Martial Arts: My talent multiplier increased

The stone gate was fully opened.

Behind the door was a downward-sloping passageway. It was about ten feet wide and more than two feet high. The walls of the passageway were also inlaid with that kind of dark red mineral, one stone every ten steps, emitting just enough light to see the path underfoot.

The young men from the three cities began to enter in turn.

Blackstone City was the first to move. Zhou Tieshan led twelve men into the tunnel. The hammers clattered against his backs with dull thuds that echoed through the tunnel.

Yunyan City followed closely behind. The Zhao twins stepped in side by side, shoulder to shoulder, their steps perfectly synchronized.

Fang Yuan took a step forward.

Very light footsteps came from behind.

He turned around.

The Lin family's caravan had approached without anyone noticing. Four carriages stopped about twenty feet behind the crowd, and the curtain of the first carriage was slightly lifted.

A person got out of the car.

A woman. She looks about seventeen or eighteen years old.

She wore an extremely simple white long dress, tied at the waist with a five-colored silk sash. She wore no ornaments and carried no weapons. Her black hair was tied back with a wooden hairpin, revealing an extremely clean-cut face.

Her features were exquisite, but not the kind of stunning beauty that makes you unable to look away. There was an extremely unique quality about her face—coldness. Not the coldness of anger, nor the coldness of arrogance. It was the kind of coldness that remained calm and undisturbed by anything.

Fang Yuan's twice-strong spiritual perception reacted automatically the moment she stepped out of the carriage.

Within the range of perception, the woman's qi and blood fluctuations were extremely abnormal.

The surface appears very calm, like a lake without ripples.

But beneath that lake, Fang Yuan sensed an extremely deep layer of energy deposits, almost impossible for someone at the Bone Refining Realm.

She was suppressing her cultivation level.

Fang Yuan's Adam's apple bobbed slightly.

This person's actual cultivation level is far beyond the Bone Refining Realm.

The woman in white got out of the car and glanced at the crowd at the valley entrance. Her gaze paused for a moment when it passed Fang Yuan.

Less than half a breath.

In that brief pause, Fang Yuan sensed something extremely subtle.

It wasn't curiosity. It wasn't scrutiny.

It looked like it was confirming something. Once it was confirmed, it was moved.

Fang Yuan didn't follow that gaze. He turned around and led Fang Qi and Fang Zheng into the passageway.

The passageway extends downwards. The slope is not steep, but the downward trend is obvious.

The dark red ore on both sides of the wall was spaced ten steps apart, the light was weak but very even. The stone surface underfoot was polished to an extremely smooth finish, and there was almost no friction sound when the soles of the boots were stepped on.

Fang Yuan walked at the very front.

Double the Divine Soul Talent is fully unleashed.

The moment the sensory network is deployed, all the information within the tunnel floods into the brain.

The wall's material—not natural rock, but some kind of artificially treated composite stone—remains on the surface with extremely faint energy fluctuations, so ancient that more than 90% of them have dissipated.

The airflow direction on the ground—flowing from the entrance inwards—indicates that the interior space is much larger than the passageway, and there is a pressure difference.

The smell in the air—a mixture of earth, mineral dust, and plant humus. The last smell is the strongest.

plant.

Plants grow in the underground space.

Fang Yuan's doubled comprehension allowed him to complete the deduction within 0.3 breaths—the existence of a living plant community in the ancient cultivator's remaining space meant that this space had an independent lighting system and water cycle.

The passageway was much longer than expected. Fang Yuan walked for about half an incense stick's time before the slope began to ease. The light ahead changed—the dark red mineral light was gradually replaced by a brighter light source with a slight bluish tint.

The end of the passageway.

Fang Yuan stopped in his tracks.

Fang Qi, standing behind him, uttered his first words since entering the Hundred Beasts Cave in a muffled voice.

"...What kind of place is this?"

The tunnel's exit leads to a huge underground space.

The word "huge" is not quite accurate. As far as Fang Yuan could see, he could not see the boundary on the other side.

Above them was an arched dome, at least thirty zhang high. The dome was densely inlaid with countless luminous ores. These were not the dark red ores found in the passageways—they emitted a cold, bluish-white light, with an intensity similar to that of an overcast sky above the ground.

The cold light shone down, illuminating a vast underground forest.

It wasn't dead wood and moss. It was a real forest.

The canopies of the towering trees gleamed an unnatural deep green under the cold light, their branches and leaves intertwining to form a thick, dense canopy. The trunks varied in thickness, with the largest few, Fang Yuan, estimating, exceeding three zhang in diameter. The roots sprawled across the grayish-white soil, extending in all directions.

Interspersed among the trees are piles of rocks of various shapes and cracks in the ground. Shallow streams flow through the cracks, reflecting the cold light from the dome and drawing fine, shimmering silver lines on the ground.

Fang Yuan stood on the high platform at the exit of the passageway. The exit was located in the middle of the side wall of the space, below which was a natural stone staircase about three zhang high, the bottom of which connected to the edge of the forest.

His sensory network was deployed the moment he stepped out of the passageway.

Thirty zhang (approximately 33 meters).

The sheer volume of information within a thirty-foot radius subjected his brain to a momentary surge of strain.

There are living things in the forest.

It wasn't just one or two.

Within his perception radius alone, Fang Yuan detected at least five different biological auras. Three of them were very weak, possibly belonging to small animals or low-level demonic beasts.

The other two—

heavy.

