Originally Yang Chen was still suspicious about the previously mentioned request for him to go out and train, but after hearing that he would have to go up the Floating Mountain, all of his doubts were immediately dispelled. Actually, they asked him to go out to allow him to participate in the heavenly general assembly of the new disciples for every sect on the Floating Mountain.
Thinking carefully, Yang Chen immediately thought of a reason. Perhaps, when he had killed that assassin, he had incidentally told them that he had no fear of illusions and many other things, which made the elders who wanted to gain some face for the Pure Yang Palace, consider him.
This was not some major event, but for Yang Chen, this was a huge opportunity. Initially, he was under the impression, that he still had to stay in the Nine Earth Manor for next three years and only then would he be able to go out, but he hadn’t anticipated that it would be so surprisingly easy.
After some casual packing, Yang Chen went towards the Manor’s main hall to bid farewell to Chu Heng and Du Qian, and then immediately set off on his first trip to training outside, after entering the Pure Yang Palace.
Gongsun Ling was not present, supposedly she had already set off. Yang Chen was delighted that Du Qian and them hadn’t asked him to journey together with Gongsun Ling, otherwise, it would have been quite troublesome.
The four servants Shen Da, Ho Lin, Ting Yuan and Gu Qin, were not allowed to leave, however. They were servants, thus before they would reach the sixth qi layer, they were not allowed to go out and train.
Free and easy by himself, when Yang Chen came out of the Nine Earth Manor, he suddenly felt like a fish who had jumped into the ocean or like a bird, flying high in the sky.
Because of their increased importance, every five or six days Yang Chen would refine a furnace of xun qi pills and deliver them to Medicine Hall. Previously in exchange for the sect’s contribution points, but later he had exchanged them all for crystal stones. Presently within Yang Chen’s hand, there were at least four to five hundred jin of crystal stones. After leaving the Nine Earth Manor, Yang Chen directly went to the city market at the foot of Meiqing Mountain.
Sun Hai Jing, that kind of nasty person, in no way would he give up this good opportunity to kill him and would definitely make some arrangements to kill him outside. Yang Chen had gone to the city market to purchase some stuff which he could use to defend himself.
Although Yang Chen was not afraid of trash like Sun Hai Jing, he was still only at the first qi layer and many higher level enemies also harbored grudges against him. At the moment Yang Chen had plenty of crystal stones with him, when he entered the city market, as long as he first looks for the crucial stuff and haggled slightly over the price, he could leisurely spend the money, after all, he was an expert.
After staying in the city market for three days, until Yang Chen felt with his own spiritual awareness for certain that no one was spying on him, only then did he confidently leave the city market and start flying towards a direction other than Meiqing Mountain.
Below Yang Chen’s body was only a paper crane. This was a type of talisman tool: the whole body of a paper crane consisted of magical symbols and was processed by the magical power of a foundation stage expert. As long as the user could input the magic power, he could urge the paper crane to fly. Even though its speed was not very high, compared to walking on foot it was a lot faster.
The cost of this paper crane was also quite high. Within the city market, it would cost at least around two hundred liangs of crystal stone. Yang Chen had bought it together with a pile of talismans and talisman gems, taking a discount from the seller for all purchases, absolutely cost effective. (liang=37.5 grams)
Yang Chen was flying along the foot of the Meiqing Mountain, following the signs of human habitation and avoiding all the regions which people are suspicious of. After flying on this route for two days, he had almost left the confines of the territory of influence of the Meiqing Mountain.
Only then did Yang Chen stop the paper crane and enter into the mountain road, disappearing without a trace.
Not long after Yang Chen’s silhouette faded away, a secretive group of four or five people appeared in the region where Yang Chen had gotten off of the paper crane. After looking everywhere, they conceded that they could not find him.
“What a crafty kid. We had come to the area of Pure Yang Palace’s influence to take care of him, but how could we expect that this guy would be so careful, even using a paper crane to escape.”
A middle aged man with a long scholarly beard turned around and said:
“Did you not say that you can find the whereabouts of this paper crane? Where is it?”
“I have pinned my Dark Stitch Tracking Spell on that paper crane, so even if he puts it in the qiankun pouch, it can still be found.”
Behind his body, a person dressed in black clothes with a shady vulture-like appearance coldly said:
“Causing me a loss of fifty liangs of crystal stones and only then cheaply purchasing it, don’t worry he won’t be able to escape.”
When the man in dark clothes finished speaking, he fished out a spell disk and started casting the spell he mentioned earlier. That spell disk was similar to a compass, within its center a pointer kept spinning round and round for a while without halting.
“What’s wrong?”
The person with the long, scholarly beard also looked at the strangely behaving spell disk and asked hastily.
“What happened?”
