A Sign of Danger

Li Fan followed the rat into the deep tunnel and discovered that the area beneath North Mang Mountain had long been hollowed out and turned into a nest.

Although tens of thousands of Northern Army guards are stationed outside Beiman Mountain, along with many well-hidden tomb keepers to prevent infiltration, and the underground palace's mechanisms and formations are even more difficult to overcome, it's clear that these mechanisms and secret passages are primarily designed to target those attempting to sneak into the mountain from the outside to rob the tomb. As for the rat tribe residing in the mountain, who might have crawled out from behind the stone coffin at the bottom of the tomb, or even earlier, there's little to no protection against them.

According to Li Fan's calculations, there were naturally no spirits or monsters here when the royal tomb was built. However, even in this world of cultivation, so many years have passed, and it's a time of upheaval. It's impossible to completely prevent rats from becoming spirits. Besides, what's the use of having many guards outside? You're guarding a tomb, not a warehouse. How can you periodically exhume the tomb and open the coffin to see if the tomb owner is comfortable? That would be a great disrespect!

Actually, Li Fan was still a little puzzled. The imperial mausoleums were not only made of stone that could withstand the test of time, but also had earthquake-resistant designs and were protected by talismanic arrays to prevent water and moisture. Logically speaking, it was impossible for these rat spirits to dig through them so easily.

But after careful study, Li Fan still figured out the rats' methods.

Nothing new, just malevolent energy. These rats have all cultivated malevolent energy, using their vomit and excrement to pollute and corrode the foundation stones of the royal tomb, and then using their mutated claws to hollow out and break through the tombstones.

These rat holes, constructed in this way, form winding tunnels like anthills, connecting the entire base of North Mang Mountain. These rat holes are only up to the chest of a normal man and are very narrow on both sides, just enough to hollow out the foundation stone and move freely through the cracks in the walls.

Just a wall away are the precious coffins and jade thrones of the celestial emperors and kings, pulled by nine dragons. Every day, rustling sounds crawl behind their pillows. I wonder if the celestial emperors live comfortably or not.

However, these rats are quite clever. They've been digging around in the tomb for so many years without alerting the tomb raiding alarm system. They must have had some expert guidance behind them.

So Li Fan followed these rats underground for several miles, leaving the Immortal Tomb. But he estimated that they were still within the range of the North Mang Mountain. The rat nests were growing larger and larger, almost the size of an underground city!

In fact, the Xuanmen (Daoist sect) does have methods of searching underground. If it were in another place, it would inevitably be discovered by a passing master who could spot the demons hiding underground and wipe them out with a move of a mountain or a sea.

But in a place like North Mang Mountain, looking down into the ground is considered taboo. The Imperial Guards patrol day and night, catching those who dream of tomb raiding out of their utmost disrespect. Meanwhile, powerful Divine Transformation are concentrated in guarding the immortal tombs, which allows these rats to take advantage of the darkness and build up the main city!

The rat nests for raising offspring, the armory for storing weapons, the quarry tunnels for quarrying stone, the veins for extracting gas, and all sorts of rat huts of all sizes—though chaotic, rotten, filthy, and overcrowded—are undoubtedly a society that only a highly intelligent species of a civilized level could have planned and expanded into.

At the very bottom of this civilization are the newborn mice. These mice are completely different from those outside. They are thrown into swamp-like nests and piled together. At the bottom of the nest is a statue of an evil god, which is submerged in the excrement of the mice and cannot be seen clearly. The mice are exposed to the evil energy emanating from the statue while eating garbage, rotten meat, minerals and their own kind to grow wildly.

Ultimately, the evil energy will influence the growth of two types of monsters. One type is a smaller rat spirit, which is what Li Fan saw as those that burrowed into tunnels to temper crossbow bolts. These rat spirits have evolved their brains under the influence of the evil energy, developed spiritual consciousness, and gained a certain level of intelligence.

