they had to do was just to show off their skills. Therefore they neither panicked, nor got involved with other forming groups of cultivators. Just meditated quietly to pass the time.
Gradually, the chatter of the surrounding cultivators slowly waned as they also took out praying mats and sat cross-legged on the floor. For a while, the entire hall was silent. As the palace had no windows, the cultivators inside hadn’t had much sense of time.
Some time later, the black ceiling of the palace suddenly lit up with countless stars. The stars flickered and flashed, and numerous snow-white jade stones shot towards the cultivators below!
Although the cultivators were meditating, none of them had settled down. When the spiritual energy in the air fluctuated, everyone opened their eyes and looked up. They saw innumerable stones falling to the floor like a torrential rain!
Many cultivators, reflexively, sent out defensive artifacts or the body-protective divine light to withstand this meteor attack. Still, there were also some keen cultivators who thought that these jade stones were not ordinary at all. Almost without thinking, they flew up, as if they wanted to fight the meteors with their bodies—
When Li Jinzhi opened his eyes and saw these powerful jade stones, he turned into a ray of light to meet them with his body. Ye Yu’s speed was not slow either, and he followed closely behind. As the two were about to meet the hail of jade stones, their bodies suddenly shone brighter, and with a flick of their sleeves, they held two jade stones in their palms.
The weird part was that, except for the two jade stones they had obtained being real objects, those jade stones that grazed their body-protective divine light and smashed to the ground appeared to be illusions, untouchable and intangible.
A lot of the cultivators who flew into the air seemed to have noticed this, and they all stopped midair with their own jade stones, looking at the ones below with strange expressions on their faces.
As the cultivators down below who chose to use the body-protective divine light saw the scenes in the air, all of them seemed to realize something and reacted accordingly. Almost at the same time, they controlled the evading light and went straight towards the jade stones, scrambling to be the first. The competition was extremely fierce.
However, even if there were a lot of jade stones, there were even more cultivators. In the blink of an eye, most of the originally numerous jade stones below had been reduced by half. The cultivators who got the jade stopped in mid-air contentedly, and the ones who didn’t were scrambling below.
Li Jinzhi stroked the warm jade-like bead in his hand, and quietly looked at the scene down below. After a long while he said, “The number of cultivators is about three times the number of jade stones.”
Hearing this, Ye Yu twisted his head to look at Li Jinzhi, and nodded, “And the jades in each colored area have different spiritual pressure.”
Li Jinzhi nodded slightly, and caught sight of a Foundation Building cultivator below snatching a jade with his hand. However, his complexion abruptly changed, dark red blood spilled out from the corners of his mouth, his fingers slightly loosened and the piece of jade escaped from his palm.
“Presumably this is the first step in the selection of the Myriad Red Clouds Sect.” Li Jinzhi looked down at the jade stone peacefully laying in his palm. “I wonder how many years pass between each recruitment of new disciples.”
Since the two of them did not use voice transmission, others could hear them. As soon as Li Jinzhi said this, a female cultivator standing not far from the two spoke, “The Myriad Red Clouds Sect’s selection is every hundred years, and the methods are different. At other times, outstanding juniors are selected from the big and small clans of the Green Flame Kingdom.”
Li Jinzhi nodded, understanding in a flash, “It’s no wonder that as soon as the jade came out, it seemed that not many people were aware of what to do.”
The female cultivator chuckled, “Not only are there not many people who are aware, it’s fundamentally impossible for people to know. You must understand that this hall is a magical artifact specially used for the selection of outstanding disciples. Even if there are eighty one test methods, and it is once a century, even if someone has seen all the methods, it will take eight thousand one hundred years.”
While speaking, the beautiful female cultivator’s bright eyes wandered, and she already sized up Ye Yu and Li Jinzhi from top to bottom, “The two of you reacted quickly. If your spiritual roots are not weak, your cultivation base unrivaled, and your bone age not high, joining the inner sect is a guaranteed matter.”
Li Jinzhi raised an eyebrow, and after looking around, realized that the cultivators who got the jade first stopped at the top to look at the scene below, while those who got the jade later were at the bottom.
Could it be that the selections for the inner and outer sect had something to do with the timing of catching the jade?
Silently, Ye Yu stood beside Li Jinzhi, with a cold expression and vigilant eyes, his body half-turned as if he was going to block Li Jinzhi behind him at any time. Especially when that female cultivator repeatedly appeared before Li Jinzhi’s face several times, the air around him was the heaviest.
When the female cultivator saw Ye Yu’s expression, she raised an eyebrow. Having a clear understanding, her line of sight deliberately stopped on Li Jinzhi’s face, with her eyes roaming over it a few times. Sure enough, she saw that the other party’s red eyes grew even more irritable, and even exuded a bit of a killing intent.
The female cultivator pursed her lips, turned her eyes elsewhere, and muttered softly, “Chi, you really can’t take any teasing, behaving as though people are out to snatch the things you like.”
