54 Ye Xiu

The Winged Lightning Dragon's last words to her before she left its lair were, "The blood essence I gave you contains a berserk energy that is so powerful that if a regular human tried to refine it, they would explode in a heartbeat! You will need to find a high tier alchemist to figure out a way that it can be utilised safely."

Ning'Er did not explain to him that she possessed the ancient Purifying Art of Sacred Lightning, which should give her the ability to refine the wild energies contained within the Legend Ranked blood essence! At the same time, she was already at Black Gold Rank, and had a natural affinity to lightning, which would help the process as well.

Her grandfather was overjoyed to find that she had come back safely. He had been worried to the point of not being able to sleep every night as he waited and prayed for her return.

"Grandpa, here's an abundant supply of Azure Water. With it, you'll be able to resolve the last of the poison around your heart, and the Winged Dragon Family will soon have a peak Black Gold Ranked expert to protect it again!" Tears came into her eyes as she said these words and saw the look on his face. He had never expected to be fully healthy again, and was stunned as he imagined his strength rising to the point he had experienced before the fateful day of the poisoning.

"Thank you, Ning'Er. How I wish your grandma were here to see this. She would have been so proud." He said as he started choking up. They stayed up through the night sharing stories of Grandma Xiao from Ning'Er's childhood, laughing and crying as they remembered these precious experiences of the past.

…..

The next morning, first thing Ning'Er did when she arrived back at Glory City was to re-enter into Heavenly Sacred Border. The unique environment and time there provided an ideal setting for her to test out the power of the blood essence she had obtained. She had gained incredible insights and experience from the dangerous life and death battle she had just faced with the dragon's clone, and it was the perfect time to take advantage of it!

Sitting down cross-legged, she felt the incredibly rich pulses of pure energy swirling around her in distinct waves. She meditated for a couple of hours in order to be in the optimum state to begin refining the blood essence. Once she sensed that the time was right, she carefully poured out a drop of blood from the vial onto her finger, and even from that small contact, she felt a ferocious energy that threatened to devour the finger that held it.

She began to breathe in a unique rhythm as she activated the divine purifying technique, allowing the purifying energy course through the blood and qi pathways of her body. Then, taking a deep breath, she absorbed the terrifying drop of blood into her body.

Immediately, she felt an insane energy begin to explode through her arteries and meridians with a raging force that she had never experienced before. Just how much power did this tiny drop of blood hold?!! Even with the purifying technique at work, she could feel the berserk power of the blood rush through her body, heating up her internal organs like a volcano that was building to erupt!

Her blood vessels were constantly cracking and repairing itself as the raw force rampaged through every corner of her body and she gritted her teeth in pain as fresh blood seeped out of her skin, pushed out by the pulsating energy that her physique could not fully contain.

At the same time, she felt her soul realm expanding rapidly due to the volcanic force that kept building. Sensing that the churning soul force had reached its maximum point, she quickly circulated her Lightning Dragon Cultivation Technique that Nie Li had taught her, and the energy in her soul kept growing and growing.

BOOM!!

Over the next three weeks of intense cultivation, she easily smashed through the 2 Star Black Gold Rank barrier and then twice again, finally stopping at the peak of 4 Star Black Gold Rank when the berserk energy finally started to calm down and stabilise!

She opened her eyes in wonder as she realised she had just raised three whole ranks at the Black Gold level just from a tiny drop of blood! The essence blood of a Legend Ranked dragon was just too incredible and she could also sense that her entire body, blood vessels, meridians and bones had been bathed in a unique baptism of energy that vastly increased her physical strength as well. After all, the draconic lineage had probably the toughest physical bodies out of all the divine beasts!

She felt like she could use one finger to easily shatter a pillar of stone at this point without using any soul force at all!

She caught her breath completely stunned as she began to sense new abilities in her blood as well. The blood essence contained profound imprints of the unique abilities of the Winged Lightning Dragon, and she would be able to activate them to a certain extent, now that she had refined it.

Instinctively, she realised that she could create a clone which would be difficult to distinguish from herself in aura and appearance, except that its strength would always be one level below hers. The length of time a clone could sustain itself was based on how much soul force she infused into it, as well as how much energy it utilised such as in combat. At most, a clone could last an entire day if it did not engage in any battle!

Also imprinted in her mind was the divine technique to forcefully increase her strength by driving a powerful jolt of lightning into her cells to draw out any hidden power from her body. However, this would only last a short while, where she would enter into a severely weakened state after. Remembering the sharp increase in raw power the dragon clone had demonstrated, this could be an important trump card for her in extreme emergencies!

Finally, there was one last ability that the clone had not displayed because it involved a powerful technique for long-distance flight, enabling a dragon to enter into a state for efficient long-range travel. Paired with her Heavenly Golden Cicada wings, this would enable her to cover great distances using far less soul force, meaning she finally had a solution to explore ruins that she had heard about from Nie Li but which had been too far to attempt travelling to.

She remembered that she still hadn't obtained a single legendary cultivation technique except for the one she was using! There were some ancient ruins that Nie Li had talked about where she may be able to find some of the other legendary techniques but they were all in regions significantly outside the St Ancestral Mountain Range.

The benefits that she had gained this time were tremendous and she wondered if the Winged Lightning Dragon even knew that she would be able to obtain its innate abilities through its blood essence. She doubted it because not many experts in the past could have even attempted to refine such a dangerous and berserk blood even if a dragon had allowed them to obtain it!

She exited the Heavenly Sacred Border in an extremely good mood and bumped into Ye Shuo and Ye Sheng who were talking in the courtyard of Holy Orchid Institute.

