The mountains and rivers were magnificent, the spiritual energy so dense it was nearly impossible to see through. Ye Fan truly felt the preciousness of this trial ground. Beyond the fierce and savage ancient beasts prowling across the land, and the ancient medicinal herbs growing everywhere underfoot, there were also vast expanses of extraordinary earth.
He walked on foot, encountering plot after plot of land that was ideal for cultivation — each one suffused with auspicious energy, perfectly suited for training. Here and there, lakes of five shimmering colors were wrapped in clouds of blessed mist, the very air around them alive with overflowing essence and spiritual power. These could rightly be called spirit lakes.
All of it was rare and sacred earth of the highest order.
He even witnessed the process by which sources came into being — in certain isolated places, the concentrated primordial essence of heaven and earth had condensed into liquid form and crystallized, each droplet clear and sparkling, glittering with inner light.
Ye Fan had now been within the Primordial Dao Ground for more than half a month. He had spent his days in enlightenment and cultivation, and had yet to encounter a single adversary. Long Ma had stayed close behind him throughout, equally absorbed in a wondrous state of contemplative bliss.
“It is time to go and take a look.”
He mounted Long Ma and soared into the sky, riding through the vast heavens and galloping across the expanse of the sky. The rumbling passage shook the ancient earth below, so that not one of the powerful ancient beasts in the spirit mountains dared raise its head to look.
Caw!
A golden crow and a horned dragon were locked in a battle over a Blood Phoenix Vine — a length of ancient vine, red as carnelian and shining like a gem, not particularly thick or long, barely a single zhang in length, shaped in the form of a phoenix spreading its wings. It had drawn two beast kings into a vicious battle.
“This place is truly extraordinary,” Long Ma said. “To think they have something like this here. Legend has it that the essence blood left behind in this world by immortal spirits can give rise to strange plant life and ancient medicines — this vine must be in that category.”
The opportunist profits while the others fight. Long Ma plunged in suddenly and snatched the Blood Phoenix Vine away, then bit down on it with the abandon of a cow chewing a peony. Instantly, crimson radiance blazed across its entire body. Vital essence sprayed in every direction, nearly splitting it apart from within.
They crossed the sky for tens of thousands of li and came to a tranquil place. Ahead, light glittered and shimmered. A young woman sat cross-legged within a pool roughly one zhang in diameter, wreathed in strands of sacred mist.
“This is… Dragon Saliva Fluid,” Ye Fan said, his voice touched with surprise.
The spirit pool was small — little more than a zhang across — yet the essence within it steamed and shimmered, flowing with iridescent light. Spirit grasses and ancient medicinal herbs grew thickly all around it. The fluid that welled up continuously from within the pool was the essential essence released from the dragon’s head of the underground ley line — a precious liquid nurtured by the great earth itself, extraordinarily rare and difficult to find.
Mu Guanghan sat cross-legged at the center of the pool. The precious liquid had soaked through her garments, giving faint and tantalizing glimpses of her graceful, exquisite form. Her hair flowed smooth and lustrous, cascading over the snow-white skin of her neck and shoulders.
Her eyes were closed. She bathed within the Dragon Saliva Fluid, merging herself with the underground ley line and the entirety of this vast landscape, a tremendous and surging power flowing through her.
“This girl has truly landed herself an extraordinary fortune,” Long Ma said. “To find a sacred ground like this for her enlightenment — working with half the effort for double the result.” Its expression made it very clear that it was itching to ambush her.
But in the end, it did not act on the impulse. Mu Guanghan had not provoked them. They had no desire to ruin someone’s cultivation without cause. Pursuing their own Dao comprehension was what mattered most — for they only had one month here, and every minute spent in a place of such wonder was precious beyond measure.
“Amitabha…”
From another stretch of mountains and rivers in the distance, a sound like thunder rolling — the chanting of a Buddhist invocation rang out. That entire area had become a world of golden light. All manner of Buddhist radiance flowed and billowed, flooding an entire range of mountains and ancient terrain.
Ku Toutuo was in the midst of cultivation. He had transformed an entire spirit mountain into what seemed like a Buddhist kingdom, awe-inspiring in its grandeur. Three thousand ancient Buddhas appeared in the heavens above, chanting in unison, their voices shaking the very earth.
“What is that monk doing?” Long Ma said, astonished.
“He is opening a void Buddhist kingdom,” Ye Fan said, visibly moved.
One ancient bodhisattva after another, one ancient Buddha after another — each one manifested as a golden silhouette, surrounding Ku Toutuo, circling around him in motion, mysterious and immense in their majesty.
“That mountain is cracking open,” Long Ma said, its eyes going wide. “A small temple is rising up.”
The colossal mountain ahead was splitting apart, fractures spreading across its face. An ancient temple rose from within it, pouring forth ten thousand zhang of brilliant radiance that shone in all ten directions. Within it, one could dimly make out the shadowy outline of a great Buddha, seated in meditation.
