Zhanxian

Chapter 103 – Surely There Is A Secret

Originally Yang Chen wanted to use the excuse of hunting Chu Heng as a pretext of going to the Desolate Valley, but at the moment Yang Chen was hell bent on killing him. Never before had Yang Chen felt such an intense desire to get rid of this person. Chu Heng had gone too far by daring to insult his master, even a hundred deaths could not pardon his crime!

Gao Yue had never seen Yang Chen angry before, so she did not know that Yang Chen would be this frightening when he was angry. It seemed to her that since Yang Chen was calm towards Chu Heng words insulting him, he would not be angry like this. But she hadn’t thought that just a single line which had been directed at her and Yang Chen would make him so angry.

But Yang Chen getting angry because of Chu Heng insulting her had given her a kind of happiness which could not be explained with words. Apart from her master, Wang Yong, Gao Yue never received this kind of concern from any other person, and Yang Chen had even remained indifferent to the abuses on himself while she herself had felt injustice at the wrongful abuse.

Although the Desolate Valley was known as a valley, it was actually not very small. In fact, the Desolate Valley was a region with huge hills, which also had abundant sand dunes. In this region, within a radius of thousand miles, the earth attributed Spirit Power was outstanding, while the Spirit Power of other attributes was repelled. Although it didn’t mean they were not there at all, instead only in very small quantities.

The landscape here was boundless sand, no matter in which direction one looked, apart from sand dunes and sand hills, there was nothing visible but desert. A constantly blowing wind filled the sky with sand, it was exceptionally dry.

The time it had taken Yang Chen to set foot in this region was one month. During this time, Yang Chen had first refined that qiankun pouch and then he had gone looking for those four fellow apprentices of the Law Enforcement Hall which had been injured by Chu Heng and thoroughly investigated what had happened at that time. He realized that this matter was ten times more serious than what he had thought when he had heard about it from Gao Yue.

Apparently Chu Heng was deliberately trying to make Pure Yang Palace lose face, and using Yang Chen as pretense, trying to degrade Yang Chen into complete shambles, who had not said even one word. At that time he had the opportunity to get rid of these four disciples, but against all expectations he did not kill and only seriously injured them, and showing his arrogance, he used a few loose cultivators to carry them back to the Pure Yang Palace, not only making this public with great fanfare, but he even asked the Pure Yang Palace to provide remuneration to these few loose cultivators for carrying them back.

This certainly was a tight slap in the face of the entire Pure Yang Palace, after this joke had gotten out to the entire cultivation realm, the disciples of the Pure Yang Palace basically hadn’t even been able to raise their heads in the outside world.

It is not that they hadn’t sent any high level experts to catch him, but Chu Heng was very cunning. During the one year time Yang Chen was in seclusion, several JieDan stage experts of the Law Enforcement Hall had turned the entire Desolate Valley upside down, but they weren’t able to find the whereabouts of Chu Heng. Chu Heng’s traces couldn’t be found, even in other regions, as if his person had disappeared from the world.

If someone said that he didn’t have any help of other people, nobody would believe him. This matter happened just after the Pure Yang Palace had demanded that the Greatest Heaven Sect and some other sects provide an explanation for their wrongs at the time when Yang Chen had climbed the peak of the Heavenly Stairs. At that time, several big sects had provided compensation and admitted their mistake, but this kind of thing was just too big of a coincidence to believe.

Regardless of what was said, they hadn’t been able to find Chu Heng to deliver the sect’s punishment for all this time and couldn’t do anything to remove the shame Chu Heng had brought on the Pure Yang Palace. Not only the Pure Yang Palace, but even Yang Chen and Gao Yue were also looked down upon as a joke among daoists everywhere.

Daring to insult his master, and even insulting his sect; regarding the slanderous words against Yang Chen, Chu Heng had already forced Yang Chen into a corner. If Yang Chen did not set out alone as a formal representative of Pure Yang Palace to settle this matter, after even these events, then the Pure Yang Palace’s reputation would fall by a thousand times at once. That was the reason why Wang Yong had not allowed Gao Yue to follow after him, but Yang Chen was also the most suitable person to resolve this affair.

During the one year when Yang Chen was in seclusion to concoct pills and attack the bottleneck of the foundation stage, the entire Pure Yang Palace had concealed this news from him, which clearly conveyed their intentions of supporting and protecting Yang Chen. From the Palace Master to the servants, everyone knew about this, but they didn’t tell him for the fear of disturbing his cultivation, so how could Yang Chen ignore the expectations the sect had for him?

