Jiang Yi was quite fortunate!
If he didn’t have a spirit beast that could dig underground, he would definitely be spotted by those scouts that came from the Great Xia Kingdom and the Divine Martial Kingdom. If his spirit beast that was capable of traversing underground wasn’t fast enough, he would have probably been spotted soon.
A few dozen Soul Travel Realm experts from the Great Xia Kingdom had arrived, using their top speed to search around. Someone actually found a few tunnels, and after going deeper into them, the scouts didn’t find anyone. One of those tunnels was actually dug out by Big Huang when Jiang Yi arrived here, and there were other tunnels which were already there long ago. Jiang Yi went escaped through another tunnel and even collapsed it, so how was this group of people going to find him?
Su Pingping gathered more scouts from the vicinity of 500 kilometers to do a detailed search but helplessly left after the lack of any results from the search. After the scouts from the Great Xia Kingdom left, the scouts from the Divine Martial Kingdom arrived while scouts from various vassal states also came to search. Some of them even went into the nearby cities in the Great Xia Kingdom, attempting to find some traces.
The results were self-evident.
No one could find any clues, and the nine rays of divine lights from the Nine Heaven Stars came and vanished mysteriously. No one knew what had happened, and all the influential forces knew that there wasn’t anyone who broke through to the Heaven Monarch Realm and contacted the laws. This matter had turned in an unsolvable mystery that was like displeasure in all the various Kings’ hearts which was like a fishbone stuck in the throat.
There was a huge commotion throughout the continent, and the hottest topic in every city was the nine rays of divine light. Many of them said it was a meteorite from the heaven, some said it was a fight between the immortals in the heaven… some said it was a concealed martial expert that broke the shackles and obtained freedom.
The originator of this incident was also completely in the dark.
Jiang Yi was completely oblivious of what happened back then; even if he knew, he wouldn’t have the time to go think about it. He was now seated cross-legged kilometers deep in an underground cave, using his inner vision to look at his dantian while having this bitter expression.
His dantian had transformed: there weren’t any purple mansions but nine stars instead.
This might be the result of following the third rank of the Nameless Divine Art during the reformation, but no one had ever heard of nine stars appearing in the dantian in the history of this world. He wouldn’t be in such a shock if this Nameless Divine Art transformed the dantian into a gigantic purple mansion, or three purple mansions… or even reverting to the Cast Tripod Realm. Now, it had completely transformed.
A human’s body was fundamental. If the body had transformed and was no longer human, anyone would be in a state of panic, fright, and confusion. Take if a human turned into half a beastman for an example—even if it made him stronger by ten folds or a hundred folds and allowed him to become the no.1 martial expert in the world, he wouldn’t be happy because he was already fundamentally inhuman.
Of course…
Jiang Yi’s situation was better. Since he was a freak from a young age, it allowed him to withstand such bizarre surprises. When he was young, his dantian had been sealed which awakened a strange divine art. When he condensed the purple mansion, two different-sized purple mansions appeared. Therefore, when his dantian transformed into this bizarre form, Jiang Yi might be in a panic and confusion; but it wasn’t enough for him to lose his mind.
“Without the purple mansion, how am I going to cultivate from now? What realm am I considered to be in?”
Seated in the underground cave, Jiang Yi let out a long confused sigh. A martial artist’s cultivation stage was measured by the intensity of the essence forces in the purple mansion. The more essence force the purple mansion had, the higher the cultivation stage. Once at the peak stage of the purple mansion, it would have a qualitative change: turning all the liquid essence force into a solid state, condensing the soul elixir, and entering the Soul Travel Realm.
Without the purple mansion, it seemed like Jiang Yi would not be able to condense the soul elixir. Jiang Yi had read on the information regarding the soul elixirs, and these nine star spheres weren’t soul elixirs. A soul elixir was able to emit a golden light and would constantly revolve, but these nine stars were dark and dimmed like nine piles of cow’s dung—which looked nothing like soul elixirs.
