High in the clouds, a wide flying ship was traveling steadily.
A few young Foundation Establishment cultivators were surrounding a well-dressed youth and chatting and praising him. This was the usual way of interaction among the disciples of the Hundred Tempering Mountain.
These Foundation Establishment Cultivators were all inner sect disciples, but from the moment they chose to join the Hundred Tempering Mountain, it meant that they would never experience equality in their lives.
As time passed, the disciples of the Hundred Tempering Mountain formed such a relationship.
The disciples of the two families oppressed the inner sect disciples. The inner sect disciples attacked the outer sect disciples, and the family disciples and inner sect disciples bullied the outer sect disciples together.
Trials were not terrifying. The terrifying thing was that ordinary disciples would never have the chance to escape the identity of the victim. This was very despair inducing.
The only fortunate thing was that there were many ordinary disciples in the Hundred Tempering Mountain. They might not necessarily bully one person alone.
Cultivating to this extent could only be said to be aggrieved.
At this moment, a disciple suddenly felt uneasy. He looked in the direction of the flying ship’s bow and inexplicably felt a little uneasy.
“Senior Brother, do you think the two demonic cultivators from Shu Mountain will attack our fleet?”
There were many merchant ships in the Hundred Tempering Mountain. It was impossible for them to arrange for Golden Core cultivators to escort each ship. If they were really hit by those two, they would definitely not be spared.
“What are you afraid of? You’re still too young. Two demonic cultivators scared you to this extent.”
That well-dressed disciple smiled with disdain.
“Think about it carefully. Those two guys only attacked merchant ships from a few small sects.”
“Who are we? We’re from the Hundred Tempering Mountain!”
“In this Great Mountain Region, there are not many people who dare to go against us. Even if the Shu Mountain Five Elements Peak does things, they still have to seek our Hundred Tempering Mountain’s opinion. It’s just two sword cultivators who have fallen to the demonic path. They definitely won’t dare to provoke us.”
“If you follow me in the future, you have to be braver. If you embarrass me outside, you’ll suffer.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Senior Brother is right.”
This senior brother was very confident. In terms of confidence, he had indeed surpassed the Shu Mountain disciples.
How could the other disciples dare to refute? They also cooperated and agreed.
“Eh? What’s this?”
At this moment, they discovered that outside the spiritual qi barrier of the flying ship, there were suddenly many white wisps.
The well-dressed youth walked to the edge of the fence and reached out to pass through the cover formed by spiritual qi, touching the biting cold air outside.
Then, his palm turned cold, and a white wisp landed on it.
“This is… snow?”
He pulled back his hand and was a little stunned. A ball of white snow was slowly melting in his palm, quickly turning into a puddle and disappearing.
“Senior Brother, is it snowing? I didn’t expect to see such beautiful snow in the sky.”
The flying ship of the Hundred Tempering Mountain did not change direction because of a small change in the weather. It directly collided into the airflow of snow.
Although there was a spiritual qi barrier, the temperature on the deck quickly fell.
“It’s really… snowing… how is that possible?”
However, not everyone was so heartless. They did not realize it in a short period of time and also felt a strong sense of strangeness.
They looked at the clouds. Sure enough, they were covered in dark clouds.
However, the problem was that they were now… flying above the clouds!
The sky was bright and the sun was bright. Below were thick dark clouds.
How could the snow float up to the flying ship from below? This was extremely unreasonable even in the cultivation world.
Something was amiss!
The vigilant cultivators observed the environment carefully.
Then, they discovered that there was something wrong with the dark clouds below!
“Damn it! There are ghosts in the clouds!”
In the dark clouds, countless ghosts were densely packed and roaring greedily at them!
When the few Foundation Establishment Cultivators saw this scene, their scalps instantly turned numb.
“Call the elders! Call the elders!”
Amidst a sharp cry, a black coffin with some color in it descended from the sky and hit the flying ship that was still traveling at high speed.
Boom!
The coffin pierced through the emergency barrier with unparalleled might and crashed into the flying ship with unstoppable force!
In an instant, more than ten decks were pierced through. Even the hardest and most important central dragon bone at the bottom was shattered on the spot!
A disciple courting death actually dared to look at the situation in the hole.
Looking down, with just a collision, a huge hole was created in the expensive flying ship!
The flying ship shook violently. The dragon bone was broken, and 70-80% of the array formations on the ship lost their effectiveness.
The most important offensive, defensive, and acceleration array formations were all down!
