Ye Fan’s golden fists were filled with immense power; with the lightest swing, the void hummed and trembled around him. He had the illusion that he could slay a true dragon with his bare hands.
A thousand-meter waterfall cascaded down in a great roar of white mist. Ye Fan stood in the pool below and threw a punch straight upward — the long waterfall reversed its flow, hanging inverted like a white silk ribbon.
“He went into closed cultivation for a month and already broke through his previous realm. The Desolate Ancient Sacred Body is truly terrifying!” Tu Fei clicked his tongue in amazement.
With one hand, Ye Fan lifted a boulder weighing tens of thousands of catties, then twisted sideways and hurled it with full force. The massive rock shrank into the distance as it shot into the sky.
At the far end of the horizon, a flock of wild geese flew past — and were all knocked out of the air.
Tu Fei stared with his mouth agape. After a long moment he finally cried out: “You beast! You absolute beast! You knocked an entire line of wild geese out of the sky with a boulder weighing tens of thousands of catties! I’ve never seen anyone as monstrous as you!”
Ye Fan’s physique was overwhelmingly powerful — he possessed the strength to uproot mountains and lift peaks. If those blows landed on someone’s body, who could withstand them?
“Woof, woof, woof…” From twenty-odd li away came the sound of furious, frenzied barking. The Black Emperor howled in misery: “What the hell! Is there no justice in this world?! I was just sleeping and nearly got half-killed by a rock falling from the sky!”
Tu Fei had been standing there dumbstruck, but the moment he heard the great black dog’s anguished wailing, he burst into hysterical laughter.
“Woof! You there, surnamed Tu — just you wait! This Emperor knows it was you!” the great black dog howled from the distance.
“What the hell does that have to do with me?!” Tu Fei cursed.
Ye Fan stood at the foot of a stone mountain a thousand meters tall, swinging his golden fists. “Thud, thud” — the sounds rang out one after another. He was like a man punching through mud; every strike sank into the mountain’s body with effortless ease.
Finally, he wound up and struck with full force, driving his fist straight through into the mountain’s core!
“He really is a beast!” Tu Fei’s jaw nearly dropped in shock. He brought out an Eight-Trigram bronze mirror — wreathed in purple mist, it surged forward as he said, “Let me test your cultivation level now.”
It was a purple-bronze treasure mirror, a weapon only cultivators at the Four Extremities Secret Realm could wield — solid and immensely powerful, like a purple mountain pressing down from above.
Clang!
Ye Fan flicked his finger. His golden fingertip struck the purple-bronze mirror, producing a sharp crack. Impossibly, the Four Extremities treasure mirror fractured and shattered like fireworks, exploding brilliantly in mid-air.
Purple radiance shot into the sky. A tremendous surge of energy raged in all directions, sending the waterfall rolling backward and the stone mountain shuddering — yet Ye Fan stood utterly unmoved.
Tu Fei cried out in anguish: “Is your body forged from sacred materials?! My treasure!” He was devastated. He had no shortage of weapons, but having one shattered so casually still made his heart ache.
Ye Fan’s blood and vital energy surged like a great river. He could feel his own immense power. By cultivating the Western Emperor Scripture, he had at last entered the Third Heavenly Layer of the Dao Palace, fully refining the Divine Repository of the Liver — its Five-Phase element being Wood.
Yet still he had not manifested a divine spirit. Unlike others, he had no deity shielding his body.
At the same time, he noticed that he was cultivating in reverse order of the Five Phases: the Heart belonged to Fire, the Lungs to Metal, the Liver to Wood. He had first refined the Divine Repository of the Heart, then the Lungs, then the Liver — Fire restrains Metal, Metal restrains Wood, advancing against the natural cycle of the Five Phases.
Barring some unexpected turn of events, his next realm would undoubtedly be the Divine Repository of the Spleen, for its Five-Phase element was Earth, and Wood restrains Earth.
“You have no need for weapons at all — your physical body is mightier than any treasure.” Tu Fei was deeply envious.
“I am short on ore-essence. I need it in vast quantities.”
Tu Fei’s expression grew complex. He sighed: “As long as you have ore-essence, you will face no bottleneck within the Dao Palace Secret Realm — you can advance in tremendous leaps.”
“Then I want to borrow some. Whatever ore-essence you have — lend it all to me. I will repay you tenfold in the future.” Ye Fan spoke with complete seriousness. He felt a pressing urgency; he desperately wanted to enter the Four Extremities Secret Realm.
“The little ore-essence I have wouldn’t even fill the gaps between your teeth. To enter the Fourth Heavenly Layer of the Dao Palace, you need a hundred thousand catties of ore-essence — a number that makes your head spin.”
