While cultivators cannot break through to the Immortal Realm, Mist Beast can use the Inner Core condensed from the corpses of cultivators to help them break through.
While a cultivator's corpse cannot disappear and return to the world in a short time, the Inner Core of Mist Beast can vanish into the world in an instant.
In this act of drinking and eating, the cycle of Reincarnation Temple was subtly revealed. Although the Land of Exile lacked stable order and rules, these Mist Beast seemed to have replaced the original rules.
The battle between cultivators and Mist Beast has become different because the Mist Beast have developed intelligence. In the barren land, only powerful creatures can ensure the survival of their races.
The cultivators and the Mist Beast were at odds with each other, and they harbored an extremely strong aversion to the outsider cultivators.
Having tasted the benefits of the cultivators' corpses, and as their population grew, the Mist Beast began to control the battle in the Land of Exile.
After several battles, the cultivators discovered the secret of the Mist Beast. They stopped leaving behind the corpses of the opposing cultivators after battles, thus preventing the Mist Beast from increasing their chances of reproduction.
Upon seeing this, Xu Long suddenly realized that during the battle in the small spiritual vein of the Rogue Cultivators Association, Deng Shouchong's Dharma banner had absorbed the entire Old Pavilion Master Huang, leaving no corpse behind. He had previously thought it was somewhat cruel, but now it seemed to be a necessary measure.
But it was too late. The overall strength of the Mist Beast had already surpassed that of the cultivators. As some gods began to wither and fall, the cultivators had been firmly suppressed by the Mist Beast. Now, the Mist Beast were starting to seek out cultivators to parasitize!
The suppressed cultivators, after much agonizing reflection, began to band together for mutual support in the face of external threats. However, those cultivators who had been banished to the Land of Exile had already split up, scattered across the land, their whereabouts unknown to one another.
It was impossible to gather all forces, but under the constant threat of the Mist Beast Clan, some cultivators began to gather in one place.
Through bloodshed and death, they learned that to build true civilization, they needed to rely on the true spark of civilization to dispel the Mist Beast.
Some powerful beings cleared flat land from the earth, and some gods brought water to the wilderness. They wanted to build high walls and boundless cities in a barren land.
To establish a home for cultivators in this desolate land, to establish an order for cultivators, and to ignite the spark of civilization.
This was a magnificent engineering feat, with countless cultivators working tirelessly for the construction of the colossal city, and countless powerful beings and deities perishing in its pursuit.
On the earth, they willingly surrendered themselves to the beasts rather than fall into the hands of the Mist Beast; before the Mist Beast, they fought desperately without retreating a single step.
The high walls separated the wilderness from civilization, and the long city spread myths and the flame of civilization. When the great city was built, the songs of the ancient times rang out again in a wild land.
Countless ancestors protected the flame of civilization before the Mist Beast Clan, and countless fallen meteors carried on the spirit of cultivators.
Perhaps this place was once a wild and barren land, but the existence of this city signifies the continuation of order and civilization.
Blackwater City!
This is Land of Exile, this is a city of cultivators!
With the establishment of cities, the scattered cultivators had a place to gather, and the number of births among the Mist Beast rapidly decreased, which greatly displeased the Mist Beast race.
They planned to conquer the city, turn all the cultivators into ice sculptures, and then parasitize the eggs of the beasts. The intelligent Mist Beast knew that they had to expand their population.
During the battle, a large number of Mist Beast gathered outside the city, confident that they could overthrow this giant city.
When the azure mist surged up from the earth like an avalanche, the cultivators in the city turned pale. This was the innate divine ability of the Mist Beast, and a nightmare for both cultivators and Desolate Beast.
However, there was no panic in the City Lord's Manor. The powerful figure who oversaw the construction of the city had long anticipated this calamity, so at the beginning of the city's construction, he created something to resist the Eternity Ice Mist.
In ancient times, countless powerful beings and deities were banished to Land of Exile. Their spiritual realm declined, but their understanding of the world did not disappear.
They are powerful beings who have gained insight into the secrets of heaven and the rules of the universe through their understanding of the laws of Heavenly Dao and their observation of Reincarnation Temple.
When building the city for cultivators, powerful beings and gods deliberately incorporated their lifelong insights and laws into the city, condensing an energy core at its heart.
