stealing the heavens

Chapter 12 – The Traveler

Chariots rumble and roll and horses whinny and neigh.

The sky was a deep clear blue and not a cloud was in sight. Two huge eagles are soaring high up in the sky. They seem to be circling the group moving on the ground.

There was rain a few days ago, so the road that lead to Little Meng City had accumulated almost a foot of thick mud. Although the skies had been clear for the last two days, the mud is still not completely dried up. As such, wheels and hooves could easily get stuck, requiring the horses to use great strength for every step they took.

Due to the strong sunlight constantly baking the muds, the surrounding air filled with a weird pungent smell. This weird pungent smell is like some rotten meat left to ferment in a clay pot. The smell seemed to be able to enter one’s body through their pores, making it inescapable.

An army of two hundred horsemen is escorting seven gold engraved coaches, though they are moving quite slowly, due to the muddy road. Sometimes a few of their horses slip on the mud, which always brought scolding and cursing from the riders on their back. Some of the more bad-tempered riders would fiercely whip their horses when this happened.

All seven of the coaches are extremely luxurious. The leading six coaches each have four wheels and are each being dragged by four pure white horses.

As for the last and biggest coach, it doesn’t have a single wheel. The whole coach is floating three feet above the ground and is being dragged by four pure black rhinos. These rhinos are a very rare species. Green spots dot their black skin and they have three curvy horns on their head. The horns shimmer like amber, full of strength and grandeur.

The internal decoration of this floating coach is simply luxurious. It is just like a large bedroom.

It has a soft bed, a long study table, two book shelves, and four bronze censers placed at each corner of the coach. There’s even a thick carpet on the floor and various fine decorations. Although it is on the road, it still provides extremely luxurious comfort to those who ride in it.

Lu Chengfeng is sitting behind the study table with unkempt hair, barely able to keep his sleepy eyes open. He is staring blankly at the lower tier magical item ‘Little 25th Lamp’ in front of him. The magical lamp is the size of a fist and is made from purple gold and shaped like a toad. It’s slightly opened mouth spits out a tiny hair size thread of red flame, a soy bean sized Silver Essence is floating within the flame and melting slowly.

This piece of Silver Essence is small, but it cost Lu Chengfeng three hundred white silver to extract and purify it. It contains a thread of concentrated Western Great White Gold gas in it. Due to the class of the silver and Lu Chengfeng’s skill level, the extracted Silver Essence contains only a very thin amount of concentrated gas, and the quality is very poor, but still, it is the gas of Great White Gold.

Lower tier magical item ‘Little 25th Lamp’, this is a treasure that Lu Chengfeng spent all his wealth on, as long he puts a fire stone in it, it will spit out a thread of primordial fire. Of course, with sufficient cultivation level, he could use his own energy to ignite the magical lamp and obtain the fire, it’s just that Lu Chengfeng’s skill level is not high enough for him to do that.

The strength of the fire ignited using the fire stone is not very high, and also very unstable. This piece of Silver Essence had been melting for more than 14 hours, but only 99% of it was melted. The last drop of it, which is the heart of the essence and contains the gas of Great White Gold, refuses to melt, no matter how it burns.

Filled with impatience and anger, Lu Chengfeng gritted his teeth savagely and formed a seal with both of his hands. He made up his mind and bit hard on his tongue, then he spit out a mouthful of blood essence into the magical lamp. A noise like blowing wind came from the lamp and then the fire in the magical lamp suddenly become stronger, turning from the size of a hair to the size of a matchstick. The Silver Essence floating in the fire melted instantly, turning into a half transparent silver droplet.

Lu Chengfeng was filled with joy, and he hurriedly reached over to a stone stick, the size of a baby's arm[A], and, with his right hand, carefully grabbing a set of tweezers made from purple gold. He moved the tweezers to the silver droplet, then he grabbed it and carefully pulled it out from the lamp.

A very fine silver thread was pulled out from the silver droplet, the shining silver thread was floating in the air like a shadow.

