Vessel of Worlds

Several days later, the seven or eight cultivators, Golden Leaf Fairy among them, gathered on the shore of Bitter Cold Pool.

"Fairy Jin, fellow cultivators—this old Daoist intends to try his luck elsewhere. I'll take my leave of you here." The speaker was the Jade Clarity Sect Daoist, a man who looked to be in his fifties or sixties.

"The two of us will also be heading elsewhere. Until we meet again, fellow cultivators!" The old monk from the Pure Brightness Sect announced his departure as well. Beside him stood a young monk who appeared no older than seventeen or eighteen.

"You're all planning to go off on your own? You should know that in Dragon Descent Valley, a cultivator without sufficient strength who travels alone will have a very hard time escaping if he runs into a high-stage cultivator or a powerful beast!" Golden Leaf Fairy cautioned, seeing that everyone was intent on splitting up.

Before the monk or the Daoist could respond, one of the Great Void Sect's twelfth-layer cultivators—a young man—spoke first: "Senior Sister Jin is right, going alone is extremely dangerous. But every one of us knew the risks when we came here. Staying in a group is certainly safer, but it also means far fewer chances of finding rare treasures. If we can't trade for a Foundation Establishment Pill, we'll be nothing but dust in a few decades. Better to take the gamble—who knows, maybe fortune will smile on us."

"This young patron speaks the truth. That is precisely how this poor monk sees it as well." The old monk nodded in firm agreement.

Seeing that everyone had made up their minds, Golden Leaf Fairy didn't press the matter. She smiled and said, "Since you've all decided to try your luck on your own, I won't force the issue. Let us part on good terms—and may we all meet again outside the valley!"

After a round of polite farewells, the cultivators departed in different directions. Only Golden Leaf Fairy remained by the pool, along with one Great Void Sect cultivator and a Moon-Gathering Sect woman who had chosen to stay with her.

"Junior Brother Zhao still hasn't come up from the pool—it seems he plans to keep searching down there. We've scoured the bottom for days now, and apart from a dozen or so low-grade ice spirit stones, there's been no sign of any mid-grade ones. There's no point wasting more time here. Let's head to Rosy Cloud Mountain nearby and try our luck there." Golden Leaf Fairy addressed her two companions. The three of them tossed out their flying artifacts and glided low over the ground, drifting into the distance. Bitter Cold Pool returned to its usual stillness.

At that moment, Andy was crouching inside a hidden stone cave formed by a heap of rocks at the bottom of the pool. In his hand he held a stone the size of an infant's fist, covered in white frost. On the surface it looked no different from the countless white stones that littered the pool floor. But a careful probe with spiritual sense revealed pure ice-attribute spiritual power pulsing beneath the frost—a low-grade ice spirit stone.

This was the fourth low-grade ice spirit stone Andy had found in three days. With no dangerous beasts left in the pool and the pool floor being relatively remote and safe compared to the surface, Andy had decided after finding three stones to locate a hidden spot at the bottom, bring out the little bowl, and cultivate the low-grade stones into mid-grade ones. While deliberately searching for a concealed location, he had stumbled upon this small cave.

The entrance was barely two chi wide, but the interior opened up to over a zhang across. After crawling inside and walking a short distance, Andy sensed another faint fluctuation of spiritual power. A careful search turned up this fourth low-grade ice spirit stone.

Andy was very interested in this seemingly bottomless cave. Its location was extremely well hidden; he only needed to pile a few loose rocks over the narrow entrance, and even someone standing right in front of it would have trouble spotting it.

That meant he could use the little bowl to cultivate spirit stones without any risk of being discovered by other cultivators.

Andy continued deeper into the cave. After walking well over a hundred zhang, the passage still showed no sign of ending. He couldn't help feeling a touch of unease.

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He took out the mid-grade spirit tool—the transparent ice shield—and held it before him, while sending a moonlight stone far ahead to illuminate the way. This way, if something dangerous lurked in the depths, he would at least have time to turn and flee.

After another hundred zhang or so, the cave opened abruptly into a vast underwater cavern—twenty or thirty zhang high, stretching farther than he could see. At the same time, a familiar beast scent reached his nostrils.

"Could this be the flood dragon's lair?" The thought quickened his steps and eased his worry somewhat.

