Entering the Cave

Two hundred-odd li was neither particularly far nor particularly near.

In the predawn hours, Yang Yunhai, who had run on and off for at least five shichen, finally reached the outskirts of the mountain range marked on the map.

Looking up, he saw a crescent moon, like a curved blade, appearing and disappearing amid murky clouds as it cast faint moonlight.

At the same time, it illuminated the sheer, blade-cut stone cliffs beneath it.

"This mountain really is at a ninety-degree angle! Good thing it isn't the flat, smooth kind." Yang Yunhai secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

If it had been too smooth, with no footholds at all, even using vines to climb it would not have been easy. He would have had no choice but to take a detour.

As the thought crossed his mind, he raised a hand and summoned his martial soul, infusing it with Soul Power to split off four vines that wrapped around his waist.

Then, he controlled the vines to Stretch out from his back, feeling their way upward along the cliff face. Only after finding footholds did they stop, their barbs hooking securely and pulling taut.

With a thought, he controlled the vines to contract, swiftly hauling his body upward.

Once he reached their limit, he pressed himself close against the cliff to maintain his balance, then controlled the vines to search upward for new footholds.

Repeating the process over and over, resting whenever he grew tired, he did not travel particularly slowly.

As time passed, he crossed one mountain peak after another. The occasional soul beast he encountered along the way had, at most, a hundred years of cultivation. Yang Yunhai bound them one after another, then absorbed from them for a while to maintain the vines' condition. Afraid of affecting his body, he did not draw the energy into himself.

Of course, he did not drain the soul beasts dry either, releasing them once he had absorbed enough.

Who knew how much time had passed before the horizon finally began to brighten, heralding the arrival of morning.

"Rumble..." A faint roar began to sound in Yang Yunhai's ears as cool, watery mist washed over his face.

"My three and a half years of training weren't for nothing!" Delighted, he seemed to forget his exhaustion for a moment and accelerated his climb along the cliff face.

Before long, his toes touched solid ground, and he found himself in a forested valley. Not far beside him flowed a gentle stream, while ahead stood the Silver Waterfall, so tall that its peak was beyond sight. Lush green trees surrounded it, and Blue Silver Grass carpeted the ground like scallions, swaying constantly in the wind from the falls.

"This really is a nice place." Yang Yunhai could not help but admire the beauty before him.

Rolling his neck, he strode to the pool's edge, stripped, and jumped in, taking a thoroughly comfortable bath.

After getting dressed again, he first sat on a reef rock and ate something, then closed his eyes to recover.

After staying awake all night and climbing mountains for so long, even with his current strength, he truly could not hold on much longer.

Still, what he sought was right before his eyes, and his heart remained ablaze.

About half a ke later, Yang Yunhai opened his eyes and rose.

After moving his body a little where he stood, he looked up at the waterfall. Perhaps because the rushing water striking the pool had kicked up mist, or perhaps because there was a large river above, the sky over the waterfall was thick with gray clouds, leaving the surroundings rather dim.

The surrounding cliffs were dark brown as well, and with the water mist hanging in the air, it was difficult to see clearly from afar.

Seeing this, Yang Yunhai immediately went around the pool and arrived beneath one side of the waterfall.

When he looked up again, his eyes suddenly lit up.

Traces of dirt. They were extremely faint, but they were definitely there. Why would scattered smears of dirt be on the waterfall's stone wall?

There was no doubt about it—it had been caused by someone.

Thinking of Tang Hao, whom he had met only yesterday, he immediately understood.

"If I'd come one or two days later, these traces probably would have been completely washed away, wouldn't they?" Yang Yunhai sighed inwardly.

"Tang Hao, Tang Hao, you've saved me quite a bit of trouble."

With traces to follow, climbing upward along them would undoubtedly make it much easier to determine the cave entrance's exact height.

With that thought, he hurriedly summoned his martial soul and created vines. Using the same method as before, he controlled the vines to climb upward. Though the cliff face around the waterfall was wet and slick, its shape was highly irregular, with protrusions appearing every so often.

Some gaps were quite far apart, but that was no problem for him.

After all, his First Soul Skill could extend without limit.

