A Hefty Price

Wang Li had seen quite a few ruthless people, but those ruthless enough to be this cruel to themselves were truly rare.

Fortunately, according to what he knew, entering from the western or southern edge of White Bone Continent was indeed the best choice.

"Alright."

The woman in the red, gold-sprinkled robe seemed not to doubt He Lingxiu's answer at all. She looked amicably at the six cultivators and said, "Then we shall proceed as you suggested."

The six cultivators showed no displeasure. They all gave the woman slight nods in greeting, after which five of them unhurriedly entered the activated teleportation array and vanished within it.

The remaining cultivator adjusted the teleportation array. In no more than several dozen breaths, he activated it again, then nodded at the woman. "It's ready."

The woman nodded. She remained standing still where she was, while the lanky male cultivator who had been following her stepped into the teleportation array first.

After one breath, the woman finally seemed completely reassured. She said to He Lingxiu, Wang Li, and the others, "You go first."

Neither Wang Li nor He Lingxiu spoke, and neither paused in their movements.

Both were clever. The woman's actions confirmed for them that she and the lanky male cultivator must possess some special technique or magical treasure that allowed them to transmit information across astonishing distances.

It had to be that only after the lanky male cultivator had teleported over first and confirmed that the destination was safe did she feel fully at ease sending all of them through.

For Wang Li and He Lingxiu, having such cautious companions was naturally a good thing.

Amid waves of profound light, Wang Li, He Lingxiu, the three young cultivators, and the woman in the red, gold-sprinkled robe all appeared near the lanky male cultivator who had passed through the teleportation array first.

A desolate aura unique to the Chaos Domains, impossible to describe in words, instantly curled around them.

This aura came from the scarcity of human traces, from spiritual energy far thinner than that of regions like Lesser Jade Continent and Evil Water Continent.

Yet even more of it came from the dangerous presences mingled within that thin spiritual energy of heaven and earth.

For example, the demonic aura exuded by strange beasts and bizarre trees, and the rotting stench left behind by powerful demons after death.

Together with the forest around them that blotted out the sky and covered the sun, and the decaying bones scattered everywhere within it, these presences clearly reminded the cultivators that they had left the territory of cultivators behind. They had arrived in a paradise for demonic beasts, a refuge for exiled cultivators, the domain of unorthodox sects—a Chaos Lands unrestrained by Dao Precepts, where slaughter and death were everyday fare.

Wang Li's expression was no different from before he entered the teleportation array.

His gaze swept rapidly over the surrounding forest, while he also studied the expressions of everyone around him.

Including He Lingxiu, all the cultivators beside him remained calm.

As far as he was concerned, he only believed half of He Lingxiu's words. He remained doubtful of her claim that she had never entered White Bone Continent.

As for these people around him, even if they had never entered White Bone Continent, they had likely traveled through the Chaos Domains before.

Before entering this place, Wang Li had always appeared taciturn before these people, but now he was the first to speak.

He looked directly at the woman who had arrived last through the teleportation array and said, "Senior, are you truly certain you intend to keep following us into the Seven Treasures Ancient Domain?"

The seemingly amiable woman showed no surprise at his question. She merely replied gently, "So long as those three can be saved, this meager cultivation of mine amounts to nothing."

"Mm, alright." Wang Li was slightly taken aback, but said nothing more.

Even then, he did not forget to glance at the expressions on the faces of the cultivators around him.

He Lingxiu's expression had not changed at all.

The lanky middle-aged male cultivator clearly gave him several serious looks. As for the other three young cultivators, apart from a trace of puzzlement, they seemed to show no particular change in expression.

It seemed that these three young cultivators might not yet know that the woman was a Golden Core cultivator.

In the cultivator continents under the jurisdiction of the Three Sages' Dao Precepts, the higher one's cultivation, the greater one's advantage. But in the Chaos Domains, that was not necessarily so.

For in the Chaos Domains, a cultivator's greatest enemies were often no longer other cultivators.

Take White Bone Continent as an example. According to the Cultivation World's precise records, White Bone Continent had originally been a marshland rich in spiritual energy.

A so-called marshland rich in spiritual energy was a swamp with an exceptionally astonishing concentration of spiritual energy.

