Archfiend

Chapter 201: Danxia Temple (20)

After a full hour, the qi vortex completely entered Xu Yangyi’s body. He then opened his eyes. Late-stage Qi Condensation! The foundation platform had appeared! Already, he’d touched the border truly leading into cultivation. At the moment, that which he had to do was sprint towards Foundation Establishment with full strength.

However, how challenging was a feat of this magnitude?

A scale of one among a hundred, that was the rarity of cultivators destined for Foundation Establishment. If said that Core Formation ancestors were China’s apex military strength, then it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Foundation Establishment was the cornerstone.

There were less than 20,000 Foundation Establishment cultivators keeping watch on all sides, only existing due to the solid system of Cultivation Civilization nowadays. Once Foundation Establishment was achieved, all parties’ olive branches just couldn’t be finished taken. Even lousier Foundation Establishment cultivators would be given heavy responsibility!

The Featherwood Guard’s position of regional chancellor could only be taken charge of by a Foundation Establishment cultivator. The Bountiful Treasures Pavilion’s position of regional director further required that one be a Foundation Establishment cultivator. Each provincial deputy branch master of Heavens Law and every one of the CSIB’s VIPs needed to be at the Foundation Establishment realm! At Foundation Establishment, one could already establish a sect. An initial-stage Foundation Establishment senior was enough to support an upper second-rate clan!

“Is this the late stage of Qi Condensation…?” Xu Yangyi collected his thoughts and clenched his fists. He felt inside his body a kind of sensation that was at least a fold greater than in the past. It was supremely gratifying.

Such a feeling originated from the firmness that he could feel from his fleshly body. It laid with the degree of vigor that he could sense from the qi inside him. Furthermore, his spiritual sense was already able to extend over 300 meters in distance!

Without engaging someone in arcane combat, spiritual sense was the most direct method of reflection. These 300 meters could be said to be Xu Yangyi’s absolute domain! So long as he willed it, the wind would blow and the grass would stir within this 300 meter radius. He was able to be clearly aware of everything!

“Is this also the Eternal Alchemy Canon’s merit…?” His gaze slightly flickered because he’d read through many teaching materials. In the late stage of Qi Condensation, the currently known peak spiritual sense was 298 meters. As for this record, it came from Sunnihilator. This was humanity’s once-in-a-century genius!

Unexpectedly, his spiritual sense had surpassed the latter’s by two meters! Yet his qualifications back then weren’t enough to make Sunnihilator’s stele crumble into pieces at all. All that had been left behind was a deep scar on the stele’s surface.

“Ten Cardinals Red Lotus…” A pride towards strength welled up in his heart. He didn’t face upwards and roar loudly but rather inhaled deeply, using his first divine ability.

“ROAR!” A fierce roar thundered. From his hand, a fire dragon, a over a dozen meters larger than from the past, screamed into existence! It seemed as if it wanted to burn up this fog sea! However… it wasn’t limited to only this!

“The color changed?” Xu Yangyi studied the fire dragon carefully for a few seconds, believing himself to be mistaken. Nonetheless, he now confirmed… that he wasn’t wrong! Indeed, the color had changed… The Ten Cardinals Red Lotus had originally been a deep-red fire-dragon. However, he understood quite well that deep-red represented a temperature around 700 °C. 

But now… it was a golden-orange color! This represented that the fire dragon had attained a temperature of 1200 °C!!!

And what concept was this?

Quite simply, a volcano. When an active volcano erupted, the magma was no more than 1200 °C! Already, this fire-dragon was enough to compare with a portion of nature’s might! It was equivalent to a lava channel that was tens of meters long!

With such an outstanding transformation, even he couldn’t help but fiercely clench his fists. The sound of his cracking knuckles rang out. It seemed… if he found someone to test it out on… wouldn’t they perhaps turn into roasted dog meat?

A certain husky’s body was rather huge. Yes… it was worthy of being roasted.

Waving his hand, the Ten Cardinals Red Lotus vanished with a bang. He restrained his excitement and snarled, “Azure Dragon Seeks Cauldron!”