“How much ore-essence do you have?” Ye Fan was desperate to break through.
“I have a little over one square, roughly four thousand catties or so.”
“Not even ten thousand catties — and you’re a descendant of the Great Bandit.”
Tu Fei rolled his eyes: “If the Great Bandit had rich ore-essence deposits, he wouldn’t have become a great bandit in the first place. Besides, how could I dare touch my grandfather’s treasury?”
“Ore-essence is a major problem.” Ye Fan muttered to himself.
“You don’t need to panic. I’ll go out and make a trip — gathering twenty thousand catties for you will be no problem.” Tu Fei planned to seek out Li Heishui, Liu Kou, Jiang Huairen, and Wu Zhongtian.
“But I’m a crippled body. It’s not worth it for you to help me like this.”
“I, Tu Fei, am not someone who minces words — I’ll speak plainly. I have an intuition that you might break the curse of the Desolate Ancient Sacred Body. Think about it: if one day you become a fully perfected Desolate Ancient Sacred Body, I won’t need to cultivate for the rest of my life — I can still run rampant across the Eastern Wastelands and the Central Province. As long as you’re alive, my descendants for generations to come will be able to dominate all under heaven. A fully perfected Sacred Body should be able to live for at least ten thousand years.”
“What if I spend my entire life unable to advance beyond the Dao Palace Secret Realm?” Ye Fan asked.
“If you can’t break through, then at that point just give me the Myriad Things Mother Qi Cauldron — it would happen to complete the lid for my Heaven-Devouring Jar.” Tu Fei said it half-seriously and half in jest.
“Woof, woof, woof…” The great black dog appeared on the horizon, radiating murderous intent. It had been sleeping perfectly peacefully, only to be struck by a stone and left with a battered, bruised face — it could not have been more displeased.
“I’ll leave now. At most a month, at least half a month — I will definitely return. Seven squares of ore-essence is absolutely no problem.” With those words, Tu Fei shot into the sky.
The great black dog came running up with a dark expression, fixed its gaze on Ye Fan, and spoke with clear hostility: “I suddenly have a feeling it was you who did it.”
“What did I do?” Ye Fan played dumb.
“Don’t play innocent with me. What the hell — a boulder weighing tens of thousands of catties fell from the sky and smashed me flat. An ordinary person couldn’t have done that!” The great black dog’s stubby tail was nearly pointing straight up to the heavens.
Ye Fan flatly denied it to the end, and eventually managed to muddle his way through, averting what would have been an epic battle between man and dog.
The stone stronghold had been fully rebuilt. Set amid green mountains and clear waters, the houses were exquisitely crafted — far superior to what they had been before.
Most significantly, the environment had transformed. The young women and children were the happiest of all; they could frolic in the clear spring pools every day, no longer having to face wind and sand all day long as they once had.
Rocks had been piled into small hills outside the stronghold, though most were just foundation stones and the like. Ye Fan had moved over every single stone from the original stronghold, terrified of missing anything.
Ye Fan and Old Man Zhang the Fifth busied themselves sorting through the tumbled rocks, selecting stone grinders, stone pedestals, and stone millstones — fifty-odd stone artifacts in total.
The Black Emperor stood nearby with a watchful, covetous eye, afraid of missing any benefit that might come its way.
“Elder, are you certain you want to cut them open?” Ye Fan asked.
“Cut away. I want to see what our ancestors left behind.” Old Man Zhang the Fifth answered calmly.
Ye Fan got to work. He cut open three stone pedestals in a row — all worthless stone, with nothing inside. Old Man Zhang the Fifth also worked with his own hands, cracking open four stone locks — equally without result.
“Could it be we guessed wrong? Did that old Daoist misjudge?” The two men looked at each other in bewilderment.
“Why be so careful? Just smash them all at once and be done with it.” The Black Emperor urged impatiently.
“Get back over there!” Ye Fan glared at it.
Suddenly, a fragrance wafted out — like orchid, like musk, permeating the senses and intoxicating one to the very bone.
“What is that smell?” Sure enough, a dog’s nose was the keenest of all. The Black Emperor was practically pressing its face against the stone grinder, its drool nearly spilling out.
“Something’s been cut open!” Old Man Zhang the Fifth’s expression grew solemn. He was in the middle of cutting a stone grinder, and the fragrance was drifting out from the crack in the stone.
Ye Fan’s heart leapt in surprise. He tossed aside the millstone in his hands and crowded forward to look. This was truly strange — how could cutting stone produce a wafting fragrance?
Could it be that something from the Primordial Ancient era had been sealed inside?
