Vessel of Worlds

Andy had already purchased a sufficient quantity of the beast souls needed for puppet crafting in the market. For Qi Condensation grade puppets, the souls of rank-one beasts were quite enough. A rank-one soul sold for only a few low-grade spirit stones apiece, and Andy had bought over a hundred.

As for materials—none were particularly precious, but in such quantities the cost still added up. Across several different shops, Andy had acquired enough to produce roughly a hundred Qi Condensation puppets.

Beyond the puppet materials, he had also bought a good stock of auxiliary crafting supplies, some of them quite expensive. His total spending in the market came to a remarkably large sum—far too large for an early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator. Which was precisely why he had sent Old Man He and his granddaughter away while he shopped.

The total was high, but he had bought everything piecemeal in scattered purchases, and teleported away that same day to a place countless thousands of kilometers distant. It would attract no attention.

There was still a sliver of risk in it—but for Andy and his grand designs, the risk was well worth carrying.

Several days later, Andy returned to Luojia Island, took out a white jade formation disc, and made straight for his dwelling.

But the moment he entered Luojia Mountain's bounds, three small points of light began flashing on the disc in his hand!

This white jade disc controlled the Six-Wheel Spirit-Severing Formation—points of light meant three cultivators of unknown origin had defied the formation's concealment and intruded!

Andy hurriedly took out the other disc, patterned in green and red. To his relief, it showed no damage—the Heaven-Covering Twin Poles Formation still stood, unbroken.

So someone had discovered the deeply hidden Six-Wheel Spirit-Severing Formation and entered it—but his dwelling itself should still be secure.

Andy took out a semi-translucent cloak shimmering with faint, elusive iridescence and wrapped himself in it, pushing his Concealment Technique to its utmost, then stepped slowly into the Six-Wheel Spirit-Severing Formation.

The formation was his to command and built above all for concealment; combined with the subtle Concealment Technique and a cloak that could deflect spiritual sense, his movements became all but impossible to detect.

He crept forward soundlessly for several kilometers—and found two Foundation Establishment cultivators in long black robes battering relentlessly at his Heaven-Covering Twin Poles Formation. Both were mid-stage, and both wielded the same artifact: wooden staffs thick as a man's arm, wreathed in black mist, their heads set with three or four blood-red skulls. The formation's curtain of green and red light was showing faint signs of weakening—clearly the pair had been at it for some time and had ground away a fair portion of its power.

Demon Gate cultivators again—dressed exactly like that lot in the Outer Star Sea. Have they come for revenge? Andy's thoughts churned—but he judged the possibility remote. He was an early-stage nobody; why would the Demon Gate make such a production over him? Besides, they could never have moved this fast—tracing his origins and arriving ahead of him.

He had exposed neither his identity nor his secrets in the Outer Star Sea. The Demon Gate cultivators could not be here for him. There was only one possibility: this had to do with the other cultivator who had entered the formation.

Their target might not be him—but they had brought their fight to his very doorstep, and there was no avoiding it now. Either abandon the dwelling outright and leave, or strike at once and destroy both men. Those were the only two roads.

The dwelling itself he could bear to lose—he could always find another place to cultivate. But the flood dragon eggs inside were another matter entirely.

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From the texts, Andy knew that of all beasts, flood dragons held the greatest evolutionary potential—the value of their eggs needed no elaboration.

After a brief deliberation, Andy made his decision: silence them both.

Under his layered concealments, he closed on the two black-robed cultivators without raising the least flicker of awareness—twenty-odd zhang. He curled several flying needles into his palm and edged closer still.

One of the cultivators seemed to sense something amiss. He glanced over his shoulder—and found a refined-looking young cultivator barely a dozen zhang behind him. His face drained in horror. "What do you think you're—!"

Before the words could land, eight points of red light shot toward the pair—six stabbing at the one who had turned, the other two at his companion.

