Sapphire (Prologue pt. 2)

This youth was starting to get annoyed.

A light flashed from the ring on his middle finger and two items popped out of it. Namely, there was a piece of blank torn paper and a stick of charcoal.

He placed the paper on a flat area and proceeded to map his surroundings based on where he walked.

"Hmm... this seems inaccurate." Luo Ling was dissatisfied by the map that he drew. He grabbed it, only to tear it into pieces.

He took out another piece of paper to map the place a bit clearer by actually walking this time. Placing little glowing Star Pebbles on his trail, he parted from the Blackstone column.

Turn right... then left... then a little curve to the northeast... The map became more and more convoluted but Luo Ling did not struggle in the least with keeping up.

After a while of walking, Luo Ling stopped for a brief moment. Two looming pathways stood before him.

There wasn't much difference between the two, except for the fact that one of the paths had a singular flower growing in the middle.

Blue petals surrounded the bright cerulean pistil as a cold aura emitted from the tiny flower. Ice covered the small area under the shade of the petals.

"Isn't this... a Sapphire Flower?" Luo Ling looked in shock at the small growth. It was actually the extremely rare Sapphire Flower!

Rumors say that this flower was used as an ingredient for a myriad of different concoctions and pills. The frost energy present inside the different parts of the flower trumped every other ingredient in terms of amount and purity.

However, one needed an enormous amount of luck to find just a petal of this flower. Even so, a petal was still considered a treasure by many alchemists.

"This small flower can aid me!" Luo Ling, one of these alchemists, immediately headed that path to grab the temptation in front of him.

If he could concoct a specific pill with this flower, he might even get to light up 3 platinum-stroked gems without the help of his sacrificial technique!

"The only problem is... the other ingredients are missing." Luo Ling discarded this possibility in his mind.

No matter what, he needed to sacrifice his future potential to save his first true companion.

"On the bright side, I would still have the cultivation of 9 gold-stroked gems after this..." Luo Ling showed a bitter smile.

As he approached the flower, a sudden breeze dragged the temperature around his body down an astonishing degree.

"This... It's way colder than I expected..." Luo Ling shivered. He had no other choice than to harvest the flower as quick as possible.

He drove his cultivation and a light yellow glow emitted from his skin. Light energy was the focus of Luo Ling's cultivation so it could only offer a thin defense against such cold energy.

Frost penetrated his yellow armor, freezing some of the blood in his veins.

A flower pot appeared from Luo Ling's ring. He poked the earth under the flower lightly.

"Wait, this was a bad decision--!"

A chill was sent through his vein, reaching towards his brain. Luo Ling retracted his hand as fast as a rabbit.

However, he was too late. Luo Ling fell over and couldn't control his body. He felt his mind freezing.

Although the cold that he felt wouldn't do any permanent damage, it was enough to subdue Luo Ling for a while. As such, the youth fell unconscious.

Sensing an aura of life nearby, the Sapphire Flower exuded a greater amount of Frost energy. This sinister flower planned on killing Luo Ling to use him for its own nutrition.

Before long, Luo Ling's body was covered with a thin layer of ice. The Light energy inside of him did its best to drive off the assaulting Frost energy.

These two were completely incompatible with each other, or so the knowledgeable says.

A silent war happened within Luo Ling.

.....

Lan Yunhao arrived at a flat landscape. Standing in the center of a crater, he scanned the surroundings.

"Where is that brat?!" At this moment, Lan Yunhao didn't look like someone of a high position. Instead, he had the appearance of a wandering vagabond.

He got rid of his royal armor on the way here. Stopping at his secret residence, he grabbed the clothes he wore before he ascended the throne.

The torn rags that he wore were deceptive. They offered unique protection to various energies and a weakness to some.

To his knowledge, that brat surnamed Luo cultivated Light energy as his priority. These rags were the perfect protection against him.

He drove his cultivation, Dark energy, to enhance his vision within the lightless night.

There were a total of three places within a 1000 km radius of the crater. "That Luo Ling brat shouldn't have been able to get that far from here."

The Sacred Witch Hut. The Caliginous Forest. The Abandoned Kingdom. These three had the potential to provide Luo Ling with shelter from his pursuers.

As of now, the army headed towards the Abandoned Kingdom which was overrun by otherworldly beasts.

Guo Jin, one of the empire's Elite Knights, scouted ahead of the army since he had the ability to travel faster.

Because of this, Lan Yunhao crossed the Abandoned Kingdom of the possibilities. If that brat Luo Ling was there, it was only a matter of time before he would be captured and caught.

Meanwhile, the Sacred Witch Hut was relatively more dangerous than the Abandoned Kingdom. It had the protection of one otherworldly beast with intelligence comparable to a human.

The Sacred Witch was one of the most troublesome opponents of all. It had the most devious and cunning strategies to trick anyone who dared come to its territory.

Of course, humans still succeeded in raiding the place since they were smarter and more resourceful.

Lan Yunhao crossed the Sacred Witch Hut off the list for the reason that it would be plain troublesome to seek protection in a territory of an otherworldly beast.

That only left the Caliginous Forest.

"The Graveyard of Geniuses, eh?" Lan Yunhao thought about it.

Looming with dangers in every corner, the Caliginous Forest was the most lethal out of the three.

It was a fact that this place was infested with the most dangerous type of beasts: the deceiving ones.

It included the beast known as the Deceiving Trees. Despite its name, these weren't actually trees but beasts disguised as such.

