Sandstorm of Despair! The name might be rather lame, but it was extremely fitting for the technique. At this point, Xiang Shaoyun was already sure that the sandstorm was formed by the remnant power of a God Realm expert. Just from the fact that someone like him who could match a Great Saint in combat had failed to fully disperse the sandstorm, one could see just how powerful the sandstorm was.
In fact, even the entire Desert of Despair might be an area that had become a desert after being ravaged by the power of a God. That was a terrifying thought because the Desert of Despair was as large as several provinces combined. Not even a Great Saint could unleash such extensive destruction upon the world. Only a God would be capable of such a feat.
Of course, Xiang Shaoyun wasn’t too bothered about the desert’s formation since it was something in the past. It was better for him to put his focus on strengthening himself. One day, he would reach the same height he had reached in his previous life. He might even surpass that height.
Looking at the desert around him and sensing the earth energy around him, he utilized the dual-energy technique he had just learned. The Sandstorm of Despair was released and displayed a power no weaker than his other dual-elemental techniques. The sandstorm tore through the desert.
Xiang Shaoyun started bombarding the thick layer of sand on the ground incessantly, creating numerous waves of sand that spread in all directions. Although his sandstorm wasn’t as powerful as the sandstorm he had encountered, it was still powerful enough to threaten any Great Saint in existence.
As someone who had fused nine different energies, Xiang Shaoyun was naturally capable of splitting the nine different energies from his primal inception energy. He could control his energies as easily as his own limbs. One could say that for him, all the battle techniques that required one to combine energy were no longer an issue.
After about an hour of blasting the ground, Xiang Shaoyun reached deep under the ground. He could sense that a treasure was hidden beneath the desert. After countless years of accumulation, the desert had gathered a thick layer of sand.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Xiang Shaoyun was already as strong as a Great Saint, he wouldn’t have been able to dig so deep into the Desert of Despair. After all, the air was filled with sand at all times, and any hole dug by a regular person would be constantly refilled.
As for Xiang Shaoyun, he had only been able to dig a hole after sealing the surroundings to prevent any sand from interrupting his digging. Deep underground, he found that the sand was far different than the sand above ground. The sand he found underground was a layer of sparkling sand that seemed to have been polished for countless years, leaving only the essence of each sand particle.
As Xiang Shaoyun grabbed a handful of sand, joy covered his eyes, and he muttered, “Sand essence? And so much of it? I’m going to be rich!”
The so-called sand essence was a type of saint-grade material. When used to forge saint-grade weapons, it would help in increasing the quality of the forged weapons. Thus, one could see just how valuable sand essence was. He had discovered quite an amount of sand essence under the ground, enough to further enrich and strengthen the Ziling Sect. After all, apart from forging weapons, sand essence could also be used by earth cultivators to temper their bodies and enhance their defenses.
Xiang Shaoyun started gathering all the sand essence he saw. Each particle was over 100 times heavier than a regular sand particle. Holding a single sand particle felt the same as holding a rock. There was no doubting the quality of these sand essence particles.
After countless years of accumulating in the Desert of Despair, a massive amount of sand essence had gathered. The sand essence had merely remained hidden because it was extremely hard to discover. After gathering thousands of catties of the sand essence, Xiang Shaoyun discovered a saint crystal deposit beneath the sand essence.
He was overwhelmed with joy. Upon reaching the Saint Realm, a cultivator could no longer utilize regular spirit crystals. Only saint crystals would be effective for such cultivators. Xiang Shaoyun might be wealthy, but he still needed more wealth because he had an entire sect to support. Without any hesitation, he started mining the deposit.
The deposit was of excellent quality and could produce mid-grade saint crystals. Moreover, the deposit was massive. Even someone like Xiang Shaoyun would need some time to fully dig it out.
At this time, a group of people arrived before the seal he had placed above ground. This was a group of bandits, the most feared people in the Desert of Despair. This bandit group in particular had a rather aggressive name, the Army of Despair.
There weren’t many of them. They only had 49 members, but each of them was no weaker than a Sovereign. Their leader had even reached the Heaven Battling Realm, someone entirely worthy of being the tyrant of a territory. It was quite rare to see such a powerful group of people turning into bandits. Every one of them was mounted on a demonic beast, and their faces were covered by bandanas, revealing only their oppressive eyes. No victim had ever escaped their hunt.
“Leader, this is a seal,” said one of them.
The leader had a pair of bright eyes and looked extremely young. Mounted atop a mutated three-eyed wolf and clad in ancient armor while holding a bizarrely shaped saber, he looked incredibly valiant.
“Looks like someone has discovered something good here,” said the leader with a sigh.
“Leader, shall we—” asked one of the bandits while making a throat-slitting gesture.
“Do not act rashly. It won’t be too late for us to make a move when he’s done excavating whatever treasure he found down there. That way, we don’t even need to do much ourselves,” said the leader.
“That’s genius!” the other bandits hurriedly flattered the leader.
However, the leader did not seem affected at all. His choice to become a bandit was, in truth, something against his will. He was merely forced into it due to some circumstances. Who would have known that he was once the youngest leader of a certain powerful organization?
After spending some time, Xiang Shaoyun had finally dug out the entire deposit. After some calculation, he found that he had mined about 280 cubes of crystal, with each cube the equivalent of 1,000 saint crystals. In short, he had gathered 280,000 saint crystals. This was a wealth comparable to how much a tier-7 organization gathered in 100 years.
After putting all the saint crystals away, Xiang Shaoyun looked up and smiled. “Trying to steal the results of my hard work? Dream on.”
Xiang Shaoyun had long detected the newcomers, but he did not care. So long as his opponent wasn’t a God, he feared nobody. He was in no rush to leave, and he even sat down in meditation. He focused on absorbing all the thick earth energy underground, as he could sense traces of remnant God Realm energy around him. The remnant energy was what had caused the saint crystal deposit to appear here.
The energy of a God was completely different from other energies. A regular person would be incapable of absorbing such energy, but because Xiang Shaoyun had a god body and a corporeal astral cosmos sea, he could absorb all the energy without issue.
Absorbing the little bit of remnant God Realm energy around him granted him the same effect as absorbing a massive amount of saint crystals. His accumulation of primal inception energy greatly increased, and he successfully reached late second-stage Saint Realm.
“Time to leave,” said Xiang Shaoyun as he opened his eyes after absorbing all the energy around him.