Flying needles were renowned above all for their speed; launched from ambush, they crossed to the two men in an instant.

The cultivator who had spotted Andy managed only to raise a defensive barrier and swing his mist-wreathed skull staff around to block. Two needles were stopped. The other four punched through his barrier one after another and tore four fist-sized holes through his body. He died on the spot.

The second man, hearing his companion's cry, had not even finished turning or bringing his artifact to bear before the needles pierced his chest and belly. He too collapsed in a spray of blood, breath gone.

From the moment Andy was discovered to the deaths of both men had taken no longer than a breath. When it was over, from within the Heaven-Covering Twin Poles Formation came a single startled "Oh!"—a voice thick with shock and awe.

The voice struck Andy as oddly familiar—and he placed it almost at once.

"For what reason has this fellow cultivator intruded on my dwelling? And why keep hiding?" Andy collected the two corpses' storage pouches and artifacts with practiced efficiency, flicked a pair of fireballs at the bodies, then turned toward the cultivator inside the formation—shutting the array down through its disc as he spoke.

As the green-and-red curtain of light dissolved, a young woman of extraordinary grace appeared a hundred-odd zhang before him. She was sixteen or seventeen, with lips of vermilion and teeth like pearl, brows lightly drawn; on a face fair as congealed cream bloomed two flushed spots of color, like dawn light on snow. Above all, her eyes—clear as still water—seemed possessed of some inborn power to hook the soul. At a single glance, Andy was caught by her incomparable beauty and simply stared, transfixed, for a long moment.

Since entering the cultivation world, Andy had seen beautiful female cultivators beyond counting—but plainly, in looks and bearing alone, not one of them could stand beside the girl before him.

Even the killing intent that had filled his chest was mostly melted away by the sheer radiance of her face.

Andy mocked himself inwardly—rooted to the ground at the sight of a pretty girl! If this went on, what hope had he of achieving the great Dao?

The thought of his cultivation was like a blow to wake him. His expression snapped over in an instant, and he said coldly: "You come uninvited, trespassing on my dwelling grounds—hardly proper conduct. Even if I were to cut you down where you stand, I doubt it would violate West Star Island's rules!"

The girl had watched this refined young man annihilate two mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators with the speed of a thunderbolt, and her red lips had parted in shock, her heart pounding. When she caught the dazed, soul-lost look in his eyes as he gazed at her, she relaxed a little—though his rudeness stirred a flicker of pique. Then his face turned to frost and the cold threat followed, and her barely-settled heart leapt straight back into her throat.

She dipped her knees in a graceful courtesy and said, voice soft and warm: "So this is Fellow Cultivator Zhao's dwelling. This humble girl was being hunted by those two Demon Gate villains and, having no other recourse, borrowed your formation to shelter from them. I am Yun Mengli. I thank Fellow Cultivator Zhao for saving my life, and beg your forgiveness for the intrusion. I am willing to offer compensation, as both thanks and apology."

At the sound of that voice—sweet as a young oriole's first song—what little killing intent remained in Andy thinned further still. That she had recognized him confirmed his guess at her identity, and inwardly he eased considerably. Outwardly, though, his face kept its cold edge of anger. "So it is the Fairy Yun of the Mystic Change Pavilion. No wonder you could pass through both formations as if they were nothing and walk into my dwelling grounds. We have indeed met once—I'm flattered the Fairy remembers me. But I can hardly claim any friendship with you. Unless the Fairy offers me some reasonable price, I fear that in a fit of anger I might yet commit the villainy of crushing so fine a flower!"

"That is..." The girl tensed. The cultivator before her was early-stage Foundation Establishment, the same as she—but he held every advantage of ground and formation, and the way he had just annihilated two mid-stage Demon Gate cultivators marked his true strength as unfathomable, far beyond any ordinary early-stage cultivator. Any thought of gambling on a fight had long since died in her. Her mind raced instead: what treasure did she carry that might catch his eye—and quench any urge to kill?