Chapter 360 - 349: Teleportation Stone
In an underground canyon within the Land of Absolute Spirit, the bodies of two Demon Cultivators lay silently beneath a cold rock wall.
Li Yuan put away the black Token, which was engraved with the character for "dark," and walked back to the stone platform of the newly repaired Teleportation Array.
Silver Array Patterns flowed across the surface of the stone platform, emitting faint yet stable spatial fluctuations. Li Yuan’s gaze fell on the core Array Hub at the very center of the formation. Embedded there was a fist-sized, translucent gray Multi-faceted Crystal Stone.
This was the original Array Hub left behind by the Profound Nether Sect. Though it had weathered the erosion of time and the depletion of the world’s Spiritual Mechanism, its interior still contained an extremely pure, sealed spatial power.
He reached out, and the instant his fingertip touched the crystal’s surface, an unprecedentedly intense burst of purple light erupted at the edge of his vision.
[Equippable Item Detected: Teleportation Stone (Purple)]
A purple light flowed across the panel, suffused with a profound quality.
[Item Attribute Preview: Teleportation Stone (Purple)]
[Effects: Reduces the negative effects of spatial teleportation by 50%; doubles spatial perception ability; increases spatial Magic effectiveness by 30%]
[Permanence Condition Preview: Master two forms of spatial Magic to the level of Perfection.]
’Purple-tier attributes.’
Li Yuan’s eyes narrowed slightly as he carefully scanned the effect descriptions.
’Reduces the negative effects of spatial teleportation by 50%.’ Long-distance, cross-prefecture teleportation placed enormous pressure on a Cultivator’s body and Divine Soul. A Cultivator with a weaker Cultivation base could even be severely injured or knocked unconscious. Reducing the impact by fifty percent meant the stiffness and dizziness he’d experience after landing would be drastically shortened. In wartime, this was a life-saving divine skill.
’Doubles spatial perception ability; increases spatial Magic effectiveness by 30%.’ These were genuine, hard-stat buffs. Spatial Magic was already extremely rare and nearly impossible to defend against. With this enhancement, its power would undergo a qualitative leap.
’Too bad I don’t have any spatial Magic yet.’
As for the condition for making it permanent—mastering two forms of spatial Magic to Perfection—that was a different story. Spatial Magic was incredibly difficult to find, destining this to be a long-term goal that required extensive planning.
Without hesitation, Li Yuan took a standard Tier Three Void Stone from his storage bag, one that had been issued by the Primordial Yang Sect.
Spiritual Power flowed from his fingertips as he carefully severed the core circuit’s connection. He pried out the Teleportation Stone, its purple light now contained, and quickly pressed the Void Stone into the Array Hub, reconnecting the Array Patterns.
A silver light flickered, but the array continued to operate smoothly. Swapping the Array Hub hadn’t affected the Teleportation Array’s basic functions.
Li Yuan called up his equipment panel.
"Equip."
[Equipped: Teleportation Stone (Purple)]
[Teleportation Stone (Purple) is now in effect.]
[Permanence Condition for Teleportation Stone (Purple): Master two forms of spatial Magic to the level of Perfection (0/2)]
The instant the attribute took effect, Li Yuan felt the world before his eyes undergo an extremely subtle reconstruction.
In the space before him, once empty, he could now perceive layers of fine, dense folds. He could even clearly sense the silver light from the Teleportation Array at his feet following these spatial folds, extending like an invisible tunnel toward the distant Yunyang Marketplace.
’My spatial perception has doubled.’
’It’s like the world has gained another dimension.’
Li Yuan refocused, stepped into the center of the Teleportation Array, inserted a few Mid-grade Spirit Stones, and cast the activation Spell.
A blinding silver light shot upward, instantly engulfing his figure.
The familiar tearing and dizzying sensations followed, but this time, the twisting force that felt powerful enough to shred his organs was weakened by more than half by an invisible power the moment it touched his body.
Just a few breaths later, the silver light dissipated.
Li Yuan stood steadily on the newly constructed Teleportation Array inside Yunyang Marketplace.
There was no nausea, no staggering; his Divine Soul was perfectly clear. He regulated his breathing for only a moment before striding off the stone platform.
He went to the Sect’s outpost to report on the Mozhou mission and collect the remainder of his reward. Without lingering in Yunyang Marketplace, he returned directly to Mist Forest Marketplace.
After several days away, Li Yuan found that Mist Forest Marketplace had changed in ways both large and small.
The changes were "small" in that the marketplace’s overall layout hadn’t drastically shifted. The main street was still the main street, and the shacks and courtyards in the southern district hadn’t continued their disorderly outward sprawl. Everything was being managed in an orderly fashion by Ji Mingyuan and the others.
The changes were "large" in that the marketplace’s overall output had exploded to an astonishing degree.
Li Yuan entered through the south gate. As he walked, he saw cart after cart of finished Fire Evil Stones being hauled from the direction of the mines. The Ji family’s Artifact Refining workshop operated day and night, the sound of hammering on Magical Artifacts echoing ceaselessly. A long line had formed in front of the Sun family’s Talisman shop, where huge quantities of Tier One Talismans were being purchased by the bundle.
