What does my ancestor's pregnancy have to do with me, a mere servant?

Lin Yuan remained in the treetop for a full half hour.

Until Sima Duan's aura disappeared beyond the edge of divine consciousness, and there was no sign of him returning.

He then drifted to the ground like a withered leaf.

His divine sense spread out like ripples on water, sweeping across an area of ​​three hundred feet.

There were no abnormal fluctuations in spiritual energy.

He strode into the village.

Push open a wooden door that is so rotten that it can almost be pierced with a finger.

The low, earthen house was simply and poorly furnished.

The ceramic bowls on the wooden table were placed neatly, as if the owner had just gotten up and left the table.

There were still unburnt charcoal remnants in the stove, and the iron pot at the stove opening was leaning against it.

"The entire village of living people was wiped out in an instant while they were living normal lives. Not a single corpse was left, not a single soul was left."

A hint of seriousness flashed across Lin Yuan's eyes.

This method far exceeded his current understanding. The power to do this was definitely not something a Golden Core or even Nascent Soul cultivator could wield.

How exactly did the Taixu Sect perish?

He didn't dwell on the issue too much.

This was just an ordinary settlement of mortals. It was located on the outskirts of the Taixu Sect, with hardly any cultivators, let alone anything of value.

Lin Yuan walked out of the village and stood with his eyes closed for a moment in the open space at the village entrance.

His divine sense extended out in the four directions: east, south, west, and north.

The concentration of spiritual energy in the due east direction is significantly higher than in the other three directions. The distribution of spiritual energy in the Taixu Secret Realm is radial from the center, and the spiritual energy becomes more concentrated in the core area.

The direction has been determined.

He didn't linger. His whole body was pressed against the waist-high withered yellow grass, like a silent snake, and he sped eastward.

The Formless Transformation Technique continued to operate, suppressing his aura.

The combined effects of the Concealing Qi Talisman and the Lightness Talisman made his escape trajectory leave almost no ripples of spiritual energy.

They fled for nearly a hundred miles.

The terrain gradually transitions from flat wasteland to undulating hills.

Lin Yuan stopped beside a pile of rocks and took out the Spirit Rhinoceros Pendant that Li Yang had given him from his storage bag.

He infused a trace of magic power, but there was no reaction whatsoever, which meant that Li Yang was still outside the hundred-mile radius.

The random teleportation range of the Taixu Secret Realm was larger than he had expected.

He and Li Yang were thrown into completely different areas.

Lin Yuan put away the jade pendant and turned his gaze straight ahead.

There lies a dark red, barren mountain.

The mountain was bare, devoid of any vegetation. The exposed rock strata had an unnatural dark red hue.

The mountain is not particularly steep, but its sheer size is its greatest asset, stretching for miles, resembling a giant beast crouching on the earth.

Lin Yuan originally planned to bypass the barren mountain and continue eastward.

But as soon as he took half a step, his divine sense suddenly detected a very subtle fluctuation of spiritual energy.

Extremely weak.

It was so faint that if his divine soul hadn't far surpassed that of others of the same level, he wouldn't have been able to detect it at all.

There is something.

Lin Yuan stopped abruptly and scanned the area three times with his divine sense from a distance.

After confirming that there were no traps, no spirit beasts, and no other cultivators, he quietly moved upwards along the mountain wall.

On the shady side of a barren mountain, a huge rock protrudes from the cliff face.

On the shady side of a barren mountain, a huge rock protrudes. The surface of the rock is covered with signs of weathering, but at its edge, a faint ring of spiritual light from an array is flickering.

Tens of thousands of years of erosion finally exhausted the last bit of spiritual power from the foundation of this hidden restriction array, revealing the outline of the cave.

With his skill as a fifth-grade array master, he saw through the intricacies of the array at a glance.

This is a fairly basic concealment technique, but after being worn down over the long years, it has become so fragile that it is now easily destroyed.

