Martial Arts: Starting with Upgrading the Dilapidated Temple

Chapter 145 Mushroom Valley (4K)

Xu Hao squatted beside the corpse of the Spider Queen, still holding a dark purple blood crystal he had taken out of the Spider Queen's abdominal cavity.

He loosened his fingers, and the blood crystals fell into the cloth bag at his waist.

"Clatter."

A muffled thud came from the bag, followed by two short, disgruntled hissing sounds.

Xu Hao looked down.

The black tortoise was lying upside down at the bottom of the bag when the dark purple blood crystal hit it squarely on the forehead.

The little thing stared wide-eyed at the green bean, its four short legs flailing wildly in mid-air. After finally managing to roll over, it opened its mouth to bite the blood crystal.

"Don't eat everything, you can't digest this stuff."

Xu Hao flicked his finger across the outside of the bag, and it landed squarely on the black tortoise's shell.

The black tortoise was dazed by the impact, and it shrank its head, leaving only its eyes staring slyly at the blood crystal, the eerie blue light flashing in the cracks of its shell.

Previously, Xu Hao infiltrated the Imperial Observatory's convoy to escort the medicine slave. Since it was inconvenient to carry it, he casually threw it into a hidden mud pit when passing through the border of Zezhou.

When Xu Hao escorted Shen Xiaohan's group of medicine slaves out of the forest, he went to the mud pond to retrieve it. He found that this guy had not only not lost weight from hunger, but had also gnawed several poisonous snakes in the mud pond down to their skeletons. The eerie blue light on its shell was even brighter than before.

"Stay put." Xu Hao tied the bag shut.

The scroll depicting the blessed land in his mind suddenly trembled violently.

On the seal inscription of the Zezhou secondary nail, a dark gold pattern that had previously been repaired and stabilized by the power of the earth veins shattered without warning.

Warning: External forces are remotely eroding the seal of the Zezhou secondary nail.

The direction of the erosion source is north.

north.

Yongzhou direction.

Xu Hao closed his eyes, and the dark gold circulation of his five internal organs was fully opened, instantly filling the maximum range of his perception with the power of the blessed land.

He traced the inscription on the secondary nail northwards.

On the scroll, an extremely thin gray-black line emerges from the seal of the secondary nail, passes through the underground rock layer, and slopes diagonally to the northwest.

The end of the line lands right in the Mu Family's Mushroom Valley.

The herb-gathering team of about twenty people entered the valley three days later, after which the scroll's perception was blocked by the formation.

The secondary nail seal was eroded precisely after they entered the valley.

coincidence?

Xu Hao took the letter out of his pocket and glanced at the vertical pupil mark on the wax seal.

"They traveled north through the secret passage of the Mu family in Yongzhou."

66

He stuffed the letter back.

Should we keep it for now?

We can't raise them anymore.

He had been planning what excuse to use to check out the Mu family's stronghold, but these people were so considerate that they just delivered the reason to his door.

The method used to remotely erode the seal of the Dragon-Suppressing Nail was not sophisticated.

The Blessed Land's perception was precise enough for him to see through the essence of this gray-black line—it was a vacuum zone left after the earth's vein energy was forcibly drained.

Someone is "draining blood" from the earth's veins in Zezhou.

If too much blood is drawn, the blood vessels will shrink, and the earth vein power that maintains the seal will be depleted, causing the inscriptions to crumble piece by piece.

Although the technique was crude, his persistence was undeniable.

If they keep drawing blood like this, the secondary nail seal will be completely destroyed in less than a year, and the Chongyuan Dragon Lord below will probably be laughing in his dreams.

The Celestial Surveillance Bureau sent the Wusheng Sect to retrieve the fragments of the Devouring Abyss.

The Mu family was responsible for drawing energy from the earth's veins to weaken the seal.

Eunuch Wei led his team to openly pull out the nails.

Advancing along three routes simultaneously.

Was it all arranged by Emperor Heng?

I'm not sure, I'll go check it out first.

Xu Hao started walking, heading northwest.

The surging waves are fully unleashed.

