Jiang Chen had a total of eighteen assistants since he was the lord of two arenas. Many were discontent because Lin Yanyu was clearly getting preferential treatment, but they didn’t dare show it on their faces. After all, the arena lord was the one calling the shots. It was his right to distribute bounties to whomever he wanted. They could only follow his orders as they were only assistants.

However, the reality of things didn’t lessen their dissatisfaction one bit. They belittled and looked down upon Lin Yanyu because of his age. How could someone as young as him receive so much preferential treatment? It was clearly because he was around the same age as the arena lord. They simply had more in common. 

The arena lord announced that everyone was free to accept the sovereign missions, but nobody volunteered. They were certain that they couldn’t handle missions of this caliber. Doing so would only be a waste of their time. Moreover, they had to pay up if they failed. It was obviously not worth it. The total amount of money they’d made from the previous days weren’t even enough to pay for the compensation of a single mission.

Under Jiang Chen’s encouragement, Lin Yanyu decided to accept the sovereign mission worth eighty million. Though it was one of the easier ones, this action still stunned the others. They didn’t show it overtly, but they were quite shocked by his actions.

Jiang Chen glanced at the crowd after Lin Yanyu had taken the mission. “Anyone else?”

He didn’t want leave room for contention. He knew full well that no other assistant of his was capable of taking on these missions. He was only asking as a courtesy. As expected, nobody else volunteered to take on the missions. It was clear that they felt the penalty for failure was too high for them to risk it. How could they have the courage to do so when the price of the bounty nearly caused their hearts to leap out from their throats?

Jiang Chen nodded. “Since nobody else is interested, we shall proceed as usual.”

He accepted the remaining three bounty scrolls and placed them on the arena. Everyone was flabbergasted by this action. What’s going on? Is the arena lord… going to accept all three missions? A pill dao mission worth 500 million was among the three missions. The other two were general missions worth 100 million and 200 million respectively. Their bounties added up to over 800 million in total!

“Is he going to accept them all?”

“That… that’s way over the top!”

“There’s no way he’s going to leave them there. Surely he’ll return them after 6 hours.” The assistants were all speculating wildly. Jiang Chen’s actions had bewildered them greatly. The person in question didn’t care about their opinions. He sat on the arena and mused deeply with his eyes shut. The contents of these missions were already seared into his mind. He was coming up with ways to solve them. 

The pill dao mission was quite difficult indeed. The 500 million bounty was a testament to its difficulty. Moreover, it was clearly written on the scroll that it’d been in circulation in the Temple for over 800 years. No one had been able to complete the mission in all this time. Truth be told, the mission wasn’t all that complicated. It was just an ancient pill recipe with two missing ingredients. Unfortunately, both ingredients were critical to the production of the pill.

The mission hadn’t been posted by Pillfire City. Instead, it was posted by one of the first rank sects in the Upper Eight Regions. He had no association with the sect, but it was situated a little closer to Veluriyam Capital. He would never consider accepting the mission if it was posted by Pillfire City. Solving the city’s problems was the opposite of his goal. It’d be like raising a tiger that would bite off the hand that fed it.

I’m surprised that this ancient recipe found its way to the Divine Abyss Continent. It’s only a sky rank pill, but not even heavenly pill immortals can necessarily complete this recipe. Jiang Chen wasn’t completely certain, but based on the description, it should be the Ancient Reformation Pill. It was a very unusual pill. By ingesting it, one could regrow severed limbs and flesh. As long as one’s soul remained intact, one would have the freedom to reconstruct one’s body to any specification even if there was nothing that remained except bare bones. One could sculpt their body according to one’s wishes.

It was classified as a sky rank pill, but was actually beyond that at empyrean rank. There was a few differences between sky rank and the empyrean rank. For example, a sky rank pill was still considered a mortal pill. It hadn’t withstood the test of the heavenly laws. An empyrean pill however, had withstood the test and was baptized by the laws. Sky rank pills were actually the equivalent of emperor realm. Its name was only for vanity reasons. In reality, sky rank pills and spirit herbs were on the same level as the emperor realm.

