How Much For Your Soul?

Chapter 62

Thanks to access to Hua Ling's mind through the slave seal, Shen Yue was well aware of the Ling Jade Deity Lake's situation. It was a low-grade Deity's Lake that was on the verge of drying up. Initially, it'd be impossible for people with Hua Ling's power to gain control of an entire Deity's Lake. The only reason why Hua Ling could occupy it was because it produced too few spiritual stones to be worth wasting manpower on to the real movers and shakers of the Sect. Of course, this didn't bother Shen Yue at all, because as soon as he got the Myriad Miles Rivers and Mountains Painting, it would turn into a money-making machine!

In the outside world, all kinds of forces were fighting to control Deity's Lakes. The more Deity's Lakes a force could occupy, the more underlings they'd be able to recruit and expand their influence. Hua Ling's small group was basically the bottom of the barrel in terms of the pecking order in the outside world. But they were currently stronger than what Shen Yue had under his control. While he was waiting for things in the Gu Clan to develop, he would send out Hua Ling to bring these new members into the fold.

With another object on his list of things to do ticked off, it was time to get his newly promoted Heavenly Fate Realm underlings making some spiritual stones. The easiest way to do that was to farm the Ghastly Ruins. The Ghastly Ruins is one of the three training grounds at the Divine Feathers Sect' s Skysoul Institute and was founded by one of the Sect's ancestors. The ruins were filled with a large number of Ghouls that dropped Soul Scales when killed which could be traded for spiritual stones. Unfortunately, there were a few limitations placed on the training ground that made exploiting it hard for the average students.

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But those with large forces could reap a lot more benefits than if they were working alone. Even though each person is teleported to a different section of the ruins when accessing the training grounds, it was not impossible to form teams. If a hundred people entered the Ruins at the same time, there was a good chance that five or so would appear in the same section. And this did not even take into account the slave seal connecting the officers to their minions. The other restriction placed on the training ground was that soul scales would disappear if they were removed from the testing grounds or placed in an interspatial ring. They could only be carried around in cloth bags and had to be exchanged at the end of every test.

Once a thousand soul scales have been gathered, they would combine to form a single larger soul scale, making it easier to carry. Each student was only allowed to remain in the Ghastly Ruins for a maximum of two days per month; otherwise, the ruins would be overpopulated. Earth ranked Spiritual Root students at the Skysoul Institute only received a monthly allowance of just one spiritual stone a month, so gaining thirty for killing a thousand ghouls was like winning the lottery for the needy students. The soul scales could also be used to redeem other things like Demon Spirits, spiritual stone essences, artifacts, and various other items. If the students didn't have a time limit on how long they could stay in the Ruins, it would be packed with students that never left. Spiritual stones were hard to come by, so the Sect would make sure they didn't have to pay out any more than they needed to.

Shen Yue had used the one thousand five hundred spiritual stones from Gu Bei to promote over a hundred and fifty new recruits to the Heavenly Fate Realm. Unlike people with monstrous cultivation techniques like Nie Li and Shen Yue, the average student only needed ten or so spiritual stones to advance from the Earthen Fate. With slavery taking out all the jealousy and greed of the equation in teaming up, his newly promoted minions should each be able to gather over ten thousand soul scales. If Long Yuyan could gather thirty thousand before she even reached the Heavenly Fate Realm, a group of them working as one should be able to achieve a better result.

Shen Yue decided to let his minions enter first to test the waters, he planned to join the next group that would promote to the Heavenly Fate Realm using the spiritual stones gathered from this excursion into the Ruins. The Ghastly Ruins were filled with danger, especially compared to the Saint Soul Grounds, another one of the three testing grounds. Depending on the situation, someone might also try to rob them or hamper their progress when competing over killing ghouls. Shen Yue would use this group to find out the difficulty of the Ruins, after all, they had not stored a Fate Soul to resurrect yet. Although experts would step in if students were about to be killed, there was a high chance of being injured.

So as not to cause a scene, Shen Yue had the minions enter in groups of ten and stagger their entry. As the first group approached the entrance of the Ghastly Ruins, they encountered a weird vortex guarded by two experts. Before they were allowed to jump into the vortex, their school tokens had to be scanned.

*Woosh!* *Woosh!* *Woosh!* *Woosh!* *Woosh!* *Woosh!*

They materialised in a stretch of ruins that covered a thousand miles. Everywhere as far as the eye could see was crumbled and ruined walls, forming an apocalyptic scenery. A grand structure must have stood here at some point, but now it had become a ruin to be used for training. The sky was ashen-grey, and an ill wind blew by. Occasionally, a herd of ghosts drifted through the air, wailing as they flickered in and out of perception. These were the Ghouls that had to be killed. They were grouped in the thousands, and even though individually, they were of Earth Fate Realm, they'd be challenging to handle in such large numbers.

As if they could sense the aura of a human, they screamed as they rained down upon the intruders. In different areas of the Ghastly Ruins, the minions merged with their demon beast spirits and fought off the masses of ghouls attacking them. They unleashed their strongest attacks, killing some but not enough to stem the tide that still charged at them. With no other choice, they could only retreat and wait for others to enter so they could join up and gank these cheating ghoul bastards. Withdrawing now instead of stubbornly fighting on was the correct decision, there was no need to accumulate injuries because of pride. They were here to train and make money, getting injured now would stop them from doing both.

An hour later, things were a lot different. Everyone had appeared in the Ghastly Ruins and joined up with those near them, the slave seal created by the Libary of Heaven's Path was really overpowered. Now the tables had turned, and it was the ghouls running from the fight. A Heavenly Fate expert could kill a hundred Legend fighters, but thousands of them was a different story. Now that they had people to fight alongside them, they quickly overpowered the ghouls and went on a slaughter. The hardest part was picking up all the soul scales!

Shen Yue watched on as his men charged through the Ruins killing ghouls, and smiled to himself. Switching through the minds of his officers, he was pleased with what he saw. They had two days to kill as many as they could, and at this pace, they were going to make a tidy profit. Since everything was going well, he decided to catch up on some sleep. The constant scheming and cultivating left him little time to enjoy just shutting off and relaxing in bed. He crawled under the covers and drifted off to sleep.

Unfortunately, there was never any rest for the wicked. Five hours had passed before Shen Yue was rudely awakened by an urgent message from Lu Han, one of the minions that had come with him from Glory City. Since his officers did not have a link to Shen Yue's soul realm like his wives, they could only manually send someone to inform him of the problem. It seemed that his men had come under attack from a greedy student envious of the men's teamwork and efficiency in harvesting soul scales. Murong Yu had attacked three different groups already, humiliating them as he robbed them of their soul scales.

Even though they had not been using flashy moves like Nie Li, they had still attracted his attention with how many ghouls they were killing. It was a good thing that Shen Yue had not entered with his men, as he would have also run the risk of being bullied by this scoundrel. Since the minions were clear on the reason for entering the Ruins, they continued to harvest soul scales and sent a runner to ask for guidance on how to deal with Murong Yu.

"It seems that Murong Yu is an overbearing and vicious shit stain that likes to bully the weak but lick the arseholes of the strong. Since he desires a conflict, let's give him what he wants!" Said Shen Yue to Lu Han as his eyes flickered with a savage gleam.