Swoosh! In an instant, a red brilliance swiftly crept over his entire fist. The increase in strength was secondary. To his surprise, Xu Yangyi shockingly discovered that this divine ability… didn’t need power to be stored any longer!

Perhaps to explain it like that wasn’t appropriate. Each of his four divine abilities had their own merits. The Ten Cardinals Red Lotus was a ranged area-of-effect, and Pill Cauldron Builds Spirit and the Spiritcleaver Pulse were blades in the darkness. Azure Dragon Seeks Cauldron… was dedicated to attack! It was a killing move with the greatest surface power.

In the middle stage, he could only stand motionlessly in place and store power when he used this move. But now… he could move as he stored power. He could unleash this move whenever he wanted!

As for the the strange talismans that emerged in the wake of Azure Dragon Seeks Cauldron, they were at first only up to his elbow. Now, they climbed up to cover his entire right arm. It looked like an awesome tattoo.

“Worthy of being a divine ability of the Eternal Alchemy Canon.” Xu Yangyi pulled his fist back, fairly satisfied. Likewise, there was good and bad among divine abilities. In the Qi Condensation realm, some divine abilities could exhibit their full might. Usually, the power of these kind of divine abilities were impressive. However, there was a chance that they wouldn’t grow at all with advancement. 

In any case, his four presently obtained divine abilities weren’t just absolute in power but varied in application. Furthermore, following the increase of his realm, his divine abilities were akin to slowly unearthed hidden treasures, evidently revealing even more wonder!

“If I reach Foundation Establishment one day, what kind of styles might these divine abilities take on…? But since that’s how it is, I’ll have to consider the Smelting God’s Treasure Mirror even more carefully.”

It was unknown how many Qi Condensation cultivators would even sell their bodies to seek a good divine ability. And that wasn’t mentioning if they had the Smelting God’s Treasure Mirror, a secret Core Formation text. Perhaps they would sell a kidney to buy several divine abilities and immediately fuse them together. His vexation laid with his divine abilities being too strong, not knowing how to easily merge them together. 

Calming his excitement for a good moment, he then continued. Presently, he was worried about how to leave. If he couldn’t exit, he would possibly live here until he died of old age. Despite this, how was such a place different from living in a cage?

He had promised so many things, but hadn’t accomplished a single one of them. Would he carelessly die here in such a way?

He was a twenty-seven-year-old at the late stage of Qi Condensation. Placed within the entire nation’s eye, he was a peak talent. How could he be willing to die in a nearly undiscoverable place with such gifts?

“Besides… there’s still this…” Xu Yangyi moved his hand towards the sword point. He hadn’t placed in within his storage ring but rather took it and placed it at his side.

In the end, what secrets were concealed in the sword point that been used by an ancient cultivator who was able to make restrictions with the Godseal Dao? In order to hide it away… an independent space had been specifically established in one of the Eight Great Deadlands?

His finger stroked the ground a few times, yet his brows began to furrow.

Nothing? Where’s the sword point? He turned his head in shock and looked, but discovered that the sword point had disappeared! Without a moment’s delay, he stood up and vigilantly looked all around him. Could it be… that someone else had entered?

No, he immediately rejected this idea. Leaving this aside, his entry into this realm had been due to the Animus Armament being spilt with some blood. This action had only then awakened this secret space. Nobody else could even possess the mysterious, ancient pelt scroll.

But in that case… was there something else here? He began to narrow his eyes. At first, this was extremely likely. This location was pitch-black, so dark that one couldn’t even see their fingers if they stuck out their hand. It wouldn’t be unusual at all if there were a few things. However, why hadn’t the opposing party taken advantage of his breakthrough to take his life?

Swoosh… At this time, a red brilliance emerged in the sky. He raised his head and shot a brief look, but immediately looked at the sky in shock. 

As if someone was writing… the sword point was actually in the sky and had already drawn out the wall carvings that twinkled with red light from before! Compared to the original design… it was almost the same! The main focus was that these areas of flickering red light were equally glimmering!