Before White Bone Continent came into being, this marshland had possessed a naturally formed spiritual vein. Aside from releasing an astonishing amount of spiritual energy under normal circumstances, it would at certain times erupt like a fountain, spewing out dozens of times its usual amount of spiritual energy.

The incomparably dense spiritual energy would even form astonishing spiritual-energy rain across several miles.

Each appearance of this spiritual-energy rain drew great numbers of demonic beasts and quite a few cultivators, naturally triggering brutal battles.

After several hundred years, by the time that spiritual vein finally vanished, corpses and bones had already piled up like mountains throughout the marsh. An astonishing number of demonic beasts and cultivators had died there. Together with the changes in terrain caused by battle, vast amounts of water vapor in the marshland disappeared, and it eventually became a continent covered in dense forests.

Even so, countless skeletons remained heaped across most regions of this continent, which was how White Bone Continent earned its name.

After that spiritual vein vanished and the spiritual energy was cut off, many carrion-eating demonic beasts and cultivators seeking artifact-refining materials continued to arrive. The ongoing battles and further deaths brought increasingly mixed Vital Energy. Without sufficient spiritual energy of heaven and earth to dilute it, White Bone Continent naturally produced many spiritual poisons.

Some spiritual poisons posed little threat to high-level cultivators. High-level cultivators could easily cleanse away the spiritual poison that had entered their bodies with True Essence or certain special purification techniques. Yet some spiritual poisons were even more harmful to high-level cultivators.

The Vile Barrier Spiritual Poison within White Bone Continent's Seven Treasures Ancient Domain did not trouble cultivators below the Fourth Level of Foundation Establishment, but for cultivators at the Fourth Level of Foundation Establishment and above, it was an incurable deadly poison.

Once any cultivator at the Fourth Level of Foundation Establishment or above entered the Seven Treasures Ancient Domain and was tainted by this spiritual poison, their divine sense would instantly be cut off from their True Essence. They would be utterly unable to mobilize the True Essence within their bodies, after which their True Essence would rapidly mutate under the effects of the poison.

This mutation would kill cultivators afflicted by the spiritual poison in a very short time.

Besides the Vile Barrier Spiritual Poison, two types of demonic beasts in the Seven Treasures Ancient Domain were also exceptionally disadvantageous to high-level cultivators.

One was called the White Bone Demon. They were formed from cultivators who had fallen within White Bone Continent. Their cultivation ranged from the Third Level of Foundation Establishment to the Fourth Level of Golden Core. They were unaffected by spiritual poison, and the more intense the spiritual-energy fluctuations on a cultivator's body, the more they drew their attention.

The other was called the Nether Bone Worm. It was a low-level demonic insect whose offensive power was at most comparable to that of a cultivator at the Second or Third Level of Qi Refining, but their numbers in the Seven Treasures Ancient Domain were extraordinarily vast.

These Nether Bone Worms were especially sensitive to the Core Qi of Golden Core cultivators and the Nascent Soul aura of Nascent Soul Cultivators. As long as Golden Core cultivators or Nascent Soul Cultivators entered the Seven Treasures Ancient Domain, swarms of Nether Bone Worms that covered the sky and earth would inevitably appear.

Thus, to any cultivator with even a little knowledge of White Bone Continent and the Seven Treasures Ancient Domain, the Seven Treasures Ancient Domain was a death ground that cultivators at the Fourth Level of Foundation Establishment and above simply could not set foot in.

For a Golden Core cultivator to enter such a place, there was only one possibility: before entering, they would have to destroy their own cultivation and suppress their true cultivation below the Fourth Level of Foundation Establishment.

When the woman had just said, "So long as those three can be saved, this meager cultivation of mine amounts to nothing," she had also given Wang Li a definite answer.

She was certainly going to destroy her own cultivation in order to enter the Seven Treasures Ancient Domain.

If a cultivator at the Second Level of Golden Core destroyed her cultivation to suppress it below the Fourth Level of Foundation Establishment, she would still certainly be far stronger than the vast majority of cultivators at the Third Level of Foundation Establishment.

For her personally, the price she had to pay to enter the Seven Treasures Ancient Domain was rather grievous.

But for the safety of the entire sect, so long as the matter could be accomplished, such a sacrifice was worth it.

Wang Li understood this well. After all, for the sake of their sect's interests, many cultivators would not even hesitate to sacrifice their lives, much less their own cultivation.