The Ancient Reformation Pill was an empyrean rank pill in the heavenly planes. However, there were stronger variations of pill that went beyond the empyrean rank. It was a pill with various grades, the lowest of which was sky rank. Its highest grade went beyond the empyrean realm, and was a pill of the divine heavens.

It was meant for incredibly powerful martial dao masters. After the destruction of their bodies, these powerful souls could borrow the pill’s power to reconstruct their bodies. It wasn’t useful in real life or death situations, because true death was the destruction of both body and soul. The pill allowed for the regrowth of flesh and bones, but not the human soul. It was an incredibly useful pill, but paled in comparison to the Pinecrane Pill. The latter provided an advantage that the former simply couldn’t.

Of course, the Ancient Reformation Pill was still incredibly useful, especially for powerful experts. Upon the onset of old age, experts could still evict their souls to take over a body better suited to their needs. However, this was an extremely dangerous process. Under normal circumstances, nobody would ever take such extreme measures. Any mistakes could lead to the shattering of the soul. The Ancient Reformation Pill made this process easier and safer. Moreover, it also accelerated the integration of body and soul.

Jiang Chen decided to accept the mission since it wasn’t meant for Pillfire City. Then it was simply an easy profit of 500 million saint spirit stones. Moreover, he might actually find use for the pill in the future. The ingredients for the pill varied according to its rank. The one before him was obviously one of the lower grade recipes. In fact, it just might be the lowest grade one.

He combined his previous research on the Ancient Reformation Pill’s recipe with the ingredients found on the recipe and quickly came up with the two missing ingredients. The principle behind the pill was all the same, regardless of its grade. As long as one understood the principle, coming up with the two missing ingredients wasn’t a difficult task at all. 

Pill dao might seem complicated, but as always, the difficulty was only relative to one’s knowledge. For those without knowledge, even the simplest of questions would stump them. For those with knowledge, even the hardest of questions would be a stroll in the park.

Jiang Chen was done making sense of the Ancient Reformation Pill’s mission. He also had some initial thoughts about the other two missions from the general zone. One of them was related to formations. It was still in the middle of conceptualization, and his mission was to complete it.

Jiang Chen was incredibly shocked when he took a closer at the formation. Its theory clearly had something to do with the Ancient Crimson Heavens Sect! After some analyzing, he realized that it was actually one of the sect’s ten great Crimson Heaven Formations! He’d been too busy in the recent years to study the every formation from the sect, but he did pay some attention to its formation disk.

Every single one of the formations it could simulate was incredibly powerful. Its strength would be incredibly frightening if Jiang Chen could somehow extract all of its power. Mm. This formation is incredibly rare indeed. Jiang Chen noticed that the faction who posted the bounty was also another first rank sect.

There were eight first rank sects in total in the Upper Eight Regions. There was the Eternal Celestial Capital, the Ninesuns Sky Sect, the Moon God Sect, and the Great Yu Skysword Sect

[1]

, which was the sect that posted the Ancient Reformation Pill bounty.

The formation mission was also posted by another first rank sect. It was situated in the eastern region and was named the Celestial Cicada Court. Jiang Chen couldn’t help but praise Pillfire City for the range of their influence. The Great Yu Skysword Sect was situated closer to Veluriyam Capital, yet one found their mission in Pillfire City. The Celestial Cicada Court was also situated far east, and was incredibly far away from the city. And yet, they too had posted a mission in the city.

One had to praise the city for their excellent execution of information and cultural exchange. They were now the true core capital in the Upper Eight Regions. Their influence reached every corner of the region except the south, which was under the jurisdiction of Veluriyam Capital. Other than that, there was no corner which their influence didn’t reach. It was incredibly frightening. The more Jiang Chen understood about the city, the more alarmed he became. If the city had a complete fallout with Veluriyam Capital, the latter would surely eat a greater loss. That was an unarguable fact.

1. The name of the Xia dynasty founder is found within this sect’s name

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