The auras were far more intense than those of a martial artist in the early stages of the Bone Refining Realm. Fang Yuan judged from his perception that the strength of these two auras was at least at the mid-stage or higher of the Bone Refining Realm.

Monster.

They were about twenty-five feet from the exit of the tunnel. One was deep in the dense forest directly ahead, and the other was to the left, near a pile of rocks.

Neither of them moved.

Hibernation.

Fang Yuan did not immediately descend the stone steps. He stood on the high platform and used his senses to scan the surrounding terrain.

To the left. Behind the pile of rocks is a narrow rift valley. The rift valley deviates from the main passage, leading to a secluded area of ​​the space.

Directly ahead. People were already moving about on the main path of the dense forest. The people from Blackstone City were the fastest, and the footsteps of Zhou Tieshan's group made a rough sound in the woods.

To the right. A relatively sparse woodland, rising slightly in elevation. No obvious demonic beast aura was detected in that direction.

Fang Yuan made a decision.

"Go to the right."

Fang Zheng didn't ask why. Fang Qi certainly wouldn't ask either.

The three of them descended the stone steps to the bottom and meandered towards the sparse woodland on the right.

They avoided the fighting that had already broken out on the main passage.

Fang Yuan walked ahead, and the sensing network continued to operate.

The trees in the woodland on the right are more widely spaced, and there are more pebbles on the ground, but the overall path is clear. The cool sunlight from the overhead dome filters through the sparse canopy, making the visibility much better than in the dense forest.

I walked about two hundred steps.

Fang Yuan's pace suddenly slowed down.

He didn't stop. But his nose twitched slightly.

A very faint smell.

It wasn't the smell of soil or minerals. It was a plant-like aroma with a spicy and slightly bitter aftertaste. Fang Yuan's doubled comprehension allowed him to match the scent with his memory in half a breath.

Bone-tempering grass.

Page 73 of the "Complete Collection of Spiritual Herbs" in the Martial Hall Library: "Grows in extremely yin and damp places. It is potent and bitter. When applied externally or taken internally, it can enhance the efficiency of blood and qi penetration in the bone surface. It has a significant bone-tempering auxiliary effect for martial artists in the Bone Refining Realm."

Fang Yuan's breathing was not disordered, but his footsteps shifted two degrees at an extremely natural angle.

Move closer to the source of the smell.

Crevice in the rock wall.

Between two grayish-white rocks was a crack less than two feet wide. The bottom of the crack was dark and damp, and a few narrow leaves, about an inch long, peeked out from the crack. The leaves were dark purple with curled edges and covered with a layer of fine white down.

Bone-tempering grass. Three stalks.

Fang Yuan squatted down. He pinched the root of the nearest plant with his fingers and applied force slowly and evenly. He used twice his comprehension to control the angle and speed of pulling it out—too fast would break the root, and a broken root would reduce the efficacy of the bone-tempering herb by half.

The roots slid out intact from the crack in the rock. Dust particles of grayish-white soil clung to the dark purple roots.

Fang Yuan put all three plants into his bag. He wrapped the Bone-Tempering Grass in a dry cloth and stuffed it into the bottom of his backpack.

Fang Zheng glanced at it from the side. He knew his stuff.

"Bone-tempering grass?"

Fang Yuan didn't respond. He stood up and continued walking.

Fang Zheng shut his mouth.

The woodland on the right became increasingly remote. The types of trees began to change—the sparse woodland ahead, which had been full of straight, grayish-white trees, was now seeing more and more dwarf shrubs and vines.

Fang Yuan's perception range remained undetected, failing to detect any highly threatening demonic beasts. Occasionally, small creatures would rustle and move about in the bushes; they were small in size and possessed weak vital energy. They posed no threat.

But after they walked about two miles...

Fang Yuan's spiritual perception detected the change.

Not far ahead.

He stopped walking.

Fang Qi and Fang Zheng also stopped.

Fang Yuan closed his eyes.

The 30-zhang-long perception network stretched forward with all its might.

The fluctuations caused by the collision of Qi and blood.

It's not just one or two paths.

At least four.

All of them were at or above the mid-stage of the Bone Refining Realm.

Four powerful energy fluctuations collided and intersected wildly about thirty-five feet ahead, the structure not like a multi-party melee—but rather four against one.

Four people ganged up on one person.

The blood and qi of the surrounded party were extremely unique. It lacked the roughness and violence of a typical Bone Refining Realm cultivator, instead possessing an extremely condensed, almost liquid texture.

Fang Yuan's pupils contracted slightly.

He had seen that texture at the entrance of the passageway.

Woman in white.

The Lin family.

Fang Yuan's mind completed the deduction in an instant. Four mid-stage Bone Refining Realm cultivators were besieging one person, and the one being besieged was most likely the white-clad woman from the Lin family.

This has nothing to do with him.

But in the very next instant, his senses caught something else.

Directly behind the area where qi and blood collide. On a half-collapsed rock wall.

The scent of elixirs.

This flavor was more than ten times stronger than that of bone-quenching grass. The three layers of spiciness, sweetness, and bitterness intertwined, like an invisible hook piercing his sense of smell.

The double comprehension was matched within 0.2 breaths.

Fang Yuan's breath hitched.

Page 117 of "The Complete Book of Elixirs". The only entry in the entire book with a special note.

"Jade Vine. Extremely rare. It grows in places where ancient cultivators' remains are rich in spiritual energy. It is warm in nature and sweet in taste. The whole plant is used as medicine. Its core effect is to open the mind and cleanse the marrow of those who have not yet entered the martial arts path, and to unblock the congenitally blocked meridians."