“The fluctuations emanating from inside that temple are extraordinarily powerful,” Ye Fan said, narrowing his eyes. He stood watching from a distance and did not leave.
The small temple drew Ku Toutuo inside. Golden radiance seemed to thicken into liquid, blanketing the entire area. Then there came a blazing flash of light — and everything vanished.
The ancient temple, the chanting, the three thousand bodhisattvas and Buddhas — all of it was gone, as though it had never existed.
“That bald head has quite a background,” Long Ma said, its eyes burning with desire. “We were unable to force our way in — that little temple is definitely a hidden treasury.”
“That is something belonging to the Buddhist tradition,” Ye Fan said. “Most likely it requires a specific incantation to open.” He had no lingering attachment to it and turned to leave, having gained a general sense of what kind of world this was — a place of inexhaustible divine materials and ancient medicines, filled with boundless fortune and opportunity.
No wonder Yan Chifeng had kept coming back year after year. The wonders here were simply too plentiful.
Ye Fan descended to the ground and ceased searching. He devoted himself instead to enlightenment and self-cultivation, walking on foot, adjusting and harmonizing his own state. He was preparing himself to break through the restrictions of this world and get a look at the outside.
For this was not a living ancient star — it felt more like a sealed and enclosed world, and the situation beyond its boundaries remained unknown to him.
Several days passed like this, until Ye Fan encountered someone he recognized. Rui Wei was busy gathering various spiritual essences of heaven and earth and looked genuinely delighted to see him.
“This place is truly wonderful,” she said. “If I could somehow bring my clanspeople here to live, it would be like entering paradise.”
Even as she said it, Rui Wei knew it was only a fantasy. The Primordial Dao Ground served as a trial site — there was no possibility of opening it to outsiders to live in. This place carried far too much importance.
“Have you come across any particularly unusual places?” Ye Fan asked.
“There are a few restricted zones,” Rui Wei replied, “very dangerous ones that most people do not dare enter. The most terrifying of all is a region filled with primordial magnetic energy — if you have any metal weapons on you, they will drag you apart along with them.”
“Where?” Long Ma asked immediately.
Ye Fan too felt a stir of excitement. There was a wondrous divine art he had been cultivating that could not reach completion without divine magnetic energy — he needed exactly this kind of tempering for it to reach its perfected state.
“Not far from here,” Rui Wei replied. “It truly is a deadly place. I watched people disintegrate the moment they drew near — to say nothing of going deeper.” Her expression turned visibly pale at the memory.
“I am going to take a look.”
“Brother Ye,” Rui Wei said, her voice carrying genuine concern, “please do not go putting yourself in harm’s way needlessly. That place is truly not safe. Pale bones and ash are scattered everywhere for as far as the eye can see — an utterly terrifying sight.”
It was a mottled and desolate stretch of land, silent in every direction. No ancient medicines grew here, no spirit grasses. Not a single ancient beast was to be found. The entire place felt dead and lifeless.
Deep within the mountain range, a solitary peak soared upward tens of thousands of zhang into the sky. At its base, a cave mouth poured forth streams of immortal light — clearly visible from a distance.
Before the mountain range, white bone dust had accumulated to a considerable depth, making this place a true land of death in the most literal sense. And yet the immortal light radiating from within the cave was utterly captivating.
“Brother Ye, are you truly going in there?” Rui Wei asked, filled with anxiety.
“I am only going in to practice a divine art,” Ye Fan said, patting her on the shoulder reassuringly. “There is no need to worry. I know what I am doing.”
“I have a Misfortune-Warding Ancient Stele here,” Rui Wei said, producing from his hands a stone stele barely more than a foot in length, covered in many inscribed symbols. “If you find yourself in danger, you can crush it instantly — it will allow you to escape in an instant.”
This was a precious treasure he kept as a life-saving measure, and he was lending it to Ye Fan out of genuine concern that something might go wrong in that place.
“There is no need,” Ye Fan said, shaking his head.
Rather than rushing straight inside, he first began circulating his Primordial Magnetic Divine Art at the outer edges, beginning his cultivation from there, drawing in streams of immortal light one after another.
Long Ma did the same — earnestly comprehending the Dao, absorbing the mysteries of this secret art.
Immediately, the bodies of both man and horse were enveloped in electromagnetic light, making them look mysterious beyond measure. Their physical forms became translucent and crystalline, almost like jade — though this was not electromagnetic energy in the traditional sense, but rather divine magnetic force.
Two hours later, Rui Wei looked on with wide eyes and was forced to step back, retreating from the mountain range entirely. The entire area had been swallowed in immortal light. The man and the horse were advancing steadily inward, entering the ancient cave.