"Ning'Er! I was just asking Vice Principal Ye Sheng about where you were. There's someone who just came back from a long trip who may be interested in meeting you. Would you have some time to meet with him?" Ye Shuo said with a kind smile.

"Uncle Ye Shuo! It's been awhile since I've dropped by the City Lord's Mansion to see you. Of course I can make time to meet with your friend!" she replied in an upbeat tone.

They said their goodbyes to the Vice Principal, and Ye Shuo led her to the City Lord's Mansion where the City Lord and another man were discussing something in the main meeting hall. She recognised him to be Ye Xiu, Ye Ziyun's uncle and the third strongest expert in all of Glory City. She remembered him to be an extremely trustworthy man who always put his Snow Wing Family and Glory City first.

He often travelled around with Lord Ye Mo outside of Glory City, and would sometimes bring back important information and items from their adventures together. Ning'Er had a faint memory and suspicion of why he may want to meet with her today.

The two powerful men looked up as they saw Ye Shuo and Ning'Er enter. "Ye Shuo, why are you bringing a little girl in here today? Don't you know we have some important matters to discuss?" Ye Xiu asked in curiousity.

"This is Xiao Ning'Er of the Winged Dragon Family. City Lord is already familiar with her and her accomplishments despite her young age. I've come to know that she is also an absolute genius in inscriptions so I thought she may help to shed some light on the...item you brought back recently." Ye Shuo explained.

Ye Xiu's eyes narrowed in complete confusion. He knew Ye Shuo to be extremely reliable and resourceful, but wondered at this point if his comrade had grown a bit senile. As though fourteen year old girl would be able to decipher the mysterious, ancient book that none of the top scholars in Glory City had been able to make heads or tails of the last two weeks. He was even more stunned as he heard the City Lord's next words.

"Let her."

Wondering what spell had been cast on the other two men, Ye Xiu shook his head as he pulled out the ancient tome from his interspatial ring that Ye Mo had found on the corpse of a legend rank expert deep within a cave.

As expected, this was where Nie Li had obtained the Ten Thousand Demonic Beast Array!

Ning'Er had already looked through the book before in her previous life but she pretended to carefully look through the words and inscriptions found on each page, furrowing her brows as though in deep thought. With her talent in inscriptions, she could naturally make sense of the diagrams and general framework, even if she could not yet translate the instructions word for word.

After a long while, she spoke in a quiet, confident voice. "I don't know where Senior Ye Xiu got this book but it's extremely important! Although I cannot understand the words, the diagrams and inscriptions record an array named the Ten Thousand Demonic Beast Array. It's able to control thousands to tens of thousands of demon beast spirits that are Black Gold Rank and above, creating an incredible array that can be used to defend or attack within its proximity. Even Legend Rank Demon Spiritualists can be easily killed if they enter this array!"

The three men's eyes bulged and almost popped out as they looked at her and heard her words. Could what she talked about even be trustworthy? The strongest person in Glory City, who was like a god to them, was Lord Ye Mo, and they could not imagine some array being able to hurt him, let alone kill him!

The City Lord was first to speak, "Ning'Er...how certain are you about this?"

Of course, she couldn't tell him that she had seen its power first-hand and seen Legend Ranked experts completely decimated by the array's deadly strength but she gave her most convincing answer. "Based on the inscriptions, I'm very certain that if the array were set up properly, it would at the very least be able to keep Legend Ranked experts out of the area it protected even if it couldn't kill them."

The men looked at each other as many subtle expressions were exchanged. Even if this array could defend against Black Gold Ranked experts, it would already justify exploring it as a viable layer of defence around the City Lord's Mansion. The huge underground area beneath the mansion could accommodate a significant portion of Glory City's population and the array could provide a significant protective measure for the people of the city!

Ye Xiu could barely contain his excitement as he asked, "Then, can you lay down this Ten Thousand Demonic Beast Array?"

She thought for awhile as she considered how long it would take her. "I believe I can lay it down but it will take a lot of energy and focus. The materials are also not easy to obtain because I would need ten thousand Black Gold Ranked demon spirits."

"There's no problem in gathering the ten thousand Black Gold Ranked demon spirits. How much time would you require to complete it?" Ye Xiu asked as he held his breath. With such a powerful array, he was prepared to hear that it would take at least ten years to complete it but with the implications it had, it was worth exploring!

"I will need the scholars of the city to translate the wording first of all because I'll need it to complement the diagrams and inscriptions. The language can be traced back to the Woodland Empire, which only came about after the destruction of the Sacred Empire. I suspect that it will take around a month to translate because I've seen books in the library in the ancient language section relating to the language of this empire. After that, I think I will need...three months of time to lay down the array." Although she had observed the process when Nie Li had done it, and knew that she could probably do it in two months with her depth of inscription knowledge, she gave herself an extra month of buffer just in case.

She turned around to see the mouths of three men hanging open in front of her. "Thre...Three months??!! Ning'Er, if you could help to do this, Glory City will be in your debt!" Ye Shuo stammered out in awe of the unnatural confidence of the girl in front of him.

Ye Zong cleared his throat, "We would be most grateful and although it would not match the benefit the city obtains, you can choose one item from the City Lord's vault. Anything you want from it other than our Snow Wind's heritage items are available to choose from!"

At this point, Ning'Er did not feel a strong desire for artifacts because of what she already possessed and what she had seen from her previous life, but she was curious about what the strongest family in Glory City had in their vaults, nonetheless!