Chapter 245 — Another Fiasco
The Beast-Taming Craftsman · Page 2 of 7
Lu Heng said, his head throbbing: "The thing is, several of the training facilities weren't built for advanced beast tamers at all. They require master-level beast tamers to activate. And besides—and besides, are you sure about this?"
"What if by then all nine training facilities have been wrecked, and there's still nothing to show for it…"
Shi Jin gave a sheepish laugh. It was only a guess, after all.
"I don't think we'll get anything more out of studying this place alone. How about this—after the Martial Arts Tournament ends, we go check out the other training facilities that can still be used," Bai Xi suggested. "The preliminaries are almost over anyway. Let's finish the main bracket first, then talk."
"Er—the Martial Arts Tournament."
Shi Shuo was stunned. Right, there was still that whole business.
"The preliminaries are almost over already? Weren't there tons of people? I thought it would take a few more days."
During these past few days of researching the rock pillar, the Martial Arts Tournament preliminaries had long since begun. As for Jue, Lu Heng, and Bai Xi, having passed the strength certification, they had automatically earned their places in the main bracket.
"Of course it'll be over soon," Bai Xi said. "We can finish the whole thing today."
"Good. Why don't we grab a bite to eat first?" Shi Jin suggested.
The other two both nodded.
With that, the three of them took their leave. Once they had stepped away from the stone pillar, Shi Jin actually felt a little guilty at heart.
He suddenly had the feeling that his own deduction was rather shaky again.
Some of the facilities in the Martial Emperor Ruins were built from this peculiar mineral, the stone pillar. Previously those structures had been perfectly intact, so its composition could not be tested—but this time, after Lu Heng helped Shi Jin hold the broken fragments of the pillar and analyze their makeup, they found it was merely a special kind of earth-attribute energy crystal.
Not a trace of metallic element in it at all.
That strayed rather far from his reasoning. If this was a training ground built for an Iron-Eating Beast legion, wouldn't metal-attribute material have been better? Were they afraid the Iron-Eating Beasts would eat the training ground during drills?
The composition of this stone pillar gave Shi Jin the feeling once more that this was a training ground for some earth-attribute pet beast legion, not one for Iron-Eating Beasts.
All in all, it was just too hard. He was going to go have a meal and join a Martial Arts Tournament to relieve some stress.
……
After Shi Jin and the others left, deep within the ruin-space, the awakened divine turtle Chongxuan slowly opened its red eyes once more.
Over the past few days, everything that had happened within the Martial Emperor Ruins had fallen under its gaze.
It heaved a long sigh inwardly. It had never imagined that after that great war, merely healing its wounds would take two thousand years; when it awoke again, the seas had turned to mulberry fields, and all things had changed beyond recognition.
Its old comrades-in-arms had surely long since passed away. Beneath that ferocious war, it was one of the few who had barely scraped by, surviving on the strength of its racial advantages.
That it had scraped by until awakening today was not because its injuries had healed. From first to last, it had relied on deep slumber to keep its wounds from worsening. This awakening came because the injuries had deteriorated to their very limit; it reckoned this was its final flicker of light before the end, that the great limit of its lifespan was near—perhaps only a few days away.
"Still, I never imagined someone could break the record here."
Chongxuan murmured softly, gazing from its bird's-eye vantage at the Shi family party leaving the ruins, then let its eyes fall upon the nine pillars of the ruins, pondering a very important matter.