Cultivating for a hundred lifetimes to ascension

Chapter 47 Tianzhu "Treasure

Four hours later, Zhao Sheng propped his limbs at the corners, squatting in a crack in the rock to rest for a while.

Upon stepping onto this "hot land," Zhao Sheng had to be constantly vigilant,

on one hand guarding against the venomous insects and demon beasts that hid among the rocks and vegetation, ready to attack at any moment.

On the other, he had to keep well away from the Herbal Medicine Guests appearing in sight.

But what he needed to be most cautious of was...

Whoosh!

A blur the size of a tabletop, accompanied by a piercing scream, whizzed past Zhao Sheng's face, plummeting downward at nearly supersonic speed and shrinking to a speck before dropping into the depths of the Cloud Sea.

Zhao Sheng broke out in a cold sweat, thankful that he was resting in the crevice, or else he would have been struck.

Falling objects from high altitudes!

The number one killer of medicine collectors at Heavenly Pillar Mountain.

Every year, at least half of the medicine collectors are hit by falling objects and fall into the abyss, eventually dying without a whole body.

You can imagine what happens to someone on the ground when a stone is dropped from ten thousand meters up in the sky.

The height of Heavenly Pillar Mountain is unknown, and the danger of its falling rocks is many times greater than that above.

However, heaven doesn't seal off all exits.

Fortunately, Heavenly Pillar Mountain also has the anomaly of the Cloud Sea Sky Gang, which intercepts a considerable part of these high altitude falling objects.

It's said that from the third level of the Cloud Sea Sky Gang upwards, each layer of the Cloud Sea was laid with extremely fierce Ancient Prohibitions by great beings of the ancient times.

These Ancient Prohibitions possess sealing and isolating characteristics, capable of preventing people who don't meet the criteria from entering the higher levels of Heavenly Pillar Mountain.

As for intercepting high-altitude falling objects, that's just an incidental addition.

About half an hour later, Zhao Sheng was well rested.

He nimbly wriggled out of the crevice, grabbed and pushed with his hands and feet, and in an instant, he scaled the rocky wall at great speed like a gecko flying through the air.

Thirty feet,

three hundred feet,

three thousand feet,

Zhao Sheng's figure gradually vanished into the uneven rocky cliff sides.

...

Half a day passed, and the Cloud Mist rose, bringing a piercing cold wind

The far-off horizon, drunk with the setting sun, had sunk halfway down, and the vast Cloud Sea was steeped through, putting on a wine-red face.

As the evening approached, Zhao Sheng looked up at the second layer of the Cloud Sea in the Upper Sky, estimating the altitude.

Throughout the day, unbeknownst to him, he had climbed to a height of sixteen li.

The rest of the journey would have to wait until tomorrow.

Zhao Sheng glanced around and soon spotted a half man-high cave in a depression about a li away.

With a few leaps and bounds, Zhao Sheng easily arrived at the cave.

The cave was not large, just over ten feet deep, with plenty of debris on the floor and marks of human excavation on the walls.

Zhao Sheng knew at a glance that this cave was a temporary dwelling excavated by medicine collectors.

To this, he had long been accustomed.

After millions of years of mining and digging, the surface of Heavenly Pillar Mountain was already covered with countless such man-made caves.

And Heavenly Pillar Mountain, with its exceptional geomancy, reigns supreme over the Five Continents as the Holy Land for Loose Cultivators in the Cultivation World.

Over millions of years,

countless Loose Cultivators chose Heavenly Pillar Mountain as the final place for their sitting down.

Most of the Secret Realm Netherworld Palace Relics within Heavenly Pillar Mountain came into existence this way.

Thus, each year, many Netherworld Palace Relics emerge, attracting thousands of Cultivators to converge here.

The reason why Pocket World City was able to grow and prosper has a lot to do with these "treasures."

...

With a freezing cold and mist rising,

after eating his dry food, Zhao Sheng carefully sealed the cave entrance and then went to bed early, and the night passed without incident.

The next morning, Zhao Sheng cleansed his face with condensed water and quickly resumed his climb.

Because the demon beasts and fierce birds that had stirred all night were beginning a new cycle of hiding during the day and emerging at night.