Another type of larger rat monster has other parts of its body mutated, making it stronger and more ferocious than ordinary creatures. Some young rats even grow to the size of wild boars, with thick skin and great strength. These are more basic monsters with a malevolent aura, and they are used as livestock and laborers.

According to Li Fan's observation, most of them were rat monsters. These rats, twisted and mutated by the evil energy, were like monsters, crawling along the mine tunnels like a surging tide. They frantically entered and exited the underground tunnels, collecting all kinds of Spirit Stones and minerals, but of course, most of them were garbage, human garbage.

Yes, if Li Fan's calculations are correct, it must have been by scavenging the garbage from the Three Enclosures that such a large rat nest could be raised at the foot of North Mang Mountain. Although these rat monsters are larger, what does it matter if rats in the Immortal Realm are a little bigger? The gods in heaven don't even bother with the mortals beneath their feet, so why would they care about these pests and ants?

At the foot of the Three Immortal Palace, a sub-species civilization was gradually developing and growing in a corner. This is not an exaggeration. Those rat spirits with a certain level of intelligence were not simply puppets manipulated by humans. Instead, they spontaneously gathered in the underground city of the rat nest and clearly became the backbone of this rat civilization. They were led by elders and other old rats, and their inheritance was similar to that of a master and disciple in a xuanmen sect. They even developed their own writing system.

Perhaps due to the malevolent energy contained within them, or perhaps due to a lack of inheritance, these rat spirits, though possessing a certain level of intelligence, do not cultivate Qi like other Demon Race. Strangely, however, they seem to have some kind of inheritance of primordial spirit techniques. They can communicate with each other using faint primordial spirit fluctuations, and can even use magical Magic Treasure made from broken bones and Spirit Stones to emit Divine Sense fluctuations similar to primordial spirit techniques, controlling and commanding their mindless rat brothers to do hard labor.

Interestingly, Li Fan discovered that the rulers and Oldest One creators of this unique rat civilization were not rats, nor were they any demons or gods, but humans.

There was a cultivator at the Transformation Stage who was in seclusion in a pit in the center of the underground city. It was unknown whether he was seriously injured during an adventure or was hiding in the North Mang Mountain to avoid revenge killings and heavenly tribulations. The entire rat nest was spread out in all directions around the cave where this Divine Transformation cultivator was in seclusion.

The elders of the rat spirits, seemingly the cultivator's pets or controlled by magical artifacts, have long sat in a circle outside the deep pit where the Rat-Rat God was in seclusion, prostrating themselves and listening to the Creator's commands. The other rats seem to have been created for convenience. However, as their brains gradually developed under the influence of the evil energy, the new generation of rat spirit sages no longer simply knelt and worshipped the cultivator, but instead ruled and expanded this rat empire like human society.

However, according to Li Fan's calculations, the cultivator in the cave may have already entered a meditative state using some secret technique, or he may have been sealed. In any case, the fluctuation of his Divine Sense was too low, and it did not seem like he was still in a state of being conscious and commanding the rats.

Although driven by primal instincts, a large number of rat offspring still scour the Heavenly Treasure, throwing them into the deep pit for the use of cultivators in seclusion. However, they are no longer under human control, but rather acting on their own evolved consciousness.

So, besides collecting Heavenly Treasure, expanding their underground cities, and carefully avoiding those immortal tombs, most of the rats were more obviously building a rat civilization army. They not only studied and learned from the garbage of the Immortal Palace and imitated human technology, but also sorted out metals from the collected garbage to rearm and equip those mutated giant rat monsters.

Li Fan roughly counted them and found that there were hundreds of mutated giant rat monsters similar to Nascent Soul Stage demons in the underground city alone, not to mention countless other rat monsters and rat spirits. If such power were to suddenly erupt, the Imperial Guards of North Mang Mountain would probably suffer heavy losses. However, to say that the rats could pose any real threat would be an overstatement. Even for Li Fan, wiping them out would be as easy as snapping his fingers.

