txolops Chapter 717 Encountered another madman! Half-step Void Refinement!
Chapter 717 Encountered another madman! Half-step Void Refinement!
Chen Fan did not draw his sword. Instead, he activated the Fixed Word Technique to its maximum and vanished from his spot in a flash. He moved to a broken stone pillar dozens of feet away, enveloped his entire body in the concealment power of the Golden Bowl, and instantly concealed his aura completely.
Before long, a gaunt figure emerged from the shadows of the ruins.
It was an old man with a hunched back, wearing a tattered robe whose original color was no longer discernible. His hair was sparse and gray, and his face was covered with scars of varying depths.
His eyes were remarkably similar to those of the Scattered Demon Master—mad, wary, and hungry, the kind of gaze that only comes after thousands of years of struggling in dire straits.
He stopped where Chen Fan had been standing, his nose twitching slightly as if he were sniffing something. After a moment, he frowned, muttered a few indistinct words, glanced around, and then turned away dejectedly, disappearing into the depths of the ruins.
Chen Fan watched the figure disappear into the distance, his expression remaining calm, but inwardly he was on high alert.
Thinking to himself that there were indeed more than one mad cultivator like the Scattered Demon Master in the outer area of this underground space. The Fire Source Daoist had previously said that many cultivators were trapped in this space, some of whom had gone mad and become demons, feeding on others; it seemed that what he said was true.
Although this hunched old man's cultivation level was slightly lower than that of the Scattered Demon Master, his madness was no less extreme.
He waited a moment, and only after confirming that the old man had completely disappeared did he emerge from behind the stone pillar and continue his journey north.
On the journey thereafter, Chen Fan became even more cautious. He used the Fixed Word Technique to extend his divine sense to its limit, scanning every few breaths for all movement within a radius of dozens of miles. He would detour around ruins, avoid spatial rifts in advance, and conceal himself when he encountered the aura of a cultivator, waiting for them to leave.
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After walking and stopping for about half a day, he finally passed through the chaotic ruins and stepped into the corridor marked on the Yuanlingzi map.
This corridor is an ancient riverbed that has been dry for countless years. The riverbed is several tens of feet wide, and the stone walls on both sides are covered with murals that are now blurred.
The style of the murals was unlike any he had seen before, and they appeared to depict an extremely ancient war.
The painting depicts cultivators battling fiercely in the sky aboard flying boats, giant beasts bursting forth from the earth, and massive, sky-covering celestial beings colliding in the starry sky.
The last section of the mural is particularly eerie, as all the flying boats, giant beasts, and Dharma images are flying in the same direction, which is the deepest part of this underground space.
Chen Fan stood in front of the mural for a long time.
Many details in the mural have been worn away by time, but the remaining parts still reveal the immense scale of the war and the terrifying strength of the participants. The dharma figures in the painting are far more advanced than the flame dharma figures of Nascent Soul cultivators, at least at the Void Refinement level or even higher.
What kind of war could draw all these beings into the same battlefield?
And who piled up all their remains in this underground space?
Chen Fan withdrew his gaze and continued walking along the riverbed.
As Yuan Lingzi had marked, the spatial rifts along this corridor were indeed relatively sparse, and there were no dangers along the way.
He traveled through the riverbed for about an hour, and the view ahead gradually opened up.
At the end of the river lies an extremely vast gravel plain.
Scattered across the plain were numerous wrecked flying ships, densely covering the entire ground and stretching as far as the eye could see.
These flying boats come in all shapes and sizes: dark blue metal flying boats, transparent crystal flying boats, bone flying boats pieced together from animal bones, and several giant boats built of black wood, their hulls covered with twisted and eerie runes.
They were scattered haphazardly across the plain, some piled up on top of each other, some stuck diagonally in the ground with only half of their sterns showing, and some had long since shattered into countless fragments, mixed with rubble and tiles and indistinguishable from each other.
All the wreckage of the airships had one thing in common: their fractures were as smooth as mirrors, as if they had been severed by the same force.
Chen Fan stopped at the edge of the plain, not venturing in rashly.
The map of Yuan Lingzi has come to an end here. The last area marked on the map is this gravel plain, and beyond that is the forbidden zone marked with a blood-red skull.
Yuan Lingzi inscribed a few lines of text on the edge of the map using extremely small divine sense imprints:
"The Flying Boat Graveyard, its origins unknown. Beyond lies the forbidden zone, filled with an extremely terrifying aura; I dare not venture there. Those who wish to go there later must be extremely careful. Deep within the forbidden zone are several auras, at least at the half-step Void Refinement stage, and there may even be true Void Refinement beings. Remember, remember."
After reading the text, Chen Fan looked up at the dark and deep area at the end of the plain.
The spatial rifts there were as dense as a giant spider web, layer upon layer, enveloping the entire area.
Each crack was several meters wide, intersecting and overlapping each other, shattering the space into fragments. Inside the cracks was pure darkness, from which even light could not escape.
An extremely oppressive atmosphere permeated the air. It was not a fluctuation of spiritual energy, nor the pressure of divine sense, but a more fundamental sense of oppression, as if it came from the laws of heaven and earth themselves.
The Word Fixation Technique emitted an extremely faint buzzing sound in his sea of consciousness, a reaction that only occurs when encountering some incomprehensible entity.
Even the Fixed Word Technique couldn't penetrate that darkness, which made Chen Fan's heart sink slightly.
Instead of moving forward, he extended his divine sense to its limit and carefully probed the edge of that area.
The moment his divine sense touched that darkness, it vanished without a trace, like a mud ox sinking into the sea, without even a hint of feedback.
What alarmed him even more was that at the edge of that darkness, he sensed several extremely faint yet terrifying auras.
Not one, but several.
The weakest of them was on par with Xuan Gu Shangren, while the strongest was even more profound than Xuan Gu Shangren.
That was truly the peak of the half-step Void Refinement stage, just a thin veil away from the true Void Refinement realm.
Deeper within these several auras, there was another faint presence. That aura was so faint it was almost imperceptible, yet it caused Chen Fan's back to tense involuntarily.
The feeling wasn't that he had encountered some powerful opponent, but rather something beyond his comprehension. It wasn't a cultivator, a demon beast, or a remnant soul, but a more ancient and powerful being.
Chen Fan withdrew his divine sense and slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air.
His intuition told him that this area was definitely not a place he could venture into at present. The outer perimeter was the territory of cultivators at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, while the deeper part was the domain of old monsters at the half-step Void Refinement stage.
Even though the Scattered Demon Master was considered a strong figure at the Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul stage, he only dared to linger on the outer perimeter and dared not cross the line. Although the Profound Bone Master could enter and exit the depths, he could only stay there for thousands of years without being able to leave.
If he were to recklessly venture in alone, he would likely encounter another old monster like the Mysterious Bone Master before long. He escaped by chance last time thanks to the golden bowl, but he might not be so lucky next time.