Only the floating effect remained, preventing the entire flying ship from crashing.
This was the might of the Yin Burial Coffin that had already pierced through the limit of a Profound-rank artifact and was transforming into an Earth-rank artifact.
Although this coffin was not an offensive artifact in essence, it contained a vast amount of high-grade spiritual qi. This made its weight extremely shocking, and its might was boundless when thrown out.
The Yin Burial Coffin was very well used for such a sneak attack. Then, a cultivator with a mask and a pure white body landed from the sky and stood on the deck.
The few disciples on the deck looked at the person who came in shock. Although they did not know each other, the pair of lifeless eyes under the mask made them instinctively tremble.
Swoosh!
Before the flying ship could sound the alarm, a freezing cold wave instantly engulfed the entire flying ship. In an instant, the merchant ship was completely covered in a thick layer of frost.
The few disciples who bore the brunt of the attack directly turned into subtle ice sculptures. To them, just the spiritual qi of a Golden Core cultivator was an irresistible force.
“Damn it! Who dares to attack our Hundred Tempering Mountain’s flying ship!”
The two Core Formation elders finally stabilized the array formation of the flying ship and hurriedly rushed out.
However, their hearts sank when they saw the enemy.
It was a Golden Core cultivator!
“Fellow Daoist, please leave quickly! Otherwise, the Hundred Tempering Mountain will not let you off!”
The two of them were still at the True Core stage and were still far from the Golden Core stage.
Their cultivation level was inferior to the enemy so their confidence plummeted. The two elders could only bring up the sect in an attempt to intimidate the enemy.
However, their warning clearly did not work.
The other party did not even bother to look at them. He did not have the slightest intention of paying attention to them and continued to release cold air.
If this continued, the entire flying ship would be frozen, and the disciples on board would die here.
They did not have time to think further. Under such circumstances, they had to give it a try even if they could not win!
The two of them took out a crimson medicinal pill from their arms, and after hesitating for a moment, they stuffed it into their mouths.
This was a traditional technique of the Hundred Tempering Mountain. Their strength was not enough so they had to make up for it using medicinal pills. The soaring spiritual qi gave them some confidence. They rushed towards the masked Golden Core cultivator from both sides.
The two artifacts in their hands constantly emitted a terrifying heat.
Boom! Boom!
With two loud sounds, the shock wave that erupted blew the entire deck into chaos. The few ice sculptures were even blown away by the air currents and landed in the dark clouds.
However, when the airflow dissipated, their attack that was enough to shatter the mountaintop was blocked by two snowflake shaped ice shields.
Among the variant spiritual roots, Wind focused on speed and Lightning focused on attack. As for Ice, the specialty was its defense.
At that time, in Cloud Stream City, Elder Duan Shuang, who was injured, had relied on his outstanding ice-attribute defense to forcefully resist the lightning tribulation and delay the three elders of the Scripture Storage Valley.
Now that time had passed, things were the same and people were different. The ice attribute Golden Core had long fused with the Zombie Core, becoming a Heavenly Lightning Indestructible Zombie Core that was hard to come by in a hundred years.
Not to mention that the power was several times greater than before, the opponents he faced were only two True Core realm cultivators. It was really difficult to give him any considerable pressure.
He casually detonated the ice shield and blew the two Hundred Tempering Mountain elders away. The terrifying cold air froze their faces until they turned purple. The shattered ice even scratched their bodies.
In just one round, the difference between them was obvious.
The Nine Nether clone did not pursue them and slapped the deck instead.
The flying ship suddenly shook. Under the power of a Golden Core cultivator, it could no longer maintain its height and slowly sank into the dark clouds that were still churning with dense Yin qi.
If this flying ship sank, there would be no chance to see the light of day again.
Countless ghost soldiers holding Yin Talisman Blades pounced at the flying ship like sharks that had smelled blood, tearing everything inside.
The vast number of ghost soldiers in the coffin made their first move and sacrificed a Hundred Tempering Mountain caravan.
…
Recently, in the Nightless City, the reputation of the Nine Nether clone’s Green Mountain Residence had risen.
The high-end cultivation community of Green Mountain Residence that he created did not directly affect the profits of the Nightless City. Instead, it became a highlight of the city and attracted a lot of fresh blood to come.
Although the Green Mountain Residence was churning countless spirit stones every day, there were really not many people who were jealous of it.