Lu Chengfeng did not dare to be the slightest bit negligent. He hurriedly pulled the silver thread and inserted it into a carved pattern on the stone stick. Using the tweezers, he kept pulling, stretching, lifting, and pointing the silver thread around the stone stick. There were three simple golden dagger symbols with twelve stems that connected them on the stone stick, which was slowly filled up by the silver thread.

Due to not being very skillful on the task, the silver thread was broken three times in the process of insertion, causing some imperfections on the carved symbols and stems. But overall, it was still a smooth process, the formations on the stone stick were finally completed, and it didn’t turn into a ruined formation.

After he was done using the Silver Essence thread, he inserted three bean size Earth Stones into the core position of the Golden Dagger symbols. Lu Chengfeng put down the tweezers, held the stone stick with both of his hands, and starting uttering some incantation. He slowly injected his energy into the stone stick, initiating the magical power of the formation.

The stone stick was made from low tier Earth attributed ‘Ancient Stone’ and already contained powerful Earth energy. After being carved with Metal attributed symbols, and using some Earth stones to initiate the formation, a formation pillar for use in laying the ‘Great White Golden Dagger Formation’ is ready.

The ‘Great White Golden Dagger Formation’ is a Metal attributed formation. Using the Earth attribute stone stick as the foundation, by utilizing the inter-promotion of the five elements[B], in which the Earth bears Metal, he initiated the ‘Great White Golden’ gas within the Silver Essence, turning it into golden daggers to attack his enemies. This is a basic formation that is used by lower rank cultivators in order to protect their own lives and property.

With Lu Chengfeng being at the peak of the Houtian level, to be able to successfully produce the Great White Golden Dagger Formation, and to gather all the raw materials for it, is a difficult process.

Laughing with a weird ‘Kah kah’ sound, Lu Chengfeng took out two identical formation pillars from the lowest quality storage bag he had with him. Staring at the three formation pillars shining like silvery amber, he lay his tired body down on the soft bed.

“Ha. I’m now a general for Little Meng City. A city that is attacked by barbarians every two or three years. Basically, every couple of years a batch of officers will get killed. Sending me, a good for nothing man, here. I suppose their intention is for me to die here?”

Laughing at himself, Lu Chengfeng tightly clenched onto the three formation pillars, a crazy look suddenly appearing in his eyes.

“But I am not willing to accept this! I, Lu Chengfeng, will not die in this place! Sooner or later, I will walk straight up back into the Lu family in Li Yang, and teach all of you bastards who I, Lu Chengfeng, am!”

Clenching his fists, Lu Chengfeng, like a wounded tiger, roars out in angry and deep voice.

The insulation of the coach is pretty good, thus, those cavalrymen outside of the coach never hear anything from inside.

Keeping the formation pillars, Lu Chengfeng shuts the ‘Little 25th Lamp’ and carefully stows it away. Lifting up the curtains on the window, he glared at the two hundred cavalrymen escorting him. Lu Chengfeng shakes his head in disdain.

Of these two hundred cavalry guards, every single one of them is tall and handsome, wearing nice armors and carrying good weapons. But they are all idiots, all of them are good for nothing. Not a single one of them had broken through a cultivation level in ten years. Lu Chengfeng, who had the cultivation level of peak level Houtian Grade, can easily defeat fifty of them at once. If he were to lay down the Great White Gold Dagger Formation, he could easily kill all of these scum bags.

These are the guards his family gave him. Yet they expect him to be able to depend upon and use them to open up a new world for himself in the worthless Little Meng City?

A fury expression lit up Lu Chengfeng’s face. He suddenly lifted up his curtain and spit onto a cavalryman’s face, roaring fiercely, “Get out of here, out, out! Clueless fool, you are blocking your master’s sunlight, are you looking to get killed?”

The cavalryman was absolutely terrified and quickly hopped off his ride and grabbed the reins to pull his ride to the side.

