Vessel of Worlds

On the second day after arriving in the desert, Andy finally began to make sense of something that had been nagging at him.

He had been puzzling over how this endless expanse of sand could possibly be connected to the Dragon Descent Valley of legend—a place said to contain extraordinary mountains and waters, priceless treasures, and all manner of spirit beasts.

The cultivator surnamed Chen had simply told them to sit and wait, then walked off two or three hundred zhang away and sat down in silence by himself.

Though Andy had a hundred questions, he kept them to himself. When the time came to enter the valley, the answers would reveal themselves.

The cultivators of all seven factions sat in silence through the entire night. The desert's temperature swung wildly between day and night—scorching sun during the day, bone-cutting cold after dark—but for cultivators shielded by spiritual energy, such extremes were trivial.

At noon the following day, when the sun was at its most brutal, the cultivator surnamed Chen, who had been sitting motionless in the distance, suddenly rose. "It's time," he said in his characteristically flat tone, and turned his right hand over. In his palm appeared a crimson crystalline disc, seven or eight cun across.

Immediately, one Foundation Establishment cultivator from each of the other six factions stepped forward, each holding an identical disc-shaped artifact—differing only in color.

The seven exchanged a single glance, then tossed their discs into the air simultaneously, firing streams of technique into them. Seven pillars of colored light, each as thick as a fist, erupted from the discs and converged several dozen zhang above the desert, merging into a single white sphere of light so blindingly intense that no one could look at it directly—a second sun in the sky.

A moment later, the sphere plunged straight into the desert sand and vanished.

Andy was still marveling at the sight when the ground beneath his feet began to shake violently. The earth trembled across a radius of several hundred zhang. Then, slowly, a jade platform ten-odd zhang across rose from the sand.

A teleportation formation! Once the platform had fully emerged, Andy recognized it immediately.

The formation was built in an unusual heptagonal design—seven sides, seven corners. At each corner stood a jade statue of a spirit beast in the shape of a qilin. The seven jade qilin were each a different color and form, but all had gaping mouths and expressions so vivid they seemed almost alive.

The seven Foundation Establishment cultivators, including the one surnamed Chen, each embedded their colored disc into the horn atop one of the qilin's heads, then produced a mid-grade spirit stone of the corresponding color and placed it into the qilin's open mouth.

The formation erupted in dazzling seven-colored radiance, projecting a rainbow barrier that enclosed the entire platform.

"Groups of ten. Move!" the cultivator surnamed Chen commanded the Taixu Sect's disciples in clipped tones.

Ten disciples who had been standing ready immediately stepped onto the platform. The rainbow barrier flickered once, and all ten vanished. Another ten stepped up at once.

After every Taixu Sect disciple had been transported, the other six factions sent their disciples through in turn.

In barely the time it takes for a stick of incense to burn, every last Qi Refinement cultivator had passed through the formation and entered Dragon Descent Valley. The only ones remaining in the desert were the shimmering seven-colored formation and some twenty Foundation Establishment cultivators.

"Brother Songzhen, we'll be stuck here for a full month waiting. How about a little wager to pass the time?" The rotund monk Dingyuan waddled over to an old man dressed as a Taoist priest, eyes half-shut, and addressed him with a broad grin.

The old man didn't bother opening his eyes. "A wager on what? Same as last time—which faction has the most survivors? Your Pure Light Sect sent over forty disciples this time, seven or eight more than our Jade Pure Gate. How is that a fair bet?"

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"Good point. Tell you what—we'll spot you two. Still interested?" The monk pressed on, unwilling to give up.

The Taoist cracked one eye open to a narrow slit and studied the monk for a moment. "Fine. What are you putting up this time?"

"This humble monk happens to have a Grade Three Flame-Craving Fox spirit core, and I'd like to wager it against your Jade Bamboo Talisman Treasure."

"So you've had your eye on my Jade Bamboo Talisman Treasure all along, and you're actually willing to stake a Grade Three spirit core? You must be feeling very confident, Brother Dingyuan."

"Benefactor Wan of the Tianyou Sect—care to join our little wager? I've heard your appetite for gambling is no smaller than ours."

"Ha, I'll pass. I don't have much faith in our sect's disciples this time around," the cultivator surnamed Wan from the Tianyou Sect said with a laugh.

