“This tiny bit of obstruction is truly frustrating.”
Hai Dali had already adapted to his current realm. That barrier which he could easily break through was full of temptation.
It felt as though the moment he crossed it, he would obtain boundless benefits. Yet deep down, he knew it was not the right time, so he could only suppress the urge.
Now that he was idle, a wave of drowsiness swept over him. After standing guard for an entire day and night, especially with everything that had happened the previous night, he had expended a great deal of energy. He lay down and fell asleep.
…
The moon hung high in the sky. While Hai Dali was still immersed in a pleasant dream, Xiao Fan returned to the cliff.
“This is truly risky. I hope everything goes smoothly.” Xiao Fan frowned as he looked at the cliff wall before him.
Originally, he had planned to first resolve his crisis before searching for the secret of the map.
But after escaping the previous night, he felt increasingly uneasy, as if something extremely important was about to slip away from him.
Previously, he had relied on intuition to obtain many opportunities. Whenever he encountered something valuable, he would sense it beforehand, as though something in the unseen was guiding him.
This time, the intuition was especially strong.
Whatever was about to leave him felt crucial.
He immediately began to reflect on what he might have missed. After much thought, the only thing left unexplored was the secret of the map.
He fell into hesitation.
Recently, he had been relentlessly hunted. The group from before had been the most persistent. They would catch up to him again and again, clearly using some secret technique to track him.
Although he had managed to escape each time, who could guarantee there would not be an accident?
Yet the intuition this time was too strong. It had to be something vital. The last time he had felt such intensity was when the broken bronze fragment had been snatched away by Hai Dali and Chen Muxue.
Back then, he had instinctively felt that the fragment was extraordinary.
Soon after losing it, he had experienced the same sensation, as if something precious was slipping away.
That hollow, regretful feeling had lasted for two full days before fading, and only then had he realized he had lost an immense opportunity.
At the thought of that, his teeth clenched in hatred. He decided to take the risk.
He possessed a damaged formation disk that could teleport him dozens of kilometers once. That was how he had repeatedly escaped from a group of Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators.
Unfortunately, the disk consumed significant energy and could not be used recklessly.
The last time he had leaped into the water, it had struck him that if nothing could be found above, he should search below. The source of this chapter is g.com.
So this time, he dove directly into the river. Doing so would both conceal his tracks and allow him to search for the location marked on the map.
With the blessing of destiny, Xiao Fan quickly located the cave entrance that Hai Dali had intentionally left flawed.
He pushed aside the stone blocking it and saw the passage within. Relief and joy surged through him. “Finally found it. Luckily, I didn’t lose too much time.”
Discovering a cave in this location made him certain that this was the place the missing portion of the map had intended to mark.
Soon, Xiao Fan reached the depths of the cave and noticed the characters carved onto the stone wall by Hai Dali.
“Could this be one of the Three Supreme Techniques?”
After reading the first portion, he found it somewhat obscure. Then he read the commentary beside it, which praised the technique extravagantly. His heart surged with excitement. It seemed even more powerful than the technique he himself cultivated.
Then his gaze fell upon the final line, and he read it aloud without thinking, “To cultivate this technique, one must first castrate oneself?”
He froze for a moment, then muttered, “How could such an unbelievable thing exist?”
Never in his wildest dreams had Xiao Fan expected to see those words in this world.
He had originally been an ordinary university student on Blue Star. While playing basketball with classmates, he had been accidentally struck on the head. After that, everything went black.
When he awoke, he found himself lying in a dark environment, clutching something in his hand.
A sharp pain pierced his brain. After it subsided, memories belonging to another person surfaced in his mind.
The memories belonged to a young boy born with poor talent. Because his aptitude was extremely low, he had suffered countless cold stares since childhood. His father was the patriarch of a family, yet as the patriarch’s son, he possessed Five Spiritual Roots, widely regarded as pseudo-spiritual roots and looked down upon by others.
He endured endless mockery and ridicule. His father had invested vast resources into him, yet his cultivation barely improved, earning him the title of Qingfeng City’s greatest waste. Even the servants of his own household looked at him with disdain.
The pressure was immense. Every day was torment.
One day, while out to clear his head, he accidentally slipped and fell off a cliff. Fortunately, he grabbed onto a vine and discovered a cave.
Climbing inside, he saw a skeleton seated cross-legged. Its hands rested on its knees, palms facing upward, holding a white pearl.
Curiosity drove him to approach and examine it. But the moment he touched the pearl, he fainted.
That was when Xiao Fan arrived in this world.
After absorbing the memories, Xiao Fan felt as though he had personally experienced everything. For a time, he could not tell whether he had transmigrated or merely awakened dormant memories.
Suddenly, the pearl in his hand trembled violently and emitted golden light.
Startled, he released it. The pearl leaped into the air. Bathed in the golden glow, he saw its true appearance.
He suddenly remembered that he had once worn a pendant with a pearl nearly identical to the white one. Could the two have merged into this black-and-white pearl?
The golden light around it faded, and beneath it, a droplet-like substance condensed. Before he could react, the black-and-white pearl carried the droplet into his sea of consciousness.
Just as panic set in, information flooded his mind, urging him to remain calm. Immediately afterward came overwhelming joy.
The pearl was called the Void Earth Pearl. It had been forged by a supreme existence and could assist cultivators in their practice. For unknown reasons, it had later fallen into the outside world and passed through the hands of several cultivators.
It contained one of the Three Supreme Techniques, the Void Earth Scripture. Its previous master had relied upon it to rise from obscurity and eventually shake all realms, earning the title of Earth Emperor.
Through the information, Xiao Fan learned much. He also discovered that the droplet was spiritual liquid refined by the Void Earth Pearl from the resources stored in the skeleton’s storage ring.
The Void Earth Pearl could convert material energy into the most suitable form for absorption.
After cultivating the Void Earth Scripture and refining the spiritual liquid, Xiao Fan had advanced two realms in just two days, reaching the 5th stage Qi Refining Realm.
Because the Void Earth Pearl had only just fused into one, it had entered a temporary dormant state and could only perform simple energy refinement.
If Xiao Fan wanted to rapidly increase his realm, he would require vast amounts of energy.
Thus, he had decided to return to the Xiao Family. With his status, once he shed the label of waste, he should quickly obtain resources.
Yet the moment he returned, Chen Muxue had come to annul the engagement.
Shaking his head, Xiao Fan returned to his senses and stared at the stone wall.
“For such a heaven-defying technique to appear in a tiny cave like this, with such a bizarre requirement, it’s truly nonsense.”
He raised his hand to destroy the characters carved on the wall, but hesitated mid-motion.
Thinking of that intense intuition, and finding nothing else in the cave besides this technique, he memorized it before erasing the carvings.
After finishing, he searched the cave thoroughly again but found nothing.
His brows furrowed.
He had clearly obtained a technique and searched the entire cave. Why had that unsettling feeling not disappeared?
Had he come to the wrong place?
Or had the opportunity already been taken by someone else?
And if it was only a technique, why would there be a map for it at all?