However, the key issue is not how the Rat Civilization came into being, but who taught these rats to use and create the Yuanfeng Iron Stream.

Unfortunately, Li Fan didn't find any equipment or workshops for producing Yuanfeng Iron Stream in the underground city. He only found a tunnel with some empty pottery jars that the rat monsters had brought from other places. Just like the jars carried by the rat spirits, they were obviously produced elsewhere and then transported to the rat cave at the bottom of North Mang Mountain to arm these beasts.

Although he didn't understand why they didn't just transport the weapons directly, but instead had to transport them all the way to the bottom of North Mang Mountain, the organizational structure of these rats, and the characteristics of their primordial spirit techniques, were very similar to the mummified corpses that the Divine Cult had created in the Western Regions. This made Li Fan suspect that the rat hole was also a black hand planted by the Divine Cult in the Central Plains. Perhaps the Nascent Divine Transformation cultivator in seclusion in the Bottomless Cave was some retired Dharma King or altar master.

However, it's also possible that this rat force was orchestrated by Nangong Seven Friends. In particular, the demonic statue in the rat nest that stimulated the rats' mutation is most likely the Tai Su technique that Nangong Seven Friends obtained from the Thousand-Faced Immortal. It's just that it's really hard to say whether it's a demon from the Black Lotus Sect or the Luo Sect, or some other extraterrestrial evil.

But one thing Li Fan certain of was that the rat storyline had nothing to do with Qin Jiu. The deeper he followed these rat spirits underground, the weaker Qin Jiu's senses became. Moreover, when he calculated it now, his divination had actually changed from 'extremely inauspicious' to 'fraught with danger'.

Hmm... although the outcome is still uncertain and risks remain, at least he's weathered the most dangerous phase on his own. This kid's got a tough life...

After considering it over, Li Fan decided to give up the opportunity to confront Zhi Jingzi head-on. Since he already knew that Zhi Jingzi had also appeared in North Mang Mountain, that was already a step forward. He could wait until he rescued Qin Jiu before taking action.

So he turned around and followed the transport route of Yuan Feng Tie Liu's pottery jars, disappearing without a trace, and went first to investigate the rat's whereabouts.

Meanwhile, inside the imperial mausoleum on North Mang Mountain, Qin Jiu opened his eyes.

For a moment he seemed to hear the Yuan Gong calling his name, but when he opened his eyes he found himself lying in a stone coffin.

The stone coffin was filled with pus, blood, and amber-colored tissue fluid, resembling liquefied corpse water—a stench that was horrifying.

No, it's not just "seems"! He himself was a rotting corpse filled with pus and blood! Except for the upper jaw, which barely retained a semblance of human form, his entire body was rotten and shattered!

For a moment, Qin Jiu could barely suppress the fear in his heart and wanted to scream, but his tongue and throat had long since rotted away, and he could only futilely twist his forehead in the bloody coffin.

Why, why is he still alive...?

"Hey, you're awake. Wow, you didn't collapse, your primordial spirit is really strong."

Suddenly, a beautiful young girl appeared. She looked to be only seventeen or eighteen years old, with two shallow dimples on her face when she smiled. She leaned over the stone coffin, staring at Qin Jiu, completely unconcerned about his miserable state.

"You recognize me, don't you?"

Qin Jiu stared blankly at her, unsure of what to do or how to react. Then he heard another woman's voice coming from outside the coffin.

"Jade Toad, this was sent by the Sword Immortal to save you; you can't eat it."

"I know, I know," the girl said, picking up a piece of rotten flesh with her index finger. "Hmm, it's covered in so much Bloodbreak Sand, it's all fused together, hasn't it? If you eat it, I think your intestines will rupture and your stomach will rot! How are you going to save it? I think you should just burn it?"

Then another woman's voice said,

"Having survived Cao Yuyang's blow, he is destined for greatness and is capable of accomplishing great things. Go and give him the set of equipment that was given to the God Lord back then."

