In the deepest reaches of the life forbidden zone, nine sacred mountains stood joined together, encircling an enormous abyss — pitch black, its bottom beyond sight.
At this moment, one of those mountains — the most imposing and majestic among them — was quiet and still, its vegetation lush and flourishing, layered in deep, vivid green. At the center of its level summit, a spring pool about two meters square flowed gently, its surface glinting with crystalline points of light, as though it had gathered the essence of some divine liquid.
Lying inside this very small pool was a figure — but one that looked more like a dried-out corpse. Flesh withered and sunken, skin grey and dim, nearly cracked, drawn tight against the bone.
“I’m not dead…” The moment Ye Fan tumbled into the pool, consciousness returned to him. The spring water held a rich life essence that halted any further aging of his body.
His life force had nearly run dry. His five organs and six viscera had all shriveled. His flesh and blood seemed wind-dried for centuries. Now, soaking in the pool, he began rapidly absorbing the life essence — like a long-parched desert at last receiving a fall of sweet rain.
Ye Fan lay on his back in the two-meter-square pool, feeling that even his throat had split with dryness, his lips withered to nothing but a layer of skin. With great effort he turned his head to the side, opened his mouth, and began to drink deep.
The spring water was sweet, carrying a lingering fragrance that moistened Ye Fan’s cracked lips and parched throat — like fine jade nectar, leaving him wanting more. A warmth of strength gradually gathered within him.
Ye Fan drank in long gulps. The dried-up remnants of his life force gradually kindled a faint spark of vitality. His flesh and blood began slowly returning to life; his withered organs were gently nourished by the life essence.
He knew the danger had finally passed — that he had survived. In this divine spring, the sinister force of the ancient forbidden zone could no longer age him further. A full quarter of an hour passed. He did not know how much water he had drunk, his belly completely full at last, unable to swallow another drop.
Ye Fan lay on his back in the pool, too weary to move at all. He gazed up at the clear blue sky and let out a long breath — having escaped death, life slowly returning, a weight lifting from him.
He lay there for a full half-hour before he felt the vitality within him gradually strengthen. Only then did he stir his withered arms. The dried-out flesh had swollen somewhat — his life force continuing to recover, his heartbeat growing steadier and more powerful with every beat.
Only at this point did his five senses begin to slowly come back to him. His body felt deeply at ease, soaking in the spring water, great amounts of life essence flowing in through every pore into his limbs and bones.
“Being alive is truly wonderful…” A look of contentment spread across Ye Fan’s face. Not long ago, his life flame had nearly guttered out, and he had believed there would be no escaping this end — that he would surely perish here.
“When a person is at ease and doing well, they are never satisfied with what they have. It is only when everything is stripped away and you face bottomless despair that you understand how simple, ordinary life is a kind of happiness.” Ye Fan lay there, looking up at the sky, his face awash with a quiet smile, waiting as his body recovered its strength.
Flesh and organs were being nourished, his pulse growing more and more vigorous, his skin gradually relaxing and beginning to regain some luster. Ye Fan finally felt a robust surge of strength — no longer bone-tired and spent — and he slowly sat up. And in that moment, his five senses fully awakened, and at once a rich fragrance struck him — a refreshing, soul-clearing perfume washing over him from all sides.
Surrounding the two-meter-square pool stood eleven small trees, each just over half a meter tall. They glowed with a green radiance, like jade carvings — vivid emerald green, crystalline and bright. Their form was like pine trees, with needle-like leaves in clusters, as though they had been sculpted from divine green jade, their light shimmering.
Ye Fan was no longer the ordinary person he had once been. Having made progress in cultivation, his spiritual senses were now razor-sharp, and he could naturally perceive things that once were beyond him.
The eleven small trees were very short, yet their trunks and branches were all sheathed in ancient bark — powerfully sinuous and winding, like coiling dragons. They seemed as though they had been growing for hundreds of thousands of years, having existed through endless ages — giving off an extraordinarily ancient and strange impression, as though they were not plants at all but living fossils.
