The upheaval on the surface did not affect the depths below. A thousand li beneath the earth, in the legendary realm below the Nine Springs, it was much the same.
There was no light of day, no way to tell the passage of time. Fortunately, everyone here possessed considerable cultivation; when there was nothing else to do, they simply sat in meditation and cultivated, so long as they could ignore the rumbling that echoed from the pit now and then.
On the fifth day, Shao Changping hurried over. He paused only briefly at the edge of the pit before stepping onto the unimaginably enormous lid of the cauldron. Bronze conducted heat exceptionally well, not to mention that less than a hundred feet below lay a lake of molten lava. The instant he stepped on it, there was a hiss beneath his feet as the heat clashed with his protective Gang Qi.
Another bell rang, and a mass of fiery smoke surged over from the front side. Within it stood a brawny Suanni divine beast, its mane and whiskers flaring wide like a wheel of swallowing, breathing flame. Unscattering fire-smoke poured from its mouth and nostrils, while its blazing red eyes fixed on him as though it might pounce and kill at any moment.
Shao Changping paid it no heed. His sect's cultivation method had its own means of evasion. Sure enough, as he passed, the Suanni did not seem particularly concerned. He was thus able to employ the Shrinking Ground Divine Art and reach the center of the cauldron lid, beneath the structure that resembled both a pavilion and a tower.
It was called "pavilion-like" because six bronze pillars at its base supported an open space, fashioned like a pavilion. It was called "tower-like" because atop that "pavilion" stood another