Entering the Gale Winds

A streak of silver sword light shot straight toward the northwest. The farther it traveled, the more desolate the land became. After crossing a mountain range, the sword light descended onto a plain, revealing Fang Xiao's figure.

Once he stood there, he sensed that something was wrong with the wind's direction. There was no pattern at all; winds blew in from every direction, as if they had appeared out of thin air.

Having reached this place, he no longer dared to fly through the air. Though he had not yet reached the area where spatial rifts appeared, he had to ensure that no accidents occurred.

He decided to proceed gradually from this plain. If all went smoothly, it would probably take half a month to reach that Sha Pit.

He had long held the Nameless Spirit Jade in his palm. Along the way into the Gale Belt, there were often deep pits and even ravines, but no mountain ranges. Countless years of erosion by gale winds had turned this place into a boundless plain.

As he ventured deeper, the faint sound of wind at first had become a piercing howl. Then, when he seemed to cross some invisible boundary, the howling abruptly vanished, replaced by intangible winds taking tangible form as gale winds.

The gale winds here were still quite weak. Fang Xiao tried drawing in a strand and blocking it with his hand. A faint prickling pain came from his palm.

Fang Xiao had raised his vigilance to the utmost, watching his surroundings at all times. Yet he still found no trace of spatial rifts, and he continued onward for another five days.

Fang Xiao felt the gale wind scraping across his palm. If it grew even a little stronger, it would break his skin and cut him. At that moment, the spirit jade in his hand suddenly heated up. Then he clearly saw a streak of White Light flare in the air ahead. Something like a white thread hung suspended in midair. This should be a spatial rift.

He tried throwing over a useless magic artifact. The instant it touched the spatial rift, it was sliced in half. Less than the time it took to drink a cup of tea later, the spatial rift slowly began to disappear. After testing it again, he confirmed that the rift had indeed dissipated.

Fang Xiao pondered for a moment, then continued onward. That spatial rift seemed like an omen; as he went deeper, spatial rifts began appearing in increasing numbers.

At first, Fang Xiao would wait where he was until the spatial rifts disappeared before moving on. But he later discovered that not every spatial rift would dissipate, so he began doing his best to go around them.

Along the way, he saw countless bizarre spatial rifts: linear ones, lightning-shaped ones, crescent-shaped ones, spherical ones. Once, when he was preparing to avoid a spatial rift, that linear rift actually swam toward him like a fish.

In that instant, his scalp went numb and his spine tingled as though struck by lightning. If it touched him, his fleshly body would not last even a few breaths longer than the magic artifact he had used for testing. He retreated at top speed. Fortunately, the rift did not move quickly, but he still fell into the gale winds raging behind him.

Fang Xiao immediately activated his protective sword light, but he was still a little too slow. The Magic Robe he wore was merely ordinary goods, and in an instant it was torn to shreds. His naked body was flayed bloody by the gale winds. Fortunately, the protective sword light allowed him to escape back to safety in time; otherwise, he would have suffered far more than mere pain of flesh and skin.

Daring not linger any longer, he merely circulated his cultivation to stop the bleeding from his wounds, then continued onward completely naked. Only after finding a relatively safe pit did he hide inside.

Fang Xiao first used the Water Gathering Technique to wash his body clean, then changed into a new Magic Robe before swallowing healing Spirit Wine and medicinal pills. The wounds caused by gale winds truly healed extremely slowly. It took him a full three hours just to make the wounds scab over, but as long as the injuries were stabilized, recovery afterward would be much faster.

"If not for the spatial rifts, this would truly be a precious land for Body Refining."

Feeling that the strength of his fleshly body had increased slightly, Fang Xiao could not help sighing.

For the journey ahead, he became even more careful. Yet the road before him also became increasingly difficult to traverse. Sometimes, he even had to remain where he was for a while; the longest time he waited was half a day.

After such arduous progress, he finally saw that Sha Pit radiating five-colored light. What he had estimated would take only fifteen days had taken a full twenty-two. Yet it was precisely because he had been sufficiently cautious that he encountered danger only that one time.

Still, he had reached his destination. Now, he merely needed to enter the Sha Pit and see exactly what kind of Sha Qi it contained. But a new problem arose: how was he supposed to enter?

According to the spirit jade's sensing, there were no spatial rifts around this Sha Pit, but it was enveloped by an immense gale wind.

If it were only a single gale wind, he could use sword light to protect his body and force his way through. But along the way, he had discovered a trait of these gale winds: once clustered gale winds encountered a person or object obstructing their range, they seemed to have found a target and would not rest until they had flattened the obstacle.

Perhaps he could force his way in by combining with the Great White Sword Pellet through Body Integration with Sword and using Sword Energy Turns into Rainbow, but that was far too risky. He would only attempt it when there was no other choice.

As for digging underground, he should not even think about it. The spirit jade could only sense whether rifts existed; it could not determine their direction. When he could not see them, who knew whether one swing of the hoe would dig out a spatial rift?

"Perhaps I can do this."

After pondering for a long while, Fang Xiao took out two items from his Storage Bag and muttered to himself.

The items in Fang Xiao's hands were none other than the Four Spirits Soaring Array and the Five Elements Reversal Array. To his current self, these two sets of arrays were only barely usable. He had been planning to replace them with a set of Golden Core Stage arrays anyway, so he might as well let them give off their last embers here.

He planned to observe the gale winds for a day first. Once he confirmed that no spatial rifts would appear, he would set the arrays directly opposite the Sha Pit. The moment the arrays came into contact with the gale winds and drew them away, he would quickly slip into the Sha Pit. As for getting out, he could use the same method and sacrifice the other array.

Fang Xiao patiently waited until the next day. The gale winds above the Sha Pit remained unchanged, so he began preparing to set up the array.

He decided to test the waters with the less defensive Four Spirits Soaring Array. He first went to the opposite side of the Sha Pit, chose a suitable location, and took the array disk and array flags from his Storage Bag, placing them one by one in their proper positions, leaving only the final array flag.

This array flag had to be placed within the gale winds. Once everything was ready, the instant he thrust it into the gale winds, he activated the array immediately without giving them time to destroy it.

A four-colored light screen began to rise, inevitably colliding with the gale winds. Fang Xiao could not afford to delay. He returned to his original position at the fastest speed, waiting only for the gale winds to be drawn over.

Before long, the gale winds above the Sha Pit suddenly began to rage and swiftly surged toward the array's location. The gale winds before Fang Xiao also began to thin.

Seeing that the time was right, Fang Xiao activated the Sword Pellet and turned into a rainbow. White sword light wrapped around him and shot into the gale winds, racing toward the Sha Pit.