Sure enough, moments later Andy spotted a complete snakeskin, seven or eight zhang long and entirely jade-green. The Bitter Cold Flood Dragon had evidently shed its serpent skin here when it evolved into a flood dragon.

Andy rolled up the skin without hesitation and stowed it in his storage pouch. A complete beast hide like this could be used to make talisman paper, or crafted into protective garments such as cloaks and boots.

He extended his spiritual sense as far as it would reach and began exploring the lair at a leisurely pace, searching for anything else of value.

"Hm?" Andy let out a low exclamation of surprise. He had detected a faint spiritual fluctuation coming from somewhere deeper in the cavern.

He hurried toward the source. In a corner near one of the cavern walls, he found five beast eggs, each the size of a fist.

"Flood dragon eggs!" Andy's heart leapt. Beast eggs were rare finds under any circumstances, and flood dragon eggs rarer still.

He examined the eggs closely. One was white; the other four were jade-green. All were oval-shaped and radiated spiritual fluctuations so faint they were barely perceptible. Elated, he produced a spirit beast pouch and swept all five eggs inside.

He also sensed a faint trace of refined spiritual energy emanating from the rock wall before him—and it didn't feel like ice-attribute energy.

Following the direction his spiritual sense indicated, Andy searched carefully. When he used his Gongbu Sword to break open a large section of the cavern wall, a rich wave of wind-attribute spiritual energy washed over him.

Behind the wall lay a small wind spirit stone vein.

Andy easily spotted several white wind-attribute low-grade spirit stones. He dug them out with the Gongbu Sword and tucked them into his storage pouch.

Wind spirit stones were uncommon, and he didn't dare exchange for too many under normal circumstances. Had these been ordinary five-element low-grade spirit stones, he wouldn't have bothered digging them out at all.

Over the following days, Andy remained in the cavern, using the little bowl to cultivate the ice spirit stones, upgrading them from low-grade to mid-grade.

The rest of his time he spent studying the two crafting treatises he had obtained—the one from the Hundred Crafts Sect cultivator and the one Golden Leaf Fairy had given him. In the art of crafting, hands-on practice was essential, but absorbing the experience of those who came before was equally important.

Andy stayed at the bottom of the pool for seven or eight days.

During that time, the fates of the cultivators in Dragon Descent Valley diverged sharply.

On a treacherous cliff face at Phoenix Feather Mountain, a beautiful Moon-Gathering Sect woman swept out a pale golden crescent blade and cleaved a tier-one mid-grade beast cleanly in two. Then, beaming with delight, she uprooted a spirit herb growing near the beast's corpse—a plant with blossoms of five or six colors and leaves that resembled the long plumes of a bird.

Deep inside a cave in the scorching Molten Rock Valley, a middle-aged Great Void Sect cultivator used a blazing red broadsword, over seven chi long, to cut down a Hundred Spirits Sect cultivator who commanded two eerie green blood-sucking bats. The bats self-destructed on their master's death, splattering green blood across the ground. The middle-aged cultivator then picked up a stone from the floor—ordinary-looking at first glance, but with golden flame-like patterns visible on closer inspection. His eyes shone with undisguised joy.

On a scenic hillside, two Hundred Crafts Sect disciples—fellow sect brothers—stood seven or eight zhang apart, directing their artifacts at each other in a fight to the death. Not far from them, a translucent jade-green spirit mushroom pulsed with faint green light.

A handsome young Daoist sat meditating with a mid-grade wood spirit stone in his hands, restoring his spiritual power. Beside him lay the bodies of two monks—one old, one young—still in their robes. But the storage pouches at their waists were gone.

…

A handful of exceptionally lucky cultivators had found all manner of rare treasures in remote and perilous corners of the valley. Far more had come up empty-handed.

Those who found treasure were naturally ecstatic, but some of those who hadn't seemed unconcerned. Finding treasure was one thing, they reasoned; making it out of Dragon Descent Valley alive with that treasure was another matter entirely.

The ones who found treasure were not necessarily the winners. The last ones standing were always the strongest.

As the Dragon Descent Valley expedition passed its halfway mark, cultivators who fancied themselves powerful began to stir. A blood-soaked game of treasure hunting and slaughter was building toward its climax.