Before long, he guided the vines to a protrusion. Using their barbs to repeatedly grind and cut into the stone wall, the extending vines quickly gained a firm hold.

Seeing this, Yang Yunhai did not hesitate and immediately controlled the vines to contract, pulling his body upward.

Then he carefully examined the cliff face, searching for traces of human footsteps.

Once he found them, he followed the same pattern, controlling the vines to continue climbing upward. After hooking them securely in place, he let them pull him higher.

Time passed bit by bit, and eventually he reached the area where the traces vanished—the middle section of the waterfall.

"Ha, being too strong isn't always a good thing." After looking up for a while, Yang Yunhai smiled.

The waterfall plunged down from nearly two hundred meters high, and the force it carried was easy to imagine. Passing through it would not be easy. As for Tang Hao's method, it appeared to have been rather crude—probably the same method he had used in the original story when bringing Tang San up here. With his overwhelming cultivation, he had forced the water backward and upward. What kind of powerful force would that require? And how could the waterfall's stone wall withstand it?

No matter how careful he had been, damaging the cliff's original form had been unavoidable.

This could be seen from the occasional broken sections visible behind the waterfall. They clearly had not been caused by the flow of water.

"If the terrain around this mountain range weren't so perilous, if there weren't so few soul beasts inside, and if there weren't a Beginner Soul Hunting Forest several hundred li away, this place would probably have been discovered long ago by Spirit Master teams hunting soul beasts."

Yang Yunhai could not help thinking to himself.

"Besides, being small has its advantages!" Looking at the gap exposed behind the waterfall, he secretly sighed in relief.

If there had been no opening, he would have had to push forward directly against the raging current, which would have been quite difficult.

But with a gap, the force he needed to withstand would be much smaller, naturally making it far safer.

"Now that I know the height, if this doesn't work, I'll go above the Waterfall, use vines to grab the trees or rock walls on both sides and lower myself down. Then I can swing in using momentum. If that still doesn't work, I'll use the large trees on both sides as axles, tie a huge boulder up and move it into the middle of the river with the current to block the water, creating a narrow gap in the Waterfall. Then I can lower myself through it and easily enter behind the Waterfall."

After rapidly coming up with several backup plans, Yang Yunhai took a deep breath. He removed the bundle from his back and hung it from his arm, then pressed his chest against the rock wall. With a flick of his right hand, he controlled a vine to wrap around a protruding rock far off to his right. After tugging it to make sure it was secure, he turned his head, pressed his left hand against the rock wall, and controlled the vine on his left hand to Stretch forward. Whenever it encountered a protrusion or crack along the way, it coiled around it and hooked on with its barbs.

Very quickly, the vine from his left hand extended over a hundred meters, looping around the Waterfall's rock wall several times and forming a massive net.

Seeing this, Yang Yunhai took a deep breath, pressed himself tightly against the rock wall, and slowly moved inward while climbing along the web-like vines with his left hand.

"Splish, splash." The rushing water occasionally struck his back and clothes, spraying bursts of water and pressing the vines on the rock wall down several inches.

Fortunately, there were always slightly recessed spots. As long as he pressed himself close enough to the wall, the torrent would not hit him. They were good places to rest and recover.

Thus, Yang Yunhai gradually moved farther inward until he finally reached a recessed area near the middle.

Without the slightest hesitation, he immediately controlled the web of vines within range to sway back and forth, using the barbs on them to grind across the rock wall.

He truly did not know the exact location of the mechanism on the rock wall. But according to the original novel, Tang Hao had merely pressed a certain spot on the wall and triggered it.

So it did not matter that he did not know the precise location. He just had to press every spot with the hooks.

"Bzzzz..." As the thought crossed his mind, the sound of stone grinding echoed out, and a doorway appeared not far away.

"Sigh, if Tang San, who came from the Tang Sect, had designed the entrance mechanism, how could it possibly have been this simple? All I can say is that this world's mechanism arts are still far too crude."

"And that happens to make things easier for me!" Yang Yunhai smiled faintly and quickly grabbed the vines as he moved over.

Grasping the entrance tightly, he retracted the vines and leaped inside.

PS: All I can say is that absorbing the First Soul Ring and Second Soul Ring helped enormously. This was definitely worth it.