Vessel of Worlds

Andy weighed his options again and again, but no matter how he looked at it, with his spiritual root aptitude, the chances of achieving Foundation Establishment with a single Foundation Establishment Pill were simply too low. The little bowl might be able to cultivate a pill into a peak-grade Foundation Establishment Pill, but even a single peak-grade pill was no guarantee of breaking through.

So despite already having a Blood Crystal in hand, he pressed on toward Bitter Cold Pool as planned. If he could complete one more task and earn two Foundation Establishment Pills, his odds of success would double.

And in his estimation, the Bitter Cold Pool task had at least a fifty-fifty chance of success.

According to the mission jade slip, the waters of Bitter Cold Pool were bone-piercingly cold year-round. The pool's floor sat atop an ice-attribute spirit stone vein, scattered with countless ice-attribute spirit stones. The vast majority were low-grade, of course, but cultivators had occasionally found mid-grade ice spirit stones as well. One of the current tasks offered a Foundation Establishment Pill in exchange for three mid-grade ice spirit stones.

For any other cultivator, finding even a single mid-grade spirit stone at the bottom of the pool would be extraordinarily lucky, let alone three. So the task was considered extremely difficult, and its danger rating was level two—far from trivial. That meant tier-one high-grade beasts lurked in the pool, equivalent in strength to high-stage Qi Condensation cultivators. For anyone trying to search the pool floor for treasure, this was a serious threat.

But Andy saw it differently. The ice spirit stones from the pool floor might look unusual, but at their core they were still spirit stones. Which meant the little bowl could upgrade low-grade ice spirit stones into mid-grade or even high-grade ones. All he needed was to find three low-grade stones at the bottom of the pool, and the task was as good as done.

That reduced the difficulty enormously. As long as his luck wasn't terrible and he didn't provoke the beasts in the pool, he should be fine.

With that reasoning in mind, Andy arrived at the Bitter Cold Pool region two days later.

He was still seven or eight kilometers from the pool when the temperature began dropping noticeably. The closer he drew, the colder it became. Within a hundred zhang of the pool's edge, white frost blanketed the ground.

Apart from a few strangely tall trees with jade-green leaves, everything in sight was a sheet of white.

Despite the word "pool" in its name, the body of water before him was impossibly vast—an enormous lake stretching beyond the horizon. Calling it Bitter Cold Lake would have been far more fitting.

The water was deep green, and a thin mist of ice crystals floated above its surface, a consequence of the extreme cold. That water this cold had not frozen solid hinted at something extraordinary beneath.

The sight of Bitter Cold Pool's immensity stirred mixed feelings in Andy.

On one hand, a place this vast meant that even if other cultivators came here, they were unlikely to bother one another—far less trouble to worry about.

On the other, the jade slip only said the ice spirit stone vein was somewhere at the bottom. With the pool this enormous, finding it would be no easy feat.

Andy slapped a Water Screen Talisman onto himself and was about to dive in when he suddenly froze.

Moments later, several cultivators in varied dress burst up through the surface, each shielded by a differently colored protective barrier. They raced across the water toward shore, looking thoroughly rattled.

Andy understood the reason quickly enough. The pool water surged violently, coalescing into a whirlpool more than three zhang wide. A dragon—its entire body like polished jade, thick as a water vat, and over ten zhang long—erupted from the vortex. It gazed down at the seven or eight human cultivators below, its bell-sized eyes blazing with fury. Just meeting that gaze was enough to make one feel momentarily dazed. The dragon opened its jaws wide and spewed a column of white frost-breath, over a chi thick, straight at the nearest cultivator—a Jade Clarity Sect disciple.

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The twelfth-layer Jade Clarity Sect Daoist's protective spiritual light might as well have been made of paper. The white frost-breath swallowed it effortlessly, then froze the surrounding moisture in an instant, forming an ice block over a zhang long and sealing the cultivator inside—killed on the spot.

