Cultivating for a hundred lifetimes to ascension

Seizing the opportunity as he climbed the ship's ladder, Zhao Sheng rapidly pieced together the history of this body.

Zhao Dingtian, currently fifteen years old, resident of Dome Turtle Island, an orphan by birth, discovered two years prior that he possessed the three spirit roots of water, metal, and fire, cultivating the "Wave Stepping Technique"...

Flipping through the memories of this body, Zhao Sheng thought to himself, "Interesting!"

From the memories, he found that Zhao Dingtian, due to his unique physical characteristics, had been discriminated against from a young age.

It wasn't until the age of eleven, when his spirit root attributes were revealed and found to be three spirit roots, that he was taken into the Zhao Family, given the name Zhao Dingtian, and his status greatly improved.

However, because of the notion "those not of our kind must have different hearts," Zhao Dingtian, although a three spirit roots cultivator, was still not well-regarded.

This could be proven in many ways, such as his status in the family being even lower than those with four spirit roots.

Another example was the vast Outer Star Sea, filled with countless islands, yet no cultivation sect was willing to take him in.

The most glaring example was that Zhao Dingtian, at only fifteen years old, actually had to join the Treasure Ship and become a sailor.

This was truly preposterous!

While he was thinking this, he reached the end of the ladder and leaped onto the deck, the scene before him suddenly opened up.

The grand Treasure Ship on which he sailed was gigantic, its entirety a bronze hue, with a double-decked structure. The lower deck was extremely spacious, nearly forty zhang in length and eight or nine zhang in width. The upper deck was only one-tenth the area of the lower deck, but it housed the spiritual tool warehouse, the captain's quarters, and the helm—keys to the ship's operation.

At the center of the Treasure Ship stood one main and two auxiliary masts, three vast sails fluttering in the wind, taut and bulging with the sea breeze. The sails emitted layers of light haloes, within which a huge white whale's phantom appeared.

Zhao Sheng had not even finished taking in the sight when he was suddenly pushed hard from behind.

He stumbled a step but then steadied himself and turned to look.

He saw a man eight zhang tall with a build like a bear, cursing as he emerged from the cabin.

"Damn! Just when I finally fell asleep, you had to wake me up again."

Seeing Zhao Sheng looking over, the man couldn't help but glare and roar, "What are you looking at! Xiao Si, be careful or I'll smash you to death!"

Zhao Sheng gave the man a deep look, the ring of blue light at the edge of his pupils suddenly emitted a faintly enchanting luster.

Just then, an angry shout came from the upper deck: "What are you all standing around for? Get to your positions, now!"

Zhao Sheng turned around and quickly walked to the "Gengzi" direction in the northwest corner of the deck, as per his memory.

Once the other thirty-two sailors of the East Dome had taken their positions...

Hum!

With a humming sound, the deck seemed to be electrified, and a blue glow lit up instantly on the floor, followed by a white light web rising from the deck, intricate and containing symbols of the eight trigrams and five elements.

Beneath Zhao Sheng's feet, a white circle of light also rose, at its center a "water" character glowed brightly, connecting to the light web. The others had similar experiences.

At that moment, Dongyang Ju, the captain of East Dome, stepped forward onto the deck, shouting down to the sailors, "In a moment, follow my command. After I count to three, everyone will infuse their spiritual power. Understood?"

"Understood!" The crowd shouted in unison.

Zhao Sheng leaned against the ship's side, looking outward.

At this moment, the sun was at its zenith, the sunshine bright and the sea breeze blowing in gusts.

On the boundless and vivid blue ocean, twenty li away from East Dome, a pitch-black ship was slowly emerging from the water surface, with water gushing down the sides, splashing up a great deal of foam.

And on the mainmast of this black ship hung a black flag emblazoned with a bloody severed hand.

Upon seeing this, Zhao Sheng knew they had encountered pirates.

And not just any pirates, but the infamous Blood Pirate Alliance of the Outer Star Sea, known for their distinctive feature of combining blood with parts of the human body, such as the blood hand pirates this time.

"Lower the sails!"

At the captain's command, the three sails of the East Dome quickly dropped, and the ship's speed dropped sharply.

"Activate the Spirit Stone Furnace! Prepare, one, two, three, activate!"