The dark gold heart pumped out scalding blood that washed over the limbs, and the poisonous vines and bushes in the dense forest retreated to both sides as if they had seen a ghost.

He doesn't even need to look where he's going anymore; Wan Du Sen Hai has recognized him as his new master.

Forty li.

Twenty li.

The ground beneath our feet began to rise, and the black rocks gradually turned into grayish-white limestone.

The miasma in the air thinned out, and my nasal cavity was filled with a mixed smell of humus and moss.

Ahead lies the Mu family's mushroom valley.

Xu Hao stopped on a cliff on the outskirts of the valley and concealed his presence.

The perception of this blessed land is maximized.

Two sentries were lying in wait at the mouth of the valley.

In the late stage of the Yi Jin Jing realm, he wore the gray-green hunting clothes commonly seen in the Wan Du Sen Hai, with an insect-repelling powder sachet hanging from his waist.

One was crouching behind a mushroom clump, holding a crossbow and staring blankly, while the other was leaning against a stone wall, nodding like a chick pecking at rice.

Sensing the blessed land, after entering the valley and walking three hundred steps along the path through the mushroom forest, one arrives at a stone house half-buried underground.

The stone house was completely covered by the caps of giant mushrooms; from the sky, it looked like a field of mushrooms that had come to life.

There were nine people in the stone house.

Six are at the Bone Forging Realm, two are at the early stage of the Tendon Changing Realm, and one is at the mid-stage of the Inner Strengthening Realm.

But there's more to the story beneath the stone house.

Due to the influence of the surrounding magic array, the perception of the blessed land was somewhat blurry.

Xu Hao could barely "see" a downward-extending passage beneath the stone house.

The passage was extremely deep, at least fifty feet deep, with a dense, dark gray aura lingering at its bottom.

The source of the gray-black lines extracted from the earth's veins lies here.

"We need to see what this blood pump looks like first."

Xu Hao bypassed the main entrance to the valley and climbed over the side of the cliff into the valley.

The vines and moss of the Myriad Poisons Forest instantly tightened and hardened the moment he touched them, transforming into the perfect climbing nails.

He slid silently down the slippery stone wall and landed steadily deep in the mushroom forest.

The enormous cap blocked out all the light, the air was damp, and the muddy smell filled the air.

The stone house is just sixty paces ahead.

Xu Hao didn't head towards the main entrance.

Both the visible and hidden sentries are on the ground, so the entrance to the underground passage must be inside the stone house.

Entering through the main gate is tantamount to announcing to the Mu family that he has come to visit.

He circled around to a blind spot of the sentry post, squatted down on the side of the stone house, and pressed his right hand's five fingers on the ground.

The connection between the dark gold kidney and the earth's veins is established the moment it touches the ground.

After being stained, the kidneys govern bones and produce marrow, and their resonance with the earth is simply a match made in heaven.

With the added blessing of the blessed land's authority, the rock strata opened completely towards him.

It's not physical penetration, it's holographic vision.

He saw the entire underground area of ​​the stone house.

A man-made vertical shaft, six feet in diameter and sixty feet deep.

Every three zhang (approximately 10 meters) along the well wall is a fist-sized black stone disc.

The stone disc was engraved with simplified guiding patterns, which were three parts similar to the dark gold inscriptions on the Dragon Burial City and the secondary nail seal, but the remaining seven parts were completely unorthodox.

"A counterfeit." Xu Hao curled his lip.

Someone thoroughly studied the sealing structure of the Dragon-Suppressing Nail and created a simplified version of the guiding array.

The genuine inscription gathers the earth's ley line power to the secondary nail to maintain the seal, while this counterfeit directly reverses the direction, forcibly drawing blood from the secondary nail and transporting it along the rock strata to the bottom of the shaft.

At the very bottom of the shaft was a stone chamber.

In the center of the stone chamber stood a jade-green bronze cauldron covered in rust and moss.

The cauldron was upside down, firmly stuck in a groove in the ground.

Dark golden liquid flowed in the groove.

The essence of the earth's veins.