From that day forward, the sounds of a horse’s cry, a dog’s howl, a dragon’s roar, and the call of a qilin rang out intermittently. Ye Fan gritted his teeth and persevered — but Long Ma made no attempt to hold back its wailing, undeterred yet endlessly vocal, not suppressing a single cry. What it truly sounded like was anyone’s guess — someone who did not know better might well have thought a whole herd of ancient beasts had been trapped inside.
This was a primordial cavern that had existed for untold tens of thousands of years. Primordial magnetic immortal light filled it in strands and streams without end. After entering the deeper sections, Ye Fan endured the agony of his body being gradually pulled apart.
The human body generates its own field of energy. When caught within this primordial magnetic immortal light, the two forces interfered with each other — the interaction alone was enough to reduce a person to ash in an instant.
But Ye Fan withstood it. Over the course of those few days, he brought his newly acquired Primordial Magnetic Divine Art to a terrifyingly advanced level, making explosive progress and approaching the state of great perfection.
“Woof, howl…” Long Ma showed its teeth and wailed pitifully, but it too was nearly done with its own cultivation.
The cave went very deep. At the far end of the immortal light, a cluster of ancient vines grew — sparse of leaf, yet each one translucent and glimmering, with immortal light steaming off them. Impossibly, they bore fruit.
“Good heavens, how can there be vegetation in a place like this?” Long Ma cried. “Nothing should be able to survive here. And the smell — it has actually borne fruit!”
Long Ma opened its mouth wide and swallowed one of the fruits whole. In the very next instant, it began bucking and kicking wildly. Primordial magnetic immortal light erupted from its entire body. It came very close to dissolving entirely, its whole form convulsing.
Had it not been for the related secret art it had been cultivating, Long Ma would have met its end right then and there.
“Extraordinary — this is the purest form of primordial magnetic immortal light,” Long Ma howled, caught between agony and exhilaration. “It is a fundamental source energy that predates the formation of heaven and earth.”
Ye Fan consumed one of the fruits as well. These were not immortality medicines by any definition, but they were an extraordinarily rare variety of fruit, scarcely seen across all the ages, with unique and wondrous effects. In the end, he too trembled throughout his body, receiving a thorough baptism — his entire form polished to the brilliance of a clear mirror or a divine glass pane, radiant with inner light.
With this, his Primordial Magnetic Divine Art reached completion. From this point on, as his cultivation realm advanced, this secret art would grow ever more terrifying. It could rightly be called an unrivaled secret method — comparable even to the ancient forbidden arts of the Emperor Scripture’s restricted sections.
Once the divine art reached completion, the ancient cave presented far less of a threat to them. It could no longer harm their physical forms with ease. Thousands upon thousands of strands of immortal light came sweeping toward them, yet it felt no worse than a light breeze brushing against their skin.
Ye Fan and Long Ma each consumed another Primordial Magnetic exotic fruit — and found it had almost no further effect on them. One was enough.
Still gleaming brilliantly on the ancient vine were eight more of the fruits. Each one was no larger than a fist, each one flowing with iridescent light, looking as though it had been carved from primordial celestial jade.
“Hmm — you are certain you saw him come to this ancient terrain and enter the Primordial Magnetic Immortal Cave of the ancients?” An unknown moment had passed before Yan Chifeng arrived outside the mountain range. He saw the auspicious mist shooting in all directions, immortal light cascading in ten thousand threads, and felt a jolt of surprise.
“I saw it with my own eyes through the Primordial Heaven Divine Mirror,” the person beside him replied with absolute certainty.
Yan Chifeng’s brow creased. “Of all the places in the Primordial Dao Ground, none is more mysterious or terrifying than this one. It is called an immortal cave, and from ancient times to the present, very few trial takers have ever been able to enter.”
“Could there be enormous benefits inside?” someone asked. The others all showed expressions of burning excitement.
“According to legend, there is an ancient vine,” Yan Chifeng said, pointing toward the sky above. “One that fell here from another world.”
“What?! What kind of wondrous properties does it have?” Many people were thrilled.
“The vine bears a certain fruit,” Yan Chifeng said. “It would not qualify as an immortality medicine — but it possesses extraordinary and unusual divine effects. Only those who have consumed it truly know its wonders.”
“Is that so? What a pity — if no one across all the ages has ever been able to enter, there is little point in our yearning for it.”
“This man has already gone inside, so he should not expect to come back out,” Yan Chifeng said, a cold smile curving his lips. He drew forth a divine treasure and sent it crashing into the depths of the mountain range.
A blazing expanse of light, a thunderous boom — the treasure was reduced to ash. But the primordial magnetic immortal light grew only more terrifying, surging outward like a dyke that had burst open and an ocean overflowing its shores.
“Yes — see him off on his journey!” the others called out, breaking into cruel laughter.
“He walked into the Primordial Immortal Cave unbidden — we will send him to join the immortals!”
Led by Yan Chifeng, more than ten people launched attack after attack at the mountain range. Every divine treasure they hurled was pulverized to dust — nothing could survive intact beneath the force of the primordial magnetic immortal light.