Entering Kunlun

Nothing happened that night.

Dawn had not yet broken; it was the quietest time between heaven and earth.

Zu Hao woke naturally. As his eyes opened and closed, a sharp glint flickered within them.

He did not rise at once, instead remaining on his back as he calmed his mind and turned his awareness inward toward his sea of consciousness.

The orb of light representing his spiritual power slowly revolved like a living nebula. Its glow was gentle and restrained, yet compared to yesterday, it had indeed become a little more solid and powerful.

However, its rate of growth was like a brook flowing into a great river—continuous, but somewhat calmer than the initial surging torrent.

With a slight stir of thought, Zu Hao did not hurry to get up. Instead, he quietly extended his senses.

The minuscule dust particles in the surrounding air, almost impossible to discern with the naked eye, seemed to be drawn by invisible threads. They began floating and circulating in an orderly fashion, tracing the paths of his spiritual power.

This precise control over the microscopic world demonstrated his improved command of spiritual power even more clearly than moving massive boulders.

Zu Hao slowly sat up, crossed his legs, and focused for a moment before getting out of bed.

Though his movements as he dressed appeared ordinary, his body had already silently slipped free from gravity's pull, floating half a foot above the ground as lightly as a feather.

He pushed open the inn's wooden window, letting in the crisp morning air. His figure flashed, and he was already outside the window. Then he shot upward like an arrow, soaring a thousand meters into the sky.

The rivers and mountains below gradually took shape in the faint dawn light. Layer upon layer of peaks resembled dark waves, stretching out in magnificent splendor.

The high-altitude wind was bitterly cold, whipping his robes with a loud flutter.

A surge of heroic spirit rose in Zu Hao's heart, as though he stood atop the highest peak and looked down upon all the mountains below.

He casually stretched his limbs. As his fists and kicks swept through the air, dull explosions rang out, carrying the faint force of wind and thunder.

His pure physical strength had also steadily improved under the subtle nourishment of spiritual power and the tempering of Nine Yin Manual internal energy. A casual punch now contained explosive force well beyond six tons.

Such strength would have been enough to shock the world in his previous life.

But in this world of Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber, against first-rate masters with profound internal strength and strange techniques, he still needed to remain cautious.

"No matter how strong you are, it's useless if you can't hit them."

Zu Hao understood this well. Those top experts might not be able to withstand one of his incomparably fierce punches, but their movement techniques, combat skills, and the sharpness of divine weapons could still threaten his body.

Of course, whether those experts could even get close to Zu Hao was another matter entirely.

Zu Hao possessed more than spiritual power. His internal strength had now reached the first-rate realm as well. Added to the firearms in his personal storage space, he could indeed be called invincible in this world, in a sense.

After wandering among the clouds for a while and breathing in the qi of heaven and earth, Zu Hao finally returned to the inn.

When he left his room, Zhang Wuji, Yin Li, Zhou Zhiruo, and Yang Buhui were already awake and washing up in the courtyard.

After a restful night, much of the weariness had faded from the children's faces, and their eyes had grown much brighter.

While they were eating breakfast, bursts of noisy gongs and drums, along with faint cheers, sounded from outside the inn and drew steadily closer.

Before long, several elderly men with white hair and beards, dressed in patched coarse cloth, arrived at the inn with a group of sallow, emaciated villagers. They carried cured meat, dried mushrooms, a bolt of rough cloth, and other items.

The moment they saw Zu Hao, they tried to kneel and thank him, speaking earnestly. "Thank you, hero, for ridding the people of evil and destroying those villains of Black Mountain Stronghold."

"These are merely small tokens of appreciation from the villagers. We hope you will not disdain them."

Zu Hao looked at these ragged commoners struggling to survive amid the chaos of the late Yuan era.

Even without the bandits, their lives would remain difficult.

Zu Hao sighed inwardly.

"There is no need for this. Life is difficult for everyone, so please take these things back."

Zu Hao politely declined the gifts. Unable to refuse their sincerity completely, he accepted only some portable dried provisions and water, then gently urged them to take good care of themselves.

As for high-yield crop seeds such as potatoes, Zu Hao did not give them to these people.

It was not because he was unwilling to part with them, but because they could not protect them and might even invite catastrophe.