This energy core contains the energy of powerful beings from the primordial era, beings so powerful as to be immortal, who condensed their life's insights and laws into a core, infusing it with energy equivalent to that of an entire world.
The powerful beings had discerned the secrets of heaven; their own existence was equivalent to a small world. With the relentless infusion of energy from several powerful beings and gods, the energy core within the city finally took shape.
With this energy core, the City of Cultivators can truly become self-contained. Even if the Land of Exile does not have any blessed lands, the City of Cultivators already possesses the energy core of a blessed land created by the gods in the ancient times.
In the barren Land of Exile, Blackwater City, with its energy core, is a civilization that will never wither, a flame that will never be extinguished!
The energy core is what keeps the giant city running. Its importance is equivalent to that of a person's heart. Hidden within it is the energy of several ancient gods. It is a small world full of energy and laws!
Therefore, once the city possessed an energy core, it became a small world of its own, and was not afraid of the incoming Eternity Ice Mist.
When the energy core within the city unleashed its earth-shattering power, the azure Eternity Ice Mist vanished within it for the first time. This was the first time the invincible innate divine ability of the Mist Beast had failed to work against a cultivator.
With the Eternity Ice Mist rendered ineffective by the energy core, the cultivators in the city knew it was time to fight back!
After the city was established, the cultivators had their own territory in the Land of Exile. Relying on the city, which was both offensive and defensive, the cultivators finally began to launch a counterattack against the Mist Beast.
The Eternity Ice Mist that had failed beneath the city walls shocked the Mist Beast race. It seemed that for the first time, they had felt the power of a cultivator—an immortal power, a power unique to heaven and earth.
That power is called—civilization!
Neither side held back in their battle; for those with deep-seated hatred, the ultimate goal was to completely annihilate the other and thus survive.
Of course, with cities, the cultivators became even more powerful, and the flames of war on the land began to reignite. However, as time passed, those once powerful beings perished one by one, and in this barren and desolate world, cultivators and Mist Beast coexisted in opposition to each other.
Xu Long opened his eyes in an instant. The vicissitudes that flashed in his eyes seemed to have lasted for ten thousand years. The sunlight that fell on his head was still there, but the holy feeling on Xu Long was gone.
A faint sense of sorrow permeated the hall. He now understood how this city had been built in the Land of Exile.
Countless lives were lost for this cause, and countless indomitable beings roared at the heavens, determined to preserve the flame in the Land of Exile.
Indeed, this Blackwater City once boasted a glorious past, home to countless cultivators and a brilliant civilization.
This city belongs to the indomitable spirit of cultivators, and to their legacy!
But after ten thousand years, why did the once prosperous city turn into ruins? Why was the vast city buried by yellow sand? Why did the once immortal gods perish one by one? Why are there Mist Beast tribes within the city of cultivators?
Has that ancient civilization been lost, that ancient flame extinguished, and in the blood and sweat of countless cultivators, an unbearable tragedy has been reenacted, and countless past glories have been filled once again with suffocating nightmares?
Has this city of cultivators fallen? Has this land of civilization crumbled? Has the flame of its heart been extinguished?
Xu Long examined all the murals and books in the main hall, but he only found information about the city's construction and the Mist Beast.
However, he found no information about the current state of the city, nor about the Ancestral Spirit, only some ancient gods, which caught his attention.
Logically, only ten thousand years have passed, so there should be records in books and murals. However, in the city overrun by Mist Beast, not a single piece of information about the past can be found.
The information from the past ten thousand years seems to have been erased by human hands, leaving no one to examine or understand it, as if a gaze from the unseen world is always watching this place.
The past buried within the city walls will forever remain silent in history, never to be casually revisited again.
The information about the Ancestral Spirit was not found inside the main hall; the events of the ancient times have become history.
The gods banished to the Land of Exile were too busy fighting the Mist Beast to record those ancient grudges and conspiracies.
They buried all their secrets deep in their hearts, buried them in the vast yellow sands, with only the occasional mirages replaying their past stories.
Xu Long's figure disappeared from beneath the dome. This fragmented space didn't seem to be very large; beyond the dome lay a dark world.
Xu Long's eyes flickered for a moment, then he walked into the darkness, where he seemed to feel a tremor in his heart.