The person who looked like a vulture was also stunned for a moment. This type of condition could only occur in two types of situations: either Yang Chen was nearby or they had completely lost his trail. The first situation however was completely impossible.
Yang Chen could absolutely not leisurely cultivate in the presence of these five people of the seventh qi layer and these people would immediately sense him. They had already swept this region with their spiritual awareness several times and they were not able to find a trace of him. Yang Chen should’ve had destroyed that paper crane entirely, otherwise even if it was broken, the black clothed person’s tracing spell would have been able to find it.
This kind of situation certainly made all of them very suspicious. Taking the lead, the long bearded scholar looked all around and firmly commanded:
“Everyone seperate, he is just a first qi layer disciple and doesn’t have the ability to fly. Everyone look around in an area of five hundred li and then slowly search for him before the meeting, I don’t believe that he could have escaped an area of five hundred li within such a short amount of time!”
The other four quickly agreed and dispersed at lightening speed. These few people had only collaborated for this single business opportunity, if they succeeded, every one of them would have the chance to obtain a magic tool. This was the kind of opportunity which one would only come across rarely who would still let it slip by, so everyone put in all of their strength to fulfill this task. If they were not doing this within the territory of the Pure Yang Palace, then they would have made Yang Chen suffer the consequences already much earlier.
The long bearded scholar had the highest cultivation among them, so naturally he was the leader of these few people. Opening his spiritual awareness widely, he frantically swept the surroundings once but after he did not find anything, he started to become suspicious, so he began to carefully search the surroundings.
Yang Chen hadn’t walked very far away and was within the region of the spell formation. As for that paper crane, he had already put it into the Achievements Ring. For the enemies to discover the whereabouts of the paper crane through the Achievement Ring was simply an impossible matter.
Looking at those dispersing people, Yang Chen sneered and without paying any attention he directly turned around. Using his fingers to do some sort of calculation he selected a path to follow and in accordance with some sort of odd pace he began to walk and soon completely disappeared within a spell formation.
Within the spell formation, Yang Chen walked the exact number of steps he had calculated and only after spending several hours worth of effort Yang Chen stopped on top of a large piece of empty land. On one side of the empty land was a very high cliff and below the cliff there was a conspicuous cave mouth, of which the insides were very dark, making it impossible to see what was inside.
“Fortunately, it still exists!”
Looking at this pitch black cave entrance, a smiling expression finally appeared on his face.
This cave or using a more accurate description, this dwelling was left behind by some ancestor of the Pure Yang Palace. Theoretically, this cave dwelling would be discovered sixty years in the future, including the huge illusionary spell formation on the outside.
This is the most remote part of the Meiqing Mountain, so most people believed that the spirit power here was quite deficient, but they were not aware, that this ancestor had discovered an underground spirit vein here and had constructed this simple cave dwelling to sit extremely close to it, in order to breakthrough to the JieDan stage, condensing his Yuanying. But in the end, he had suffered from failure and the dwelling was blocked due to a great spell, so not even the slightest bit of spirit power could leak out, so nobody discovered this far off place.
In the later generation some disciple of the Pure Yang Palace was seriously hurt and had fallen down into the illusionary spell and by lucky coincidence he studied the spell formation intensively and only then, based on the experience of the sect teacher who had entered the illusion spell, the cave dwelling could be discovered. However, in this life, it was convenient for Yang Chen.
The spiritual influence was sealed off by that great spell and had no way to leak out, so once Yang Chen came in, he was immediately able to sense that kind of boundless spirit power. This enormous spirit power also provided the unending magic power needed by the source of the illusion spell, making the land of illusions more and more powerful and also hindered people from detecting it.
From the Achievement Ring Yang Chen took out the clean bottle containing the Medicine Garden of the Yang Mountain. Merely a line of that blue colored liquid was left over, appearing almost as if it had dried up, but when it came into contact with the rich spiritual influence, the bottle started radiating light magnificently and out of thin air it began producing a sudden attraction and started gathering the spirit power in the surroundings.
The blue liquid spot at the bottom of the bottle was, as far as Yang Chen was aware, indeed the spirit power absorbed and collected by the clean bottle and used to maintain the spirit power required for the Medicine Garden. For the herbs to grow, adequate spirit power is absolutely significant, however, it could not be too excessive, as, if it was excessive, the herbs would die. And so the clean bottle had this magical ability, to absorb and store all of the spirit power in the surroundings and then later slowly release it as required by the Medicine Garden.
Before that, the line of blue liquid at the bottom of the bottle already contained enough spirit power to support the needs of Medicine Garden for several years. Originally Yang Chen had planned to come out to train after a few years and replenish the spirit power of the bottle, however at the moment he had this opportunity, both to hide from the assassins looking for him outside, as well as to collect the things left behind by the ancestor here, and at the same time he could also replenish the spirit power of the bottle.