Although he is a good for nothing man of the Li Yang’s Lu family, Lu Chengfeng still holds the lives of these cavalrymen in his hand. Even their family members and relatives, all the life of their bloodline are controlled by Lu Chengfeng. When facing the angry Lu Chengfeng, who would dare to say a word?

After releasing his anger, Lu Chengfeng walked out from the coach while clenching his teeth, standing beside the coachman and staring blankly at the two eagles that were floating high above his head.

Remaining silent for some time, Lu Chengfeng asked, in an indifferent tone, “Xiao Hei, how far are we from Little Meng City?”

The coachman is a nearly three-meter tall muscular man with dark skin. Hearing Lu Chengfeng’s question, the dark-skin man, with an ugly face full of scars, shows a gentle smile on his face, he answers with respect, “Young master, in another two hundred miles we’ll be reaching Little Meng City.”

Smiling and clasping on Xiao Hei’s muscular, rock-like shoulder, Lu Chengfeng said with a smile, “Work harder, we must reach Little Meng City today.”

From one of the coaches in front, a short and think, having similar dark skin old man trembling and walks out from the coach, carrying a bowl of milk in his hand, came to Lu Chengfeng’s coach. Lifted up that bowl of milk with a respect manner, the old man smiled and said, “Young master, you’re burning the midnight oil again, please have a bowl of human medicine!”

Lu Chengfeng look at that gold plated big bowl hatefully, shaking his head and he grabs over the bowl, gulped the milk in a swallow.

A strong aroma of medicine hits right onto his throat, Lu Chengfeng almost vomits out. He forced himself to get used to this discomfort, quietly feeling the energy rise up after the milk entered his stomach.

Although he hates human medicine the most, but he had to admit that, without this human medicine, he won’t have enough energies to complete that three formation pillars continuously.

In order to make human medicine you needed to find human women that were still breast-feeding, force them to consume a huge amount of various herbs, and use a secret method to channel the most essential part of those herbs into their breasts, dripping it out together with the breast milk. This is the human medicine. This type of tonic is quite common among all the wealthy and influential families. It is claimed that this is the most effective way to get rid of those harmful ingredients in the herbs.

Lu Chengfeng hates this kind of human medicine, but he had no choice but to drink it. If not ,he won’t be able to finish making the formation pillars, and he will not be confident in his ability to secure his position in Little Meng City.

Handing over the big bowl back to the old man, Lu Chengfeng sighed, shaking his head.

He said to himself with a low voice, “After all, I was born by you too, why are you treating me like this? Why must you pass your sin onto me? Those bastards, no matter what, I’m still your elder brother who born by the same mother, why must you all force this on me?”

Before he can finish his words, those two eagles in the sky suddenly let out a sharp cry.

From the woods beside the road came the sound of a wooden clapper.

‘Buzz’, sounds of releasing strings came from the woods, and a hundred-fifty strong arrows shot out from the woods, like some crazy bumble bees.

Lu Chengfeng’s two hundred guards were startled, nearly seventy over men were hit by the arrows, screaming and falling off their rides.

Fifty men who are wearing tight black cloth and have their face covered, only show a pair of eyes, carrying long blades in their hands and dashing out like a wild wind.

The leading man in black pointed at Lu Chengfeng and shouted, “Go, chop his left hand!”

When he heard ‘chop his left hand’, Lu Chengfeng pale face was immediately covered with a ferocious expression.

“Must you really force me to go this far?”

Screaming can be heard everywhere. Lu Chengfeng’s guards were defeated instantly. In a short moment, another thirty over men were killed.

The rest of the guards are screaming aloud, many even control their rides and turned around out of instinct, dispersing into all directions.

Veins stand out on the back of Lu Chengfeng’s hand, and his body is trembling violently.

The man in black had now arrived in front of him.

Notes:

[A] - This was legitimately in the raws…

[B] - This is the five elements (also known as Wu Xing). Some elements have a supporting or generating relation with each other. This is one of those cases. (The Earth bears Metal. You find metal in the earth.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Xing

Chapter 12 – The Traveler

Chariots rumble and roll and horses whinny and neigh.

