Chapter 187: Getting blood

Yun Jhin needed quite a lot of blood to awaken the river fully, the question was where he could get it? Even though the blood of the innocent would awaken the river faster, any type of blood would work but he would need higher quantities of it.

He couldn't sacrifice his disciples yet as they were too few and if word got out no one would come to join the sect anymore as no one wanted to walk into a death trap.

He could give the current disciples the mission of gathering the necessary "ingredients" but people knew about the characteristics of the blood river so they would realize what he wanted to do when his disciples went around to gather people.

So the question was how could he gather an immense amount of people to squeeze them dry and throw them in the river?

And do all of that stealthily.

Yun Jhin hovered over the blood river while sitting cross-legged, his eyes were closed and his hands were moving rhythmically in front of him as the river underneath him started to glow with a crimson color from time to time, the river was dried up and dark red but Yun Jhin's hand movements were enlivening it somewhat.

Yun Jhin shook his head as he stopped his actions:

"This would take too much time, only if there was a way to funnel blood from somewhere... actually there is a way."

Yun Jhin's eyes sparkled as he thought about a way on how to funnel blood towards the river.

He only needed to find a location where many deaths would happen daily and install a siphoning formation there, combined with a spatial formation he could connect the river with that location so whenever someone died there, their blood would be absorbed into the formation and delivered to the river.

But Yun Jhin wasn't up to date with the current universe locations yet, after all, a lot of time passed since he had reincarnated and he only had a small understanding of the overall universe and the new planets that had popped up with time.

He left the blood river and ascended to the castle as he asked the old men duo about dangerous places where people would die daily.

They started to rummage through their minds to think about any such places, they were rather lazy and they didn't care much about such places and only the profits that came from them, sometimes they wouldn't even bother to learn the names of the people who brought out the treasures they sold after they ripped off the actual seller.

"Uh... Um... Actually, I think one of those locations could be the Dead Bones valley? It's under the jurisdiction of the Dead Bones sect and people are sacrificed there daily their bones are extracted while they are alive and then their bodies are boiled in the gigantic cauldron before being fed to their bone beasts."

Yun Jhin shook his head as he said:

"I need neutral locations."

"Neutral ones?"

"Master we are not sure about any neutral places, most of these locations are controlled by evil sects of higher status, also they are eyed by the righteous sects as they want to destroy these places, there are no such neutral grounds where people die daily, even though there are some 'dangerous sites' people die there but not as often as you would want."

Yun Jhin frowned then asked them about the latest news and a universal map.

It seemed that the righteous sects had reined themselves in as there had been no attacks whatsoever, Yun Jhin's reputation and former actions had made it so their fear and cautiousness acted against them in this situation.

"Atleast I will have a few hundred years at this rate... but the blood river won't awaken so soon if it doesn't have sacrifices."

"What should I do?"

Yun Jhin had a dilemma, what could he do to awaken the river without getting the wrong attention from the other sects?

He could hold a death tournament with bountiful rewards... that could work?

Yun Jhin knew that he would attract the disciples of his own sect in such a free tournament but you couldn't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs first.

Yun Jhin's eyes shined as he looked at the two old men kneeling in front of him as he decreed:

"We shall host a tournament for future and current disciples and even those from the other sects or rogue cultivators are allowed to attend, this shall be the first big event my sect will host in the universe besides the recruiting efforts. It shall be something that everyone shall enjoy!"

The duo didn't know what to say as they kneeled, they knew that this was mostly a scheme or something similar, how could Yun Jhin be so good to give out free rewards?

"The rules will be as following: there are no rules besides the winning conditions which are killing your opponent or making him surrender."

The duo nodded as they left the palace and sent the invitation to the whole universe using the communication formation that was tied both to the sect and the Bazaar.

Yun Jhin started the construction of the arena personally as he created a gladiator-style arena in 10 days quite easily, it was plenty sturdy and even God Realm experts wouldn't be able to break it easily if they were below the middle stages.

Yun Jhin invitation stirred quite a lot of people awake, most of them knew that Yun Jhin was plotting something but considering they didn't know that the blood river was dormant they still bit the bait.

