Sage of Humanity

For a moment, the scene was chaotic, even with Dao Thirteen present, it seemed difficult to maintain control.

Zhang Julai slapped the armrest of his chair and angrily shouted, "Silence, all of you!"

Only then did the Blood Race quiet down, but one still spoke up, "Cave Residence Master, if that's the case, what about our future cultivation?"

Surely we can't really rely on consuming nature's spiritual energy or extracting power from Spirit Stones, what advantage would the Sacred Race have left then?

Zhang Julai had already received Lu Ye's instructions, so he confidently explained, "Banning your slaughter of Blood Food is precisely for the sake of your future cultivation! While Blood Food is easy to breed, it's hard to cultivate them to maturity. If we kill too many, sooner or later we'll end up with none to use. In the future, I will have people bring fresh blood from nearby villages periodically, ensuring your needs for cultivation."

In fact, the Blood Race absorbing human blood doesn't necessarily mean killing humans, but during the process of absorbing fresh blood, it's easy for the Blood Race to lose control, making it hard to restrain themselves, resulting in humans being drained dry.

But if merely drawing some blood from the body, it harms humans temporarily but is not life-threatening.

This too was a method thought up by Lu Ye.

He had a plan in mind, but to implement it, he had to leverage the Blood Race's power, as his identity as a human within the Blood Refinement World left him with little to accomplish.

To utilize the Blood Race's power, it was essential not to oppress them too harshly; ensuring their needs for cultivation was the bare minimum requirement.

According to this method, nearby villages need only contribute some blood periodically, and no one would die because of the Blood Race.

The Blood Refinement World is ruled by the Blood Race; unless there is strength to eradicate them entirely, improving the human race's status is difficult.

A member of the Blood Race shouted, "The blood let out... doesn't taste good."

The method Lu Ye thought of, naturally, had occurred to others before, but it was abandoned after being tried for a while due to issues of taste and flavor primarily.

The feeling of capturing a living person and consuming their fresh blood is fundamentally different from drinking blood extracted in advance.

The Blood Race inherently has a craving for consuming living blood.

Of course, it doesn't significantly affect cultivation.

Zhang Julai shouted angrily, "This is the first command of this Cave Residence Master; you will listen whether you want to or not!"

Although the Blood Race was not too happy, when they saw Zhang Julai get angry, they still agreed verbally, unaware of why he would issue such an order.

"Don't think of acting secretly; if anyone dares to disobey under the guise of compliance, you will not be spared." Zhang Julai commanded again.

This is the rule of the Blood Refinement World; the bigger fist rules. With Dao Thirteen as deterrence, none of the Blood Race under him dared disobey in his presence.

"The second matter..." Zhang Julai spoke again, "I plan to attack the Hundred Leaps Grotto Mansion!"

The Hundred Leaps Grotto Mansion is adjacent to the Bright Moon Cave Residence, naturally leading to some friction. The Blood Race member who fought with Zhang Julai before was from there.

The Hundred Leaps Grotto Mansion had attacked the Bright Moon Cave Residence three times, but each time was repelled by Sun Miaozhu leading Zhang Julai and the others, though at the cost of some Blood Race lives, planting seeds of hatred.

So when Zhang Julai announced his intention to attack the Hundred Leaps Grotto Mansion, the previously gloomy Blood Race suddenly became excited, with someone shouting, "We should have attacked them long ago, Cave Residence Master, I'll be the first to charge in!"

"Cave Residence Master, count me in!"

"I'm going too!"

The crowd's emotions surged, eager to march to the Hundred Leaps Grotto Mansion immediately and show them what they're made of.

Lu Ye stood silently beside Zhang Julai, observing, realizing the Blood Race's eagerness for battle. While he had a lot of information about the Blood Refinement World in his mind, witnessing it firsthand was different.

The Blood Race is so eager for mutual conflict, all for Blood Crystals!

Compared to nature's spiritual energy, Spirit Stones, or the fresh blood of Blood Food, Blood Crystals are the resource the Blood Race most desires for cultivation, akin to how demon beasts in the Nine Provinces World often clash because they also enhance themselves by consuming demonic pills.

The announcement of the second command quickly dispelled the oppression and discontent brought by the first command.

Zhang Julai nodded in satisfaction, "Very well, in that case, rest today, and we set off tomorrow!"

Someone asked, "Cave Residence Master, are all of us going? Do we need to leave anyone to guard?"

"No need to guard, everyone is going." Zhang Julai waved his big hand, even making those few from the Spirit Stream Realm excited, not fearing death at all, though it's unclear what use they could have there.

Sending everyone out was naturally Lu Ye's idea, for him, there would inevitably be losses in this battle, especially those at the Spirit Stream Realm, likely having no chance of returning alive.

As long as Dao Thirteen stays with Zhang Julai, the battle situation can be controlled, how many die or survive depends on Dao Thirteen's actions.