At the tip of each small tree hung a single radiant golden fruit — about the size of a longan, glittering and translucent, as though cast from pure gold, quite extraordinary.
The jade-emerald green bodies of the trees bearing these golden fruits created a striking contrast, dazzling to the eye, fragrant beyond words — enough to make one fall helplessly into a spell of enchantment.
After enduring countless hardships to enter the ancient forbidden zone, all for the sake of this sacred medicine — Ye Fan was deeply moved. He looked at the eleven golden fruits hanging from the eleven small trees and felt that everything had been worth it.
The sacred grounds and ancient families had schemed for so long, sent powerful forces twice, expended incalculable effort, consecrated restricted implements — even brought an inferior Desolation Pagoda replica — yet in the end, every last one of them had been reduced to ash and perished. Every supreme powerhouse from all sides had fallen, and all their efforts had come to nothing.
And here was Ye Fan, sitting in the divine spring, the sacred medicine within arm’s reach. How could he not feel satisfied and moved?
Splash!
Ye Fan rose and stepped from the pool in two strides, landing on the bank, and plucked one golden fruit on the spot. The rich fruity fragrance shot straight through to his organs and viscera, filling him at once with a clarity of mind and a refreshing vitality, as though his very soul might float free from his body.
“Truly divine medicine — why can it only grow over this sinister Ancient Abyss, I wonder?”
Ye Fan placed the golden fruit in his mouth and bit down gently, chewing. A sweet taste, a fragrant aroma — these took on a tangible quality, causing every pore across his body to open wide in an instant, suffusing him with ease — as though bathed in a warm spring breeze.
The longan-sized golden fruit was barely a single mouthful. Once chewed, it dissolved into fine jade nectar and slid down his throat. Ye Fan felt as though he might ascend to the heavens in broad daylight — a sensation of weightlessness, as though he were about to lift from the ground, drifting toward immortality.
By now he was a cultivator and could not simply swallow it down as though it were ordinary fruit as he once had. He quickly sat down, resting his back against the trunk of one of the ancient small trees, and began circulating the profound technique described in the Dao Scripture.
But he was still too weak. His body had deteriorated badly, having nearly aged to death. Though drinking from the divine spring had restored considerable strength, he was still white-haired and lined with wrinkles, his flesh withered. The extraordinary golden energy that entered his body did not flow to the Bitter Sea, nor into the divine spring — it surged directly into his limbs and bones, nourishing his aged flesh and causing it to gradually take on a crystalline luster.
The profound technique recorded in the Dao Scripture, once set in motion, served only to accelerate the dissolving of the sacred medicine. After a quarter of an hour, Ye Fan’s flesh swelled rapidly — no longer withered — growing steadily more ruddy and full of color. The hair, white as snow, also began to darken gradually.
He reached out and plucked the second golden sacred fruit, took it into his mouth, and chewed gently. The sweet, beautiful nectar dissolved into golden energy and rushed through his body. His skin gleamed with a golden luster, points of divine radiance shimmering outward.
After another quarter of an hour, Ye Fan felt his spirit full and his flesh charged with strength, vitality surging back in full force. His skin had regained elasticity. With two sacred fruits consumed, he had completely shed the look of old age and become a man in his mid-thirties — his body overflowing with vigorous life essence.
Ye Fan stood. With every step and every gesture, he moved with a vigorous, lively force — no trace remained of decay. He was rapidly reclaiming his youth. Right then, as though suddenly remembering something, his expression shifted, and he rushed toward a spot not far away.
A hundred meters out, the golden scripture gleamed with a brilliant light, lying quietly in the grass — it had not been carried by the Sacred Maiden of Tianxuan into the endless abyss below. Ye Fan hurried over and picked it up, re-absorbing it into his Bitter Sea.
“Thank heaven and earth!”