The white of his left eye looked somewhat ferocious, and as he walked forward, Xu Long sensed the darkness ahead and attached his will to it. The dark place within the fragmented space seemed somewhat different from before.
The gaze that flashed from the Heavenly Eye froze for a moment, and Xu Long's already raised foot stopped in mid-air. The pupil of his right eye shrank sharply, and his face turned extremely horrified.
Then, his whole body arched like a cat, and a sharp sword light, ready to be unleashed, was about to leap out. The sword light that rose up beside him instantly illuminated the darkness in the space.
Illuminated by a ray of sword light, a cultivator stood in the darkness ahead!
This was a middle-aged ice sculpture cultivator, standing calmly in the darkness, his gaze fixed on the dome beneath the main hall.
He watched Xu Long walk step by step, seemingly observing Xu Long's every move calmly, but without a trace of emotion in his eyes.
It wasn't until the Heavenly Eye detected him and Xu Long unleashed his sword light that he truly saw the ice sculpture cultivator. Their eyes met briefly in the darkness.
Eyes separated by millennia meet at this moment, conveying the vicissitudes of time and history.
Xu Long's gaze swept over the middle-aged cultivator's entire body, finally settling on the hair bun on his head, where a precious hairpin was still inserted.
This is the middle-aged ice sculpture cultivator that Xu Long and his group saw inside the city walls when they crossed the sand dunes and entered the city!
The middle-aged cultivator was the first ice sculpture cultivator Xu Long encountered after entering the Land of Exile, and he even made a point of remembering the other's appearance and characteristics.
As he entered the city, he clearly remembered that the other's frozen body was still standing inside the walls!
I have already learned from the books and murals inside the main hall that the ice sculpture cultivators are frozen by the Eternity Ice Mist and are like dead people.
How come the middle-aged cultivator I saw inside the walled enclosure is now in the main hall?
No wonder Xu Long was so shocked. When his Heavenly Eye detected the middle-aged cultivator, he couldn't help but want to unleash his sword light and rush out.
Because in his several encounters with the ice sculpture cultivator, the latter was always accompanied by Mist Beast, Xu Long couldn't help but be cautious. Could there be Mist Beast inside the main hall as well?
Thump!
A muffled thud suddenly echoed within the silent space, and a layer of cold sweat broke out on Xu Long's forehead. His heart, which had stopped abruptly, began to beat again.
He exhaled slowly, trembling, his left eye flashing as he quickly searched for Silk within the fragmented space.
The shock in his eyes gradually subsided, and when he stopped at a spot inside the hall, his gaze became more relieved.
Xu Long released his will, and then his figure went straight past the ice sculpture cultivator. In his left eye, there was only a patch of white, but he already knew the dark scene inside the hall.
Having activated his Heavenly Eye, Xu Long was able to see through illusions and clearly even in the darkness of the fragmented space. He was indeed startled when he sensed the presence of the ice sculpture cultivator.
However, upon closer inspection, he found nothing unusual about the other party. Xu Long suppressed his doubts and used his Heavenly Eye and willpower to investigate again. Finally, he discovered an unusual aura inside the main hall in the fragmented space.
In a dim corner of the fragmented space, the Heavenly Eye detected a crack. Logically, the interior of the great hall, sealed for millennia, should be an independent space, so why does this crack exist? And where does it lead?
Xu Long's will solidified behind the Heavenly Eye, then transformed into an invisible force that penetrated into the crevices in the darkness. As the information transmitted back from his will, the doubt on Xu Long's face gradually disappeared, and a meaningful smile appeared on his lips.
The separate fragment space and the City Lord's Manor are separated by a barrier, which is sealed by an array. Xu Long, of course, entered through legitimate means by chanting incantations and cooperating with the array to activate it.
What was inside the crevice surprised Xu Long, and he stopped at the entrance of the crevice.
After a moment's thought, Xu Long's eyes revealed a resolute determination. He restrained his Magic Power, and the sword light beside him was poised to strike, ready to prevent any unexpected events from occurring.
Then the figure gradually disappeared into the gap. Traveling between barriers is an extremely dangerous act, because the enclosed space is unstable. If a slight tremor is caused, everything within the barrier will be lost in the chaotic space.