Cult of the Sacred Runes

Chapter 156 – The First Rune

Ye Wei frowned, although the question seemed simple, he didn’t know anything about the Vermilion Essence Runes, after all these seven runes were created, named and categorized in a system that he had minimal knowledge on.

Rumors had it that the seven Vermilion Essence Runes were created by a prime while observing the Mystic Mountain. He was surrounded by demons but managed to escape. He was gravely injured in the battle and didn’t survive, but before he took his last breath, he managed to write down the seven Vermilion Essence Runes, inspired by the demons’ strength.

The book he wrote in was the ancient book of life, that kept record of more than sixty thousand basic runes, contained more than ten million pages with detailed description of each rune and respective sequence. Looking for just seven runes in the sea of shapes was completely intangible task.

It was known, though, that the power of these seven essential runes were exceptional. They could greatly enhance any stance, thus making their significance truly remarkable, and therefore they meant a lot to the human race.

‘I can read the whole volume from the badge, but I’m guessing it won’t be simple to find seven specific runes from the large collection...’ Ye Wei stared at the image of the book on top of the runic badge, caught in a deep thought.

‘I can receive five million contribution tokens just for finding the first essence rune and proving its existence! The second one will grant me ten million contribution points! If I will be able to find them all I can receive a total of two hundred and ten million contribution tokens!’

Ye Wei was enthusiastic, but he was soon going to find out the difficulty of excuting this task, having to isolate seven runes from a pool of sixty thousand. The question had been listed on the fifty-sixth wall for sixty years now. There were many Runemasters and Grand-Runemasters that read the book of life everyday for referencing purposes, who knew the existence of the question but none of them was able to answer it.

“Seven Vermilion Essence runes, where are you?” Ye Wei’s eyes were closed, dug deep into his mind, the Mystic Mount presence in his Sentient meant that he had an enormous library of runes in his head, but they were not necessarily arranged nor named.

Ye Wei was not particularly looking to find all seven, he was just interested in getting enough tokens to heal his Sentient, but the challenge itself was becoming interesting for him.

‘The question is – how do I identify them? How am I going to differentiate them from the rest?’ Ye Wei realized that it would take a lot of time and effort to study the runes and even then he would struggle to answer the question without a clear definition.

‘Maybe he left clues when he jotted the runes down...’

Ye Wei kept flipping through the pages, tried to search for clues, imagining where the creator of the runes would place the, trying to think alike.

‘The first of the seven... It shouldn’t be too far back in the book, right? Unless he didn’t want anyone to find it...’ Ye Wei was getting frustrated, and decided to take a closer look at the beginning chapters. He never thought looking at runes would be such a confusing thing to do.

Behind every existent rune there was an inspiration, they could be from other runes, nature or even philosophy.

Countless cultivators dedicated their life and wisdom on runes theory and its application. It was said that their effort, the stances and runes they created, would eventually become a part of enlarged Mystic Mount, in return, they would be given cosmic energy stored in the mountain that was now nowhere to be found.

Few pages into the book, Ye Wei was still struggling to identify anything even slightly related to what he was looking for. He could only find description and record of a lot of basic runes that were used for low-level Spirit stances.

Ye Wei’s hope was diminishing with the flip of each page.

‘I cannot find anything... ‘ Ye Wei thought sadly after looking through more than seven hundred runes. More than seven hundred runes were now deeply engraved in Ye Wei’s mind, however there was still no trace of the vermillion essence runes.

“Seven vermilion essence runes, seven runes...” He murmured.

Ye Wei thought for a moment to continue searching through the pages. He wasn’t someone who would give up easily. However, a thought crossed his mind, what if he would try to explore his mind and see if the Mystic Mount would be of any help, as any runes he sees or learns will be engraved in his mind forever. It was just a matter of getting to it.

Thousands of runes flashed in Ye Wei’s mind. An idea quickly passed through but his mind was too slow to react to it, to get hold of the knowledge deep inside.

‘It’s still not enough!’ Ye Wei thought in disdain and kept looking through the pages, trying to remember as many runes as he could. By the time he made another break from reading, he was able to learn eight thousand new runes.

The eight thousand runes continuously reassembled, sparks of inspiration and imagination rose and died, Ye Wei was drowning in this mysterious sensation. He didn’t even notice that two days had passed.

The Mystic Mount presence suddenly shone bright gold, different combinations of small parts of the eight thousand runes throughout the first chapters had now formed seventy-six thousand low-level Spirit stances, Ye Wei was surprised to discover that there was a rune that repeated itself ten thousand times in the strongest stances that was formed in his head.

“This rune is very special!” Exclaimed Ye Wei, excited about what he discovered. He could see the energy within this rune was far more intense than in an ordinary rune, and its simplicity doubled the stronger Spirit stances’ effectiveness.

