This creature was covered in scales from head to tail, gleaming with silver light, lying there without moving. Its body was over two meters long, with sinews and muscles taut and bulging — full of immense power.

“It’s already dead.” Ye Fan let out a long breath.

He flipped it over with the stone knife, turning it face-up. Its facial features bore a resemblance to human appearance — had it not been for the fine scales, this creature would have been considered a handsome male.

Within the Purple Mountain, this type of creature was certainly not the only one of its kind. The invisible malevolent spirit that had gathered behind him had taken exactly this form — meaning at least one more was still alive.

Ye Fan discovered a shattered stone tablet, pinned beneath the silver creature. He pieced the broken fragments together, assembling only four characters: “Those who disturb this will die.” The rest was indecipherable.

Unease rose in his heart. These characters were in human script. The primordial creature had died because of this — it had disturbed something. Was it this chunk of ore before him?

Upon careful observation, one could see that the six-armed creature had indeed struggled backward away from the ore chunk before ultimately dying.

“The ore chunk can kill…”

Ore energy flowed throughout, and the area was completely harmonious. Ye Fan stood up and surveyed the massive chunk of ore before him — nearly two meters tall, likely weighing several thousand jin.

Though this ore chunk shimmered with multicolored radiance, it was indeed not divine ore — merely an exceptionally pure, high-quality precious ore. Yet at this size, it was absolutely rare and unparalleled in the world.

“Wait — the stone garment on my body is radiating extraordinary light…” As he drew near the ore chunk, his stone armor and all other items continuously flickered.

Ye Fan circled the ore chunk once, finding numerous cracks running through it, with tiny points of radiance within — extraordinarily mysterious, like individual stars.

“There are fragments of divine ore inside…” Ye Fan held the stone knife up close to it, and the knife immediately blazed with auspicious radiance, like a supremely rare and precious blade.

“That’s right — someone sealed fragments and remnants of divine ore inside this chunk of ore.” His heart was astonished. He studied the young woman within the ore carefully.

She appeared utterly serene, as if sunk in eternal slumber.

Ye Fan sighed. This should be a corpse — life had long since departed. Though it appeared lifelike, the truth that life had left could not be concealed.

The young woman was extraordinarily beautiful — features that put the moon to shame, that made fish sink in awe. A pity that it was all past. Time had taken everything.

Suddenly, Ye Fan spotted a jade pendant, also sealed within the ore, half-hidden beneath the hem of a skirt — easy to miss if one did not look carefully.

“A creature of the primordial age… also liked this sort of jade ornament?” He furrowed his brows. Various signs were pointing toward a strong possibility that this was a human.

All of a sudden, Ye Fan’s heart seized. He had seen something else within the ore chunk — amid those tiny points of divine ore fragments, there were several strands of red hair.

“Red hair…” A shiver ran through him from head to toe.

On the night the Zhang Family’s founding ancestor disappeared, red-hair whirlwinds had swept across the blood-red earth, and an inexplicable creature had howled through the entire night, refusing to depart.

“The young child accompanying the ore-reading master had been frightened into a stupor. At the time, the child had seen the founding ancestor’s one hand covered in red hair…”

Thinking of all this, Ye Fan shuddered. When he had entered the interior of the Purple Mountain, he had looked at the inscriptions left by those powerful individuals — the names belonging to women had not been many.

“Could this be… the Jade Pool Saintess Yang Yi from ten thousand years ago?”

Ye Fan made no rash moves. He retreated several steps and searched carefully through the ancient mine, seeking any clues.

Before long, he found some characters on the mine wall: “Zhang Jiye, in reverent tribute.”

“The Zhang Family ancestor from a thousand years ago came here!” A light went on in Ye Fan’s heart. He felt as though the Ore Heaven Book was not far away.

The primordial creatures had all died here. Ye Fan did not touch this ore chunk, his mind turning over many thoughts.

“The fate of the ore-reading master…” Thinking on this, he felt a chill run down his spine.

“If I become an ore-reading master — will something ill-omened befall me in my later years as well?” Ye Fan walked far away, yet the shadow of that thought still coiled within him.