The essence of the earth veins, painstakingly extracted from hundreds of miles away by the black stone disc, all flowed into this inverted bronze cauldron.

What is this cauldron doing?

Xu Hao increased his sensory output.

The dark gold kidneys were operating at full power, and the resonance frequency between the bone marrow and the ground was adjusted to its finest.

The inner wall of the bronze tripod is densely engraved with another set of patterns.

It's not a guiding array, it's a refining array.

After the essence of the earth veins flowed into the bronze cauldron, it was roughly purified and compressed by the refining array, eventually condensing into dark golden crystals the size of apricot kernels.

The crystals were piled up on the inner wall of the bottom of the bronze cauldron; a rough scan revealed at least forty or fifty crystals.

"Earth vein crystallization." Xu Hao's pupils contracted slightly.

Blood crystals are merely crystallized blood and qi from the bodies of strange beasts and monsters, at most only suitable for martial artists below the Qi Opening Realm.

Earth vein crystals are the materialization of the earth's primordial power. For experts in the Divine Transformation Realm or even the Golden Body Realm, this thing is more precious than their own father.

The Mu family is merely a medicinal herb family in Yongzhou; their appetite is not large enough to swallow resources of this level.

These crystals were manufactured by someone else.

Who?

Looks like I'll have to go down and search it myself.

Three days ago, in Qingzhou, the capital of the Great Heng Empire.

Deep within the imperial palace lies the Hall of Longevity.

Unidentified incense was burning in the alchemy furnace, and smoke swirled around it.

Emperor Heng was dressed in a wide, bright yellow Taoist robe and sat cross-legged on a futon.

He was emaciated with sunken eyes, but his eyes shone with an unusually excited red light.

"Your Majesty." A red-clad eunuch knelt outside the hall, his forehead adorned with gold bricks, his voice trembling.

"Speak," Emperor Heng said without opening his eyes.

"An urgent report from the secret agents of the Surveillance Bureau on the outskirts of Zezhou: There is unusual activity in the Ten Thousand Poisons Forest."

Last night, a pillar of dark golden light burst forth from the depths of the forest, and a strange beast went berserk. As for Eunuch Wei—no secret messages have arrived for two days.

Emperor Heng stopped fiddling with the prayer beads.

Click.

A sandalwood rosary was crushed into powder.

"He failed to pull out the nail." Emperor Heng's voice was devoid of emotion, yet it sent chills down the spines of the red-robed eunuchs outside the hall. "I gave him three hundred black-clad captains, the Gu family's private army, the method for refining the Dragon-Transforming Saliva, and the black cauldron. He couldn't even pull out a single nail?"

"This servant deserves to die!" The eunuch in red kowtowed violently.

Emperor Heng opened his eyes, which flashed red: "Go and investigate what exactly happened in Zezhou."

The eunuch in red, as if granted a pardon, scrambled away.

Emperor Heng closed his eyes again and sneered, "Whoever wants to cut off my path to immortality—will die."

The outer edge of the Mushroom Valley in the Myriad Poisons Forest.

A grayish-black miasma permeated the giant mushrooms.

From a hidden tree hollow came a sickening chewing sound.

Bai'e huddled in the corner.

Her arms, which had been severed by the Abyss, had now grown back halfway, but the newly grown flesh was an eerie, pale white, covered with dark purple blood vessels.

At her feet lay a shriveled corpse.

Zhou Yuan.

This commander of the Celestial Observation Bureau, who was at the Tongqiao Realm, took the opportunity to escape during the chaos in the camp, but unexpectedly ran into Bai E, who was seriously injured and on the run, in this forest.

He became Bai'e's best tonic.

Bai E pulled the bone spur out of Zhou Yuan's eye socket and absorbed the last bit of his internal energy.

Zhou Yuan's body instantly turned into a pile of ashes.

"Not enough—" A muffled hum came from Bai'e's chest, and her more than twenty pupil-less eyes rolled wildly. "The blood and qi of the early stage of the Qi Refining Realm are far from enough to repair the source."

The dark gold earth vein power left by Xu Hao's strike was still raging deep within her wound.

