A saying circulated on the Dou Qi Continent: if one day you fell off a cliff and landed in a cave, do not panic. Take two steps forward, and perhaps you would become a mighty expert!
Drip... drip...
Cold drops of water fell onto his face, and Chen Cang slowly stirred from unconsciousness.
What greeted his eyes looked like a jagged mountain range hanging upside down, giving him a sense of unreality. Only upon closer inspection did he realize they were merely dangling stalactites.
He shifted his head to avoid the dripping water. After taking a good while to recover, Chen Cang slowly climbed out of the standing water, soaked through.
Ignoring such details, Chen Cang first picked up the spear beside him, which had snapped in two, and gripped it in his hand. Only then did he carefully survey his surroundings.
This was clearly an underground cave. Translucent stalagmites and stone pillars stood in peculiar shapes, while moisture gathered from the damp air and fell as droplets, forming a cycle of its own.
The cave was enormous, with four or five branching passages visible to the naked eye, leading who knew where.
"How did I end up here?"
Puzzled, Chen Cang randomly chose a passage with shallower water and headed down it. Along the way, there was no sound but the splashing of his footsteps.
After wading forward for four or five minutes, he finally reached dry ground. By the dim light, Chen Cang saw that two sets of stark white bones lay in the open space ahead.
Chen Cang stepped forward and bent down to examine them.
One clearly belonged to a magical beast. Shaped like a horse and over two meters long, it had left nothing behind but a silvery-white magic core.
Chen Cang poked the spear shaft through the bones and prodded around a few times. Only after nothing unexpected happened did he retrieve the core. Holding it, he could feel the immense energy within, as though he were gripping a nuclear bomb that might explode at any moment.
"A Sixth-Tier Magical Beast's magic core?"
Looking at the beast's remains and recalling the magical beast memories he had read earlier, Chen Cang gradually began to piece things together, vaguely guessing what had happened.
Compared to the magical beast's skeleton, the human remains nearby looked far too "petite."
Of course, size had no bearing on value.
In fact, Chen Cang was far more interested in the human remains.
He had already spotted a pale purple ring lying quietly on the ground beneath the skeleton's dangling arm.
If his guess was correct, this should be a Storage Ring.
Chen Cang had seen Ding Dian's and Master Mo's, though theirs differed somewhat in color.
He stepped forward and dragged the ring over with the spear shaft. Nothing unexpected happened this time either, and Chen Cang felt he was being overly cautious. A large part of the skeleton's skull had been shattered, clearly indicating that he had died from a fatal attack. How could he have had time to set traps?
A thread of soul perception seeped into the ring. With almost no resistance, a space of roughly twenty cubic meters appeared in Chen Cang's mind, allowing him to "see" the various objects scattered inside.
It really was a Storage Ring!
And not even the lowest-grade kind.
Coming back to his senses, Chen Cang beamed with delight, unwilling to put it down.
Storage Rings were fashioned from a rare material called Storage Stone. They contained an internal space that could hold objects without any signs of life-a must-have for home and travel alike.
Depending on the size of their internal space and their level of security, Storage Rings were divided into high, intermediate, and low grades.
The one in Chen Cang's hand should qualify as an intermediate-grade Storage Ring.
He had wanted to get his hands on one for a long time.
During his year of training in the Black Eagle Mountains, he had saved over a hundred thousand gold coins, most of which he had originally planned to spend on a Storage Ring.
With this thing, he could carry all sorts of belongings without lugging around bags and bundles. It was countless times more convenient.
Reining in his excitement a little, Chen Cang began sorting through the possessions left in the Storage Ring.
Before long, he had divided them into five groups and laid them out before him.
The first glittering pile consisted of gold coins-eight hundred and ninety thousand, not counting the loose change.
The second contained clothing and other everyday belongings, of no value worth considering.
The third was entirely bottles and jars. Chen Cang's ability to identify pills was no worse than a Third-Rank Alchemist's, and he easily recognized that most were pills such as Qi Recovery Pills, used to replenish depleted reserves.
Besides those, there were two portions of Qi Gathering Powder.
And a green pill with the richest medicinal fragrance of them all.
A Green Spirit Pill!
This was a fourth-rank pill. Not only did its name resemble that of the Three-Pattern Green Spirit Pill from the original course of events, but its effects were similar too: it could help someone break through to Da Dou Shi!
It could be considered a stripped-down version of the Jia Ma Empire's Three-Pattern Green Spirit Pill. Even their formulas were probably much the same.
Even so, the Green Spirit Pill was still extremely precious.
The fourth pile before Chen Cang consisted of several scrolls. The highest-ranked among them was a High Xuan Tier cultivation method called the Golden Sand Appraisal.
Unfortunately, it was metal-attributed and useless to Chen Cang.
He merely gave the other Dou Techniques and cultivation methods a cursory look, paying them little attention.
For him, cultivation methods and combat skills were the things he lacked least. As long as he got out alive, there would be plenty of opportunities to obtain higher-ranked ones in the future.
The final group before him consisted of a metal identification token, with "Tianying" on the front and "Feng Guanqiao" engraved on the back.
The moment he saw the token, Chen Cang knew who these remains had once belonged to.
None other than Tianying City's former city lord!
Feng Guanqiao was his name.
Back then, the Tianxing Empire had even sent people into the mountains to search for him, but they had found no trace. Who would have imagined that Chen Cang would discover him today?
Fate worked in wondrous, ineffable ways.
With a soft sigh, Chen Cang put everything away and approached the remains. He picked up the broken bones scattered on the ground and fitted them back into place like puzzle pieces. Only then did he rise and head outside, gathering plenty of loose stones to bury them.
As the saying went, accepting another's food softened the tongue. Since he had taken the benefits, he ought to show at least some consideration.
As for the magical beast's remains beside him...
He was tired. He could not be bothered.
After a short rest, Chen Cang sat cross-legged with his back against the old city lord's new home and brought himself into peak condition.
Then he turned his palm over, and the Green Spirit Pill appeared.
Without the slightest hesitation, Chen Cang popped it straight into his mouth.
The exact date was unknown. Regardless, it was an auspicious day for a breakthrough.
Immense medicinal power instantly spread through his body. As Chen Cang circulated his cultivation method, it rapidly transformed into pure liquid energy and poured into the Dou Qi vortex in his dantian.
The cycle repeated, battering relentlessly against the limits of a Dou Shi.
Liquid energy had already occupied more than ninety percent of Chen Cang's original vortex. Had he cultivated normally, he would only have needed to turn everything within it into liquid energy to break through.
Now, a single Green Spirit Pill had saved him an enormous amount of time.
The vortex slowly rotated. The liquid energy within had reached its limit, yet Chen Cang continued compressing it again and again, like a tireless machine.
An unknown amount of time passed. Only when the liquid energy within the vortex had completely transformed into a crimson crystal the size of his thumb did Chen Cang slowly stop.
His head was drenched in sweat, yet he felt clearer and more refreshed than ever before.
His Dou Crystal had formed. He was now a proud Da Dou Shi!
Opening his eyes, Chen Cang raised his palm and circulated the Dou Qi within his body. The rudimentary shape of a suit of armor instantly condensed over his skin.
This was Dou Qi Armor!
The exclusive skill of a Da Dou Shi!
Suddenly, Chen Cang sensed a gaze fixed on him and sharply raised his head.
Sure enough, a little silver horse stood at the entrance to the passage, watching him with wide, innocent eyes.
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