Unsheathed

Chen Ping'an continued to travel north along the so-called official road after leaving Crow Peak, but he would definitely venture along the small paths forking off the road to take a look whenever he came across them, continuing all the way until he reached a dead end. Perhaps he would come across deep streams hidden amid the tall and undulating peaks, or perhaps he would come across tall cliffs and sheer mountain faces.

As Chen Ping'an expected, Malicious Ghost Valley was brimming with mystery. When standing beside the mountain stream just then, he had detected members of the water race lying at the bottom of the stream and nurturing their souls. Even when Chen Ping'an squatted down and scooped up some water to wash his face, the demons hidden beneath the water were still able to hold back and refrain from attacking him. Since they were so cautious, Chen Ping'an also decided not to target them.

As for the pair of steep cliffs facing each other, there was a suspension bridge connecting them together, yet the wooden planks of the bridge had already decayed completely, with only the lonely iron chains swaying slightly in the wind.

Walking across this broken bridge wouldn't be difficult for Qi refiners or pure martial artists, but Chen Ping'an saw a large and pitch-black python coiled around the middle of the bridge, with its body as thick as a corridor pillar. The python hissed softly, and not far away from it was an extremely wide spider web especially used for catching birds in the mountains. The head of the spider spirit was only as big as a fist, yet the spider spirit had already managed to successfully manifest the appearance of a human woman.

If Daoist priests or Buddhist monks traveled here and witnessed this scene, perhaps they would step forward to slay the demons and eliminate the fiends, viewing this as an act of accumulating hidden virtue.

In Chen Ping'an's view, however, even if the demons and fiends here wanted to feast on humans and commit grave sins, they needed to actually come across some humans first.

Once again following a small fork path, Chen Ping'an ventured into the deep mountain forests, surprisingly coming across a rundown structure at the foot of a tall mountain that looked like a small resting station and temple. This structure wasn't recorded in the Be At Ease Compilation, and Chen Ping'an planned to rest here for a moment before continuing to climb the mountain.

Even though the small temple had no name and no fame, the Be At Ease Compilation introduced this tall mountain as Treasure Mirror Mountain. There was a mountain stream at the waist of Treasure Mirror Mountain, and there was a legend pertaining to the origin of this stream and the name of the mountain.

It was said that an immortal had been traveling around the world in the ancient past, yet they had accidentally dropped an extremely precious treasure mirror when coming across thunder guardians, lightning goddesses, and other deities summoning clouds and rain in this area. In the end, the lost treasure mirror had transformed into the mountain stream.

In the Be At Ease Complication, the cultivators of the Flax Robe Sect speculated that the primordial treasure mirror was perhaps an immortal treasure on the surface, yet it was actually a mystical treasure that contained astonishing fated opportunities.

This piqued Chen Ping'an's interest, so he wanted to explore this area and take a look. In any case, there was no concept of taking a detour or whatnot since he was simply in Malicious Ghost Valley to train. Chen Ping'an had always felt a sense of resignation toward fated opportunities in the past, feeling certain that he wouldn't enjoy any good fortune.

However, things had changed a lot now, but he still couldn't become involved in fated opportunities pertaining to things such as the eight wall paintings of the female heavenly officials in Mural City. As for the remaining fated opportunities — be that treasures with no owners in the immortal abodes of mystical realms or natural treasures born from heaven and earth —Chen Ping'an wanted to try his luck with all of these opportunities.