With the Dao Scripture retrieved, Ye Fan made his way back, inevitably taking stock of his surroundings. The sacred mountain was quiet and still — no skeletal forms were present here at all. A profound peace.
He looked into the distance, and at once the hair on his scalp rose. The other eight sacred mountains were blanketed in dense white — skeletal forms endlessly clambering upward from the depths of the abyss.
“How can this be? Only this place is calm and undisturbed — utterly silent.” Ye Fan’s mind raced, and in an instant he thought of the green copper block.
“The Sacred Maiden of Tianxuan was blasted away, and she has yet to reappear — could the green copper block carry such a powerful suppressive force?” He was uncertain, unsure whether this was really the reason.
“The Desolation Pagoda can suppress even immortals. The green copper is also a supreme treasure — perhaps it carries such suppressive force.”
The green copper block lay silent and still, sunk at the mouth of the spring beneath the Bitter Sea — immovable as a boulder, impossible to control. He had absolutely no way of wielding it against an enemy. Not long ago, it had been the Sacred Maiden of Tianxuan who had reached into his Bitter Sea herself and touched the green copper block — that was what had brought devastating injury upon her. The mysterious green copper could not be violated and could not be controlled — a source of both hope and helplessness for Ye Fan.
“That is…”
Ye Fan’s expression stiffened. On the adjacent sacred mountain, he spotted a figure — flesh and blood, not bone. The distance was too great to see clearly, but he was certain it was no skeleton.
At the summit of that peak, a great iron sword more than ten meters long stood planted straight upright in the mountain. The figure stood silently on the sword’s hilt, a black cloak billowing in the wind.
“A Desolation Slave!” Ye Fan arrived at this conclusion immediately. True flesh-and-blood beings could not survive long in this place — whoever this was, they had to be an existence like the Sacred Maiden of Tianxuan.
“And there…” As Ye Fan looked more carefully, on another sacred mountain he caught a second figure — also flesh and blood, standing at the summit. Above the figure’s head hovered a silver bell the size of a house, gleaming brilliantly, hanging in still suspension.
Ye Fan’s expression grew solemn. He found a third figure — standing at the cliff’s edge of yet another sacred mountain, the skeletal forms all swarming around it while above the figure’s head hung an ancient pagoda, nine tiers in all, standing several tens of meters tall, as though it could suppress an entire realm.
“A fourth!” He then spotted a fourth Desolation Slave — standing with hands clasped behind their back, purple robes rippling. Above their head hung a large, square seal — ancient in bearing, vast and magnificent.
“What is happening here?!” Ye Fan was inwardly stunned. Every sacred mountain within his sight had a figure upon it.
Bells, pagodas, and seals were among the most difficult objects to consecrate — those who used them as weapons were generally not common figures. And those who had truly cultivated to the end and achieved completion would certainly possess accomplishments beyond imagination.
“Legend holds that none but the supreme masters of their age can become Desolation Slaves. Those who wielded bells, pagodas, and seals as their weapons were, in their day, almost certainly figures who shook the very heavens. Their names may even appear in the ancient records somewhere.”
Ye Fan walked swiftly back to the pool’s edge. He wanted to restore himself fully. He plucked two more golden fruits one after another and consumed them — the golden energy flowing in a gentle stream into his flesh and blood, organs, and bones.
His body blossomed with a brilliant radiance. The golden energy spilled outward, giving his form a crystalline, shimmering glow — like divine jade carved into human shape. A vigorous, surging life aura spread outward; his body had fully recovered, radiating a precious, resplendent brilliance.
At this moment, Ye Fan had once again become a youth of fifteen or sixteen.
He felt powerful divine force surging within him — life essence roiling like a tide, surging and crashing — his five organs and six viscera shining with pure, unblemished divine radiance; his bones gleaming with brilliance, condensed with spiritual essence; and his skin radiant with flowing light, dazzling beyond measure — looking nothing like flesh and blood at all, but more like a deity shaped by the devoted reverence of all the world.