Destiny in Cinders

Despite Xu Tai’s inner misgivings, he kept his expression stern and neutral. He happily gathered his subordinates after he received a mission from An Jing to harvest the spirit plants in Brokeblade Mountain.

An Jing and Bai Qinghan didn’t idle around either. The girl joined Shen Mubai on the important task of maintaining the terrestrial-vein nodes of Riverside so that they might get the city’s major defensive formation back in working order.

Before starting his exploration, An Jing would have to wait for the Grandvoid Pathway to cool down. He sold the harvested spirit plants in Skysource and used that money to buy more speed sprouter. He also used the remaining money to buy more used automata to help with fertilizing and building a small warehouse near the farms to store the harvest.

As expected of An Jing’s mysterious faction! Huo Qing watched in shock as An Jing made an order for a massive amount of fertilizer. Even though most of it would be put into storage instead of being used right away, it was still a sign that whatever faction An Jing hailed from had enough safe farmland to need this much fertilizer.

It was already difficult to achieve something on this scale in the safe zone; there was only one large manor near Pilljungle Town that grew spirit plants in any notable capacity. Mortality Plains was mostly barren and the agriculture industry mostly congregated at Vastspirit Marsh east of Deepnight City.

Though surprised, Huo Qing didn’t get hung up on the details and nodded in an understanding fashion as he took care of the tasks An Jing gave him. While An Jing was thankful, he didn’t quite get what Huo Qing was so gleeful about.

Once An Jing returned, he had the automata fertilize the soil before he started his exploration of Palespirit Cave. Brokeblade Mountain looked like a massive right-angled triangle when viewed from high up in the air. The right angle of the triangle was where the tallest peak was and also where Palespirit Cave was situated. The rest of the mountain range looked like a massive blade that glimmered coldly in the sun.

Whether one tried to reach Palespirit Cave on land or by air, one had to pass through many cloudy layers of metal and toxic lethal qi. The cave extended deep underground, with the entrance only peeking out at the peak. According to ancient records, this was where battles between ancient immortals, gods and heavenly fiends had taken place. It was believed that the whole mountain range was something that formed around the broken shard of an ancient blade of a powerful immortal, hence the name. The truth wasn’t that far off as Yvelbane’s fragment was actually behind it.

An Jing didn’t notice this connection immediately because there were simply far too many possible candidates that he had to eliminate. For instance, there was also another rumored immortal ruin at Mount Refuge, situated on the other side of Riverside. Legend said that the place had been formed from the orb of a rain dragon king. Mount Refuge and its surroundings would always have cloudy or rainy weather even as other places experienced sunny days. Massive arboreal canopies stretched a thousand li into the sky. The seemingly endless rain was also one of the water sources for Yonder River.

”I’m inclined to believe that the legend of the dragon orb is also true,” Yvelbane said. ”I might’ve forgotten a lot about the past, but it’s true that all that time ago, the dragonkin of Void Embrace, led by the Ancestral Dragon, fought on the side of the immortals and gods. They suffered immense casualties, but their achievements were stunning. The peaceful coexistence and mutual prosperity of the dragonkin and humankind is partly because the former is the ruler of all true spirits and the latter is the leader of all sentient life, but it also has a lot to do with the dragonkin’s sacrifice during the fiend calamity.”

”Perhaps I can ask Sis Jin to come take a look. It’s too bad that I can’t set up a void altar on my own to open a path for her here. I wonder when we’ll meet next.” An Jing filed the notion away and focused on piloting the drone through dense and hazardous lethal qi. The first layer contained profound yin lethal qi from the four-winged lunar serpent, which caused the drone’s spirit patterns to shudder and almost prompted An Jing to pull it back. But Solace quickly deployed a layer of oil-like substance on its outer surface that resembled toxic lethal qi. This was the Lethal-Qi Integration spell at work.

”Is it that easy?” He was somewhat dumbfounded about how smooth things were going. Calming himself down, he piloted the drone into the next layer of metallic lethal qi. It was filled with armament lethal qi, a category of lethal qi that included Yvelbane’s sword intent as well as the fighting spirit and killing intent of the many fallen warriors in this area, forming clouds of malevolent qi weapons. One would immediately be cut to shreds just by stepping into it.

Alas, Solace shifted forms into that of a soft disc of dough. Though it seemed like the lethal-qi armaments cut it into many tiny blocks like tofu, its core was spared and its component parts didn’t separate from each other either. Like a big jellyfish, it easily swam through the dense layer of metallic lethal qi.

”Now this is what a high-performance drone should be.” An Jing felt much better after the drone had passed through the danger zones, which Yvelbane considered the most difficult part of the whole ordeal. Corrosive lethal qi often congregated densely near the ground, making lethal qi at lower elevations the most dangerous. The lethal qi near the top tended to be more refined and threatening, but the density was much thinner.

And as Yvelbane had predicted, Solace progressed rapidly after making it out of the first two layers of hazards. With the lethal-qi-cloud density data collected by the drone, An Jing would be able to use his mantle’s warding-field generator to travel through where the lethal-qi concentration was lowest.

However, he wasn’t planning to actually make the trip this time around. He wasn’t one to dawdle, but exploring the lair of a peak-sage crown fey was something to be done with the utmost care. He was absolutely right to be cautious.

The closer Solace was to Palespirit Cave, the more disruptive the geomagnetic fields in the area was, so An Jing slowed the drone down and let it continue to gather data about the surroundings.

”The density of spirit qi here is a few times higher than what the Foundation Realm qi-collection formation in Nian Quan’s residence can generate. It’s a really pure metal-aspect spirit qi,” Yvelbane said after viewing the data in the waterscreen. ”If only the spirit qi here were suitable for immortal qi cultivation. You would be able to make incredible progress with Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal here.”

”I can also use my Evenstar lifestar to purify the spirit qi, but it’ll be slower. It’s still better than many other places, though.” An Jing was feeling rather optimistic. ”If the density here is so high, imagine what it’d be like with the Treasures Realm spirit and terrestrial veins in the cave.”

”Have the drone go deeper then. It’ll be fine even if we wreck it. The data we’ve gathered using it is already worth far more than the unit itself. We can just get the principal to provide us with another unit if it breaks.”

With that in mind, An Jing had Solace speed up toward Palespirit Cave. There was nothing in its way, no barriers, whether spirit or physical. Perhaps those measures simply weren’t necessary with so much lethal qi around the entrance of the cave. The drone made it inside without any issue.