No sooner had the words been spoken than Zhao Sheng flipped out a spirit stone in his hand. At the same time, he circulated the vortex in his dantian, channeling spiritual power through the Yongquan acupoint in his feet, pouring into the spirit energy network on the deck.

In an instant, the light net lines on the deck suddenly became several times thicker, as streams of red, blue, gold, green, and yellow spiritual power rapidly transmitted from each spirit array node into the spirit stone furnace below deck.

Boom!

The East Dome suddenly shuddered, the stern sharply sinking, and as the sea breeze rushed toward them, the East Dome surged forward like it had been injected with an adrenaline rush.

Whoosh!

Vast amounts of seawater were split open, with the waves swiftly cast behind the ship, while Zhao Sheng absorbed spiritual energy from the spirit stones and incessantly infused spiritual power.

The Shattered Star Sea was boundless, with countless islands scattered throughout its waters. Over generations, ancestors fought to the death to carve out these islands, and more and more of them became populated by humans.

In the great oceans, the primary mode of transportation and communication between islands naturally revolved around ships.

In the Shattered Star Sea, due to the different locations, resources, and spiritual energy environments of the islands, some were extremely prosperous and wealthy, others were poor, and of course, there were many uninhabited ones.

Over thousands of years, countless shipping routes had been established between the islands of the Shattered Star Sea—some of these routes were so profitable they were known as the Spirit Stone Routes.

Where there are profits, flies follow. Thus, pirates were rampant on the Spirit Stone Routes.

Just as there were cultivators protecting legit businesses, pirates were sure to have cultivators lurking in the shadows behind them.

As Zhao Sheng knew, the vast majority of pirate groups were supported by demon cultivators, so the pirates of the Shattered Star Sea were also referred to as Demon Pirate Groups.

As for the backer behind this Blood Hands Demon Pirate Group.

After briefly recalling, Zhao Sheng couldn't help but laugh wryly, feeling it was too much of a coincidence.

The force behind the entire Blood Pirate Alliance was none other than what had once been the illustrious Origin Return Sect, now known as the Blood Demon Sect.

As for how the Origin Return Sect evolved into the Blood Demon Sect? Zhao Sheng didn't quite understand.

It seemed that Zhao Dingtian only remembered something called the "Blood God Catastrophe," which occurred over three hundred years ago, causing major turmoil in the Central Continent.

After the chaos had subsided, the Origin Return Sect became despised outcasts, jointly expelled from the Central Continent, and ultimately ended up in the Shattered Star Sea, where they even changed their name to the Blood Demon Sect.

Although he wasn't clear about the specifics, Zhao Sheng had already guessed why the Origin Return Sect ended up in such a plight, combining it with his own situation.

"Attention! A flying boat is catching up! If you don't want to become a blood slave, get ready to fight for your lives!"n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

The captain, Dongyang Ju's shout, snapped Zhao Sheng out of his reverie.

He turned to look back, his complexion changing. At that moment, he saw a sleek, three-foot-long red flying boat rise from behind their ship and rapidly approach them.

The flying boat was incredibly fast and caught up with the East Dome in the blink of an eye.

Whoa!

With a strange cry of "whoa," more than twenty blood-clothed people jumped down from the flying boat, landing on the deck before ferociously lunging at everyone.

Dongyang Ju, the only Foundation Establishment Cultivator on the ship, was about to make a move, but he was intercepted by an elder in red robes wearing a faceless mask and with white hair.

"Hehe! Your opponent is me."

With that, the masked elder flung a blood-luminous flying sword from his hand, slashing at Dongyang Ju.

Dongyang Ju, seeing this, had no choice but to halt and, using his spiritual artifact, the Nine Yang Spear, to block the bloody flying sword.

The two Foundation Establishment Cultivators quickly became entangled in battle. Stay tuned for updates on empire

On the other side, Zhao Sheng was also confronted by an enemy, a towering blood thief, who was shouting wildly, wielding a sword and shield.

Zhao Sheng charged forward... as if!

Seeing the enemy, he took off running the other way.

Are you kidding? He was only at the Qi Refining Second Level, facing a blood thief who was at least at the Qi Refining Fourth Level.

Not running would be foolish!

It wasn't that he couldn't kill the enemy, but unless absolutely necessary, he didn't want to reveal his true strength.