"Surely not! This humble monk thinks the disciples your sect sent this time are considerably stronger than previous batches."

……

Andy felt a moment of dizziness and disorientation, and then the teleportation formation was gone.

The smell of rotting leaves. Soft, slippery earth beneath his feet. Shafts of light filtering down through gaps in the canopy. Trees so massive that several people linking arms couldn't encircle their trunks. The occasional call of a bird or chirp of an insect. These were Andy's first impressions upon arrival.

He circulated his spiritual sense through his body, and his head cleared quickly. From the look of his surroundings, he was deep inside a dense forest.

"Could have been worse," Andy murmured to himself.

He had already learned from the mission jade slip that once cultivators entered Dragon Descent Valley, the valley's ancient barrier would scatter them randomly to different locations within. Some were extraordinarily lucky—materializing right beside a cluster of treasures and scooping up a haul before anyone else arrived. Others were catastrophically unlucky, appearing directly in front of several high-grade spirit beasts and dying before they could even react. Most, like Andy, simply ended up in some remote, unremarkable corner of the valley.

First priority is figuring out where I am. Then I can decide where to search. Andy settled on his approach.

They had one month inside the valley. At the end of that month, the weakest point in the valley's barrier—a place the cultivators called "Peace Valley"—would be breached by the Foundation Establishment cultivators waiting outside, creating a temporary one-way passage. This passage could only be used to leave the valley, not to enter it, and was the only way for Andy and the others to get out.

If a cultivator failed to reach Peace Valley and exit through the passage within the month, they would be trapped inside Dragon Descent Valley. When the valley opened again ten years later, the next batch of cultivators would find that those left behind had mysteriously vanished—not even their remains could be found.

Andy swallowed a Grain Abstinence Pill—one of the sect-issued supplies—which would sustain him without food or water for the full month. With only thirty days to search for treasures, wasting time hunting for meals would be foolish. The Grain Abstinence Pill was nothing rare; presumably the other six factions distributed them as well.

He extended his spiritual sense as far as it would reach, scanning the forest around him carefully. No spirit beasts, no other cultivators. The dense canopy overhead made the Flying Plume impractical, so he picked a tree with plenty of branches and climbed hand over hand toward the top.

Near the crown, after confirming with his spiritual sense that no avian spirit beasts were circling above, Andy pulled out his Flying Plume and rose two or three zhang above the treetops, surveying his surroundings in every direction. The sky was an unbroken ceiling of thick, grey clouds. For ten-odd kilometers in every direction, the dense forest stretched uninterrupted. In the distance, he could make out a few mountain peaks and lakes.

"That's Crystal Jade Peak!" Andy spotted a mountain about a hundred-odd kilometers to the east, blazing with a brilliant, eye-catching light. Unlike every other peak in sight, this one was composed entirely of a smooth, translucent crystalline stone. It was one of Dragon Descent Valley's most recognizable landmarks.

The mountain produced a material called Crystal Quartz—hidden among the ordinary crystalline stone that made up its body.

Crystal Quartz, as the name implied, contained hair-thin filaments within the crystal matrix—each strand a condensed thread of refined spiritual energy.

Generally speaking, the denser and more regular these filaments, the greater and more refined the spiritual energy the stone contained, and the higher its value. Based on this, cultivators classified Crystal Quartz into low-grade and mid-grade varieties.

Low-grade Crystal Quartz had internal filaments that were broken, scattered, and chaotic—of limited use.

Mid-grade Crystal Quartz had filaments that were regular, fine, and densely arranged in a spiral pattern. It could be used to forge exceptional-grade artifacts.

There was also a rare upper-grade variety, in which the filaments were not only fine and orderly but had turned red. Known as Blood Crystal Stone, it was a precious and scarce material used in the forging of spirit treasures.

One of the Dragon Descent Valley missions called for exactly this: upper-grade Crystal Quartz—Blood Crystal Stone—in exchange for a Foundation Establishment Pill.

Better still, Crystal Jade Peak was home to only a few first-grade mid- and low-tier spirit beasts—equivalent to cultivators at the tenth layer or below—making its danger rating the lowest possible: Grade Three.

Since Crystal Jade Peak was relatively close, the danger was minimal, and the detour didn't conflict with his original plan, Andy decided to head there first and try his luck. If he could find some of this rare Blood Crystal Stone, all the better.