The dragon opened its maw and swallowed the entire block whole.

"A tier-two beast—a Bitter Cold Flood Dragon!" Andy's heart jolted. Judging by the spiritual energy radiating from it, this was a tier-two beast comparable to an early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator. And flood dragons were far more powerful than ordinary beasts to begin with; an ice-attribute flood dragon like this one was stronger still than a typical early Foundation Establishment cultivator. That was why a single exchange had been enough to kill the unfortunate Jade Clarity Sect Daoist.

"Don't panic! On land, this creature's strength drops significantly." A young woman's voice rang out—one Andy knew very well.

He turned to look. Sure enough, it was Golden Leaf Fairy, Jian Xin'er's close friend.

Besides the poised and upright young woman, there were two other Great Void Sect cultivators at her side, along with a Jade Clarity Sect Daoist who looked to be in his fifties or sixties, a red-robed Moon-Gathering Sect woman, and a pair of Pure Brightness Sect monks—one old, one young. These cultivators stood in a loose ring about ten zhang out from Golden Leaf Fairy, artifacts at the ready.

Andy took one look at the group and was momentarily speechless. Of the entire party, only Golden Leaf Fairy had reached the thirteenth layer of Qi Condensation. The rest were mostly at the twelfth layer; the Moon-Gathering Sect woman and the young Pure Brightness Sect monk were only at the eleventh.

In other words, aside from Golden Leaf Fairy, every last one of them was cannon fodder for this Dragon Descent Valley expedition.

The nearly three hundred cultivators from the seven sects who had entered Dragon Descent Valley could be broadly divided into three tiers based on their overall strength—cultivation level, quality of artifacts, and the like.

The first tier was the weakest: bottom-rung cultivators whose cultivation hadn't even reached the thirteenth layer, armed with mediocre artifacts and no special means. For these people, finding treasure was out of the question—simply surviving was the challenge. They were the seven sects' expendable pawns. If any of them did stumble upon rare materials, they were almost invariably hunted down and killed, their gains claimed by others. This tier made up roughly half of all the cultivators in the valley. Based on past expeditions, their survival rate was dismal—as low as one in ten.

The second tier consisted of ordinary thirteenth-layer cultivators like Golden Leaf Fairy. They were competent enough to defend themselves but not so powerful that they could act with impunity. When they encountered a lone, weaker cultivator, they would kill without hesitation and take everything. But against someone stronger, they could only steer clear.

The third tier was the true beneficiary of the Dragon Descent Valley expeditions. These were cultivators at the absolute peak of the thirteenth layer who wielded formidable artifacts—the elite among Qi Condensation cultivators. Many of them didn't even bother searching for treasure themselves. Instead, they waited until the final days of the expedition and slaughtered other cultivators wholesale, looting their storage pouches to amass treasures. Each sect had only four or five cultivators of this caliber, but it was these elites who ultimately carried the prizes out of the valley. Everyone else was cannon fodder for them.

By cultivation alone, Andy was just a twelfth-layer cultivator—cannon fodder on paper. But his peak-grade artifact and his staggering stockpile of mid- and high-grade talismans put him on par with the elite disciples in actual combat power.

The seven or eight cultivators before him now, aside from Golden Leaf Fairy, were all firmly in the bottom tier. Yet they had clearly rallied around her, forming a small band. If this group could hold together, they did have some capacity for self-defense—their combined strength could just barely contend with one or two elite disciples.

But every cultivator who entered Dragon Descent Valley had their own agenda. Not a single one was there out of goodwill. That Golden Leaf Fairy had somehow managed to hold together these self-interested cultivators from rival sects, even temporarily, was a feat in itself—Andy couldn't begin to fathom how she'd pulled it off.

Even now, facing a flood dragon whose power far exceeded their own, not one of them ran. They followed Golden Leaf Fairy's commands precisely, directing their various artifacts in a coordinated assault against the tier-two beast.