This was because the spiritual qi supply of Green Mountain Residence was really too generous. There was really no false advertising. The full high-grade spiritual qi allowed one to cultivate until they were satisfied.
With a little calculation, one would know that this Green Mountain Residence could only earn a little bit of profit even when all the guest rooms were full.
However, most of the low-level cultivators were still struggling to fill their stomachs. Some with small savings would only treat Green Mountain Residence as a luxurious service. Only when they broke through in their cultivation realm would they come and get a temporary membership for a few days.
Therefore, in the eyes of many people, Green Mountain Ascetic was making a loss by promoting this business. He would probably lose quite a number of spirit stones every day.
The business of losing spirit stones naturally could not be said to attract any greed.
The only thing that made them curious was where did Green Mountain Ascetic get so many high-grade spirit stones to squander at will.
However, no one would attack a Golden Core cultivator just out of curiosity. At the very least, they would not attack so easily.
The Nine Nether clone also used this platform to get to know many Golden Core cultivators.
The news that the two sword cultivators surnamed Zuo had been loitering near the Nightless City recently would affect the prosperity of the city. Naturally, news had been forcefully blocked, and the lower-level channels were almost unable to know about it.
He had also obtained second-hand information from one of those Golden Cores.
When he heard this news, he knew that they were most likely the reason why the two Golden Core cultivators had come to the Nightless City.
During this period of time, Prosperous Jiang Hong and his Nine Nether clone were constantly harvesting the other party’s spiritual root seeds.
He could take over about 50 people every three days. Currently, he was even preparing to speed up the process.
Jiang Li intercepting the other party’s spiritual root seeds like this was no different than cutting off its path to become stronger and destroying its Great Dao foundation.
This was an extremely vile act. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they were irreconcilable enemies.
However, before the spiritual root matured to a certain stage, the Spiritual Root Branch could not directly affect those disciples with artificial spiritual roots, nor could it directly understand who was behind this.
The Nine Nether Branch could only determine the approximate location of their disappearance by sensing the spiritual root seeds.
However, Golden Core sword cultivators did not have the ability to attack Nightless City directly, so they could only attack the merchant ship that was out of the city.
Jiang Li did not have the intention to fight with Golden Core sword cultivators for the time being.
However, Jiang Li had some thoughts about attacking the caravan.
Recently, the Hundred Tempering Mountain seemed to have obtained a batch of top-grade spiritual wood and planned to send it to the Misty Mountain Range to build a vast stronghold.
The advancement of the Nine Nether Wood just happened to require a large amount of spiritual wood as supplementary materials.
Since they were so generously placing these resources before him, Jiang Li won’t stand on ceremony. After all, the Hundred Tempering Mountain had offended him before… and they were just too vicious.
In the Hundred Tempering Mountain, there just happened to be Jiang Li’s ‘good friend’. Moreover, this good friend’s status was similarly not low.
With his information, Jiang Li easily grasped the sailing route of the Hundred Tempering Mountain merchant ship.
Therefore, he did not tail them at all but ambushed them in advance. During this time, he even had the time to go to the Black Lotus Divine Sect and bring back the sword cultivator clone and the asura’s corpses.
The only pity was that the two Core Formation cultivators were determined to fight to the death. The Nine Nether clone used all his methods and only captured one of them alive.
After feeding him the spiritual root seed and putting on a mask, the Green Mountain Residence in the Nightless City finally had a proper subordinate to use.
Qin Shuman and a group of ghosts had always been needed to hold the fort. It was indeed a little embarrassing
Jiang Li was not afraid that the Hundred Tempering Mountain would find him.
Everyone knew that Green Mountain Ascetic was a wood attribute cultivator, but the one who attacked the Hundred Tempering Mountain merchant ship was an ice attribute Golden Core cultivator.
No matter how hard they tried, they could not think of this!
The thick dark clouds slowly dispersed. There was no longer any Hundred Tempering Mountain flying ship in this sky.
…
Three days passed in a flash.
In these three days, Jiang Li had been cultivating his body, qi, and mind.
With the help of the Golden Core status, this process was not considered difficult.
He could sense that as long as he wanted to, he could take the final step at any time.
Moreover, he had a Dao Foundation Spiritual Fruit in his hand. Foundation Establishment was definitely not a problem. The problem was, what kind of Dao Foundation did he want to establish, and to what extent would he go?
When he opened the door, Shenshan Qiuhua was already waiting there.
She was clearly much more prepared today. She tied up her loose sleeves and was ready to face the challenge at any time.