Cultivation: I Can Solidify Equipment Attributes

The next morning, Li Yuan led Ji Huaiyuan and Wang Ting’an back down into the mine tunnel.

The three of them stopped before the collapsed opening on the west side of the cavern.

Li Yuan raised a hand and sent out a wave of Spiritual Power, precisely pushing aside the large rocks on the surface of the debris. He didn’t recklessly clear away all the rubble. Instead, he opened only a narrow passage, just wide enough for one person to pass, doing his best to keep the tunnel’s original structure intact.

After clearing about two zhang deep into the rubble, the space ahead suddenly opened up.

A uniform tunnel, about five feet wide and seven feet high, appeared before them. The walls were polished, and the rock surface bore the faint, ancient marks of Spiritual Power runes. Though they had long since lost their function, the inscriptions were still clearly visible.

The air was filled with a dull, musty smell, mixed with extremely faint fluctuations of Spiritual Power.

The three of them filed in one after another.

Li Yuan walked in the lead. With his feet on the ground, the senses of his Earth Vein Spiritual Pivot continuously scouted ahead, probing the tunnel’s direction and structure.

The tunnel extended northwest for about two hundred zhang. There were no forks in the path, nor any signs of trap Arrays. The Spiritual Power runes on the walls grew denser the deeper they went, finally converging at the end of the tunnel into the remnants of a simple Spirit Gathering Array.

At the end was a stone door.

The stone door was ajar. Its hinges had rusted and broken, and one half of the door leaned crookedly against the wall. The Restriction runes carved into it were long dim, their Spiritual Mechanism completely dissipated.

Li Yuan turned sideways and passed through the doorway.

Inside was a small stone room, about three zhang square. The furnishings were extremely simple: a stone bed, a stone table, a wooden chair with a broken leg, and a few decaying wooden chests piled in a corner. Several niches were carved into the stone walls, with a scattering of bottles and jars inside.

It was the cave-dwelling of a Foundation Establishment Stage Cultivator.

Judging from the layout of the stone room and the specifications of the Spirit Gathering Array, the former resident’s Cultivation was not high—probably between the Early-stage and Mid Stage Foundation Establishment.

"A solitary cave-dwelling," Ji Huaiyuan said calmly, glancing around. "Judging by the age of this residual Spiritual Power, it’s been at least several hundred years."

Li Yuan walked to the stone table.

The tabletop was covered in a half-inch-thick layer of dust, which he gently brushed away. Beneath the dust lay a paper-bound book. Its cover was yellow and brittle, the corners mostly crumbled away.

’Not a jade slip, but a handwritten paper book.’

Li Yuan carefully picked up the book. The pages were extremely fragile, threatening to crumble at the slightest touch. He formed a thin film of Spiritual Power over the pages to protect them and then slowly opened it.

Most of the pages had been damaged beyond recognition by moisture and insects; only a dozen or so pages toward the back still had legible writing.

The handwriting was messy, as if written in a state of extreme panic or exhaustion.

Li Yuan read through the pages one by one.

The first surviving section of text recorded trivial matters of daily cultivation and mine patrols, holding little value. But starting from the third page, the handwriting grew more chaotic, the sentences filled with a palpable sense of panic.

"...The Sect Master has gone mad. To break through to Divinity Transformation and ascend, he’s sacrificing the entire Sect..."

"...He said the Spiritual Mechanism of heaven and earth is fading, and if he doesn’t leave now, he never will. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but he’s already made his move..."

"...The foundation of Mozhou’s Spirit Vein has been more than half-drained. On the surface, there’s still Spiritual Qi, but it’s just a remnant. Once the foundation is broken, the Spiritual Qi will sooner or later dry up completely. In a few decades, maybe a century, Mozhou will become a dead land..."

Li Yuan turned the page. The next few lines were even more blurred, with only scattered fragments legible.

"...Not just Mozhou. The Sect Master plans to move on Liangzhou next. Spirit Veins, Demon Beasts, essence blood... he wants everything that can provide a Spiritual Mechanism..."

"...Rumors are spreading through the Sect. Some elders may have already been secretly contacted, planning to strike out on their own. But who would dare make a move? The Sect Master is a late-stage Nascent Soul Grand Cultivator..."

"...I’m just an ordinary sect disciple. There’s nothing I can do. I’m writing this down in case someone, someday, might see it..."

The journal ended there. The remaining pages had all been eaten by insects, reduced to unrecognizable fragments.

Li Yuan closed the book and placed it back on the table.

’The root cause of Mozhou’s declining Spiritual Qi is right here in these pages.’

’It wasn’t a natural disaster, nor natural depletion. The Sect Master of the Profound Nether Sect forcibly drained the foundation of Mozhou’s Spirit Vein to break through to Divinity Transformation.’

He turned to check the stone table’s drawer. It was stuck fast, so Li Yuan used a gentle pulse of Spiritual Power to jolt it open. Inside lay a folded piece of animal hide.

The hide was dry, cracked, and stiff. Li Yuan unfolded it and spread it out on the table.

It was a map.

It was severely damaged. Nearly half of the hide’s edges had crumbled away, and most of the ink markings were faded and blurry. All that could be made out were a few locations marked with special symbols and several dotted lines connecting them.

