Everlasting Spring

"In... out... in..."

His ragged breathing sounded like a bellows, and Fang Yu's hand trembled uncontrollably around the golden hammer.

He looked at the corpse on the ground, its head smashed apart, and sent his Divine Thought out in every direction. Only after confirming that there were no unusual presences nearby did he grab the corpse and enter the cave.

The walls of Cloud Mist Cave, where the fiery clouds had rampaged, had been scorched until lava flowed down them. The furnishings in the cave abode had long since been reduced to ash. In the terrifying heat, the clothes on the corpse in his hand rapidly dried and charred. Just as they were about to burst into flame, they vanished.

Flaming Mountain. Cave abode.

Fang Yu carried the corpse into the flint chamber and tossed it onto the floor. He opened the spirit spring water barrel and gulped down half of it.

The cool spirit spring water slowed Fang Yu's racing heart, and his breathing gradually steadied.

He plopped down on the floor and stared at the corpse for a while. Once his breathing had completely settled, he got up, went over to it, and began searching it.

He soon pulled a pouch resembling a sachet from inside its robes. There was nothing else.

"What's this?"

Fang Yu sensed a trace of spiritual essence coming from the pouch and touched it with his Divine Thought. His eyes immediately lit up. "This is a storage sachet with a space as big as a room!"

With a movement of his Divine Thought, he took everything inside out.

"These clothes have spiritual essence! They're a set of Dharma robes!"

"Is this a flying boat Law Artifact? It looks pretty good!"

"What kind of stone is this? It contains such astonishing Spiritual Qi, and its concentration and purity are more than ten times greater than at Medicine King Ridge. Could these be the Spirit Stones Great Scarlet Heaven's cultivators use? That's far too extravagant!"

"One, two, three... twenty-one... thirty-two... I'm rich, I'm rich! There are so many Spirit Stones!"

"'Everlasting Spring Technique'? Th-this is a Cultivation Method?"

"Hmm, this looks like a map. So Great Scarlet Heaven has marketplaces and immortal sects too?"

"..."

Fang Yu examined everything one by one, his arm trembling involuntarily. This was different from the trembling before.

Before, he had been frightened by the sudden attack. Now, he was excited.

"Calm down... calm down..."

Fang Yu went back to the spirit water barrel and gulped down another half barrel, calming himself once again.

He turned to look at the corpse with its head smashed apart and wondered why this Great Scarlet Heaven cultivator had lain in ambush for him in his own cave abode.

When had this person discovered him? How had he found him? And why had he launched a sneak attack without a word?

After thinking for a moment, he recalled the scene when he had tried out the fire technique.

"Could he have noticed the fluctuations of spiritual power while passing by, come looking, and found my cave abode? Then he hid in the cave and waited for me to come back so he could attack me!"

I had no grudge against him. He probably attacked me because he thought killing me would benefit him. Hmm, my three-piece flint set really is extremely valuable.

At the Metal Stone Immortal Sect, he had often heard that Rogue Cultivators outside were extremely vicious, killing people for treasures and robbing them of Spirit Stones at the slightest provocation. Since Great Scarlet Heaven had cultivators too, they were probably much the same.

This man was probably a vicious Rogue Cultivator!

Fang Yu settled on a simple assessment of the head-smashed corpse's identity, then picked up the Everlasting Spring Technique and leafed through it carefully.

Hmm! Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Spirit Transformation... Great Scarlet Heaven's cultivation realms are different from Black and Yellow Heaven's?

Fang Yu read through the Cultivation Method several times, a somewhat bewildered look in his eyes.

He understood most of the Cultivation Method, but the realms it listed truly puzzled him.

Weren't the orthodox cultivation realms supposed to be:

Qi Ingestion Realm, Dao Foundation Realm, Purple Mansion Realm, Golden Core Realm,

four realms?

How did Great Scarlet Heaven have five? Apart from the Golden Core Realm, the rest were rather different.

Was this Golden Core the same Golden Core?

Fang Yu recalled what the instructor in the sect had taught him about the realms when he had joined at six.

"The Purple Mansion is the great Dao that cultivators like us pursue throughout our lives. Upon entering the Purple Mansion, one gains Divine Abilities that reach heaven and penetrate earth, and can decide the lives of the millions in a commandery or even an entire kingdom."

As for Golden Core, that was the Heavenly Dao: knowable, but beyond reach. For twelve thousand years, Golden Core True Lords had not appeared in the world. There were only legends, with no trace of them.

Yet in Great Scarlet Heaven, there were two more realms beyond Golden Core.

Fang Yu thought about it for a while but still couldn't make sense of it, so he stopped trying. He knew too little about Great Scarlet Heaven. Once he learned more in the future, he would probably be able to understand the differences.

Putting down the Everlasting Spring Technique manual, he picked up a map titled Overview of the Chu Kingdom Cultivation World.

The map depicted mountains and terrain. Fang Yu quickly found the mountains representing Medicine King Ridge. Three thousand li to its east was a marked marketplace called East Spirit Mountain Marketplace, while Medicine King Ridge was merely a small branch of the East Spirit Mountain Range.

East Spirit Mountain Marketplace, in turn, belonged to a sect called the Cloud Spirit Sect, which was prominently marked as a "Golden Core sect."

Besides those, there were spiritual lands belonging to various "Foundation Establishment lineages," large and small, as well as more than a dozen other marketplaces of various sizes.

By the time Fang Yu finished studying it, a layer of cold sweat had appeared on his forehead.

"There are so many cultivators in the Chu Kingdom! Good thing I didn't wander around blindly. If I'd barged into the spiritual land of some lineage or sect, I'd surely have died without even knowing how."

He wiped the sweat from his forehead, then reached down, grabbed the corpse, and threw it into the earthfire pit. Flames surged up, and within moments the corpse was burned to ash.

After destroying the corpse and wiping out the evidence, Fang Yu put everything away and went to the quiet chamber. He brewed a pot of tea and drank it as he considered what to do next.

He didn't know whether the local cultivator who had attacked him had any accomplices. To be safe, he should stop cultivating in Great Scarlet Heaven for the time being.

Fortunately, I seized more than thirty highly concentrated Spirit Stones, enough to cultivate for a long time.

I can also try cultivating the Everlasting Spring Technique. That way, I can gain a deeper understanding of Great Scarlet Heaven's cultivators. At the very least, I need to find out the difference between the Qi Refining Realm and the Qi Ingestion Realm.

Another thing: I must be more careful when acting in Great Scarlet Heaven from now on. I absolutely cannot make the same stupid mistake again and let someone track me to my own cave abode and ambush me.

By the time he finished the pot of tea, Fang Yu had more or less finished reviewing the matter. He got up, left the cave abode, and headed straight for the Divine Maiden Pavilion.

"Madam Liu, have any new girls arrived?"

"Yes, yes, of course!"

After he followed the madam into a private room, a bevy of remarkably fresh and lovely girls poured in moments later and attended to Fang Yu as he ate and drank.

After suffering such a fright for no reason, he naturally needed to relax properly. Only then would he have the mood and vigor to continue cultivating.