The Yuan Dynasty still ruled the land. If the Yuan gained control of these high-yield crops, it might prolong the dynasty for a very long time.

For the greater picture, it would be more appropriate to give them to the Ming Cult after reaching the Kunlun Mountains.

Once they had packed up, the group set off again.

The carriage jolted westward along rugged mountain roads. The farther west they traveled, the sparser the signs of human habitation became. All they saw were desolate wastelands and barren mountain ridges.

Most nights, they could only sleep in the wilderness, gathering dead branches to light campfires, using the sky as their blanket and the earth as their bed.

Fortunately, Zu Hao's spiritual power grew stronger by the day. Hunting game, keeping watch over their surroundings, and driving away wild beasts all became effortless. Thus, although the journey of sleeping in the open was harsh, it was not especially dangerous. Instead, it carried a unique feeling of escaping worldly clamor and drawing close to nature.

After enduring so many upheavals, Yin Li, Zhang Wuji, and the other children had developed resilient temperaments. Under Zu Hao's protection, they gradually grew accustomed to this life and even found the joy of adventure within it.

The days passed amid this plain yet fulfilling trek.

Zu Hao was in no hurry regarding his transmigration. The Negative Reversal System had no time limit on its tasks, so he could slowly accumulate strength in this world.

Besides, he had a bit of a collector's obsession and compulsive streak in his bones. Since he had come to this world of Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber, he would feel that the journey was incomplete if he failed to acquire supreme martial arts such as the Nine Yang Divine Skill and Heaven and Earth Shift.

Furthermore, Zu Hao had sweet-talked Yin Li into revealing the Thousand Spider Myriad Poison Hand.

It was a rather sinister technique that required one to cultivate using venom from poisonous spiders. Spider venom could be condensed in one's hands, poisoning an opponent upon contact.

The more spider venom one absorbed, the deeper one's cultivation and the greater its power became.

Its side effect was that one's face would fester and become unbearably ugly.

Through the Negative Reversal System, however, Zu Hao only became more handsome the more he cultivated it.

The only problem was that finding poisonous spiders was troublesome and time-consuming, making it less convenient than cultivating the Nine Yin Manual.

The group traveled by day and rested by night, and more than half a month passed in the blink of an eye.

The landscape around them had changed completely. The towering Kunlun Mountains stretched across heaven and earth like the spine of a giant dragon. Their snow-covered peaks glittered with sacred yet frigid silver light beneath the deep blue sky and dazzling sun.

The air was cold and fresh. When drawn into the lungs, it carried the distinctive chill of ice and snow, instantly refreshing the spirit.

By then, Zu Hao's spiritual power could effortlessly move boulders weighing twenty tons. Within a two-hundred-meter radius around him, it was like invisible, nimble tentacles, agile and extraordinarily precise.

His physical strength had increased relatively slowly, with his punching power remaining around six tons. Yet the superior internal cultivation methods within the Nine Yin Manual had made his methods of exerting force more refined, while his muscles, bones, organs, and viscera had grown ever stronger.

The Soul-Shifting Method recorded in the manual, a mystical spiritual art, complemented Zu Hao's powerful spiritual power perfectly.

After only a little study, he had already grasped its essence. He was confident that even someone with cultivation as profound as Zhang Sanfeng's would have his mind affected if caught off guard.

Ordinary martial artists, naturally, would find it even harder to resist.

Under Zu Hao's guidance, Zhang Wuji and the other three had also improved in martial arts.

Yin Li and Zhang Wuji had better foundations and had already crossed the threshold into the third-rate martial artist realm. Given time, advancing into the second-rate realm would not be difficult.

Zhou Zhiruo and Yang Buhui had started somewhat later and were still laying their foundations, but both possessed good aptitude. So long as they did not die prematurely, their future achievements would be worth anticipating.

After entering the depths of the Kunlun Mountains, the roads became increasingly perilous, and the carriage could no longer proceed.

The five of them had no choice but to abandon the carriage, pack their essential supplies onto two packhorses, and continue climbing on foot.

The mountains were majestic, the forests deep, and the paths treacherous, with countless forks in the road.

Although Zu Hao had prepared a map, maps from this era were crudely drawn and could only indicate the general direction. They still had to find the exact route themselves.