Zhang Julai certainly wouldn't feel sad over Blood Race deaths; in fact, the more that die, the better, as each member has their own Blood Crystal, albeit of varying quality.

Currently, what he lacks are Blood Crystals.

However, not too many can die, they need to gather more people than they have now because his target is not limited to the Hundred Leaps Grotto Mansion.

He had more ideas to implement, and all of this required a strong enough power base. It was difficult to achieve anything by relying on himself alone.

An uneventful night passed, and the next morning, Zhang Julai led the Blood Race of Bright Moon Cave Residence out with a fierce momentum.

Dao Thirteen followed along.

Lu Ye stayed behind, officially under Zhang Julai's order to guard the cave residence, but in reality, Lu Ye didn't want to waste time. His current abilities were limited, so the task of attacking the Hundred Leaps Grotto Mansion was left to Dao Thirteen.

Throughout the entire Bright Moon Cave Residence, apart from him, there were only the human captives, mostly women, with only a few men.

With no Blood Race guarding them, they didn't even know how to escape, mainly because they couldn't.

The cave entrance hung on a cliff wall, making it impossible for these humans with little cultivation to leave.

Lu Ye set up a warning formation at the cave entrance and stayed in his own cavern.

He didn't need to concern himself about those humans, primarily because he didn't know how to manage them. Survival was not something he needed to worry about; the Blood Race at Bright Moon Cave Residence had brought in captured wild beasts and Spirit Rice from nearby villages, enough for the humans to survive on.

They only needed to take care of themselves.

Sitting cross-legged in his cave, Lu Ye immersed his mind, observing the new spirit runes on his Talent Tree.

Previously, in the Nameless Secret Realm, he had obtained two spirit runes, one being Soul Taming, which had a significant impact. Both Dao Thirteen and Zhang Julai could be considered his soul slaves.

Under Soul Taming, he had absolute control over the soul slaves, without worrying about any rebellious thoughts arising from them.

The other was As-Close-As-Siblings.

This spirit rune was somewhat similar to Twin Flying Phoenixes, both used to borrow power, but it was easy to perform and hard to maintain.

Unlike Twin Flying Phoenixes, once the Twin Flying Phoenixes Spirit Runes are formed, they imprint on the contact point between Lu Ye and another person, maintained by Lu Ye, making it impossible for them to dissipate.

But As-Close-As-Siblings didn't have such strong stability. When spirit force surged, the spirit runes might collapse.

Moreover, because this spirit rune's effect was not limited to two people, there would be more uncontrollable factors involved.

When he first obtained this spirit rune, Lu Ye didn't think much, but as he calmed down to ponder, he realized this rune was a killing weapon!

A killing weapon that could exert immense power in certain situations.

For example, in a battle between two armies, even if the cultivators on one side were well-coordinated, they couldn't borrow power from each other. On the other side, if the cultivators used As-Close-As-Siblings, with their auras interlinked, the stronger and weaker strength would be evident at a glance.

More so, with this spirit rune as the core, one could set up an unprecedented large array, concentrating the power of all cultivators within the array. If achieved, its impact would be beyond imagination.

It was only at this point that Lu Ye realized he had underestimated the use of this spirit rune.

He had borrowed many books on spirit runes from his master's Bibliotheca, reading and learning about numerous spirit runes, but he had never heard of such a rune.

Including Soul Taming, Twin Flying Phoenixes, and the telepathy-like spirit runes, before they were activated on his Talent Tree, Lu Ye never imagined such mystical runes existed in the world.

The Path of Spirit Runes was indeed vast and profound!

The uses of the As-Close-As-Siblings Spirit Runes still needed thorough research.

However, he could first use this spirit rune as the core to refine an array disc, making it possible for anyone holding an As-Close-As-Siblings Formation to activate its effects anytime, allowing companions nearby to borrow power from each other, thereby enabling one to exert greater strength.

This would help with some plans in his mind.

Once thought, it's time to act.

Lu Ye had studied Artifact Refining for two months with Khong Khong in the Sword Weapon Sect's secret realm, and he had already had an introductory knowledge of the Path of Artifact Refining, though he hadn't delved deeply into it due to a lack of distraction.

Still, for him, even without the right tools, refining an array disc using his own fire attribute spirit force was no difficult matter.

The most it would do was take some effort due to his currently restricted cultivation.

He had many materials in his storage sack, from which he picked some, using spirit force to envelop and incinerate them.

Time passed, and Lu Ye spent half a day refining an array disc containing the As-Close-As-Siblings Spirit Runes, although the array disc wasn't very exquisite due to his current Cloud River Level 1 cultivation.

Channeling spirit force into it, the array disc hummed, and a halo rippled outwards, revealing that the halo was obviously constructed from fine Yin-Yang Dual Origins, radiating a range of one square meter centered on the array disc.

Lu Ye couldn't help but frown.

This was somewhat different from what he had imagined...

The range of one square meter meant that within this range, cultivators could borrow power from each other. Once outside this range, it wouldn't work.