Yang Chen treaded towards the peak of a sand dune with heavy steps, stopping at the peak of the highest sand dune in his line of sight and began to look in all directions.

Yang Chen had flown on his flying sword when he had set off from the Pure Yang Palace, but after he had reached the boundary of the Desolate Valley, he had renounced travelling on the flying sword and had walked on foot into the Desolate Valley. Yang Chen had spent four days walking from the edge of the Desolate Valley to reach this sand dune.

The description by the Law Enforcement Hall’s disciples made Yang Chen remember a special spell formation. In reality, if Chu Heng, a person who was restrained by the earth attributed Spirit Power of the Desolate Valley, wanted to defeat four disciples of the Law Enforcement Hall attacking together, it was simply impossible. But this impossible event had still happened, but even the four Law Enforcement disciples were not convinced by this.

Yang Chen had thoroughly investigated the circumstances at that time, the details given by the four Law Enforcement disciples had given him a general idea about the situation. He was currently walking step by step, moving forward in order to confirm his conjecture.

After walking thousands of miles for several days, Yang Chen’s Spiritual Awareness had sensed the direction of the underground Spirit Power, which was in accordance with his guess. An enormous spell formation had already been placed under the gigantic Desolate Valley at some unknown time. This spell formation was so huge, that it could not be activated by using a spell formation and could only be used by cleverly exploiting the geographical position and direction of the underground vein.

Arranging this kind of spell formation was basically impossible, even after spending five hundred years. Moreover the preparations for arranging this spell required someone whose Spiritual Awareness was at least comparable to Yang Chen and he would also be using Yang Chen’s current method, that was to personally sense the terrain and the direction in which Spirit Power was moving. This would require an even higher amount of hard work.

Since this Spell Formation was already completed, then it could be activated slowly from some special location, allowing Chu Heng to severely injure four cultivators who were no weaker than him. Without the assistance of this spell formation, that idiot Chu Heng could never achieve this kind of accomplishment.

In his previous life, Yang Chen hadn’t paid much attention to the Desolate Valley, he was only concerned about it in this life because the Fifth Earth True Qi Secrets within the Great Five Phases of Yin and Yang secrets required the fifth earth True Qi for cultivation.

The main function of the huge spell formation within the Desolate Valley was apparently only one, that was to gather fifth earth True Qi from all directions within a small region and allow people to focus on refining it easily.

After he clearly understood the function of this Spell Formation, a smile appeared on Yang Chen’s face. This affair was becoming more and more amusing.

This seems to have been just the tip of the iceberg some sect had somehow discovered this fifth earth True Qi and wanted to exploit it for it’s own use, but the fifth earth True Qi was scattered in all directions, so they could only use this method to slowly gather it.

Moreover it was the work of a big sect, an ordinary small sect simply could not arrange such a spell. Not to mention other things, just deploying the formation required three YuanYing stage experts, not one less, how could a small sect gather such strength? Moreover the person who had deployed this rank of spell was certainly a great expert in Spell Formations.

Operating this rank of spell formation was not beyond the scope of those sects whose JieDan stage experts had tried to make things difficult for Yang Chen at the Heavenly Stairs. The biggest suspicion was naturally towards Yang Chen’s old enemy, with whom Chu Heng had rushed to curry favour, the Greatest Heaven Sect, which was also the biggest sect which had admitted their wrongs for the Heavenly Stairs and had paid compensation.

On one side they had admitted their wrongs, which had decreased their reputation of being straightforward, but on the other hand they had used Chu Heng to defame the Pure Yang Palace, so spectators would immediately judge by comparing both sides. Being open and straightforward would gain them even more acclaim and support and by defaming a trifling disciple who had been the cause of their humiliation, his future prospects would be destroyed.

The most crucial point was that, if nobody knew about the reason for arranging the Spell Formation, then after the vein of fifth earth True Qi had been refined by their people, the Spell Formation could be destroyed and then, even if it was a Great Principal Golden Immortal, he could also not find traces that a huge spell had existed there. This huge spell was arranged by relying on the natural terrain, so when the moment came. it would return to nature again, who would have proof of anything happening here?

The enemy had just incidentally made use of this Spell Formation, but the Pure Yang Palace had been drenched with sewage because of it. Even if Chu Heng was captured in the future and the sect rules were executed, they would still be unable to remove this stain. Like using grass to catch the rabbit, the enemy would not be affected in any way, only the Pure Yang Palace and Yang Chen would have to carry the burden of shame.

The plan was very sound, but unfortunately for them, Yang Chen had come. Several days was already enough for him to verify the existence of this big spell. Although the enemy wanted to silently defame the Pure Yang Palace now it would not be able to.