The demonic calling alternated between weak and strong. Ye Fan had advanced more than a li into the Purple Mountain from his last position when he made a significant discovery — he spotted a snapped stone pendant, identical in every way to the one on his own body.

At the same moment, radiant light flowed across Ye Fan’s entire body — the stone knife blazed brilliantly, and the star-disc shone dazzlingly.

Without a sound, a procession of figures emerged from an abandoned mine in perfect formation, without the slightest disorder.

These were yin-ghost people and yin-ghost horses — ice-cold and frigid, as though walking out of the netherworld.

“These things have formed in such numbers…”

Like phantoms, they quickly surrounded him, silently closing in from all sides. Every one of them was deathly pale, with no color in their faces, no fluctuation of life — only a strange energy flowing within them.

Since understanding cultivation, Ye Fan had given serious thought to what so-called “ghosts” were. He concluded that they were the “field energy” of a person that had not dispersed after death — a temporary formation that would naturally dissipate over time.

“Tens of thousands of years ago, far too many people died here. These things are probably not few in number…” Ye Fan was not worried. He had no fear of such things — as long as they were not primordial creatures, everything was manageable.

Puff!

He swung the stone knife, and the surrounding yin-ghost people and yin-ghost horses rapidly dissolved and scattered. The stone skin of divine ore was indeed naturally and innately opposed to evil.

Suddenly, a piercing shriek rang out. In the desolate silence of the Purple Mountain, it was enough to make anyone’s flesh crawl with cold — enough to make anyone feel a chill run through their body.

Not far away, a shadow charged like a phantom — a disheveled woman dressed in snow-white clothing came straight at Ye Fan.

Clang!

The woman slammed into the stone knife with tremendous force, nearly knocking it aside.

“She is…” He was startled to find that this woman’s yin-body was remarkably dense — nearly as solid as a physical form.

“What doesn’t the Purple Mountain have inside it…” This woman had been nourished by the yin energy within the Purple Mountain and had achieved a certain degree of formation.

Whoosh!

Ye Fan drew a five-colored flame from the cauldron and flicked it out. In an instant, she let out a miserable cry and was reduced to ash and smoke on the spot.

He strode forward and entered the abandoned mine. A bone-piercing cold surged over him — it was an ice chamber, with solid ice everywhere.

“Senior Zhang Jiye, you couldn’t have died here, could you?”

Before long, Ye Fan’s scalp was tingling. This mine shaft connected to a yin vein. In the deepest recesses, he saw dense masses of yin-ghost people and yin-ghost horses squirming and stirring.

There were no skeletal remains — Zhang Jiye had not died here. Ye Fan directly brought out the cauldron and unleashed five-colored cloud flames, burning every last yin-ghost and yin-horse to nothing.

These yin entities had clearly not yet reached full maturity — their formation time was limited. Yet his heart was deeply uneasy: tens of thousands of years ago, many people had died in this place. Deep within the Purple Mountain, there were likely yin-ghost figures that had been forming for many years.

With this thought, he sensed things were very bad. Besides the primordial creatures, there were likely other ghostly entities as well.

Ye Fan advanced another li and more before spotting a shattered stone knife and a smashed star-disc.

“Senior Zhang Jiye, your cultivation was low — how did you make it this far…” He was at his wit’s end.

Suddenly, the cyan lotus in Ye Fan’s Wheel Sea trembled lightly and erected a curtain of cyan radiance around him.

“What is here?” He felt as though something was behind him, and he whipped around.

Several dozen meters away, inside an ancient mine, a massive creature was staring at him with cold and emotionless eyes.

Its lower half was a serpent body — as thick around as a water vat, extending dozens of meters in length. Its upper half resembled a human torso, covered in black beast-fur half a chi in length, with exceptionally long arms and palms covered entirely in black fur.

“Can you understand what I’m saying?” Ye Fan was on high alert.

Boom!

This unidentified creature charged straight at him. Its two hands clamped toward Ye Fan’s throat like iron pincers, with strength that was outrageously immense — like a mountain crushing down upon him.

Ye Fan darted aside. The stone knife slashed down, sending sparks flying everywhere — like hacking at iron-hard stone.

From afar, fierce winds surged, and a long and piercing howl rang out.