The output from the pill shops was even more staggering. The herbs grown in their own Spirit Fields were being converted into an unending supply of medicinal pills.
Mist Forest Marketplace was like a war machine running at full capacity, frantically consuming and churning out resources.
Li Yuan went straight to the administration office. Chen Yi was at a desk, his brow furrowed as he sorted through a thick pile of intelligence jade slips.
"You’re back?" Chen Yi looked up. Seeing Li Yuan, his tense expression softened slightly.
"The situation in Mozhou is resolved," Li Yuan said, sitting down across from him. "Judging by your expression, things have gotten worse?"
"’Worse’ is an understatement." Chen Yi pushed a red jade slip toward Li Yuan, his voice low. "The Demon Cultivators’ advance is getting fiercer. The Qi Shui Sect has backed down."
Li Yuan picked up the jade slip and probed it with his Divine Sense.
"The Qi Shui Sect and the Demon Sect seem to have reached some kind of shady agreement. The Qi Shui Sect has proactively abandoned several key resource points in central Yunzhou and completely pulled back its defensive lines. In exchange, the Demon Cultivators have halted their full-scale assault against them."
Chen Yi sneered, his tone dripping with unconcealed disdain.
"It’s tantamount to selling out every Loose Cultivator and small family in all of Yunzhou."
"Now that the Demon Cultivators have eaten their fill in Yunzhou, we don’t need to guess what their next move will be," Li Yuan said, setting the jade slip down.
"Exactly." Chen Yi nodded emphatically. "They’ve already shifted their focus to Liangzhou. The pressure on the border is about to increase exponentially. The Primordial Yang Sect is already dispatching Inner Sect Disciples to reinforce the front lines."
Li Yuan didn’t say more. The grand tide of events was not something a single Foundation Establishment Cultivator like him could influence. All he could do was hold on to the cards he had been dealt even more tightly.
Back in his stone house, Li Yuan sealed the door and windows and activated all his Early Warning Arrays.
He walked to his table and laid out the black "dark" character Token he had confiscated in Mozhou, along with the jade slips that had recorded Demonic Qi fluctuations from his micro-node arrays over the past several days.
Time to continue the decryption.
With the core Token as a reference point and the aid of his Micro Level perception from [Dark Evil Insight], Li Yuan’s speed at deciphering the Demonic Qi transmission frequencies increased dramatically.
An hour later, he had finished translating a newly intercepted piece of intelligence from the mole.
The content was brief.
"Tonight, we move."
"Objective: Collect... (specific material code)."
The intelligence vaguely mentioned a location, but the mole had apparently used a codename instead of specifying the exact place.
Li Yuan frowned slightly as he looked at the decoded message on the paper.
’The Demon Cultivators are collecting some kind of material.’ This aligned with the intelligence Chen Yi had mentioned before. ’But what material could possibly be worth the Dark Abyss Association and the Evil Slaying Sect going to such great lengths to acquire?’
An image suddenly flashed through his mind: an internal materials allocation list from the Primordial Yang Sect that he had inadvertently glimpsed while turning in his mission at Yunyang Marketplace.
At the time, he had only glanced at it and paid it no mind. But now, as he compared the types of Spiritual Materials on that list with the frequencies of the fragmented codenames from the mole’s intelligence, Li Yuan’s heart skipped a beat.
Certain materials the Primordial Yang Sect had recently been assigning frantic missions to collect had an extremely high degree of overlap—in both properties and uses—with the materials the Dark Abyss Association was unscrupulously gathering.
The trail of clues ended there. The mole’s intelligence was too brief to piece together the complete picture.
Li Yuan crushed the paper containing the decoded message to ash in his palm.
Li Yuan sat cross-legged on his meditation cushion, his eyes partially closed.
He withdrew all five of his Divine Sense Lines back into his body and threw himself completely into his cultivation.
The dense Spiritual Qi in the air, along with the Spiritual Power generated by his [Spiritual Essence Stabilization] ability, washed continuously through his meridians.
He first activated the Cyan Wood Longevity Skill.
The Wood Attribute Spiritual Power circulated unceasingly within his body, following the twelve major meridians and eight extraordinary vessels to form a perfect closed loop. As the final strand of Spiritual Power flowed into the Wood Attribute node in his liver, a soft chime, like spring thunder cracking ice, suddenly rang out from within him.
The cyan Spiritual Power that had been drifting freely through his meridians instantly became incredibly solid, as if taking on the vital rhythm of true, living vegetation.
A panel appeared.
[Cyan Wood Longevity Skill: Perfection]
The Cultivation Technique had reached Perfection.
Li Yuan didn’t stop, instantly switching the circulation path of his Cultivation Technique.
Frenzied, chilling Demonic Qi rose from the shadows at the base of his Dantian. Aided by [Dark Evil Insight], he pushed the circulation path of the Demon Essence Skill to its absolute limit.
The Demonic Qi compressed frantically within his meridians. The once-ethereal black mist gradually condensed into tangible black droplets. As these droplets flowed through his meridians, they showed no sign of backlash. Instead, they were as docile and obedient as an extension of his own limbs.
[Demon Essence Skill: Great Success (0/1600)]
Two Cultivation Techniques, two successive breakthroughs.