His fingertips flickered with golden light. He gestured for Old Man Zhang the Fifth to step back, then took the stone grinder into his own hands. The Black Emperor craned its massive head forward and stared intently.
Shhh, shhh, shhh!
Stone chips flew in all directions. Very quickly, the outer stone shell of the grinder was stripped away by more than half. Ye Fan noticed that moisture was seeping out.
Old Man Zhang the Fifth had applied slightly too much force earlier — the stone grinder was quite brittle, and it had cracked open along a fracture line. The moisture was flowing from within that crack, as was the fragrance.
“A treasure has been cut out!” The Black Emperor — with its great square head, large ears, and eyes wide as brass bells — stared in intense concentration.
Ye Fan carefully peeled away the stone shell. At last, from the very center of the grinder he cut out a fleshy fruit — pink in color, somewhat resembling a peach.
“This… it’s fleshy!” The Black Emperor was quite taken aback.
“What is this thing?” Ye Fan was puzzled. He had read through the Yuantian Scripture but had never encountered a description of anything like this.
Old Man Zhang the Fifth was also stunned, finding it utterly beyond belief.
The fragrance was emanating from this fleshy fruit. Its skin had already split — half of a clear liquid had spilled onto the surface of the stone grinder, the aroma assailing the nostrils and making one irresistibly want to swallow it whole.
“It smells so good — surely it can’t be a longevity immortal fruit?” The Black Emperor’s eyes began to glow with green light.
Old Man Zhang the Fifth heard this and felt a stir in his heart. “Ancestral records say that what is sealed within stones is not limited to ore-essence.”
“These must be extraordinarily rare spirit stones, with contents impossible to predict!” Ye Fan stared at the stone artifacts.
No such entry existed in the Yuantian Scripture. This fleshy fruit lay beyond the classification of ordinary stone materials — it could only be categorized as a spirit stone, and the things left behind by the Yuantian Master likely held extraordinary significance beyond what was immediately apparent.
“The color of this fruit is changing, and the fragrance is fading — what’s happening?” Old Man Zhang the Fifth’s expression shifted with alarm.
The pink fleshy fruit was gradually turning a greenish hue, and the fragrance had indeed grown considerably fainter.
“Eat it quickly — if you don’t, the Life Essence will dissipate!” the Black Emperor said urgently.
Ye Fan was uncertain. Could something like this actually be eaten? He dipped the tip of his finger into a single drop of the liquid and placed it in his mouth. In an instant, he found it unbearably bitter — he nearly threw his head back and cried out to the sky. The bitterness was so extreme that his tongue went numb immediately, followed by a spinning, dizzying sensation, as if the heavens and earth were revolving. He nearly crumpled to the ground.
“Let me taste it!” The Black Emperor snatched it up impatiently, bit off a chunk, and swallowed skin, liquid, and all in one great gulp.
“Woof — woof — woof…”
The very next instant, the Black Emperor went into what seemed like a fit, barking uncontrollably, trying desperately to spit it out, then foaming at the mouth and convulsing on the ground.
Old Man Zhang the Fifth was thoroughly frightened. He had been about to taste it himself, having thought it some sort of celestial flesh-fruit — but now he recoiled from it as though it were a deadly viper or scorpion.
No one knew how much time passed before Ye Fan finally recovered, the dizziness no longer spinning through his head. He said with a start: “What kind of fruit is this?”
By this point the Black Emperor looked very nearly like a dead dog — only its four limbs were still twitching, and it continued to foam at the mouth.
Ye Fan examined it and determined that its life should not be in danger, though its current state was quite wretched — no one could say when it might recover.
He swept his gaze over the remaining stone artifacts and, for the first time, felt the gravity of the situation. He said: “These are rare treasures left behind by the Yuantian Master. We have absolutely no idea what they’re for. It’s best we don’t cut any more of them open — let’s wait until we understand them better before acting.”
Ye Fan had a vague sense that these might be extraordinary items — the kind of fleshy fruit that the Crimson Dragon Elder had been searching for might very well be something like this.
These were most likely priceless treasures. In their current state of ignorance, they absolutely could not be rashly disturbed again.
“This millstone has already been cut open — you might as well split it and have a look. As for the other stone artifacts, let’s preserve them.” Old Man Zhang the Fifth said.
Ye Fan nodded. He had already cut open several stone artifacts, yet had only extracted one fleshy fruit — this millstone might not necessarily yield anything.
Yet when he peeled back the stone shell and cut to the very center of the millstone, ten thousand divine rays of light suddenly shot out — brilliant and magnificent beyond bearing, so intense that no one could keep their eyes open.