The girl shrugged and smiled at Qin Jiu, "Okay~~~ By the way, the little sister from the Sword Sect has come to pay her respects to you again."

"Don't worry about her. If she can't find me, she'll go back on her own."

In the dim light, Qin Jiu seemed to see a golden figure walk to the coffin and glance at him.

Although he couldn't see the person's face clearly, the warm light shining on his face reminded Qin Jiu of his time in his hometown.

Along the banks of the rolling Li River, amidst golden wheat fields, Qin Jiu and the village boys fished and played in the river, watching Dang Kang dozing among the ridges of the fields.

Of course, it wasn't about seeing the giant pig, but rather the goddess with braided hair riding it—Qiao Chunhua, the most beautiful girl in the surrounding villages, the dream girl of the boys in the Qin Family.

Just look at her smile, just one glance from her, and you feel warm from head to toe, inside and out, and can't help but let out a sigh of relief.

Qin Jiu was feeling that way right now. In an instant, the panic and fear in his heart were dispelled by the warm light. It was warm, soft, and dizzying, as if he were floating on the warm waters of the Li River, being enveloped and molded, as if he were being reborn.

Qin Jiu slept in a daze for an unknown amount of time before waking up. He found himself lying safely in bed, his limbs fully restored, with none of the horrifying scenes of ghostly tombs and blood-soaked flesh from his nightmare the previous night. It was as if it had truly just been a dream.

Qin Jiu rubbed his head, but the more he tried to recall, the more blurred the dream became, as if it were dissipating like dust. In the end, he could only remember fighting bandits and then being knocked away by something. Sigh, the bandits of the Central Plains are really powerful...

Qin Jiu looked around and found an apricot-yellow Daoist robe by the bed. He changed his clothes, pushed open the door and walked out of the bedroom. A strong wind blew against his face, making him squint.

Looking around, he realized he was on a flying treasure ship, traveling through a sea of clouds and green mountains. A man in an apricot-yellow Daoist robe, with broad shoulders and a wide back, was standing at the bow of the ship with his back to him.

Qin Jiu vaguely remembered that the person he had encountered before was a tall Daoist priest in a green robe carrying a sword. He hesitated for a moment, but the man in the yellow robe had already appeared in front of him, smiling as he patted Qin Jiu's head and asked,

"How is the Qin Family boy sleeping?"

Then Qin Jiu suddenly remembered that he had been saved by this bearded, aristocratic man in an apricot-yellow robe when he was injured by bandits. He immediately bowed and thanked him.

"Qin Jiu, a disciple of the Louguan Sect of Ink Bamboo Mountain, thanks you for saving my life, senior."

The expert chuckled, "No need for formalities. The Nine Great Xuan Sects are all of one mind, so it's only natural for them to lend a helping hand. I am Xiao Qingzhi of the Taiyi Zhenri Palace, and I'm on my way to attend the gathering at Yuntai Peak. Qin Jiu, your skills are not bad, but who trained you as a disciple?"

"In reply to your question, senior, it is an ape," Qin Jiu hurriedly replied, "It is the Divine Lord Qingyue of Ink Bamboo Mountain."

The bearded man chuckled, "I see. I suppose your master will also be visiting Yuntai Peak then. Why don't you stay with me for now? We'll meet again when we reach the Jingji."

Then he waved his sleeve, and in an instant the clouds and mist dispersed.

Below the flying boat, amidst the sea of clouds and towering cliffs, and the verdant forests, dozens of celestial peaks rose in a cluster, their peaks and valleys opening up like blooming Phoebe flowers. Clouds swirled around them, and divine light shone forth. It was truly a sacred land, a fairyland on earth.

Qin Jiu, this country bumpkin, had never seen anything like this before. He could only utter one word. "Wow!"

Xiao Qingzhi stroked his beard and laughed.

"Thirty-six peaks resemble a hair bun, bringing comfort to passersby. Suddenly, white clouds gather in abundance, all shrouded in mist and illusion."

This is Tai Shi Mountain, also known as Mount Song.