Inside and Outside the Cage

"Hiss..."

Lu Chen woke with a pounding headache.

He sat up and circulated his spiritual power through his dantian once, scattering the remnants of his hangover.

He looked around. The room was tastefully furnished, and the air still carried the powdery scent left behind by last night's maidservants. The smell made his stomach churn.

"So you're finally awake, you idiot!"

Turtle Elder's aged voice rang out in his sea of consciousness.

"It wasn't..."

"Hmph, did you really think they were kindly throwing you a welcoming feast?"

"That wine was meant to muddle your mind!"

"And those little girls were no saints either. Every last one cultivated the crooked path of harvesting yang to replenish yin!"

The old turtle showed no mercy in his scolding.

"I..."

Lu Chen opened his mouth, his face shifting from green to white, but he could not squeeze out a single word for a long while.

The atmosphere last night had indeed been strange, but with fine wine, delicious food, and soft voices amid warm fragrance, how could someone who had spent his whole life buried in bitter cultivation have ever seen such a scene?

The sensation had been utterly soul-stealing, and his guard had slipped away before he knew it.

"Ah, what normal cultivator could withstand that kind of test?"

Lu Chen protested in a low voice.

"Bullshit!"

"Our Wèi Earth lineage values a heart as immovable and unshakable as a mountain. Yet you, after a few cups of yellow broth and a few flattering words, nearly had your soul snatched away!"

"Look at that Shen boy. Did he show even the slightest lapse in composure last night?"

Lu Chen's face flushed scarlet.

Thinking back, Shen Qingzhou had handled everything with ease. He had not touched a single drop of wine and had stayed far away from those maidservants.

From beginning to end, he had kept a cold face and barely paid anyone any attention.

Compared to him, Lu Chen was simply... ah!

"Enough. Don't forget what we came here for." Turtle Elder had merely intended to use the chance to knock some sense into him.

Otherwise, he would have stopped him long ago. Since Lu Chen had not truly encountered any danger, letting this blockhead suffer a small loss and learn a lesson was not such a bad thing.

...He could hardly admit that after holding back for over a thousand years, he too had been engrossed in watching last night.

"Turtle Elder, I understand."

Lu Chen answered gloomily. He walked to the window and pushed it open. Outside, the sky was gray and murky, and all he could see was a vast expanse of swamp. His spirits sank at once.

Over the next seven days, nothing changed in Sunken-Sand Fort.

Zhao Yan came twice more to invite them out, but both times the two men politely sent him away with the excuse that they needed secluded cultivation to stabilize their realms.

He could not understand it at all and loudly declared that they had cultivated themselves stupid.

That day, Shen Qingzhou silently left the encampment.

The miasma in Blackwater Marsh was bizarrely sinister. The divine senses of Qi Refining cultivators were severely suppressed here.

Yet that happened to be Shen Qingzhou's finest cover.

After traveling roughly a hundred miles, the terrain began to rise, and the miasma in the air thinned considerably.

A few scattered villages came into view.

None of the villages were large. The bigger ones had only around a hundred households, while the smaller ones might contain only a few families.

The houses were crudely built, mostly piled from black mud mixed with beast bones. They looked simple, but they were quite sturdy.

In the open ground before one village, a group of bare-chested men were training their strength.

"Hey, Stone, can't go on anymore?"

"Look at those trembling hands. You can barely lift a lousy stone lock now, can you?"

A brawny man covered in knotted muscles tossed aside the bone club in his hand and teased the young man beside him, who was grimacing.

The young man called Stone reddened and immediately spat.

"Get lost!"

"Last night, I went fishing by the mud pond and nearly got dragged into the water by those little Earth Dragons! My arms are still twitching now!"

The brawny man cursed as he raised the millstone-sized stone lock over his head again.

"That's the spirit! That ruthless drive is exactly what we need!"

An old man leaning on a cane walked over, nodding repeatedly as he looked at the youths.

"Listen carefully! The stronger your bodies are, the more meat you can bring back. And the easier it will be to survive the winter!"

"Never forget that we can keep our lives in Blackwater Marsh only because Earth Mother grants us food!"

"You must never stop the morning and evening worship. Your hearts must be sincere!"

A woman carrying a cracked clay jar came over to wipe the sweat from her man's brow, lowering her voice.

"You should save a little strength too. Don't end up like Uncle Dagen back then! He was so strong, and his worship was the most devout, yet he was gone just like that!"

"The village shaman even said the immortals had taken a liking to him and summoned his soul away early!"

The brawny man grinned, not taking it seriously.

"What nonsense are you women babbling about? He went off to enjoy blessings and cultivate immortality! What do you mean he was gone? Stop saying such unlucky things."

"Serving immortals is far better than dying of sickness or starvation in rotten mud, isn't it?"

His young son beside him widened his eyes and looked at him in worship.

"Dad, I want to worship the gods every day too!"

"When I grow up, I'll definitely be even stronger than you!"

The woman's smile froze, her expression becoming complicated.

Shen Qingzhou heard everything clearly from his hiding place in the distance.

His divine sense swept over the dilapidated altar at the center of the village and the clay statue standing atop it.

This was a method that borrowed the path of incense and worship.

It was crude and brutal, an unreasonable act of forcible plunder.

"This is far too vicious. How is it any different from those demonic cultivators..."