Suddenly, all her eyes turned to the depths of the valley.

She smelled it.

An extremely pure and extremely rich aura of the earth's primordial energy.

Its blood and qi are a hundred times purer than Zhou Yuan's.

"Crystallization—" Bai'e's horn cracked open, revealing fine, sharp teeth. "As long as you swallow it, you will not only recover, but also completely enter the Divine Transformation Realm."

She transformed into a wisp of extremely faint gray-black mist, skimming along the ground and silently gliding toward the stone house in the center of the valley.

The stone house is sixty feet underground.

The stone chamber at the bottom of the shaft was stuffy and humid.

The emerald green bronze cauldron emitted a soft hum, and dark golden earth essence condensed at its bottom.

Mu Fang, the steward of the Mu family, stood in front of the cauldron, holding a specially made jade box in his hand.

He carefully used silver tweezers to remove the dark gold crystal from the bottom of the cauldron and placed it into the jade box.

"Forty kiosks." Mu Fang breathed a sigh of relief, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "The quality is even better this time than last month."

The two Mu family martial artists at the Yi Jin realm standing behind him exchanged a glance. One of them lowered his voice and asked, "Manager, that pillar of light deep in the forest a few days ago—could it affect the formation here?"

Mu Fang closed the jade box and snorted coldly: "Mind your own business. We just need to do what the master tells us to do. We don't need to know what they're doing over there. The bigger their commotion, the louder the earth veins roar, and the faster we can extract them here."

"But who is the master going to give this crystallized item to?"

Mu Fang's eyes flashed sharply: "Don't ask what you shouldn't ask!"

He carefully put the jade box away from his body and turned to leave.

Just then, a very faint hissing sound came from the entrance at the top of the stone chamber.

It looked like a venomous snake flicking its tongue.

Mu Fang's expression changed drastically: "Who?!"

His answer was a pale, bony claw.

Some of the gray-black mist poured in from the entrance.

Bai'e's figure materialized in mid-air, her incomplete arms waving, her bone claws carrying a strong aura of death, aiming straight for Mu Fang's face.

"A monster?!" Mu Fang was shocked and drew his sword to block.

Two Mu family warriors simultaneously drew their swords and slashed at Bai E.

Bai'e didn't dodge at all.

The blade struck her pale skin, producing a crisp, metallic clang.

She withstood two blows, and her bone claws shattered a martial artist's throat.

Fresh blood gushed out, instantly drained by the deathly aura.

"The Tongqiao Realm is bizarre!" Mu Fang's scalp tingled, and his hand holding the knife trembled uncontrollably.

Aside from the three overlords, when did this thing, Yi, appear in the Myriad Poisons Forest?

Look at this bizarre appearance. Both arms are half severed, and there is a deep, terrifying knife wound on the chest that reveals the bone. The edges of the wound are scorched with dark gold, clearly indicating that you have just chopped it up like a melon.

What kind of monster could have crippled her?

Mu Fang's mind was in complete turmoil.

"Crystal—give it to me—" A muffled hum rolled from Bai'e's chest, and more than twenty pupil-less eyes stared intently at the jade box that Mu Fang kept close to his body.

He ignored his subordinates and turned to flee towards the top of the shaft.

The earth vein crystals inside the jade box must not be lost.

How could Bai'e possibly let him go?

She let out a shriek from her chest, and the death energy transformed into two black ropes that wrapped around Mu Fang's legs, forcibly pulling him down from mid-air.

Mu Fang slammed heavily against the bronze cauldron, and the jade box fell from his arms and slid to the ground.

Bai E's more than twenty eyes instantly locked onto the jade box, her greed evident in her expression.

She abandoned Mu Fang and headed towards the jade box.

Just as her bony claws were about to touch the jade box.

A foot wearing a black military boot emerged from the void and landed steadily on the jade box.

Bai E's movements suddenly stopped.

All their eyes narrowed sharply, staring intently at the suddenly appearing figure.

Black clothes, long sword.

Dark gold patterns flowed slowly across the scabbard.

Xu Hao.

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