Cultivation Starting from Choosing Augments

Chapter 316 - 176: The Yellow Springs Traveling Palace Opens

However, after hearing her say there was Evil Qi inside,

Xiao Chen, far from hesitating, waved his hand grandly. "Don’t anyone stop me. As cultivators, we must face challenges head-on."

With that, he walked to the entrance and jumped in without a second thought.

The moment he dropped inside, he felt as if the world were turning upside down.

Once things settled down, he found that he had landed in a pitch-black cave.

Xiao Chen had been to the Profound Celestial Immortal Palace before, so he recognized this as a form of spatial teleportation and remained calm.

He simply activated his Eye of Truth, carefully surveying his surroundings to get his bearings.

As far as he could see, everything was a hazy gray, without a trace of any other color.

The cavern had a front and back passage, both roughly ten feet high and wide, clearly carved by human hands. Looking in either direction, he could see no end, and there was no discernible difference between them.

In such a situation, it was impossible to tell which way was which.

Xiao Chen didn’t hesitate for long, simply heading in the direction he was facing when he first arrived.

After winding his way along for about two miles, he noticed patches of moss that gave off a blue, fluorescent glow starting to grow on the surrounding stone walls.

By this faint light, he could see that at the far end of the passage, a large amount of sand had flowed in.

But unlike ordinary sand, these grains were an unsettling, deathly white color.

Furthermore, as Xiao Chen drew closer, he could feel an increasingly strong, cold Yin Qi permeating the air ahead.

Xiao Chen bent down, picked up a grain of sand, and gently rubbed it between his fingers.

The grain of sand instantly turned into a wisp of cold energy that seeped into his body.

A biting cold instantly washed over him, as if he were standing naked outside in the wind during the dead of winter.

’So this is Cold Wind Sand.’

Xiao Chen immediately recognized the sand’s origin; it was a special Spiritual Object that only formed in extremely cold, yin-heavy environments.

It had the appearance of sand, but in reality, it was purely a highly condensed form of Yin Qi.

It was one of the raw materials for Talisman Making, used by Talisman Cultivators. He recalled that it sold for about one Spirit Stone per five jin.

His gaze swept over the ground. ’Just here at the cave mouth, there must be a hundred or so jin.’

Xiao Chen then took a few steps forward and strode out of the cave.

He glanced around and saw that the entire ground was covered in this Spiritual Sand.

’All told, there must be at least tens of thousands of jin here. If I could take it all, it’d sell for one or two thousand Spirit Stones.’

However, this substance was composed of Yin Qi, so it couldn’t be collected from a distance using Magical Power. It had to be gathered by hand.

There were a few traces of digging on the ground, likely left by the cultivators who had entered earlier.

But it looked as though most people had simply passed this area by, hurrying to find other valuable things.

Typically, a resource like this would be left for the next time the Yellow Springs Traveling Palace opened.

Only then would cultivators come prepared, specifically to gather it.

.

Xiao Chen did not linger here either, but continued deeper into the area.

However, as he walked on, a gust of yin wind suddenly blew past. Then, a large mass of Cold Wind Sand unexpectedly gathered into the shape of a person and lunged at him.

’Huh?’

’Wait, what’s going on?’

’According to the knowledge I’ve gained from all sorts of texts, Cold Wind Sand is supposed to be an inanimate object.’

But judging from the fluctuation of Spiritual Qi erupting from the figure before him, its power was no less than that of a third-level Foundation Establishment cultivator.

Xiao Chen struck out with his sword, cleaving the figure in two.

"THUMP!"

As the figure collapsed, a large amount of Cold Wind Sand scattered, and two streams of Yin Qi emerged from within.

’It looks like those are the culprits behind this strange transformation.’

However, the two streams of Yin Qi quickly merged into one and attached themselves to the surrounding Cold Wind Sand, reforming into a new figure in the blink of an eye.

"CLANG!"

Xiao Chen struck again with a backhand swing of his sword, simultaneously activating his Spiritual Eye to carefully observe the dispersing Yin Qi.

Strangely, it looked like nothing more than ordinary Yin Qi, yet it seemed to be alive.

And this time, as a fresh gust of yin wind blew past, the two scattered streams of Yin Qi rapidly expanded, quickly becoming two separate figures.

’I knew it. Why would someone leave so much Cold Wind Sand just sitting here?’

’Something is definitely off.’

Seeing this, Xiao Chen gave up on attacking. He instead transformed into a streak of golden light, dodging the figures as he continued to press forward.

The number of figures around him was growing, and it became clear this was a massive hunting ground.

Although the Cultivation of a single figure wasn’t high, a full forty-nine of them had appeared in the vicinity before he realized it.

These figures attacked tirelessly and were themselves nearly indestructible.

Even a typical late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator would likely be in for a rough time if they ended up here.

Fortunately, the Vertical Earth Golden Light was fast enough. Weaving and dodging, he rushed forward for about three miles, and the ground was finally free of Cold Wind Sand.

The moment Xiao Chen stepped off the sand-covered ground, the figures behind him instantly crumbled, as if they had never been there at all.

By this point, he had arrived in a new cavern.

Compared to the previous area, the moss here was more abundant, and all of it was concentrated on the ceiling.

The shimmering blue light illuminated the entire cavern, also making it possible to clearly see a series of murals carved into the rock walls on both sides.

There were no words on these murals, and they were drawn in a rather simplistic style.

They exuded a kind of simple, primitive beauty.

Xiao Chen examined each of the images in sequence. They chronicled the story of a group of people who worshiped a river.

In the beginning, a single person was leaning over the river to drink.

Then, a group of people was leaning over the river to drink.

Then, it seemed to show the passing of the four seasons, and the people growing old.