‘Although only a basic rune, its effect is far from simple...’ Ye Wei began to think that only an extremely skilled and experienced Grand-Runemaster could have created this.

Ye Wei was immediately overwhelmed by a rush of joy, feeling euphoric, certain that this rune was the first of the fabled seven, ‘This makes sense right?’ He began to feel tired. Even though his investigation was almost automated, his lack of sleep did not make his over-worked brain any more relaxed.

There were so many runes in the volume, making a huge amount of knowledge and persistence necessary if he wished to find the single right rune. Nonetheless he was able to find the first. To find the second, third and proceeding further would become increasingly difficult if he was to employ the same method, as the pool of runes he had to process would just keep increasing.

‘I will send this in for now, and maybe revisit the question when I have time in the future!’ Thought Ye Wei, while writing down in details how the rune he found was an intrinsic ingredient to many powerful stances.

The jade walls of questions had always been the focus of Runemasters across all dynasties, most of them would find themselves using it either to solve the problems they face while cultivating or they would use the walls as the main way of earning contribution tokens.

The more difficult the questions got, the less attention they eventually receive. People who bothered to check any of the walls Ye Wei was on were mainly Grand-Runemasters.

Over at Sky Flood dynasty, a few Grand-Runemasters gathered at the union’s branch as they have been doing habitually for years, they were chatting over glasses of wine and one of then flipped over to the fifty-sixth jade wall’s content.

“Have you seen this? Someone actually answered the question!” Exclaimed one of the Grand-Runemaster, surprised to see an answer to the question for the first time in sixty years.

A lot of Runemasters tried to solve this problem as the reward for it was rather high, but for sixty years there was no one competent of doing so; nobody came remotely close to solving this question. Everyone assumed that it was put on the jade wall by someone incredibly powerful and it slowly turned to an enigma among the most powerful Grand-Runemasters.

It had been sixty years, but nobody ever found out who it was that listed such question.

“Are you kidding? How could this simple rune be one of the seven?”

“Look! There are some explanations!”

“What? Eight thousand stances? And this Runemaster arranged them into over seventy thousand stances? I mean it’s impressive that he or she went this far and found out that this one rune repeated itself in the stronger of stances... How long must it have taken? Ten years? I admire the dedication of doing such a repetitive project!”

They didn’t know that someone with a presence of Mystic Mount in his mind didn’t actually need to create his own stances but rather look through the knowledge already inside him, go through the original memories, which is much more easier than creating stances and runes from scratch.

“Haha, these seven runes... Some people think all of this is a myth, but if they do exist I guess it was worth this Runemaster’s effort and time! Just because we think it’s impossible, doesn’t mean others don’t have a way, right? I respect it if his answer proves itself to be correct!” The President of the dynasty’s union branch, Hu Yanzhuo paused to look at what Ye Wei wrote, and he began to realized the rune’s subtle but genius functions that had been ignored by the community for longer than he could care.

At the same moment another Runemaster exclaimed loudly.

“The person who answered the question already received the reward! His answer was accepted!”

“Are you certain? Well, that pretty much proves it! The person who was knowledgeable enough to post the question probably knows best, as he studied this subject thoroughly!”

“The first vermillion essence rune has been discovered! Should we try using the same system to find the other ones?”

“Forget about it! It probably took at least a decade for someone to learn eight thousand runes and go through all the Spirit stances to find the first vermillion essence rune! I am afraid that looking for the second rune will take double the time!”

Hu Yanzhuo could not check who posted the question but his clearance allowed him to check the identity of the union member who answer the questions from the jade wall.

“I am not sure I know who Master Ye is... “ murmured Hu Yanzhuo. “But if he was able to discover the first rune he must be a veteran.”

Hu Yanzhuo kept looking down to find out more about the mysterious Runemaster “He is sixteen years old and three star Runemaster?! What is this madness, is someone using him as a middleman?” He couldn’t believe that someone who just discovered the first vermillion essence rune was a young boy!

“Are you sure mister President? There must be some kind of a mistake? How could a sixteen year old...” “ The Grand-Runemasters stared at each other in awe.

At around the same time, the branch president of the Sacred Snow dynasty, Yang Shuo also learned the news.

“Ye Wei... This Ye Wei Kid again? God! He found a vermilion rune!? Who the hell is he?” Yang Shou was completely shocked by the answer he was reading: ‘How can a teenage boy managed to do something that would take a Grand-Runemaster at least a decade to achieve...’

The president quickly dismissed the possibilities of any mistakes being made regarding the authenticity of the small essay Ye Wei wrote as he saw the transaction confirmation. ‘I don’t see a problem in his proving method and he just earned five million tokens... This is unbelievable! I think we will have a very young new leader in the union soon!’ The thought sent a shiver down the president’s spine.

Everyone in the Runemaster Union across the lands were talking about this breaking news, that someone was finally able to give the correct answer to a high profile question on the jade wall.

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