Most of them were rogue cultivators who didn't want to join sects but they were too tempted by the rewards that Yun Jhin put out, pills, techniques, and the like, the top winner would also be awarded whatever he wanted, well if Yun Jhin had what he wanted, if not he would be given something similar in value that Yun Jhin had in stock.

This put the whole jianghu (martial world) on fire, they all flocked to Yun Jhin's sect as they signed up at the new gladiator arena, they didn't find it weird that there were no rules involved and the signs were mostly hinting that a massive killing was going to happen.

Yun Jhin watched from the underground through the defensive formation which he already repaired to around 40% which was the current maximum with the current resource channels.

"Hmm.. no old fogies are present and very few disciples from the other sects, it's pretty much perfect!"

Yun Jhin's eyes glowed as he looked at the rogue cultivators who joined the tournament up and down, he was analyzing their quintessence and looking through their bloodlines trying to see if there were any good ones worth poaching into his sect.

Most rogue cultivators had mixed bloodlines, no physiques worthy of mention nor any pedigree that the sects wanted but there would always be diamonds in the rough where their mixed bloodlines mutated into something even better than the original bloodlines!

Yun Jhin could even incite such mutations with a low chance of them being successful due to his knowledge of bloodlines.

"Very disappointing, it seems all of them will go into the mouth of the blood river."

The way the tournament was made only the top 1,000 would actually survive if the others didn't surrender and they were killed on the spot, and currently there were around 15,000,000 participants!

While Yun Jhin's sect only got 750,000 disciples the moment they learned that they would be able to participate in a tournament where they wouldn't have to join the sect a lot more people came regardless of the distance.

A lot of rogue cultivators enjoyed their freedom and hated the sect's type of abusing their disciples through the points system. They all thought themselves to be free birds that couldn't be chained down to the sects, but the moment some free benefits came they would flock to the sects like sharks would do when they smelled blood.

They were all opportunists at heart and also not very smart.

Most rogue cultivators could be considered quite dumb as they didn't go through proper education in cultivation and they could only cultivate instinctively with the help of their mixed bloodline inheritance or the things they scavenged, thus gaps in knowledge appeared.

Even though they were rather sly when it came to street smarts they wouldn't be as smart as to understand what the rules of the tournament actually meant, but that didn't mean there weren't exceptions!

A blonde-haired man with a dirty beard and bags under his eyes who wore a dirty robe started shouting outside near the arena:

"GUYS DON'T YOU SEE THAT THE TOURNAMENT IS FISHY?"

"DON'T YOU SEE THAT THEY ARE MEANT FOR US TO SLAUGHTER EACH OTHER?"

"DON'T YOU KNOW THE EVIL REPUTATION OF THE BLOOD THRONE SECT? WHY WOULD YOU EVEN CONSIDER COMING HERE?"

The man was trying to play the hero as he warned everyone here about the nefarious plans of Yun Jhin but everyone looked at him with either anger or annoyance:

"Bro if the patriarch of the blood throne sect wanted us dead we would have already been dead, why are you muddying the water?"

"Yeah what if we have to kill each other for the rewards of the tournament? It's only natural such things happen, after all, even though this is a hosted event it doesn't mean death won't happen in our day to day lives, considering the sect's disciples participate too it must be a tempering trial for them as well!"

"Yeah! You go away if you don't want to participate!"

The dirty blonde-haired man started to curse under his breath as he took out a bottle of alcohol from under his robe and took a swig of it as he hiccuped and left.

Yun Jhin narrowed his eyes as he watched the man leave, that man wasn't a rogue cultivator for sure!

Yun Jhin's body disappeared from above the blood river as he activated his stealth technique and teleported to the outside area of the meteorite, his eyes targeted the dirty blonde-haired man who was at the 8th stage of the sage realm under his disguise that Yun Jhin easily saw through.

"Let's see which sect's disciple is this..."

Yun Jhin appeared behind him as he put his hand over his mouth and a 1,3 meters blue ki sword went through the man's back and exiting his chest, the man looked puzzledly at the ki sword sticking out from his chest before life faded away from his eyes.

Yun Jhin started to absorb his soul as he thought:

"Let's hope it isn't a disciple from any of the stronger sects..."