Chapter 157: Constructing the Immortal's Cave
Translator: StackThatCoin Editor: Hitesh
Wu Qi took a stroll around the foot of the cliff wall, so that he could have a clear and accurate glimpse at the trend of the underground energy vein. Then, he entered the dark pine forest, where he buried twelve large formation disks with several dozen feet diameter. On each of these formation disks were twelve array pillars, all made from the same material of Wood, Water, and Earth element. They were also socketed with energy stones of three different elements, while Wood and Water element energy stones occupied the most of them.
He arranged these formation disks into two concentric circles, with three disks at the inner circle and nine at the outer circle. After that, he drew a small portion of underground energies and injected them into the formation disks. He carefully unleashed a few finger incantations, using them to activate the 'Illusionary Formation of Seven Emotions and Six Sensory Pleasures' engraved on these formation disks. Suddenly, there was a slight twist and turn in the surrounding air, and the light in the dark pine forest dimmed every so slightly. If not because Wu Qi had been paying close attention to the surrounding, he would not be able to detect such tiny changes in the light.
A faded water vapor began to be produced and rose from the ground. A chilly wind blew by out of nowhere, bringing forth faintly audible moaning and groaning of young girls, their trifle giggles with someone in love, lingering back and forth within the forest while pushing the mist into all directions. Very soon, the dark pine forest several miles in circumference was entirely enshrouded by the mist. Such a mist looked identical to that produced by nature. When the Sun rose, it would retract back into the ground. Thus, no one could find out anything unusual about it.
Standing on top of a tree, Wu Qi carefully spent some time in calculating. Then, he laboriously selected several dozen pine trees within the forest and relocated them, before burying a great amount of energy stones in some places which chimed in with the formation disks. With all that being done, the construction of the foundation of the lower-grade illusionary formation recorded in Scroll of Stealing was considered complete. Although it was merely a lower-grade illusory formation inside of Scroll of Stealing, and a formation consisting of only twelve array pillars, but it was able to draw in fiends from the outer territory and the ones hiding inside. Not only could it confuse one's hearing, vision and thought, it could also attack one's soul and Nascent Divinity. Even a Heaven Immortal who had cultivated his Nascent Divinity would suffer in this formation due to a small careless mistake.
Wu Qi breathed out a sigh of relief, feeling satisfied with the hard work done. He took out the Sword of Greedy Wolf and controlled it to messily hack and hew on the cliff wall, carving out twelve holes, three inside and nine outside, several dozens of feet deep each. After that, he buried another set of twelve formation disks into these deep holes, using rocks and rubbles to fill the holes, and finally melted these rocks with Fire of Samadhi so they could become one with the cliff wall. He then unleashed finger incantations and activated the illusionary formation deployed on the cliff wall. Immediately, faded water vapor shot right out from the wall, merging together with the water vapor coming out from the dark pine forest.
Sword of Greedy Golf transformed into a dark sword beam that looked like a flood dragon, as it began cutting at the foot of the cliff wall. It dug out a small channel where the ground and the cliff wall met, stretching straight up to the lake Wu Qi found in the valley earlier. After that, Wu Qi flew up onto the cliff. He brought a small river from several miles away, changing its course to make it flow down from the cliff. The little stream of water gurgled down from top of the cliff wall, through the ancient pine trees and wisterias and splashed down to the root of the wall. Several thousand streams of water the size of grown tree trunks provided a perfect veil before the cliff wall. They twisted and turned and splashed in the mountain breeze, hiding the traces of the faded water vapor produced by the formation.
The water fell down from the cliff, pouring into the small channel and finally flowed into the lake in the valley. With Wu Qi’s ingenious design, it all looked almost natural, as no traces of human work could be detected. Looking at the work, he pondered for some time, then found a few hives of venomous bees from a loft cliff far away, brought them over and hung them on the pine trees under the cliff. Ordinary mortals and even Xiantian warriors would evade upon seeing such nasty insects, while cultivators would never bother to waste their time with these unintelligent bugs. As a result, the secrecy of this place was greatly improved.
After preparing all this, only then Wu Qi came up to the cliff wall, where the core of the illusionary formation was located. He controlled the flying sword carefully and stabbed into the wall. As the sword beam flashed, a large chunk of rock was hacked off from the wall. Suddenly, a strong jet of energy burst out from the rock wall with a loud whistling noise. Actually, there was an energy node in this part of the rock wall, and as the energies accumulated within the wall had reached an extreme level, when the cliff wall was broken, the highly concentrated energies immediately sprayed out.
Without the slightest hesitation, Wu Qi quickly threw out the silver lotus, putting it before the hole so that no matter how much energy was being sprayed out, they were all devoured by it. Gradually, five distinctive colors appeared on the once silvery surface of the lotus. Five bright glows of different colors were seen moving ceaselessly, making this spirit item look exceptionally splendid and magical, filled with a powerful aura.
One after another, rock was hacked and extracted by the sword beam. Wu Qi stored all the extracted rocks in his storage ring temporarily, then brought them far away from the forest. He crushed them into pieces and threw them far, far away. Every single piece of extracted rock was neatly handled in a sane manner, leaving no traces behind.
A doorway the size of an ordinary door was produced on the rock wall. On top of the doorway, Wu Qi engraved three ancient characters - 'The Out-worldly Residence' (离尘居). Then, he laboriously dug out two rooms behind it, first one in front and the second one at the rear. In the front room, he placed a stone table, stone chairs, and tossed a few crude clay teacups on the table. He also sprinkled a few used tea leaves into those teacups.