There was no legend, no directional markings, not even a discernible scale.

But Li Yuan’s gaze froze on one of the marked points.

Its relative position almost perfectly matched the valley where he had tailed the Demon Cultivator two days ago before they vanished.

He firmly committed the relative coordinates of every remaining point on the map to memory.

"Senior Ji, Brother Wang, come take a look."

Ji Huaiyuan and Wang Ting’an walked over to the table.

Li Yuan briefly recounted the contents of the journal, then spread the fragmented map out before them.

The stone room fell silent for a moment.

Ji Huaiyuan’s expression darkened. He stared at the tattered map, not speaking for a long while.

"Relics from the Profound Nether Sect," Ji Huaiyuan finally said, his voice low. "The cultivation world has never reached a consensus on why Mozhou’s Spiritual Qi declined. To think the root of it was here."

He shook his head and pushed the tattered map back onto the table.

"But this map is too incomplete to be of any use. Just a few isolated points, with no orientation or scale. We can’t even tell if it’s showing the geography of Liangzhou or Mozhou."

Ji Huaiyuan looked at Li Yuan.

"My advice is not to go exploring. The Profound Nether Sect was a Nascent Soul Grand Sect back in its day. For Foundation Establishment Cultivators like us, stumbling upon anything they left behind is a death sentence."

Li Yuan didn’t respond immediately, turning to look at Wang Ting’an instead.

There was something off about Wang Ting’an’s expression.

He had been staring at the points on the map for a long time, his brow occasionally knitting then relaxing. His lips moved twice, as if he wanted to say something but swallowed the words back down.

"What do you think, Brother Wang?" Li Yuan asked.

Wang Ting’an snapped back to his senses and forced a smile.

"Me? I’m with Senior Ji. I don’t plan on taking this risk." He patted the dust off his clothes. "My Wang family’s entire enterprise is in this marketplace—the mine veins, the excavation teams, a whole household. How could I dare get involved with something like this?"

He paused for a moment before adding.

"Besides, the Primordial Yang Sect has operated in this region for many years. They might know more about the Profound Nether Sect’s past than we do. If the Sect has already gotten ahold of these things, we’d just be asking for trouble by investigating ourselves."

His tone was natural, his logic sound.

Li Yuan nodded and didn’t press him further.

He turned and continued to go through the remaining items in the stone room.

The wooden chests in the corner had rotted away, leaving only their frames, and their contents were scattered across the floor. Li Yuan examined them one by one, finding a few jade vials, two fragments of an Array Disc, a flying sword broken in two, and a damaged storage pouch.

The Spiritual Mechanism in all the items had completely dissipated.

The pills in the jade vials had turned to dust, the runes on the Array Disc fragments were completely dim, and while the material of the flying sword was still sturdy, without its Spiritual Mechanism, it was just a piece of scrap metal. The space within the storage pouch had long since collapsed, leaving nothing inside.

All of it was junk.

Several hundred years was enough time to reduce a Foundation Establishment Cultivator’s entire fortune to a pile of useless scraps.

Li Yuan placed the Array Disc fragments, which had some reference value, into his storage pouch, and left the rest of the items as they were.

Finally, he carefully put away both the journal and the tattered map.

The journal was paper and extremely fragile, so he sealed it with Spiritual Power, wrapped it in three layers of soft cloth, and placed it deep within his storage pouch. He had already seared the information of every point on the map into his mind, but it was still necessary to preserve the original document.

The three of them returned to the cavern the way they came, then back up to the surface through the mine tunnel.

After exiting the mine, Ji Huaiyuan went straight back to his Artifact Refining shop in the southern district. Wang Ting’an took his guards to arrange the follow-up work for the mining team. Before leaving, he glanced back at Li Yuan, looking as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he just nodded and left.

Li Yuan returned to his stone house alone.

He sealed the door and windows, sat down at his table, and took out a blank jade slip. He then inscribed all the contents of the journal and the coordinates of every point from the tattered map onto it, not missing a single word.

After doing this, he took out a batch of Spirit Medicines he had previously purchased from the Loose Cultivator stalls and at Yunyang Marketplace. He began to check them one by one against the list of supplementary Spirit Medicines from the Core Formation manual.

He was still missing two of the main ingredients for the Upper Element Pill and needed to continue searching for them.

These two ingredients weren’t exceedingly rare, but they seldom appeared at the Loose Cultivator stalls in Mist Forest Marketplace. He might be able to find them once that large merchant guild from Jingzhou arrived.

Li Yuan sorted and put away the Spirit Medicines, then swallowed a Condensing Evil Pill.

[Evil-Condensing Heart Wall (Green) Permanence Condition: Consume one Condensing Evil Pill daily for 15 consecutive days (3/15)]

He then got up, left the stone house, and followed the mine tunnel back down to the depths of the cavern. There, he sat cross-legged and began to operate his Cultivation Technique.

The dense, Fiery Evil Spiritual Qi in the cavern enveloped him like warm water.

[Evil-Burning Body Tempering (Green) Permanence Condition: Cultivate continuously in an environment with extremely high concentrations of Fiery Evil Spiritual Qi for 30 days (2/30)]