The Mysterious Cave

What appeared before Liu Xing's eyes was a fiery-red cave spanning more than a hundred meters. For some reason, he felt that there ought to be a dazzling point of light amid that sea of red.

Yet the eye of his spiritual sense could see no such light within it. Could my senses be wrong?

Just as Liu Xing had that thought, all his Divine Sense suddenly receded like a tide, rushing back toward him. As it withdrew, he felt as though he had gained eyes that could see a thousand miles. The fiery-red cave in his vision swiftly retreated, growing farther away and smaller by the moment.

Had Liu Xing experienced life in the outside world, he would have thought that the scene unfolding through his Divine Sense resembled aerial footage from a helicopter suddenly climbing at tremendous speed.

In the blink of an eye, his spiritual sense returned to the boundless sky above Sky-Peak Volcano, then swept through the void at lightning speed and withdrew into his body.

Liu Xing quietly recalled what had happened. Every sight his Divine Sense had encountered along the way was deeply imprinted on his mind, as though a double of himself had taken a tour of Sky-Peak Volcano.

As Liu Xing savored that feeling, a voice suddenly rang out within his Divine Sense: "Go! Go! Go..."

The yellow phantom had awakened at some point, and was now sending Liu Xing a signal from within his body through his Divine Sense.

Although the yellow phantom had not said where to go, Liu Xing could simply feel that it meant the mysterious cave his consciousness had seen last.

That feeling was, without a doubt, profoundly mysterious!

Liu Xing glanced at the Black-Clad Woman. She still lay there quietly. Though her jade-like body was laid bare in an alluring pose, she did not look as though she would awaken anytime soon.

After a brief pause, Liu Xing pulled the Black-Clad Woman's clothes over her naked body, then dashed out of the cave without looking back and headed straight for Sky-Peak Volcano.

After sending the message "Go!", the yellow phantom gave no further response. Yet Liu Xing instinctively felt that he had to get there as quickly as possible, as though something extraordinary were waiting for him.

Was this feeling caused by the yellow phantom's influence?

Liu Xing could not find an answer yet, but he was indeed heading toward Sky-Peak Volcano at his full speed.

Sky-Peak Volcano stood at the western end of the Frozen Earth Plains, roughly a thousand li from where Liu Xing lived. It was a highly active, ring-shaped volcano.

No living creature could survive around Sky-Peak Volcano, so Liu Xing rarely went there to hunt. But just now, the Eye of Divine Sense had scanned the entire volcano's terrain like a GPS satellite. Like an old horse that knew the way, he raced straight toward it along the shortest route.

Each leap now carried Liu Xing more than a hundred meters, his speed rivaling an airplane's. Like a tireless machine, he kept sprinting without slowing in the slightest.

A thousand li was no short distance, but Liu Xing reached Sky-Peak Volcano in only about two hours.

Sky-Peak Volcano was not actually very tall. Its summit rose no more than a few hundred meters above the ground, but it covered an enormous area, with a circumference of dozens of kilometers.

Looking down from its ring-shaped summit, one could see boiling lava through the layers of smoke. Sky-Peak Volcano was so active that it erupted frequently, sending pillars of smoke soaring all the way to the heavens. That was why the old man and Liu Xing had named it Sky-Peak Volcano.

Liu Xing surveyed his surroundings. As he remembered it, the fiery-red cave he sought was not at the summit, but behind a fissure halfway up the mountainside.

Without a scan from the Eye of Divine Sense, even if Liu Xing had wandered around Sky-Peak Volcano every day, how could he have discovered that an entirely different world lay behind an inconspicuous fissure?

After several swift leaps, Liu Xing reached the mountainside and stopped before a dark-red rock wall.

Countless layers of cooled lava had accumulated to form this wall, and even the fissure was only faintly visible.

Without a moment's hesitation, Liu Xing bent down, picked up a huge boulder, and hurled it against the rock wall.

The wall formed from cooled lava was not particularly sturdy. After several successive blows from the boulder, cracks appeared across it, and the fissure slowly widened.

Gradually, a sliver of fiery-red light shone through the fissure. That was enough to prove that the scene within Liu Xing's Divine Sense had not been an illusion. The mysterious cave he had seen truly existed.

As the fissure widened enough for a person to squeeze through, the red light pouring out grew even more dazzling. The yellow phantom, which had remained quiet within Liu Xing's Divine Sense for quite some time, grew restless again, as though urging him to hurry inside.

With a trace of curiosity, Liu Xing slipped into the fissure. After squeezing forward for several meters, the space before him suddenly opened up. There it was—the fiery-red, mysterious cave he had seen through his Divine Sense.

Before Liu Xing could take a closer look, red light surged before his eyes. At the same time, he felt an incomparably vast torrent of spiritual energy suddenly erupt. A fiery-red dragon apparition, about as thick as a bucket, flickered in and out of sight amid the red light, baring its fangs and brandishing its claws as it lunged at him.

Liu Xing was badly startled. In his haste, he threw himself down and rolled like a lazy donkey, dodging the fiery-red dragon apparition. Despite its size, the apparition was extremely nimble. It wheeled around and lunged at him again. With no other option, Liu Xing could only dodge once more, and for a time it chased him into a thoroughly sorry state.

Liu Xing knew little about the Cultivation World. Had he been a well-informed cultivator, he would certainly have recognized the fiery-red dragon apparition attacking him as a soul spirit.

Soul spirits would attach themselves only to treasures and depended on spiritual energy to survive. They generally arose only in places rich in spiritual energy, and forming a dragon-shaped soul spirit was all but impossible without ten thousand years.

That a dragon-shaped soul spirit could emerge on a Garbage Planet like Connors Star, naturally deficient in spiritual energy, would have astonished anyone. The only explanation was that some Innate Treasure within this mysterious cave could nourish the dragon-shaped soul spirit with its immense spiritual energy!

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