Since this was the case, it meant that Jiang Yi’s cultivation stage couldn’t be judged using the original martial arts system. In other words… there was no way to know what cultivation stage or realm he was in. He had to judge his martial arts class using his speed and strength.
The problem was this!
When Jiang Yi was fleeing, he realized that his speed was more than two folds, which was around the same speed as a fifth-stage Purple Mansion Realm martial artist. The black essence force might have been stronger than the blue essence force all along, but his speed couldn’t be suddenly so fast.
“Blue essence force! What about my blue essence force?”
Jiang Yi noticed another strange thing. There were tens of thousands of black essence forces in the nine stars, but the massive amount of blue essence forces all went missing. He used his inner vision for a long time and confirmed there wasn’t any wisp of blue essence force, he immediately went into a meditative state and cultivated using the Jiang Water Art.
In the end…
After cultivating for one hour, he was shocked to realize that not even one wisp of blue essence force had appeared.
“What is going on? Am I unable to cultivate anymore?”
Jiang Yi cultivated again and finally realized the source of the problem.
The Jiang Water Art could still be used to cultivate, but the essence force didn’t appear in the dantian. It appeared in the first star on the left, and it was actually… black essence force! His cultivation speed was much—much slower which only produced three wisps of black essence force after cultivating for such a long time.
“Let me try the Nameless Divine Art!”
Jiang Yi frantically circulated the Nameless Divine Art which gave a huge response. The black essence force quickly appeared in the first star on the left at a speed which was ten folds faster than the Jiang Water Art. It was around the same speed as when he had the two purple mansions.
“The Jiang Water Art can actually cultivate black essence force? And… this black essence force is now in a gaseous state, but the speed has been increased by ten folds?”
Jiang Yi was confused. After experimenting for an hour, he was finally able to ascertain a few points. Firstly, the Jiang Water Art could still be cultivated, but it was comparably much slower than the Nameless Divine Art. The cultivation speed of the Nameless Divine Art was the same speed as before.
Then, there was the soul spirit where Jiang Yi could feel a trace of transformation, but he could identify what it was. Yet, he could sense it was different from before.
“It didn’t matter. I will figure it out slowly in the future. If I don’t do my current task properly, I will be going to the netherworld which wouldn’t care what my dantian turned into.”
With so many doubts disturbing Jiang Yi, he couldn’t be bothered to go think about it. He just knew that with his current strength, he was still able to kill—that was enough!
“Surface!”
He leaped onto Big Huang, who was by his side, and steered it towards the surface. According to his calculations, the bridal escort army should be passing through the Soul Break Valley now and was about to enter the Great Xia Kingdom’s territory. If he didn’t go there now—once the army arrived at the Summer Rain City a few days later, he would have completely lost all the opportunities.
“Moo-Moo!”
Big Huang’s speed was very fast, and it took just a few moments to arrive at the surface of the ground. Jiang Yi analyzed the terrain and continued controlling Big Huang towards the nearest city from the Soul Break Valley.
Half a day later, Jiang Yi found a small city. He kept Big Huang into the spirit beast talisman and strutted into this small city and spent a few gold leaves to obtain very surprising information.
Xia Wuhui’s bridal escort army had yet to reach the Great Xia Kingdom—even the advance scouting party had yet to appear. This meant to say that the army had yet to even enter the Great Xia Kingdom’s territory and was still in the Divine Martial Kingdom.
“What’s going on?”
There were these unconvinced eyes under Jiang Yi’s demon mask. He would naturally not allow such a great opportunity to slip by. He immediately exited the city and used the fastest speed to hurry over to the Soul Break Valley.
Half a day later, Jiang Yi arrived at the nearby vicinity of the Soul Break Valley while the advance scout party of the bridal escort army had yet to even arrive. He quickly circled the area and found a concealed corner to dig underground using Big Huang before going under the Soul Break Valley. He set up the entire underground for six hours before stopping.
He looked at the extensive tunnels under the Soul Break Valley and let out a satisfied mutter before he fell asleep, “I have done everything I can; the rest is up to the heavens. Whether I am able to plunder the Soul Subduing Herb or not would be up to luck!”