To collect the spirit power, Yang Chen himself didn’t need to do anything, as long as he exposes the clean bottle to the outside, it would do everything by itself. Yang Che tied the clean bottle to his waist and immediately entered the cave with large steps.
The cave was not deep at all. In those days after discovering the spirit vein that ancestor hadn’t made any efforts to decorate the cave and had hastily placed the illusion spell to fool other people, whereas he immediately started to seal the mountain pass. Therefore, after Yang Chen entered, all he saw was a simple and crude cave.
At the highest point in the cave, a night pearl was embedded, which was twinkling with yellow colored light. This much brightness was sufficient for Yang Chen to see everything inside the cave.
When he went a few feet deeper into the cave entrance, he saw an enlarged cave with a circumference of several feet. There on the ground was a mat and on top of that mat, there was a middle aged man wearing Pure Yang Palace’s apparel sitting motionlessly with both of his eyes closed. His surroundings didn’t have the slightest bit of liveliness, he had already died several years ago without noticing.
“Junior disciple Yang Chen kowtows to the ancestor!”
Yang Chen didn’t dare to be neglectful and bowed his head to salute the skeleton on the mat. This is Pure Yang Palace’s ancestor after all and Yang Chen was of the younger generation, so performing this salute as a courtesy was a must.
After paying his respects, Yang Chen carefully stood up, and only then did he move his feet forward and directly went to the middle of the area and used his earth attributed spirit power to excavate a big, square shaped pit. Soon after that, he fished a few gigantic pieces of wood out from his qiankun pouch. These were the good stuff prepared in the city market. Using his wood attributed spirit power, he trimmed the gigantic wood pieces and soon bound them successfully to manufacture a durable coffin.
After doing everything properly, Yang Chen very carefully moved the remains of that ancestor on the mat and placed them in the coffin. Before closing the lid of the coffin, he carefully took the qiankun pouch from the waist of the ancestor. Again kowtowing to pay his respects to the ancestor, he placed the coffin into the recently dug out pit and buried it.
Immediately in the very center of the cave, Yang Chen piled up a tombstone. From his qiankun pouch, Yang Chen took out a highest quality heavenly bluestone and, using it like a knife, from his own memory, carved down the name of the ancestor. After inscripting that the Junior disciple Yang Chen pays his respects, he stood in front of the grave. After doing this properly, he once again paid his respects and only then did he begin to carefully examine his surroundings.
Actually, all of the stuff in the cave was obvious at a glance. In the center was that one black mat, in the most distant part of the cave there, hung a long sword in a sheath, on either side were wooden desks. Apart from this, there was nothing else in the cave.
However, Yang Chen was aware that all these ordinary looking things, apart from the two wooden desks, were not all that simple.
That black mat in itself was a complete piece of obsidian jade, carved in the shape of a mat. Placed just right at the exit of the spirit vein. The obsidian jade was always covered in moisture and it was not only able to coagulate spirit power, but also prevented the spirit power from coming out too vigorously and cause harm to meridians.
At the moment, the obsidian jade would help Yang Chen’s effort in cultivation. Regarding the objects left behind by the ancestor, Yang Chen did not feel even a little guilty in his heart. A person who cultivates the immortal path has to understand the way of karma and since Yang Chen had come in, these items now belonged to Yang Chen.
As he moved the obsidian jade aside, an absolutely rich spirit power, compared to surrounding spiritual influence, rushed forth from where it previously lay. Earlier it was controlled by the obsidian jade, but now it immediately rushed out. Yang Chen was calm, however, and without hurry, he immediately place the bottle on the vein’s exit. The spirit power rushing forth was then directly absorbed by the bottle.
A short while later Yang Chen walked forward a few steps towards one side of the sheath hanging with the sword. Yang Chen only looked at it, though, and didn’t move to take it off. His mind began to recall some memories pertaining to the sword, it had a very strange appearance.
The long sword in the scabbard was actually not a sword at all, rather was a sword box, which can be treated both as a flying sword and simultaneously the tool containing a flying sword, a very good item. However if Yang Chen tried to forcefully retrieve it without using any secret way to bind this sword box and just relied on his cultivation, he would be lucky to escape with his life. In the previous life, the Pure Yang Palace even had to pay the price of a JieDan stage master to collect it.
After a good moment, Yang Chen released a long sigh. He had no choice but to abandon the idea of collecting this sword for the time being. Even though this thing was important, his life was even more important. He had already gotten the obsidian jade so he was already satisfied. Moreover, according to his experience from his previous life, this cave would remain peaceful for the next ten years and afterward he would still have the opportunity to collect it.
Bringing his greed under control, Yang Chen sat on the obsidian jade mat and opened the ancestor’s qiankun pouch and began to inspect the items inside.
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