The Rumble Outside the Valley

The Rumble Outside the Valley

Before the morning mist had cleared, Chen An was already squatting beside the vegetable plot, testing his newly made soil moisture meter.

He tightly wound the last length of fine copper wire around the rough edge of a plain pottery shard. A simple yet ingenious electrode was born in his hands. This was no longer a precise laboratory instrument, but a marvelous fusion of survival wisdom and modern principles—he had infused the soul of modern sensing technology into the body of this primitive environment.

The finished electrodes looked unimpressive, but concealed great potential. He carefully buried several of the pottery-shard electrodes at the depth of the crop roots, letting them sink silently into the soil like lurking sentries. The wires led to a readout device modified from old batteries and a simple meter head.

The principle was simple yet ingenious: dry pottery was an excellent insulator, but when moisture in the surrounding soil began seeping into its tiny pores, the pottery clay absorbed the water molecules and formed a weak conductive pathway.

The more moisture there was, the stronger the conductivity, and the lower the resistance value displayed on the meter. By burying multiple electrodes at different locations and depths, he could draw a dynamic map of soil moisture infiltration—where water was lost quickly, where the soil could effectively retain moisture. Every piece of data was clear in his mind.

Thus, the most ancient pottery clay combined with modern metal wiring to become the earth's "stethoscope." He no longer needed to water blindly based on experience. Instead, he could "hear" the silent flow and distribution of moisture underground, achieving precise, data-based survival management. This tiny device was like a faint spark of technology lit within the primitive wilderness.

As the pointer slowly moved across the dial, a muffled thunderclap suddenly came from the distance.

"Boom—!"

The first deafening blast tore through the air. The copper wire in Chen An's hand sprang violently upward, and the moisture meter's pointer began jumping wildly.

He abruptly raised his head as an invisible spiritual pressure bore down like a mountain. Deep in the hills to the southeast outside the courtyard, a strange pale-purple pillar of smoke shot into the sky. It was not ordinary mountain mist, but a phenomenon produced when the air was torn apart by the violent burning of pure magical power.

Beneath the pillar of smoke, the battle had reached its climax. A clear, silvery-white spell radiance resembled a living giant ice serpent. Carrying the righteous force that purified demons and evil, it unfurled countless profound runes with every twist. The dark-red vortex of demonic power entangled with it was filled with violence and ominous energy. It took the form of a hideous, scaled giant serpent, constantly devouring and corroding the silver light.

Every time the two "giant serpents" formed from pure energy collided head-on, they unleashed a muffled thunderclap. The shock waves were not invisible. They transformed into visible ring-shaped ripples that rapidly spread outward along the ground. Wherever the ripples passed, loose stones trembled and distant trees swayed violently as if struck by a powerful wind. Even the earth beneath his feet gave off waves of continuous, deep, low-frequency vibrations, as though the heart deep within the earth were quivering in fear.

The air filled with a strange smell of sulfur and scorching. It was the scent produced when Spiritual Power and demonic power were driven to their limits and annihilated one another. This extraordinary battle had already transformed that mountain hollow into a realm of mortal combat far removed from the mundane world.

Then, roars rose from all directions in waves: the low snarls of Demonic Beasts, the impassioned curses of cultivators, and the booming crashes of massive beings clashing, sending stones tumbling from the mountain walls.

Chen An's fingers unconsciously dug into his palms. He recognized these sounds—the four words "Witch-Demon Tribulation," circled in vermilion in the Primordial Wilderness classics he had pored over before transmigrating, seemed to burn before his eyes.

Ever since Ancestor Hongjun had joined with the Heavenly Dao and established order in the Primordial Wilderness, the most brutal cycle in this world had begun. At its core was the fated confrontation between the two great innate divine-beast clans: the dragons and the phoenixes.

This was no ordinary conflict, but a great calamity of Heaven and Earth—a furnace the Great Dao used to cleanse the universe and reshape its laws. Each occurrence could be called world-destroying.

