Cultivating immortality in the seas, I created an immortal island of eternal life.

"Come out."

Gao Yao's voice wasn't loud, but it was enough for someone in the shadows to hear him in the desolate outer area of ​​the herb garden.

Upon hearing this, Qian Qian's expression changed, and he quickly took half a step behind him.

A rustling sound came from behind the stone pillar, and three figures emerged from the gray mist, all dressed in the same Yun Kingdom attire.

"Which team are you on? Who's your team leader?" The leader stared at Gao Yao, his tone unfriendly.

His gaze swept from Gao Yao's mud-covered face to the still-dry bloodstains on his black robe, then to the timid-looking Qian Qian beside him, his brows furrowing more and more tightly.

Seeing that they were all dressed in Yun Kingdom attire, Qian Qian's businessman's smile returned: "Fellow Daoists, what a coincidence! We just arrived too. This herb garden is heavily guarded, so having more people is better for mutual support..."

"I wasn't asking you." The leader interrupted him, his gaze fixed back on Gao Yao's face. "I'm asking you, which team are you on?"

Gao Yao cursed inwardly. This robe might fool an outsider like Qian Qian, but it wouldn't fool a true fellow disciple from Yun Kingdom. Besides, the other side had a strict system, and he knew too little about Yun Kingdom.

He was silent for a moment, but that moment was enough to arouse more suspicion in the other party.

The Yun Kingdom cultivator placed his hand on the hilt of his sword, and the two people behind him took a step forward at the same time.

"Let's do it," Gao Yao said decisively.

The three Yun Kingdom cultivators drew their weapons at the same time, but Wu Ling was faster than them.

A phantom rose up behind Gao Yao, and the pressure of a Foundation Establishment stage cultivator pressed down without reservation.

The stone pillar in front of them trembled, and rubble fell from the top. The gray mist solidified, and the spiritual energy in the air was frozen. The movements of the three Yun Kingdom cultivators seemed to have been paused.

Gao Yao didn't give them a chance to break free; several earth-flowing talismans flew out and disappeared into the ground.

The stone slabs underfoot suddenly arched up, as if something huge was about to burst out from the ground.

The stone pillars tilted, and pebbles flew everywhere.

Three stone walls rose from the ground, trapping the three Yun Kingdom cultivators.

The scream was very short.

The sound disappeared when the stone wall closed.

Gao Yao withdrew his enlightenment spirit, the stone wall shattered into powder, and the three corpses collapsed limply in the pile of rubble.

He walked over, squatted down, and expertly began inspecting the storage bag.

Qian Qian stood there, his smile completely gone.

"Fellow Daoist." His lips moved a few times, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end only he managed to utter, "Senior, what is this...?"

Gao Yao didn't even look up: "They recognized us."

Qian Qian's eye twitched, and he subconsciously took a step back.

Gao Yao finally looked up at him: "What are you afraid of?"

"I..." Beads of sweat rolled down Qian Qian's forehead, and he wiped them away. "Senior, I'm just a errand boy, I don't know anything and I don't understand anything. You won't gain anything by killing me."

"You just said," Gao interrupted him, "that good things won't just fall into your hands if you don't risk your life." He took the last storage bag from the corpse's waist, stood up, and said, "Now you don't need to risk it; someone else will."

Qian Qian paused for a moment, looked down at the three corpses on the ground, then looked up at Gao Yao, his Adam's apple bobbing a few times: "What you mean, senior..."

"There are so many dead people in this blessed land. How many are from the Yun Kingdom and how many are not? Who can say for sure?" Gao said, emptying the contents of his storage bag and counting them as he spoke.

"You happened to encounter several people from the Yun Kingdom in the herb garden. They were greedy and wanted to take advantage of you, so you had to take action to protect yourself."

Gao Yao put the talisman back into his pocket and quietly looked at Qian Qian.

Qian Qian's face flushed red, and the veins on his neck bulged: "Senior, I am from Hongyun Trading Company! Our Manager Feng said that doing business is about integrity, and I cannot..."

"Can't what?" Gao Yao asked, his brows furrowing slightly.

Qian Qian opened his mouth, but the words got stuck in his throat. He was a smart man and had already figured out Gao Yao's meaning.

The other party dared to attack in person, killing three Yun Kingdom cultivators, yet instead of silencing them, they pinned the blame for the murders on themselves…

This is clearly a plea for his allegiance.

Qian Qian's expression changed several times, from fear to hesitation, from hesitation to resignation, and finally settled into a mournful smile.