The sky was a deep clear blue and not a cloud was in sight. Two huge eagles are soaring high up in the sky. They seem to be circling the group moving on the ground.

There was rain a few days ago, so the road that lead to Little Meng City had accumulated almost a foot of thick mud. Although the skies had been clear for the last two days, the mud is still not completely dried up. As such, wheels and hooves could easily get stuck, requiring the horses to use great strength for every step they took.

Due to the strong sunlight constantly baking the muds, the surrounding air filled with a weird pungent smell. This weird pungent smell is like some rotten meat left to ferment in a clay pot. The smell seemed to be able to enter one’s body through their pores, making it inescapable.

An army of two hundred horsemen is escorting seven gold engraved coaches, though they are moving quite slowly, due to the muddy road. Sometimes a few of their horses slip on the mud, which always brought scolding and cursing from the riders on their back. Some of the more bad-tempered riders would fiercely whip their horses when this happened.

All seven of the coaches are extremely luxurious. The leading six coaches each have four wheels and are each being dragged by four pure white horses.

As for the last and biggest coach, it doesn’t have a single wheel. The whole coach is floating three feet above the ground and is being dragged by four pure black rhinos. These rhinos are a very rare species. Green spots dot their black skin and they have three curvy horns on their head. The horns shimmer like amber, full of strength and grandeur.

The internal decoration of this floating coach is simply luxurious. It is just like a large bedroom.

It has a soft bed, a long study table, two book shelves, and four bronze censers placed at each corner of the coach. There’s even a thick carpet on the floor and various fine decorations. Although it is on the road, it still provides extremely luxurious comfort to those who ride in it.

Lu Chengfeng is sitting behind the study table with unkempt hair, barely able to keep his sleepy eyes open. He is staring blankly at the lower tier magical item ‘Little 25th Lamp’ in front of him. The magical lamp is the size of a fist and is made from purple gold and shaped like a toad. It’s slightly opened mouth spits out a tiny hair size thread of red flame, a soy bean sized Silver Essence is floating within the flame and melting slowly.

This piece of Silver Essence is small, but it cost Lu Chengfeng three hundred white silver to extract and purify it. It contains a thread of concentrated Western Great White Gold gas in it. Due to the class of the silver and Lu Chengfeng’s skill level, the extracted Silver Essence contains only a very thin amount of concentrated gas, and the quality is very poor, but still, it is the gas of Great White Gold.

Lower tier magical item ‘Little 25th Lamp’, this is a treasure that Lu Chengfeng spent all his wealth on, as long he puts a fire stone in it, it will spit out a thread of primordial fire. Of course, with sufficient cultivation level, he could use his own energy to ignite the magical lamp and obtain the fire, it’s just that Lu Chengfeng’s skill level is not high enough for him to do that.

The strength of the fire ignited using the fire stone is not very high, and also very unstable. This piece of Silver Essence had been melting for more than 14 hours, but only 99% of it was melted. The last drop of it, which is the heart of the essence and contains the gas of Great White Gold, refuses to melt, no matter how it burns.

Filled with impatience and anger, Lu Chengfeng gritted his teeth savagely and formed a seal with both of his hands. He made up his mind and bit hard on his tongue, then he spit out a mouthful of blood essence into the magical lamp. A noise like blowing wind came from the lamp and then the fire in the magical lamp suddenly become stronger, turning from the size of a hair to the size of a matchstick. The Silver Essence floating in the fire melted instantly, turning into a half transparent silver droplet.

Lu Chengfeng was filled with joy, and he hurriedly reached over to a stone stick, the size of a baby's arm[A], and, with his right hand, carefully grabbing a set of tweezers made from purple gold. He moved the tweezers to the silver droplet, then he grabbed it and carefully pulled it out from the lamp.

A very fine silver thread was pulled out from the silver droplet, the shining silver thread was floating in the air like a shadow.

