Chapter 225: Emerging from Isolation, and the Invasion of the Vampiric Empire
A dragon pattern vaguely covered the pitch-black body of the blade.
One could sense a faint yet intimidating sword aura coming from it.
The Dragonslayer was obviously a better sword compared to the Bloodthirst.
It was truly something worthy of being classified as a power item.
The blade managed to achieve the power of a mid-tier power item, skipping the stage of being a low-tier one entirely.
While the difference between low-tier and mid-tier power items did not seem to be much, the powers represented by the tier difference were actually significant.
If Chu Yunfan were to make a move again, he would not have needed to summon the thunder dragon again, for that Dragonslayer blade alone would have enabled him to sink an American aircraft carrier.
That was a feat deemed near impossible for a low-tier power item.
The sword had evidently become more than the usual so-called godlike weapons.
One of the examples of so-called godlike weapons would be the Bloodthirst. Its sharpness was unmatched compared to regular cold arms, even when said cold arms were forged from modern high-tech alloys.
Despite the Bloodthirst’s formidable status, it was still considered a weapon of mortals instead of a power item befitting a true cultivator.
While power items were nonetheless formidable weapons as well, they were more than just formidable weapons. Their prowess lied with more than just their sharpness, as they inherently came with all types of mystical abilities.
Take the Dragonslayer as an example. It was a power item that Lu Xuan sealed that terrifying Advent of the Thunder Dragon skill with. The Dragonslayer practically enabled him to cast that skill as he wished in the future. He had not had to worry about depleting all of his powers with that one single move.
But then again, it was a one-time thing; he had to replenish the skill into the blade afterward, nonetheless.
The unreal properties of the Taiyi Metal enabled Lu Xuan to boost the Dragonslayer’s quality from its supposed low-tier to mid-tier in one shot.
When it came to sharpness alone, however, the Dragonslayer was more than enough to match that of high-tier power items.
That weapon was more than enough for Lu Xuan at the moment. The era where power items were all over the place had yet to come, after all.
Without nourishment from spirit qi, qualities of many power items saw a sharp drop in every way, even if they were to be able to be preserved after the dragon vein was severed.
His Coiling Dragon Ring was one such power item.
When compared to the ring he possessed back in his past life, the Coiling Dragon Ring, as it was at the moment, was but a low-tier power item.
However, even low-tier power items were considered extremely precious at the moment, nonetheless. Even massive organizations like the Taichu Group, which benefited from its ancient heritage of cultivation, did not necessarily have many such low-tier power items at their disposal. Even if they were to have any mid-tier ones in their possession, those items had to be reserved as trump cards.
That was due to them not having Lu Xuan’s powers. They needed to think of ways just to even make use of such power items alone instead of being able to field them as regular, standard weapons of war.
The Dragonslayer alone had boosted Lu Xuan’s combat capacity by over 50 percent.
50 percent was actually far more terrifying than it sounded like; it was an increase in powers that many Invincible Vajras could only dream of.
Lu Xuan emerged out of isolation, and Yang Chengsi, who had been waiting outside, went up to him right away. He reported any changes that had happened thus far.
It was only then that Lu Xuan realized that the world was no longer the same as the one he knew that he went into isolation.
It was especially so when the world of cultivators was concerned.
While he had only used a single day to craft the Dragonslayer, he went on to patch all manner of inadequacies with the blade afterward. He then sealed the Advent of the Thunder Dragon skill into it. The entire process took him one whole week.
A lot has changed throughout the world within that one week.
The change was far more pronounced when it came to the world of cultivators.
The huge shadow that loomed over the United States all along—the Vampiric Empire—bared its fangs.
The empire’s existence was considered a secret from common folks. Governments of nations all over the world had been reluctant to acknowledge the existence of those paranormal beings and phenomena before spirit qi was restored to the world for fear of throwing their citizens into mass panic.
However, the existence of such beings was not a secret to cultivators.
The backing of the Vampiric Empire had a lot to do with the United States’ streak of victories throughout the wars they fought all over the world for the past several decades.
The American government never got along well with the Vampiric Empire, and massive wars had even broken out between the two parties.
But then again, the development of affairs throughout the years had cemented the symbiosis between the Vampiric Empire and the American government, effectively making them into a single entity.
It had been the vampires that took out any paranormal factors, specifically the cultivators who possessed mystical abilities, when the United States went to expand its influence throughout the world.
The way the American government went about waging wars throughout the world in earlier times earned the ire of cultivators worldwide.
It was especially so after World War II.
The vampires had been able to maintain their powers from declining rapidly through deriving sustenance from human blood. That was precisely why the Vampiric Empire was able to keep expanding its influence throughout the years, while many cultivators had fallen into decline. A good number of ancient cultivation heritages struggled to keep themselves afloat.
The Huaxian cultivators were no strangers to the Vampiric Empire, especially after the North Korean War back in the 1950s, where a massive head-on conflict broke out between the Huaxian cultivators and the Vampiric Empire.
That battle was indeed an earth-shaking one, and the Huaxian cultivators, which had been in severe decline, suffered a crippling blow.
But they still managed to repel the forces of the Vampiric Empire.
Both parties suffered great losses.
Since then, the Vampiric Empire never dared to set foot on Huaxian soil any longer.
The vampires bared their fangs out in the open yet again after spending nearly 100 years recuperating, and it was the Huaxian cultivators that they were after.
The leading vampire was also someone that even the Huaxian cultivators were very familiar with, for he was none other than Count Dracula, the one who led the Vampiric Empire’s forces and cultivators from many other nations, to attack Huaxia back in the day.
About 100 hundred years had passed since then, and that king of vampires had completely recovered apparently. He pulled something that shocked the entire world of cultivators of Huaxia, on the very day he stepped foot onto Huaxian soil.
Several days ago, on the brightly lit base of the WuTang Clan in the WuTang Mountains.
As one of the topmost heritages among all found in Huaxian soil, the WuTang Clan was deemed the Shaolin Temple’s equal.
It was said that the south revered the WuTang while the north, the Shaolin.
That saying alone was more than enough to demonstrate the prestige of the WuTang Clan.
It was especially so after spirit qi was restored to the planet. The clan, which had been struggling to survive for ages, brought the age-old heritage to the fore, nurturing a great many renowned fighters in a very short period of time, shaking the cultivators of the south. Its influence became so great that it seemed as if the WuTang Clan had become one of the leaders among the cultivators of the south.
The clan’s prestige and status were recovering at a frightening rate, approaching what they had been several hundred years ago.
A faint barrier enveloped the entire clan’s estate, on top of its majestic temples, which served as a measure to fend off both invaders, as well as pesky tourists.
A group of figures clad in black was moving at a frightening speed to the top of the clan in the dark of night.
One could vaguely tell those beings to be of blonde hair and blue eyes. They were of very pale complexion and wore black robes. What stood out most, however, were the webbed wings that grew out of their backs. They were huge and powerful enough to give them sustained flight.