In the rear room, he made a stone bed and placed a weed cushion he bought in Ji City on the bed in a messy order. Carefully, Wu Qi then placed a skeleton on top of the cushion; it was from an Embryonic Breath tier cultivator. As he had killed quite a lot of people recently, there were many similar skeletons placed inside his storage ring. It came in handy right now.
Wu Qi again tossed out a lower-grade flying sword, a middle-grade protective shirt of the same magical item quality, and even removed the boots he was wearing right now, which were magical items as well. He threw all them on top of the bed, before the skeleton. These items no longer provided any great usage to him, but could serve as great decorative items for this cave. Besides these few magical items, he also threw a few different lower tier spirit pills on the bed. He intentionally loosened the corks of the pill bottles. With that, it would not take long before the medicinal strength of these spirit pills evaporated completely, and even a Divine Golden Immortal would not be able to find out what the spirit pills in the bottles were.
After being done with the decoration, Wu Qi spun and squeezed down underground, going deeper until he reached to the depth of nearly ten thousand feet. He had come almost right above the energy node. Here, he opened up an enormous cave, one thousand feet in both length and width. In this Immortal Cave, he constructed several dozens of formations using the strongest abilities of his, which he could control. They consisted not only illusionary formations, but also offensive formations, trapping formations, and many other types of formations.
With the profound knowledge of formations he learned from Scroll of Stealing, Wu Qi was confident that even an expert who had cultivated his Nascent Divinity, if he were not familiar with formations, would not be able to break the defensive mechanisms in this cave within a couple of days. Right at the center of this cave, Wu Qi placed three formation disks of minor teleportation formation. One of them was interconnected with the three formation disks he placed in Ji City earlier, while the other two were connected to elsewhere.
He found a remote cave several hundred miles away from this valley, where he buried the second formation disk in it. As for the last formation disk, he planned to place it in another Immortal Cave of his. With that, he would have many escape routes prepared while he was at Ji City, and every secret hideout would be interconnected with other caves through teleportation formations. Then, through different teleportation formations, he could also transport to some wilderness outside of his cave. With that, it provided a great guarantee to the secrecy and safety of all his secret caves.
After finishing preparing the formation disk in the remote cave, Wu Qi used a small illusionary formation to seal off the place. Then, through the teleportation formation, he traveled back to his first secret cave. In here, he left behind a batch of energy stones and some healing and life-saving spirit pills, together with two backup storage rings. As no one could predict when he would be struck by calamity, the more he prepared, the bigger the assurance he had in keeping his life safe.
The methods of constructing all kind of secret hideouts the shadowy figure, who passed Scroll of Stealing over to Wu Qi, taught him were simply fantastic. He owned at least several hundred thousand secret hideouts all over the world. Each of them was located in various unimaginably queer, harsh and dangerous places, and many of them were in places which no one could ever think of. Each of the secret hideouts was protected by powerful defensive mechanisms hundreds and thousands of times stronger than those constructed by Wu Qi, equipped with various life-saving methods and countless healing and life-saving spirit pills and escaping devices.
For example, one of the life-saving secret hideouts of the shadowy figure was actually hiding right inside the core of a supermassive star. It required a heaven-shaking approach to build something like that. As of now, it was far beyond the consideration of Wu Qi. What he could do now was try his best to prepare a few more escape routes for himself.
After completing the construction of the first secret cave, Wu Qi also deployed countless distracting arrays and traps at its perimeter. Only then did he leave the unnamed valley, venturing deeper into Meng Mountains. As he traveled further, he kept searching for places where energy veins were found, or dangerous and harsh places with barren hills and turbulent rivers. He meticulously constructed secret caves one after another, serving as his escape routes. And because of his improved cultivation base, in just a short one month, he had traveled more than one hundred thousand miles deep into the Meng Mountains.
During this period of time, Wu Qi had constructed over twenty secret caves in this vast Meng Mountain, on top of over thirty teleportation formations in the various remote wilderness which served as backups. While in the middle of constructing these secret caves, he also harvested countless herbs and rare resources in the mountain, recorded several hundred exact locations of precious mineral mines, their rough volume and quality.
After that, Wu Qi spent another half a month, traveling in a straight line into the depths of the Meng Mountains.
But this time, he was traveling with a flying sword, which allowed him to cover a distance of nearly twenty thousand miles in a day and a night. Half a month later, he arrived at a place four hundred thousand miles deep into the Meng Mountains, yet he still had not found the border of this vast mountain range. Right in front of him was an enormous river, nearly one hundred times wider than Myriad Red River, and had its surface hovering with dense water vapor, stretching far into an unknown distance.
Staring at the rocking and rolling river water in front of him, with the water rushing westward, Wu Qi decided to end his journey here.
In a ridge over three hundred miles away from the giant river, he found a lofty peak which could overlook the river. He constructed his last secret cave right there.
For this secret cave, he used up all the formation disks and up to ninety percent of his energy stones, constructing several hundred formations which interconnected with each other. Only Wu Qi, who had inherited the Scroll of Stealing, could have deployed such a great formation. If it were some other cultivations, just the conflicts between different formations would have blown the entire great mountain into the sky.
After getting settled with everything, Wu Qi had his mind finally rested in peace, giving the last secret cave a name - 'The Underhand Cave'. Carefully, he took out two dark-green bodies from his storage ring, both stiffened yet not showing any sign of rotting.
These two 'corpses' were actually the bodies of Shi Tianmo and his son. That day, Meng Xiaobai brought some men and left the city, pretending they were going to bury them. But actually, both bodies were sent back to Wu Qi in the end. As Wu Qi was very busy before this, he simply did not have time to 'digest' them. But now, a smile emerged on Wu Qi's face.
He quickly stripped off every single cloth from both bodies, then took out a huge amount of herbs.