To perform seven spirit enhancements on a nascent soul, and live through it, was a fundamentally heaven-defying matter. Countless people had been shaken by the matter. Second on the list was someone named Zhou Hong, whose nascent soul had a sixfold spirit enhancement!
The person in third place had a fivefold enhancement. Going down the list, the numbers dropped down all the way into the ones....
Unless something unexpected happened, it seemed obvious that Gongsun Yi would become the successor of the Hell-Emperor. After all, not even Zhou Hong seemed willing to go past a sevenfold spirit enhancement. That was no surprise, since the success rate was extremely low, and a failure would lead to death.
Because of the list of names on the Hell-Emperor Stele, and the glowing light which surrounded it, there were always soul cultivators gathered in the area. Not only could they improve their cultivation base because of the light, they also could study the names on the list at the same time.
The name list wasn't static. New names would occasionally pop up, and sometimes names would fade away. Obviously, the names that disappeared represented people who had attempted a spirit enhancement on their nascent soul, only to fail and perish. As for the new names, they always caused a stir.
Of course, the stir for a new name usually wasn’t very much to speak about. After all, new names usually came with only a single spirit enhancement. The only thing that would cause a true commotion was when someone broke into the top 10.
However, on this day, something completely unexpected happened with one of the new names on the list!!
The first person to notice the new name was a middle-aged soul cultivator who happened to be a member of the Giant Ghost Legion forces that were stationed in Arch-Emperor City. Only a few years before, he had been part of the army that fought the Starry Sky Dao Polarity Sect at the Great Wall.
However, by this point, the cultivators of the Giant Ghost Legion had all been recalled to Arch-Emperor City for rest and recovery. At the moment, they were waiting for deployment orders to go back to the Great Wall.
That middle-aged soul cultivator was seated cross-legged some distance away from the stone stele, doing breathing exercises. As usual, he was looking at the name list on the stone stele, when suddenly, his jaw dropped as he noticed a new name at the very end of the list.
At first, a blank expression could be seen on the man’s face, but then his eyes widened, and his aura began to surge unstably.
“This... this....” What he was seeing seemed completely preposterous, and he was actually convinced that he was seeing things.... He rubbed his eyes a few times, and then he looked over again. At that point, he simply wasn’t able to hold back from crying out at the top of his lungs.
“Bai... Bai Xiaochun!!!”
His cry instantly broke the silence in the area of the stone stele. Countless soul cultivators who were practicing cultivation in the area opened their eyes. Most of them seemed confused; the name Bai Xiaochun seemed familiar, but at first, many couldn’t place it. However, many of them clearly recognized the name, and were instantly shaken. Then, people look over to see what the middle-aged soul cultivator was looking at, whereupon more shouts of astonishment filled the air!
“Bai Xiaochun? How is that even possible!?!?”
“Bai Xiaochun.... I remember! He’s a major general from the Starry Sky Dao Polarity Sect’s Great Wall!! He’s that shameless bastard who figured out how to detonate pill furnaces!!!”
“It's him.... I knew that name sounded familiar. Senior Red-Dust personally offered a bounty of a deva soul for his head! He’s in 1st place on the Execution List!!”
All of the soul cultivators were shaken, and soon, as their cries of astonishment rang out, more people heard, leading to even more unsightly expressions.
Originally, Bai Xiaochun’s name was not very widely known in the Wildlands. However, after the Giant Ghost Legion’s recent attack on the Great Wall, his name became the talk of the army, and from there, spread out into all of the Wildlands!
He had defeated the Giant Ghost Legion over and over again!
He had inflicted heavy casualties on the vengeful soul forces of the Wildlands!
He had not only led the Starry Sky Dao Polarity Sect’s forces to victories on the Great Wall, but his methods had been spread to the other three riversource sects, leading to similar victories on other stretches of the Great Wall. Because of that, the Wildlands had suffered defeat after defeat, which was completely unprecedented!
Exploding pill furnaces! Driving beasts to madness! Soul Convergence Pills!
Any one of those tactics would have shaken the Wildlands. Then there was the reward being offered for Bai Xiaochun’s head, which skyrocketed to such heights that everyone in the Wildlands was flabbergasted.
Furthermore, his rank of major general had been achieved by brazenly trampling the Wildlanders under foot with impunity!
Because he had eventually gone missing, people started to forget about him. But now, his name had appeared on the Hell-Emperor Stele, causing instant chaos in the area!
Countless eyes came to be fixed on the name list, where there, right out in the open for everyone to see... was Bai Xiaochun’s name!
It was not Bai Hao... it was Bai Xiao Chun! Three characters made up his name, and right next to it was the number one, indicating that he had performed a single spirit enhancement on his nascent soul.
“It’s Bai Xiaochun!!”
“He’s in the Wildlands! And he’s not dead!!”
“This is too important! Hurry up and report the matter!!” People immediately began to take out bone slips and send messages to their superiors....
It didn’t take long... for all of Arch-Emperor City to be completely shaken!
1. Trivia point: There was already a character named Zhou Hong in AWE, written with the exact same Chinese characters too. He was mentioned a couple of times in the early chapters as a chosen in the Spirit Stream Sect Previous Chapter Next Chapter
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Chapter
673: Crazed By A Rise In The Rankings.
As word spread through Arch-Emperor City, everyone who got the news was stunned. For many, it took some thought to recall why the name seemed familiar, and some even had to ask around. In the end, though, everyone was shocked.
Of course, there were some people who instantly recalled all sorts of things when they heard the name.
“Devil Bai has appeared!!”
“So, he’s not dead after all! Not only is he here in the Wildlands, he’s actually in the Nascent Soul stage!!”
“Dammit! This is outright provocation! Bald-faced mockery! There’s no way Devil Bai doesn’t know about what happens when you perform a spirit enhancement on a nascent soul. He obviously did this all on purpose to make sure we knew he had come!!”
Arch-Emperor City in general was shaken, but even more so was the Giant Ghost Legion. Countless shouts of rage could be seen as people raced over to the Hell-Emperor Stele.
Of course, not everyone in Arch-Emperor City was very impressed with Bai Xiaochun’s name. Many thought the stories were exaggerations, and that a person like him wasn’t worthy of the commotion.
“This is outrageous! I can’t believe that Bai Xiaochun is being so pretentious! How arrogant! How imperious!!”
“Hmph! Those are just stories, right? I refuse to believe that this Bai Xiaochun is as important as people say he is. He’s a nobody!”
“Obviously the Giant Ghost Legion just wanted to come up with a reason for why they got defeated so handily. The fact that the other three sects on the Great Wall are using the same tactics just goes to show that Heavenspan Island arranged it all.”
Regardless of the specific reactions, though, the entire city was shaken.
Generally speaking, the commotion would have died down fairly quickly, and things would have gone back to normal. But then, something else happened that no one was expecting!
Even as everyone was looking at Bai Xiaochun’s name, his name vanished from last place and then reappeared in the top 20!