Zhao Sheng's journey next was exceptionally smooth.

After only a quarter of an hour, he had climbed to a height of eighteen miles and then proceeded to traverse horizontally towards the east.

An hour later, twenty miles behind him, Zhao Sheng arrived atop a protruding rock and was about to stop for a brief rest.

Suddenly,

his nose twitched.

He then abruptly tilted his head back, eyes darting towards the upper reaches of the mountain wall to the east.

There, on the mountain wall thirty yards away, grew a Cypress, half-dead, half-green.

At this moment, in the rotten hole around the waist of the Cypress tree, was a Lingzhi, about a foot high and the size of a dinner plate, vividly indigo against the shade,

catching the eye at first glance.

Zhao Sheng glanced at the Lingzhi and, the next second, as if he had not seen it, abruptly pushed off the ground with his feet, shooting forward like an arrow.

After a dozen leaps, he had already run far away in the blink of an eye.

At this time, the mountain wall beside the Cypress suddenly rippled like water.

After several flickers, a gap suddenly opened in the wall and two pale-yellow heads poked out.

They both looked in the direction where Zhao Sheng had fled, their faces filled with regret.

"Big brother, did that kid discover us?"

"Impossible! The Illusion Array I set up is flawless; that kid is clearly a greenhorn, he definitely can't see through it."

"Big brother, we've been holed up here for seven or eight days. Can we move to a new location? There's not a feather in sight; this place is so remote!"

"Hmm, you make sense. Let's leave."

...

Elsewhere, Zhao Sheng clung to an old vine between sheer cliffs, swinging away into the distance.

At the same time, he couldn't help shaking his head and mocking under his breath, "What kind of blockheads! Out of all things to learn, they choose to fish like crooks. Didn't they ask themselves if they had the skill for it?"

Zhao Sheng had the least respect for these brainless "fishermen."

You hide your body, at least take care of your smell too.

What a piece of work!

Your body odor is wafting thirty yards downwind. Tell me, who wouldn't smell that!

Two days later, after a trek of nearly a thousand miles, Zhao Sheng finally reached the junction of Yin and Yang on Heavenly Pillar Mountain.

Another hour passed, and he found the landmark of the entrance from his previous life: a big green stone, three yards high.

Standing on the big green stone, Zhao Sheng looked three to four yards away.

All he could see was dense fog that seemed boundless, connecting the Green Darkness above and the Abyss below.

Aside from the fog, there was nothing else in his sight.

It was as if since time immemorial, an invisible Divine Weapon had cleaved Heavenly Pillar Mountain into two stark worlds—one with clear skies as far as the eye could see, and the other shrouded in dense fog.

A moment later, Zhao Sheng slowly exhaled and took out an Invisibility Talisman from his Storage Bag, casually infusing it with Spiritual Power.

As an imperceptible ripple washed over, cerulean light flashed around Zhao Sheng and was gone; then, the light flickered slightly and his figure gradually faded until at last, he "disappeared."

If one were to look carefully, they could see a slight warp in the light where Zhao Sheng had been standing.

Two breaths later, a human-shaped gap suddenly opened in the thick fog, but the surrounding fog quickly filled it back in, smoothing over the gap once more.

Once inside Death Treasure Land, Zhao Sheng heightened his vigilance to the extreme, moving very slowly, ready to hide at the slightest rustle of movement.

It's always best to be cautious,

as Zhao Sheng certainly didn't want to die and go back without achieving his purpose after finally entering this place.

Three hundred years had passed, and there had been significant changes here.

All the "locations" of danger he had noted in his previous life were now void.

Zhao Sheng could only search for landmarks while advancing with extreme caution.

Fortunately, despite three hundred years, the landscape along the way hadn't changed too much,

so long as Zhao Sheng carefully avoided those fierce demon beasts and birds of prey, he would be fine.

It's hard to say how much time had passed when the "night" of Death Treasure Land fell.

Faced with near absolute darkness, Zhao Sheng wisely chiseled into the mountainside, carved out a deep pit, and finally buried himself inside.

Soon, the frost that condensed sealed the soil on the surface of the pit solid!