A bizarre bird came charging in — featherless, its entire body covered in scales. Unfortunately, its body was too massive to spread its wings and fly, so it could only run along the ground.

Its enormous frame, over ten meters long, thundered through the rock cave, leaving a rumbling in its wake.

“Damn it — primordial creatures!”

Ye Fan had seen the fossils of this type of creature in the mine shaft. It made no move to attack the serpent-body creature — instead, the two combined forces and gave chase after him.

“So I’ve still managed to disturb them!”

A powerful killing intent surged like a tide — relentless, unstoppable. The wild violence of that power was chilling to the bone.

“At least… they are not purely humanoid creatures.”

Ye Fan could feel their killing intent. Through that killing intent, he gleaned one fact: primordial creatures disturbed and driven from the ore could not survive for long. Once outside the ore, they would quickly begin to decay.

Even if the ore cracked open and they retreated back inside, it would be of no use.

“It seems only creatures accidentally sealed inside during the original formation of the ore could have survived intact to this day…”

These two monstrous beasts were like two malevolent gods, their killing intent reaching to the skies, desperate to cut Ye Fan down on the spot.

Yet the interior of the Purple Mountain was riddled with countless rock caves, some of them exceedingly narrow. The creatures struggled to pass through these, severely slowing their speed.

Boom!

A force that could overturn mountains and reverse rivers struck at Ye Fan. The power was so immense it defied reason — capable of splitting mountain ranges asunder.

When he looked back at the creature behind him, his complexion changed completely. A six-armed humanoid creature had appeared — the very presence that had coalesced into an invisible malevolent spirit at his side. Its entire body blazed with silver light, burning like flames.

Ye Fan had no choice. He brought out the cauldron and sealed himself within it, then charged forward at full speed.

Bang!

An enormous force of incomparable magnitude struck the cauldron. The Myriad Source Cauldron was sent flying, punching through over a dozen ancient mines in succession, the cave walls crumbling like tofu blocks.

“ROOOOAR—!”

That long howl reached him, making even one’s heart seize. Even sheltered within the cauldron, a layer of goosebumps rose across Ye Fan’s entire body.

This creature was truly overwhelmingly powerful. That terrifying strike just now had been completely unstoppable — had it not been for the Myriad Source Cauldron, he would have been ground to dust.

“So this is what it means to experience the terror of a primordial creature…” Ye Fan piloted the cauldron through the air.

He found that he was drawing closer to the center of the Purple Mountain. The demonic calling was growing ever more intense.

Bang!

The silver creature had caught up. From a great distance, it delivered a palm strike. The Myriad Source Cauldron hummed and vibrated, and was sent slamming through another dozen or more ancient mines.

At this point, the Purple Mountain was no longer quiet. Several more piercing shrieks rang out — even more fearsome than those of the six-armed creature.

Even sheltered within the cauldron, Ye Fan felt as though his very soul was on the verge of shattering. This shook him deeply.

“How can they be this powerful…”

At the same instant, from the deepest part of the Purple Mountain, the demonic calling suddenly surged tenfold in intensity. Even inside the cauldron, Ye Fan could not stop himself from wanting to charge in that direction.

“How can this be!”

A suppressive aura permeated outward. The power of the calling strengthened again by several more multiples. By now, Ye Fan realized he could no longer hold back — he had lost control of his own body, and was being driven irresistibly to respond to the call.

Dong!

Suddenly, the long, drawn-out sound of a bell rang out — like a divine note from the heavens. In an instant, the turbulent Purple Mountain fell completely still.

“Tens of thousands of years ago, when the Great Emperor suppressed the creature within the peerless divine ore, the extreme Dao weapon he deployed was a great bell as tall as the heavens themselves…”

Ye Fan moved with the bell’s sound, charging forward like a bolt of lightning. The primordial creatures behind him came to a halt and gave no further chase.

Swoosh!

Ye Fan burst into a vast open cave dwelling — like a great hall, extraordinarily expansive. The bell sound had vanished here.

Upon careful examination, it was indeed a vast and empty hall, though truly enormous — no different from an open plaza.

“A skeleton…” He first spotted a set of human bones. Beside it lay a silver scroll, shimmering with a cold and faint radiance.