But this huge spell was indeed too excessive, covering an area in the radius of a thousand miles. With Yang Chen’s speed, even if he used a flying sword, it would still take two days and two nights, but if he wanted to sense clearly towards where the Spell Formation was aligned, with just one person, Yang Chen, walking to measure it, the time it would take would be more than for those people to refine the fifth earth True Qi. How could Yang Chen waste so much time right now?

Confronting this huge spell, even though Yang Chen had the knowledge of his previous life, he couldn’t help but wrinkle his brows. He only knew that the fifth earth True Qi was here, but he did not know where it was scattered, so the biggest challenge in front of him was precisely the refining of fifth earth True Qi.

Not only that, the face of the entire Pure Yang Palace was on the line here, but if he could not sense the path along which the Spell Formation had been deployed, then he would also be unable to exploit it. Although he wanted to do it by himself he knew that he was unable to and for a moment Yang Chen began to feel embarrassed. In this kind of situation, since he could not do anything, he could inform the sect leader of the Pure Yang Palace about the existence of this huge spell.

But if the Palace Master knew about it, then he would surely send people of the sect to investigate, which may alert the enemy and could also lead to war. But then, obtaining the fifth earth True Qi would no longer be such an easy matter for Yang Chen. Since there was also this possibility, Yang Chen would only inform him as a last resort.

With this kind of worry, Yang Chen kept on roaming the Desolate Valley aimlessly, trying to think of some method. Although Yang Chen had heard about this kind of huge spell, but he hadn’t experienced it personally. With enough time this spell would not be a problem but currently he did not have enough time.

Sitting on the peak of a sand dune, Yang Chen was painstakingly trying to think of some method, while his gaze focused at a distant place in the desert and didn’t move for long time. Several hundred threads of Spiritual Awareness, thin as silk, were scouting all activities in a radius of several hundred miles. But unfortunately this huge spell was concealed extremely well and was arranged according to the terrain, so even when scouting with his Spiritual Awareness, he was unable to investigate distant regions and could only focus on the small area around his feet.

All of a sudden, something slightly bulged inside of the sand on which he was sitting, a black sand scorpion with two claws and a sharp tail slowly took its head out of the sand and came out entirely soon afterwards.

The movement of the sand scorpion attracted Yang Chen’s attention. After strutting around in Yang Chen’s domain for some time, it went to another location and drilled into the sand again. Seeing this, Yang Chen’s eyes began to shine brightly.

Although he was not capable of knowing the way in which the Spell Formation and fifth earth True Qi were arranged in the Desolate Valley, this didn’t mean that these animals of the Desolate Valley also did not know. As long as it was in their domain, they would be very clear about the distribution of Spirit Power and as long as he could communicate with these animals and find some demonic beasts who had a huge domain, then maybe he would be able to find the arrangement of the Spell Formation.

To communicate with demonic beasts he had no option other than to use the Beast Taming Sect’s Beast Controlling Secrets. The Beast Controlling Secrets of the Beast Taming Sect could allow people to establish an even more direct connection with their beasts, thus reaching the aim of controlling their own beast. Fan Shan was a person from the Beast Taming Sect, he was even able to control beasts at the Da Cheng stage.

Within Yang Chen’s mind the words of the cyan coloured ox of the Greatest Supreme Elder reverberated to this day:

“I have a remarkable ability, the Beast Controlling Secrets, which is the cultivation method of my demon race, and is a hundred times better than the methods of the Beast Taming Sect, but the requirements of learning it are harsh, see if you have the good luck or not!”

A hundred times better than the Beast Controlling Secrets of the Beast Taming Sect, how powerful would that be?

But the cyan ox had also said that it’s requirements were harsh, so Yang Chen carefully recalled this remarkable ability and began to ponder over it.

It was indeed quite troublesome, this ability required to cultivated according to the methods of the demon race, while Yang Chen was human, so this was naturally not easy for him. But after analyzing every word in every sentence with great care, he discovered something: apparently, as long as he could settle some minor problems, he could start cultivating that remarkable ability to control beasts.

A major principle of the Beast Controlling Secret was still that the Spiritual Awareness should be higher than the cultivation realm. Although it still required the support of strong Spirit Power, the Spirit Power was only required to provide the strength to subdue the beast. Nevertheless, for genuinely connecting with a demonic beasts, a powerful Spiritual Awareness was required.

In order to establish this kind of connection, Yang Chen needed to make those demonic beasts believe that Yang Chen himself belonged to the demon race. This was the most crucial point, as long as he could solve this, the other problems could all be solved easily.