Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Roar…? Roar!

Faced with the prey it had been about to finish off disappearing into thin air while another human had shown up just a few seconds earlier in the same mysterious way that its prey had disappeared, the lord realm demon beast didn’t hesitate for long before lunged forward towards Xuan Hao. Thinking that he wouldn’t be much stronger than He Jie because of how He Jie had also had the ability to randomly disappear.

Bang!

Unfortunately for the lord realm demon beast that had felt confident in its strength and intuition, it didn’t take long before these thoughts were crushed by a simple wave of the hand that sent it flying into the distance. Injured but still alive thanks to Xuan Hao just casually knocking it away instead of directly killing it.

Not out mercy, but more so the fact that he didn’t really care much about the demon beast itself and instead found himself becoming increasingly focused on the spatial fluctuations that had been left behind by the teleportation talisman that He Jie had used to run away. Having realized that the teleportation talisman had been far from simple, as even in a clearly decayed state that limited its strength and distance, he still found it somewhat difficult to trace.

But in the end, difficult was one thing, impossible was another. After a little over five minutes sorting through the spatial fluctuations, he managed to gain a general idea of where the teleportation talisman had ended up taking He Jie… And although part of him wanted to just tear through space to chase after the other party, he understood that doing something like that would almost definitely end up drawing the attention of ancient secret realm’s guardian formation.

The only real clue to avoiding the guardian formation he had managed to grasp thanks to He Jie, was to rely on talismans to exceed the limitations in strength that had been placed on the ancient secret realm by the guardian formation.

Problem was, while he had managed to reach the Saint Realm in Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Formations, he had no experience when it came to talismans.

Even worse, he didn’t carry any talismans with him outside of communication talismans and a few convenient talismans for lighting in case he found somewhere dark to cultivate and wanted to light the place up while outside the sect. Not exactly anything like a defensive or offensive talisman, let alone a teleportation one that was far more difficult and complex to create due to the requirement of a talisman master who had comprehended the Dao of Space.

But then again, he didn’t really have much use for those kinds of talismans in the first place under normal circumstances, as his own strength far surpassed whatever talisman he might be able to get his hands on, while something like a teleportation talisman was useless to someone like himself who had comprehended the Dao of Space to the Perfection Realm.

Looks like I will have to let that old fellow go for now…

Although part of him wanted to chase down the old man with a talent more than strong enough for him to take in and bring back to the sect, he knew from the spatial fluctuations that the other party had likely ended up on the other end of the ancient secret realm, a distance that would take him at least an hour or two to reach with the current limitations placed on his strength. At which point, He Jie would be long gone.

Instead of that, he felt it was better to focus on his original goal of searching through the Giant’s Valley for now before going out to try and chase down the older man. After all, though his divine sense was limited inside the ancient secret realm, it still far exceeded that of a normal Nascent Soul Realm cultivator. Meaning finding He Jie when the time came shouldn’t be too difficult.

Whoosh~!

With the decision made, Xuan Hao ignored the demon beasts around him that had frozen in shock after seeing how the domineering lord realm demon beast had been casually knocked away and disappeared into the clouds above. None of them daring to make even the slightest sound, as they feared they too would end up getting sent flying if they caught the attention of this terrifying human. Only daring to start scrambling to get as far as possible a few minutes after Xuan Hao had left.

Not that the person in question saw any of this, as he had already reached the very center of Giant’s Valley by that point- or rather, the center of the giant footprint that had formed the valley and also the location of what should once have been the home to a smaller power within the ancient secret realm before the invasion of the secret realm began according to what little information he had managed to gather on the valley before it had turned into a valley.

But as he found himself observing his surroundings, he found no remnants of what had once been at the center of the giant footprint before it had been flattened. Instead, finding a small lake surrounded by a few lone trees with a demon beast around the Middle Stage of the Core Formation Realm sleeping peacefully at the bottom of the small lake. Undoubtedly the ruler of the valley.

Still, unwilling to once again leave empty-handed without finding anything that pointed towards the ancient residence he needed to find for the side quest, he decided to investigate the small lake at the very core of the valley a bit more closely, or more specifically, the space beneath the sleeping demon beast, as it hadn’t been possible to properly search the place due to the demon beast blocking his divine sense from going beneath it without going through its body or the ground, something that was difficult to accomplish with the current limited strength of his divine sense.

Splash!

So, without much hesitation, he directly jumped into the water and grabbed the tail of the massive demon beast that looked like a large snapping turtle more than a dozen meters wide and even longer head to tail. Catching the turtle completely by surprise, as it began flailing helplessly when something grabbed hold of its tail…

Rumble~

But even as the massive demon beast struggled in the water and collided with the lake floor causing several small earthquakes to sweep through the surroundings in the process, it had no way to fight back as it was soon dragged out of the water and flopped onto the ground before the culprit behind the sudden unexpected sneak attack let go and dove back into the water to see what might have been hidden beneath the large snapping turtle that could be considered a small walking hill now that it was up on land.

The sheer size of it having originally displaced so much water from the small lake, that its absence caused the water to recede significantly because of its sudden absence.

Roar!?

Left in a state of utter confusion over what had just taken place, the demon beast could only stare towards its home with a sense of both curiosity and fear. Not knowing what to do, as it wanted to fight whoever it was that dared to throw it out its home, while at the same time understanding that whoever or whatever it was that had thrown it out was far stronger than it was.

Unaware of the confusion he had caused the hill sized snapping turtle up above, Xuan Hao had his entire focus on the part of the lakebed that had originally been hidden beneath the snapping turtle. Not taking long to discover that there were indeed some ruins buried under a few meters of mud and other sediments that had settled on the lakebed over the years.

Digging deeper, he soon enough realized that the ruins he saw through his divine sense from a cursory sweep was the top of a tower that had seemingly been forced underground when the giant foot had come down. The material or formation that had originally guarded the tower having perfectly preserved it even as it was buried underground by the giant foot.

Rumble~

And by digging a bit more, he soon enough created a path that served as an entrance into the tower buried beneath the lake. Finding out that outside of the very top floor that had clearly degraded to the point where it had been filled with mud and other sediments with nothing outside of the walls and a part of the roof surviving, the lower floors of the tower seemed to be relatively intact and without any water, mud or sand getting inside.

The reason for this being that a simple defensive formation and preservation formation seemed to have survived over the years by drawing in spiritual qi from a natural spirt stone mine that had formed beneath the tower over the years thanks to the valley itself being one of the rare few locations inside the ancient secret realm with a higher concentration of spiritual qi.