Lin Yuan steadied himself against the mountain rock, his fingers joined together, and he forced out an extremely condensed wisp of magical power from his fingertips.

His magical power transformed into an invisible needle, precisely piercing the point where the array patterns were collapsing. He pinpointed the direction of the remaining spiritual energy at the array's core, and with a slight twist of his wrist, he flicked it upwards.

"Click."

A crisp, dry cracking sound.

The remaining restrictions, already on the verge of collapse, shattered like a torn paper window, splintering into countless fragments of spiritual light that then vanished into the air.

A pitch-black hole, about ten feet square, suddenly appeared before them.

A heavy, murky air, mixed with dust and the lingering scent of time, billowed out from the cave entrance.

This is an extremely well-organized monk's cave dwelling.

The interior space was small, no more than two zhang in circumference. The furnishings were simple to the point of being austere. There was a stone table, two stone chairs, and a blue stone bed.

On the stone table sat a set of celadon teapots, a ring of dark brown tea stains clinging to the spout. Three teacups lay upside down beside the teapots, their bottoms facing upwards, arranged neatly.

This is a habit of monks when they are alone. After finishing their tea, they turn the cup upside down to prevent dust from settling on it.

A faded dark blue Taoist robe lay casually draped over the stone bed. The robe's color had been washed away by time, becoming almost grayish-white.

Lin Yuan stepped forward.

The fingertips just touched the hem of the Taoist robe—

"trickle."

The fabric lost its last bit of support and shattered instantly, turning into a puddle of grayish-white powder that spilled onto the bed.

Still no one. No remains.

This monk, too, was instantly erased by some irresistible force while still in his daily life. His Taoist robe was still draped over the bed, and his teacup was still upside down on the table. He had probably just brewed a pot of tea and taken off his outer robe to rest.

Then there is no more then.

Regardless of how the Taixu Sect was destroyed, the scope of that disaster was terrifying, extending from the sect's core to its outskirts. No one, whether mortal or cultivator, escaped unscathed.

He dismissed his extraneous thoughts and slowly scanned the cave.

My gaze finally settled on the corner of the stone bed.

There lay quietly a dusty, gray animal hide storage bag.

Lin Yuan walked over and picked it up. He probed it with his divine sense.

The original owner's spiritual imprint on the storage bag had long since dissipated in the river of time, and the storage space inside offered him no resistance.

Lin Yuan turned the storage bag upside down and poured all its contents onto the stone table.

"Splash!"

A pile of dark gray powder, mixed with several pieces of rotten and deformed scrap iron, was scattered on a table.

Lin Yuan identified them one by one.

Among the powder were several remnants of medicinal pills that had lost their efficacy, not to mention the talisman paper, which had turned to dust tens of thousands of years ago.

The few pieces of scrap iron were barely recognizable as remnants of magical artifacts, of extremely low grade, with all the spiritual patterns worn away, no different from scrap copper and iron.

The wealth of a low-level cultivator is not worth much to begin with.

After tens of thousands of years of erosion, it's considered incredibly resilient if nothing remains.

Lin Yuan rummaged through the powder with his fingers, eventually picking out two surviving items.

Finally, his fingertips touched two objects with a texture completely different from the surrounding waste.

The first token was black, neither gold nor jade. The front was engraved with the four ancient seal characters "Tai Xu Inner Sect". The back was carved with a circle of intricate cloud and thunder patterns. The material was hard and cold.

The other item was a blueprint drawn on the skin of an unknown high-level monster.

The blueprints are made of some kind of unknown high-level monster leather, which remains incredibly tough despite being eroded by tens of thousands of years.

Lin Yuan carefully unfolded the blueprints.

The drawings depict densely packed mountain ranges, river distribution, palace locations, and detailed route markings for the core area.

This is a complete map of the Taixu Sect.

This thing is priceless.

Each time the Taixu Secret Realm opens, the major forces rely on scattered intelligence accumulated over the generations and incomplete records left by their predecessors to find the route.

Neither side possesses a complete map of the secret realm.