Lu Chengfeng did not dare to be the slightest bit negligent. He hurriedly pulled the silver thread and inserted it into a carved pattern on the stone stick. Using the tweezers, he kept pulling, stretching, lifting, and pointing the silver thread around the stone stick. There were three simple golden dagger symbols with twelve stems that connected them on the stone stick, which was slowly filled up by the silver thread.

Due to not being very skillful on the task, the silver thread was broken three times in the process of insertion, causing some imperfections on the carved symbols and stems. But overall, it was still a smooth process, the formations on the stone stick were finally completed, and it didn’t turn into a ruined formation.

After he was done using the Silver Essence thread, he inserted three bean size Earth Stones into the core position of the Golden Dagger symbols. Lu Chengfeng put down the tweezers, held the stone stick with both of his hands, and starting uttering some incantation. He slowly injected his energy into the stone stick, initiating the magical power of the formation.

The stone stick was made from low tier Earth attributed ‘Ancient Stone’ and already contained powerful Earth energy. After being carved with Metal attributed symbols, and using some Earth stones to initiate the formation, a formation pillar for use in laying the ‘Great White Golden Dagger Formation’ is ready.

The ‘Great White Golden Dagger Formation’ is a Metal attributed formation. Using the Earth attribute stone stick as the foundation, by utilizing the inter-promotion of the five elements[B], in which the Earth bears Metal, he initiated the ‘Great White Golden’ gas within the Silver Essence, turning it into golden daggers to attack his enemies. This is a basic formation that is used by lower rank cultivators in order to protect their own lives and property.

With Lu Chengfeng being at the peak of the Houtian level, to be able to successfully produce the Great White Golden Dagger Formation, and to gather all the raw materials for it, is a difficult process.

Laughing with a weird ‘Kah kah’ sound, Lu Chengfeng took out two identical formation pillars from the lowest quality storage bag he had with him. Staring at the three formation pillars shining like silvery amber, he lay his tired body down on the soft bed.

“Ha. I’m now a general for Little Meng City. A city that is attacked by barbarians every two or three years. Basically, every couple of years a batch of officers will get killed. Sending me, a good for nothing man, here. I suppose their intention is for me to die here?”

Laughing at himself, Lu Chengfeng tightly clenched onto the three formation pillars, a crazy look suddenly appearing in his eyes.

“But I am not willing to accept this! I, Lu Chengfeng, will not die in this place! Sooner or later, I will walk straight up back into the Lu family in Li Yang, and teach all of you bastards who I, Lu Chengfeng, am!”

Clenching his fists, Lu Chengfeng, like a wounded tiger, roars out in angry and deep voice.

The insulation of the coach is pretty good, thus, those cavalrymen outside of the coach never hear anything from inside.

Keeping the formation pillars, Lu Chengfeng shuts the ‘Little 25th Lamp’ and carefully stows it away. Lifting up the curtains on the window, he glared at the two hundred cavalrymen escorting him. Lu Chengfeng shakes his head in disdain.

Of these two hundred cavalry guards, every single one of them is tall and handsome, wearing nice armors and carrying good weapons. But they are all idiots, all of them are good for nothing. Not a single one of them had broken through a cultivation level in ten years. Lu Chengfeng, who had the cultivation level of peak level Houtian Grade, can easily defeat fifty of them at once. If he were to lay down the Great White Gold Dagger Formation, he could easily kill all of these scum bags.

These are the guards his family gave him. Yet they expect him to be able to depend upon and use them to open up a new world for himself in the worthless Little Meng City?

A fury expression lit up Lu Chengfeng’s face. He suddenly lifted up his curtain and spit onto a cavalryman’s face, roaring fiercely, “Get out of here, out, out! Clueless fool, you are blocking your master’s sunlight, are you looking to get killed?”

The cavalryman was absolutely terrified and quickly hopped off his ride and grabbed the reins to pull his ride to the side.

