Cultivation of immortality begins with an eighty-year-old eunuch.

Chapter 700: A Level 5 Cultivation Kingdom! Cause and Effect!

Chen Fan removed the jade slip fragment from his forehead and remained silent for a long while.

The Great Yu Empire.

A level-five cultivation kingdom.

You should know that the most powerful force Chen Fan has ever heard of is the Great Qin, a third-level cultivation country!

There are mid-stage and late-stage Void Refinement experts guarding the area, and how powerful is a Level 5 cultivation kingdom?

Secondly, there's the entrustment from Yuan Lingzi!

In Chen Fan's view, he had unintentionally become involved in another cause and effect!

He obtained Yuan Lingzi's jade slip and gleaned valuable information about this region from Yuan Lingzi's last words—this was the cause. If he only took the information and did not fulfill the last wishes, he would incur this karmic debt.

For ordinary cultivators, owing a debt of karma might not be a big deal.

However, for a cultivator like Chen Fan, whose understanding of cause and effect is based on the concept of enlightenment, every unresolved cause and effect is a crack in his understanding of enlightenment.

Therefore, he must fulfill Yuan Lingzi's last wish.

With a thousand thoughts swirling in his mind, Chen Fan put the jade slip fragment into his sleeve and continued searching in the sand.

Soon, he found Yuan Lingzi's remains under a sand dune not far from the jade slip fragments.

The skeleton was half-buried in dark gold sand, its bones as clear as jade, more complete than the skeletons seen before, each bone emitting a faint glow.

The skeleton sat cross-legged, hands clasped in front of its dantian, its posture serene, clearly having peacefully passed away in meditation. The skeleton wore a tattered, dark blue robe, with a faded star emblem embroidered on the chest, the very symbol of the Heavenly Saint Sect of the Great Yu Empire.

Chen Fan solemnly bowed to the remains, then used his spiritual power to move the remains, along with the robe, out of the sand and carefully placed them into a jade box that had been prepared beforehand.

He found the jade box in his storage bag; it was originally used to store medicinal herbs, but it was now suitable for holding the remains. He closed the jade box, reinforced it with two more layers of enchantment, and then solemnly put it deep into his storage bag.

Just as he moved the remains aside, a faint spiritual light suddenly shone from the sand beneath them.

That was a formation.

The formation was extremely rudimentary, pieced together from a few dull spirit stones and a dozen or so array patterns carved into the sand. At its core was a fist-sized array plate, its surface covered with cracks, yet a faint spiritual energy still flowed between them.

A dark blue storage bag was pressed down beneath the formation.

The storage bag is made of a very special material. It is not the spirit silk or demon beast skin commonly found on Tiannan Star, but a dark blue silk thread that Chen Fan has never seen before. Despite being eroded by thousands of years, it is still intact.

Chen Fan used the Fixed Word Technique to disassemble the remaining structure of the formation in his sea of ​​consciousness. After confirming that there were no hidden killing moves, he reached out and gently moved the formation plate aside, taking out the storage bag.

The restrictions on the storage bag had mostly dissipated on their own, leaving only a last, extremely rudimentary seal barely holding on.

Chen Fan broke the seal and emptied the contents of the storage bag.

The first thing that catches the eye is a pile of spirit stones.

There were a considerable number of these spirit stones, easily over a million, but their quality had significantly declined. Mid-grade spirit stones had degenerated into low-grade, high-grade spirit stones into mid-grade, and top-grade spirit stones into high-grade.

Even though they have degenerated, the total value of these spirit stones is still a considerable fortune.

Among them were several dark gold spirit stones that Chen Fan had never seen before. Their internal spiritual energy structure was extremely special. Even after thousands of years, the spiritual energy inside was still so rich that it was terrifying. Their grade far exceeded that of top-grade spirit stones. They were probably higher-level spirit stones that could only be found in fifth-level cultivation countries.

Secondly, there are several magical treasures.

A dark blue longsword, with intricate star patterns engraved on its blade, was of extremely high grade. However, the cracks on the blade were even denser than those on the array plate, indicating that its spiritual power had been completely depleted. It broke into several pieces with the slightest touch.

A palm-sized bronze mirror, its surface covered with spiderweb-like cracks, and the array patterns on the back of the mirror were also blurred and indistinct, completely destroyed like the sword. There was also a set of seven flying needles, made of decent material, but the spiritual light on their surface had dimmed to an extreme degree. Although they had not yet broken, they were just empty shells.

These magical treasures were at least at the Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul stage back then, but after thousands of years of erosion and the corrupting influence of the chaotic spatial forces here, they are now all ruined.

There were also several jade slips.

Chen Fan probed with his divine sense and found that most of the records contained Yuan Lingzi's cultivation insights and experiences during his lifetime, as well as some records about the Great Yu Empire.

However, these jade slips, like the previous fragment, were already broken and shattered into powder as soon as divine sense entered them.

Only one jade slip was relatively well preserved, and the contents recorded on it caught Chen Fan's eye!

That was a map.

He carefully placed the jade slip on his forehead and probed it with his divine sense.

A very detailed map of the underground space slowly unfolded in his mind.

Upon closer inspection, the map's coverage area far exceeded Chen Fan's expectations.

This underground space is not tens of miles in size, but hundreds of miles. The map marks dozens of ruins of varying sizes, each with detailed annotations indicating the potential dangers and treasures within.

Yuan Lingzi spent three thousand years exploring almost every inch of this underground space, recording the location, direction, and activity cycle of every spatial rift.

The map also marks more than a dozen extremely dangerous restricted areas, some of which are areas with a high density of spatial rifts, which even those at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage dare not enter.

Several other areas were marked with warnings of "unknown existence" and marked with blood-red divine sense imprints, indicating that Yuan Lingzi had sensed some extremely terrifying aura in these areas back then.

And the most important element on the map is a route.

It was a path that started from the riverbed, meandered through ruins and spatial fissures, and finally led to some place on the edge of underground space.

Every step of the route is marked with detailed precautions, indicating where there are spatial fissures to avoid, how long the fissures last, and where one can temporarily stop and rest.

Surprisingly, this path was something Yuan Lingzi had painstakingly explored inch by inch over thousands of years. He had followed this path countless times, traversing the riverbed and ruins, exploring every corner of this underground space, searching for a way out.

Although he ultimately failed to find it, the path itself is the most valuable legacy he left for those who came after him.

Chen Fan repeatedly imprinted the map in his mind, confirming that he had memorized every detail. Then he removed the jade slip from his forehead and solemnly put it into his storage bag.

With this map, he was no longer like a blind man feeling an elephant in this underground space.

Chen Fan already knew the locations of those spatial rifts by heart, and he would carefully avoid those forbidden zones even if he encountered them.

Secondly, that path was his only way out of the riverbed.

More importantly, the ruins and unknown restricted areas marked on the map may hold even more secrets about this underground space.