Another beast was called the Ground Eater. It lived underground and opened its mouth occasionally to feed on whatever enters it.

Not one person had come out of this place alive. However, Lan Yunhao's hunch told him that Luo Ling recklessly rushed to here.

Lan Yunhao hesitated to enter such a place, for fear that he won't see his daughter again, but he resolved himself.

"If my daughter will die, then so will I!"

The vagabond emperor headed toward the Caliginous Forest.

.....

Luo Ling woke up in a perilous state. Most of his limbs lost that ability to move.

The originally small patch of ice under the Sapphire Flower extended under his body in an attempt to freeze him to death.

Now, Luo Ling understood. It wasn't because these flowers were so rare that people couldn't find them — it was because they were so dangerous that almost none had the ability to retrieve it!

Only his head could move properly. His body had been frozen up to his neck. His insides were barely kept alive as the Light energy inside of him dwindled in supply.

The surroundings turned darker as Luo Ling attempted to absorb some Light energy from the dim cave. He then drove the energy around his body in a peculiar manner.

This was the Luo family technique: Cicada Against the Mantis!

Slowly, the Frost energy was being driven away. However, using this technique depleted the Light energy at a quick pace.

Soon, the surroundings turned completely dark. Even if Luo Ling opened his eyes and enhanced his vision, without sending out Light energy, he wouldn't be able to see anything.

But that was fine. Currently, he was in no need of vision. He focused on the battle raging inside of him.

The Sapphire Flower sensed that the being it was trying to absorb fought back. It gave off an ample Frost energy with an unbelievable purity.

This energy reached Luo Ling, who felt an ominous premonition.

He felt that if the Frost energy did so much as being within a meter around him, he would have no choice but to die immediately.

"Do I have no option left? Will I die here?" Luo Ling turned desolate.

"No, I need to live! At least until I heal her..." His determination shot through the roof at this moment. His mind processed through thousands of ideas in a split second until one stood out from the others. "...I'll try this!"

In an instant, the Light energy inside Luo Ling's body mostly dissipated. His cultivation dropped from 12 gold-stroked gems filled with Light energy to only 4 left.

Luo Ling released and compressed this energy. A thick and dense armor formed on his body, successfully driving off the first wave of Frost energy.

However, he knew that this armor was only to delay the impossibly pure Frost energy for a few minutes.

In those few minutes, Luo Ling planned to do something unbelievably reckless. Not one cultivator had done this before.

Other than the four remaining gold-stroked gems filled with Light energy, Luo Ling shattered the rest!

Blood spewed out from his mouth. After that, he used all of the Light energy from one of the remaining gems to somewhat heal the ones he shattered.

"And... there!" Luo Ling heaved a sigh of relief as he found out his plan had worked.

The gems had been reset! He could now cultivate from the start again with a different energy.

There was a one in a million chance of this working, and Luo Ling actually pulled it off! He praised himself for thinking of this ingenious plan.

An opening revealed itself on Luo Ling's Light Energy armor, directly on his chest.

The Frost energy flowed through the opening, penetrating Luo Ling's skin.

"--Aah!" The youth felt extreme pain coming from his heart. However, all he could do was endure it.

When the Frost energy reached his abdomen, Luo Ling used his gems to absorb the energy. In an instant, all 11 bronze-stroked gems filled up. Brimming with Frost Energy, Luo Ling recalled various cultivation methods suitable for this kind of energy.

"How about this Sun Freezer technique?"

Without much time to think, Luo Ling followed the procedure on the manual the way he remembered it.

The 11 gems that previously emitted a glow as bright as the sun even in complete darkness now let off an extremely cold aura that was capable of blocking out even the strongest of heat.

In an instant, streaks of frost covered the gems inside Luo Ling's body, marking it as those that contained the ice element.

However, even though he had a cultivation of Frost energy now, it didn't particularly mean that he could withstand the absolute pureness of the Frost energy eating up on his Light energy armor. Not to mention that fact that the energy inside him was unstable and needed more foundation.

Luo Ling didn't have that kind of luxury. He needed to change the strokes of his gems even though they were still turbulent. He only had about 3 minutes left before the pure Frost energy penetrated his dense armor.

As he thought that, the gems that were just filled with Frost energy the previous moment turned empty. All of the energy went to the walls of the gems, changing their strokes to a higher tier.

"—Augh!" Luo Ling coughed up a mouthful of blood. The blood was not red like a normal person's, rather, it was of an azure color with a small trace of bright red.

A crack appeared on one of the gems. It couldn't handle the sudden rush towards its walls and started to fall apart. The rest were in a similar though not as dire situation.

Vibrations occurred within Luo Ling as he tried his best to keep the gems from wrecking themselves. It seems his luck had run out, as 5 of the 11 gems shattered again.

This time, Luo Ling had no choice but to use the reserve Light energy in one of the 3 gems to heal the ones that shattered, while changing the strokes of the other ones.

Requiring precise control and intense focus, Luo Ling did not dare slack off on this task. While the pure Frost energy sieged his thick defenses, he recklessly tried to kill himself on his own!

After one minute, the energies inside his body barely stabilized. The gems previously filled with frost were now empty and had a stroke of silver with patches of bronze.

The traces of bronze meant that Luo Ling had done something wrong, but he couldn't undo it anymore since he was close to running out of Light energy.

It shouldn't be possible to do this in the first place. If not for the Sapphire Flower near him, something like filling up the gems in an instant shouldn't happen.

This was the first occurrence of a situation like this in the entire Core Gem Continent.