And the previous one, the tragic war known as the "Dragon-Phoenix Tribulation," had taken place countless years ago, yet the wounds it left behind were far from healed.

Back then, Ancestor Dragon had roared, his voice shaking the Nine Heavens, while the boundless waves raised by the countless dragons under his command had once submerged the Primordial Wilderness continent. Yuanfeng had cried out, scorching the Eight Desolations, and the flames of nirvana had burned cracks into the firmament itself.

The corpses of divine beasts fell from the sky like rain. Their vital blood soaked every inch of the Primordial Wilderness, staining the mountains and rivers a strange dark red. Even the Netherworld Sea of Blood had risen by threefold because of it.

The aftermath of that great battle had not completely faded.

Even now, in certain forbidden lands where Spiritual Power was chaotic, space remained extremely fragile. Fine cracks would often tear open, spewing out turbulent flows of the violent Spiritual Power left behind by that ancient battle.

The ancient book fragments buried deep within the forbidden grounds of the various powers were not cold words on a page. When a person of destiny touched them with their spiritual sense, dark-red damp marks would sometimes seep faintly from the mottled pages, as if the blood of the ancient past remained sealed between the lines, radiating a chilling baleful aura and mournful cries.

That was not a metaphor, but a true blood-colored mark belonging to the Dragon-Phoenix Tribulation—one that had never dried. In silence, it recounted the brutality of that reshuffling of Heaven and Earth.

"Safe Zone..." He abruptly stood and rushed toward the courtyard gate. When his fingertips touched the warm barrier, he heard a soft hum. Ripples spread across the barrier like waves on a lake disturbed by a thrown stone, isolating the violent energy outside. Chen An crouched down and scraped away the moss at the base of the courtyard wall with a stone shard, revealing the defensive runes drawn beneath with beast blood. He had based these runes on fragments of the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Though they were not as exquisite as an immortal formation, they could draw on the Safe Zone's origin power to weaken the impact by thirty percent.

"Crack—!"

Another deafening blast made the roof tiles of the stone house tremble. Chen An rushed inside, snatched up the Hide Notebook from the desk, and moved his pen across the rough hide: "The third quarter of the chen hour. A large-scale conflict erupted to the southeast.

"Energy fluctuation characteristics: spell power (cyan-blue) and demonic power (dark brown) are colliding in a spiral. Presumed to be a battle between a high-level cultivator and a great demon. The shock wave has reached three hundred zhang outside the courtyard. Barrier pressure value..." He paused, then drew a question mark after "pressure value" with a charcoal pencil. This was a simple monitoring method he had newly designed, using the frequency of ripples in the water inside the Clay Jar to estimate the intensity of the impact.

The smoke and dust outside the window gradually thickened, but Chen An remained unusually calm. He recalled the words he had written in his notebook the previous night: "The Safe Zone is a domain of laws. The more violent the external energy, the more stable the interior—provided the laws do not collapse."

He knew better than anyone that there was only one thing he could do at that moment: reinforce the barrier, record the data, and pray that this calamity would subside as soon as possible.

By the time the sun shifted westward, the rumbling had gradually faded into the distance.

Chen An stood at the courtyard gate, gazing at the clouds blackened by the flames of war as his fingertips repeatedly rubbed the barrier. It remained warm and smooth, like a silent vow.

"Tomorrow, I should go to the stream and stock up on more clean water," he said quietly. "And I should fire another layer of refractory mud for the pottery kiln."

The wind swept scorched leaves past his feet, and one or two low howls of Demonic Beasts drifted from the distance. Chen An turned and went back inside, adding one final line to the notebook: "The Full Moon of the Eleventh Month. The flames of war have temporarily subsided. The Safe Zone remains stable; the barrier's wear must be inspected. The Witch-Demon conflict is beyond my ability to influence—first, I must protect this corner of the world."