Xu Yangyi locked his eyes on the sky. This place was too weird. Why was the Animus Armament and Danxia Temple related? Why did he originally have that sensation like that of a natural predator? Why did he reject the sword point? Yet who had established this place? Why was it established? First, Jiang Shang; later, Sun Bin. Five centuries prior, Zhuge Liang; five centuries later, Liu Bowen. The Legend of the White Snake… As the final bell tolled, what secret was hidden among this?

Countless suspicions followed the emergence of these designs in the sky, flaring once again. However, the present him wasn’t of mind to look at these things at all. Secretly, he held a kind of dark feeling. These secrets included the secret of his entry and exit. All was hidden in those wall carvings.

Swoosh swoosh swoosh… The sword point finished carving out all the designs. With a swoosh, it transformed into ordinary iron once more and dropped at the side of his foot. Xu Yangyi mumbled to himself as he picked it up. In his heart, he had a theory. For this sword to portray so familiarly… were these wall carvings in themselves carved out from someone wielding this sword?

This person… wanted to tell him something through these wall carvings? He lifted his gaze and attentively studied the strange designs in the air. All the regions twinkling with red light weren’t the same. It wasn’t that they weren’t engraved differently from their wall carvings, but rather the regions in themselves were different!

There were some hooks and there were some bends… It seemed fantastically bizarre by every measure and pace, but Xu Yangyi looked at them for merely less than a minute and immediately drew a sharp breath. “These… are character strokes! They’re forming a sentence!”

Yes… all Chinese people were familiar with these things. They were the strokes of Chinese characters, in use by Chinese people everyday! Even he hadn’t foreseen that these images were actually from someone wanting to tell a few things!

However, this person’s situation was incredibly dangerous back then. There was an even greater chance that they were being monitored. They couldn’t even use normal methods to tell people a vague bit anymore! It HAD to be rather vague, just like...

They were afraid of being discovered by something!

Xu Yangyi sat down with his legs crossed and calmed his mind. Perhaps these characters were concealing Danxia Temple’s titanic secret. No matter what, if he wanted to continue, he had to gather this hard-obtained information!

The character strokes weren’t many, and his work of piecing them together couldn’t be regarded as especially strenuous. Yet even so, wanting to find suitable and completely matching words from this vast sea of Chinese characters was of no ordinary difficulty! Moreover, it was to even form a sentence!

At this moment, the gift of his eidetic memory displayed maximum usage. If he didn’t have this pill spirit, perhaps his time and effort spent would dramatically increase by over a fold. 

Nevertheless, a full three hours passed. He then lifted his head and surprisingly looked at the marks he’d carved out on the ground with his finger. In three hours, the surrounding tens of meters around him had already been carved full of scars. It was like the process of a tangram being put together.

At this moment, he studied the characters that had appeared before him in amazement. He almost didn’t risk believing his eyes!

This was it!

Among countless characters, there was only this explanation. To speak clearly, not a single stroke had been left out! Xu Yangyi dared to confirm that this person… wanted to leave behind this sentence!

However… this sentence caused him to turn terribly grave!

“I, am, at, the, bottom, of, Dan, Xia, Temple, save, me!”

Xu Yangyi jumped to his feet and cautiously surveyed each character. This… was a message coming from centuries to even a thousand years ago! As for this person, it was quite possible that he was the one who established this space!

Such a might figure had actually been imprisoned at the bottom of Danxia Temple! If the bottom of Danxia Temple was truly like what he knew… then what kind of monster was that fish? To say that it was a demon that could burn through the heavens wasn’t an exaggeration!

Who was imprisoned at the bottom of Danxia Temple?! After the honeycomb wall, what kind of secrets were concealed?

What kind of demon could force a cultivator, who was at the very least Nascent Soul, to leave this desperate cry? Xu Yangyi’s premonition of a mortal nemesis… did it originate from the giant demon?

“Huff…” Xu Yangyi took a deep breath, his heartbeat ever quickening.

“Behind the honeycomb wall… does heaven or hell lie…?”