Even though her voice was rather quiet, a cultivator’s hearing had always been quite powerful, and the featherlight sentence still reached Li Jinzhi’s ears. Slightly tilting his head, he saw the expression on Ye Yu’s face that indeed looked like he was protecting a child, and the confusion in his heart vanished. With a chuckle, he smoothed the other party’s slightly furrowed brows, and sent a voice transmission, “Learn to restrain your thoughts, and don’t express all your emotions.”
Hearing the words, Ye Yu stared back, and retorted, “I don’t.” As if to confirm the reliability of his words, Ye Yu pressed the corners of his mouth down hard.
Raising an eyebrow, Li Jinzhi said calmly, “Don’t reveal them even with your eyes.”
The corners of Ye Yu’s mouth imperceptibly ticked downwards, with the speed that only Li Jinzhi could perceive, “En, I will only reveal my true emotions to you.” His face was sincere.
“…” Li Jinzhi heard this, and his eyes drooped. He thought for a while, recalling the other’s behavior in private. He felt that this way would be the most reassuring for him so he nodded, “En, only reveal your true temperament in front of me.”
A dark light flashed in Ye Yu’s eyes, while he calmly inclined his head in agreement.
Beside them, even if the female cultivator didn’t look at the two of them, out of the corner of her eye she could still see them nodding and pondering, as if they were discussing something via voice transmission. At last they seemed to have reached a consensus, both appearing satisfied.
［Hmph, it’s great to have a partner!］While thinking, the female cultivator rolled her eyes inwardly, her heart secretly coughing up blood.
Satisfied, Li Jinzhi then glanced at the situation below. He only saw that those falling jade stones had long since disappeared, and some cultivators underneath were fighting for a piece of jade.
There were also a few who tried to use evading light to steal the jade stones of the cultivators above, but were seemingly blocked by an invisible barrier, and couldn’t come up.
Observing this scene, Li Jinzhi was momentarily taken aback, then released his Divine sense and examined the emptiness below. He discovered that there was indeed a space prohibition placed in the middle, dividing the upper and lower cultivators into three levels.
Since no one was trying to rob them, they were leisurely operating their cultivation methods in midair to recover some of the spiritual energy in a timely manner. This method of suppressing one’s cultivation in order to deceive the spirit measuring plate was different from the method of suppressing one’s cultivation to deceive cultivators.
To deceive a cultivator, one just needed to conceal the Qi. When another person’s Divine sense swept over, it would be enough to give people the illusion that it was not advanced. However, this method couldn’t be used for spirit measuring artifacts.
Measuring spiritual energy to distinguish the grade was done according to the shape of Qi in one’s Dantian. But Li Jinzhi and Ye Yu, in order to cheat this, both covered their Dantians with a fake layer of fake to conceal the Ice Phoenix’s soul. The same was true for Ye Yu.
The disadvantages of doing this were also great. Before the spirit measuring, it was necessary to use magic power to maintain the fake Qi. The consumption was not insignificant, so if one could recover even a little bit of spiritual energy… Who knew what would happen next.
If a Yao Cultivator in the Nascent Soul period couldn’t defeat someone in the Foundation Building period… then they really wouldn’t have had a face to stay.
At that moment, the sounds of fighting below stopped, and the old voice echoed again, “The cultivators who got the Purple Bamboo Jade, stay. The cultivators who did not get the jade can leave on their own.”
As soon as the words fell, the tightly closed palace doors slowly opened. Even though some cultivators were unwilling, they could only sigh and walk away.
After the people were gone, the palace doors closed again. The man spoke once more, “Next, I invite the lowest-level cultivators to inject the Purple Bamboo Jade with their Qi, to test their spiritual root aptitude.”
Once the cultivators below heard this, they did as was requested. The ice-white jades emitted various lustrous colors; some stones varied between bright and dark, while others were extremely uniform in color.
However, as Li Jinzhi looked around, he hadn’t found any monochromatic jade.
“Huh? Are Heavenly Spiritual Roots such a rarity in this Green Flame kingdom?” He muttered, frowning.
“Heavenly Spiritual Roots are rare in this lower realm. According to rough statistics, only one in ten thousand cultivators may have a Heavenly Spiritual root; a thousand have Double Spiritual Roots; and the others are a mix of either three or four spiritual roots. These are the numbers of the Green Flame kingdom, which has vast territory and abundant resources. In remote places such as North Arctic and Great Source, one would never see a Heavenly Spiritual Root in their entire life.” The female cultivator on the side sighed, “I too merely poses Fire-Wood Spiritual Root. “
Indifferently, Li Jinzhi glanced at Ye Yu and inwardly sighed. Sure enough, the author turned on a golden finger in the North Arctic. What were the odds that he would encounter three Heavenly Spiritual Roots in the short time he was there—
“…”
Hi) So I’ll try my best to update at least once or twice a month, so sorry for the long wait.
Couch Potato 
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