The living people here could not even be called believers. They were merely livestock kept in pens, living fields that produced Incense and Fire Prayer Power.

A question could not help arising in Shen Qingzhou's mind.

Yellow Earth True Person, whom the Earth Spirit Sect had encountered before, and the bone-devouring spectacle before him were all the actions of a demonic sect.

Could this truly be considered a proper sect?

Lu Chen belonged to the same Wèi Earth lineage and followed the path of suppressing opponents with the weight of mountains.

Everything before Shen Qingzhou revealed another side of Wèi Earth cultivation arts.

The earth did not merely possess mountains; it could also bear living things and transform vitality.

Earth Spirit Sect cultivators used this art of transforming vitality upon mortals. The mortals were penned up like livestock, allowing cultivators to harvest their faith and replenish their cultivation.

What venomous intentions.

There were simply no boundaries in Blackwater Marsh where the three sects kept one another in balance.

Shen Qingzhou did not remain in the village. He concealed himself and continued deeper into the Northern Wastes.

After going some distance, a burst of spiritual energy fluctuations came from ahead.

Shen Qingzhou restrained his aura and moved forward close to the ground.

Ahead lay a broad swamp. Three cultivators in earth-yellow Daoist robes were fiercely surrounding a massive demonic beast.

The beast resembled an enormously enlarged earthworm.

Its grayish-brown body was covered in slick tentacles. It was precisely the Earth Dragon Zhao Yan had mentioned.

The Earth Dragon writhed wildly in the mud, spraying dark-green venom from its mouth. Wherever it splashed upon the rocks, they corroded at once, belching white smoke.

The three Earth Spirit Sect cultivators coordinated skillfully.

One stood at the side, forming hand seals. The swamp turned into a great vortex, dragging the huge creature into a pit.

Another raised both hands, causing several thick earthen walls to rise from the ground and block the venom.

The remaining man had the highest cultivation, seemingly at the seventh level of Qi Refining.

The seventh-level Qi Refining cultivator controlled an earth-yellow flying shuttle in his hand. It gleamed with spiritual light, and every plunge tore open a huge gash in the Earth Dragon's body.

"Hurry up! This beast is trying to burrow underground!"

"Third Brother, use the Earth-Binding Art and lock it down for me!"

The leading seventh-level Qi Refining cultivator roared.

The cultivator controlling the field changed his hand seals, and the rotten mud solidified into an iron plate, jamming the Earth Dragon's body halfway through.

The Earth Dragon let out a strange cry and twisted its enormous body desperately, but it could not break free.

The leader flung out the flying shuttle. It became a streak of yellow light and nailed itself into the Earth Dragon's forehead.

With a muffled puff, the huge creature stopped moving.

"Finally killed it. Damn, that was exhausting!"

The cultivator who had formed the earthen walls sighed in relief and wiped the sweat from his brow.

The leader descended to the ground, split open the Earth Dragon's head with his flying shuttle, and pulled out a fist-sized stone.

The stone carried an earthy stench. It was an Earth Dragon stone gall.

The leader crouched beside the Earth Dragon's corpse and dug through a muddy hollow, scooping up a handful of sand that glimmered with black light.

It was Darkened Essence Sand.

"We got lucky today. This old thing was nearly second rank!"

"This stone gall is excellent quality. It's just a pity we didn't get any Kan Water Jade!"

The leader weighed the stone gall in his hand.

"Senior Brother, we're making a move here, and this isn't far from Profound Heaven Sect's Sunken-Sand Fort..."

"Could something happen?"

The youngest cultivator asked.

"You're overthinking it."

The leader took over.

"Even if you lent those trash ten times the courage, they wouldn't dare show their faces!"

"Besides, does Blackwater Marsh have Profound Heaven Sect's name written on it?"

"Whoever has the harder fist owns this place!"

"Exactly!"

"That woman from Plain Maiden Sect was so arrogant last time, but didn't Senior Brother still put her in her place until she was utterly obedient?"

"She was just short of stripping off her clothes to apologize!"

"Besides, they already gave Senior Brother their word over there..."

The three men boasted as they stripped away all the valuable materials and left.

When they departed, none of them even glanced in the direction of Sunken-Sand Fort.

Shen Qingzhou lay prone in the muddy ground at a distance, hearing every word clearly.

There were three Earth Spirit Sect cultivators: one at the seventh level and two at the sixth level.

Their coordination was seamless, and their equipment was not poor.

Shen Qingzhou was confident he could defeat them, but killing all three in a short span of time was not realistic.

The moment he made a move, his tracks would no longer remain concealed.

Before understanding the full situation, it was unwise to act.

Shen Qingzhou watched the men leave until their figures melted into the miasma.

Kan Water Jade.

Shen Qingzhou silently repeated those three words.

If he wanted to obtain this thing, conflict with the Earth Spirit Sect was unavoidable.

The waters of Blackwater Marsh ran even deeper than he had thought.

The sect encampment here was a joke.

Saying that well water would not offend river water was ghost talk meant to deceive fools.

This place was a primitive hunting ground.

Were the people of Sunken-Sand Fort hunters holding knives, or fat pigs locked in cages?

Or were they playing some other role?

"Who exactly are our own people, and who is laying traps..."

"And how am I supposed to pick up the spoils from within it?"

Shen Qingzhou frowned in thought.