"Senior, you've really put me in a difficult position."

Gao Yao couldn't help but take a second look. This man's face changed faster than turning the pages of a book. He had been all righteous and indignant a moment ago, but in the blink of an eye, he had resigned himself to his fate.

"You're right, senior. What's the point of talking about anything else if you can't even save your own life?" Qian Qian shook his head and stuffed the loose silver into his pocket. "But I still have my pride."

"You'll have to pay more."

Gao Yao paused for a moment, then burst out laughing.

To be honest, he originally planned to leave Qian Qian in the blessed land if he didn't know what was good for him, to avoid any unforeseen complications. But now he couldn't bear to part with him.

This fat guy is practically a carbon copy of Feng Yi—shrewd, greedy, but also pragmatic.

You can actually trust people like that.

"Alright." Gao tossed one of the Yun Kingdom cultivators' storage bags to Qian Qian. "It's yours."

Qian Qian took it and weighed it in his hand, and the businessman's smile returned to his face.

He opened it and looked inside, raising an eyebrow: "Trading several lives for a storage bag with nine levels of Qi refinement, this is a bad deal."

He said he was losing money, but his hands were busy stuffing the contents into his own pockets.

Gao Yao thought he was really good at judging people.

"The herb garden is just ahead, don't dawdle." Gao Yao rummaged through the corpse and found some more odds and ends.

The protective barrier around the herb garden was severely damaged; most of the array patterns on the stone pillars had faded, with only a few spots still flickering with faint spiritual light.

Gao Yao walked around the stone pillar and found a weak spot in the southeast corner where the barrier was weak.

Several ice cone talismans flew out and stuck into the array pattern nodes.

A burst of cold air erupted, and a layer of white frost condensed on the surface of several stone pillars. The remaining restrictions peeled off piece by piece like old, neglected wall plaster. The spiritual light flickered a few times before disappearing completely.

The two passed through the stone pillars, and the true face of the herb garden was finally revealed.

It's called a medicinal herb garden, but it's more like a ruin.

As far as the eye could see, vast stretches of spiritual fields had long since been abandoned and turned into wasteland, the soil hardened into clumps, cracked with dry fissures, like the chapped back of an old man's hand.

Some withered plants lay scattered haphazardly on the ridges of the field, their roots exposed and weathered, crumbling into powder underfoot.

Qian Qian muttered to himself about the medicinal herbs that should have been in the herb garden, his tone tinged with regret.

Gao Yao didn't expect that there would be anything special left in this abandoned garden.

However, he had worked his way up from the bottom and always believed in one principle: no matter how poor a place is, you can always find something if you search carefully.

Gao Yao released his divine sense and scanned the area. Sure enough, he sensed a faint fluctuation of spiritual energy at the roots of several withered spiritual plants.

I crouched down and dug for a long time with a dagger, barely managing to dig out a few remnants of roots that could barely be used as medicine. Although they were of poor quality, they were better than nothing.

He then turned his gaze to the stone house in the corner.

Pushing open the door, a wave of dust hit me, making it hard to open my eyes.

The room was barely illuminated by the light filtering in from the doorway, and cobwebs covered everything. Several stone shelves stood in the corner, empty, but a wooden box lying upside down on the ground caught Gao Yao's attention.

He turned the wooden box over and pried it open. Inside were a small shovel covered in verdigris and several rusty hoes, with a booklet wrapped in oiled paper at the bottom.

Gao Yao picked it up and flipped through it, discovering that it was a notebook left by Master Xuan Yuan, which recorded the refining methods and ingredient formulas for several kinds of pills, including the method for refining the Foundation Establishment Pill.

He tucked the booklet into his pocket and put it away, thinking that this trip hadn't been in vain.

As we walked out of the stone house, Qian Qian came from the other end and was squatting by the dried-up ditch, scraping something off the stone wall with a small knife in his hand.

He complained as he scraped, saying that he had lost his life on this mission and had only managed to get some worthless spiritual herbs that weren't even worthy of being considered entry-level.

Gao Yao didn't reply, but simply stuffed the relatively intact herbs he had just dug out into Qian Qian's hand.

"Take it."

Qian Qian took it, then looked at Gao Yao: "Senior, is this considered payment or hush money?"

"It doesn't matter."

Qian Qian carefully put away the spiritual herbs: "Where are you going next, Senior?"

"Didn't you say the library was at the deepest part?" Gao Yao patted the dirt off his hands. "Lead the way."

......