Although he is a good for nothing man of the Li Yang’s Lu family, Lu Chengfeng still holds the lives of these cavalrymen in his hand. Even their family members and relatives, all the life of their bloodline are controlled by Lu Chengfeng. When facing the angry Lu Chengfeng, who would dare to say a word?

After releasing his anger, Lu Chengfeng walked out from the coach while clenching his teeth, standing beside the coachman and staring blankly at the two eagles that were floating high above his head.

Remaining silent for some time, Lu Chengfeng asked, in an indifferent tone, “Xiao Hei, how far are we from Little Meng City?”

The coachman is a nearly three-meter tall muscular man with dark skin. Hearing Lu Chengfeng’s question, the dark-skin man, with an ugly face full of scars, shows a gentle smile on his face, he answers with respect, “Young master, in another two hundred miles we’ll be reaching Little Meng City.”

Smiling and clasping on Xiao Hei’s muscular, rock-like shoulder, Lu Chengfeng said with a smile, “Work harder, we must reach Little Meng City today.”

From one of the coaches in front, a short and think, having similar dark skin old man trembling and walks out from the coach, carrying a bowl of milk in his hand, came to Lu Chengfeng’s coach. Lifted up that bowl of milk with a respect manner, the old man smiled and said, “Young master, you’re burning the midnight oil again, please have a bowl of human medicine!”

Lu Chengfeng look at that gold plated big bowl hatefully, shaking his head and he grabs over the bowl, gulped the milk in a swallow.

A strong aroma of medicine hits right onto his throat, Lu Chengfeng almost vomits out. He forced himself to get used to this discomfort, quietly feeling the energy rise up after the milk entered his stomach.

Although he hates human medicine the most, but he had to admit that, without this human medicine, he won’t have enough energies to complete that three formation pillars continuously.

In order to make human medicine you needed to find human women that were still breast-feeding, force them to consume a huge amount of various herbs, and use a secret method to channel the most essential part of those herbs into their breasts, dripping it out together with the breast milk. This is the human medicine. This type of tonic is quite common among all the wealthy and influential families. It is claimed that this is the most effective way to get rid of those harmful ingredients in the herbs.

Lu Chengfeng hates this kind of human medicine, but he had no choice but to drink it. If not ,he won’t be able to finish making the formation pillars, and he will not be confident in his ability to secure his position in Little Meng City.

Handing over the big bowl back to the old man, Lu Chengfeng sighed, shaking his head.

He said to himself with a low voice, “After all, I was born by you too, why are you treating me like this? Why must you pass your sin onto me? Those bastards, no matter what, I’m still your elder brother who born by the same mother, why must you all force this on me?”

Before he can finish his words, those two eagles in the sky suddenly let out a sharp cry.

From the woods beside the road came the sound of a wooden clapper.

‘Buzz’, sounds of releasing strings came from the woods, and a hundred-fifty strong arrows shot out from the woods, like some crazy bumble bees.

Lu Chengfeng’s two hundred guards were startled, nearly seventy over men were hit by the arrows, screaming and falling off their rides.

Fifty men who are wearing tight black cloth and have their face covered, only show a pair of eyes, carrying long blades in their hands and dashing out like a wild wind.

The leading man in black pointed at Lu Chengfeng and shouted, “Go, chop his left hand!”

When he heard ‘chop his left hand’, Lu Chengfeng pale face was immediately covered with a ferocious expression.

“Must you really force me to go this far?”

Screaming can be heard everywhere. Lu Chengfeng’s guards were defeated instantly. In a short moment, another thirty over men were killed.

The rest of the guards are screaming aloud, many even control their rides and turned around out of instinct, dispersing into all directions.

Veins stand out on the back of Lu Chengfeng’s hand, and his body is trembling violently.

The man in black had now arrived in front of him.

Notes:

[A] - This was legitimately in the raws…

[B] - This is the five elements (also known as Wu Xing). Some elements have a supporting or generating relation with each other. This is one of those cases. (The Earth bears Metal. You find metal in the earth.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Xing