Chapter 512: Reaction

Chapter 512: Chapter 512: Reaction

Bai Mo gave a full report on the matter of the Divine Being.

Within a few days, Cultivators from Divine Dao Mountain arrived and gave the gray mouse a thorough examination.

"It’s just an ordinary house mouse that was touched by divine light and gained intelligence. There’s nothing more to it."

After the Cultivators finished their inspection, they confirmed their findings with Bai Mo and departed nonchalantly.

The gray mouse breathed a huge sigh of relief.

The old hen, who had come from the Divine Kingdom with it, flapped its wings happily.

Its food and living conditions were now a world apart from before; it had finally made it through the hard times.

Bai Mo watched the disciples from Divine Dao Mountain depart.

’The sect’s next move will probably be to put all its effort into finding the lord of that Divine Kingdom.’

’This Divine Being disintegrated of its own accord, its Divine Kingdom shattering into pieces. It most likely has a contingency plan; it isn’t truly dead.’

’The fact that it was also connected to "Tian Weng" made things even more suspicious.’

A few days later, his neighbor Zhu Tong came strolling by in his soft sedan chair, stopping outside Bai Mo’s courtyard.

The Pill Fragrance wafted from the courtyard. He took a deep breath. As the unique aroma filled his nostrils, his spirits were instantly lifted.

"Good stuff!"

Bai Mo added some Spirit Wood, let it burn, and only then dusted off his hands and walked out the gate.

Zhu Tong was scraping the stubble on his face with a small knife. Seeing Bai Mo come out, he casually tossed over a cloth bag.

"Junior Brother, whatever kind of Pill you’re concocting, it smells damn good. Let me have a bottle!"

Bai Mo smiled, took out a pill bottle from his sleeve, and handed it over.

"It’s a Pill for nourishing the spirit and calming the mind. It’s quite effective at suppressing Heart Demons. Eight hundred Spirit Stones a bottle."

"Hmm?"

Zhu Tong looked up.

"So cheap? I gave you two hundred extra Spirit Stones. Quick, give them back..."

After some fuss, Zhu Tong leaned back in his soft sedan chair and looked at Bai Mo.

"I heard you discovered a secret about the former master of the Divine Kingdom?"

Bai Mo nodded.

"I hear the Foreign Affairs Hall and disciples from Divine Dao Mountain have already fanned out to search."

"But the Divine Kingdom collapsed so completely, it’s nothing but a wasteland. Even if some clues survived, there can’t be many left."

Zhu Tong stroked his chin. "Hmm," he mused.

"Back then, I heard they could communicate directly with the heavens. I thought they were talking to the Celestial Dao, but now it seems some Divine Beings were communicating with... something more."

With that, Zhu Tong left, leaving a string of jade beads behind.

The jade beads were something he had taken from a box after dispelling a formation.

The box had been unearthed from the ruins beyond the Celestial Barrier Mountain. The Foreign Affairs Hall had given it to Bai Mo as a reward for his report.

Hidden within the jade beads were several Pill Methods, left behind by ’Tian Weng’.

Relying on such methods, this ’Tian Weng’ had been an important figure in the former civilization that existed behind the Celestial Barrier Mountain.

Bai Mo rubbed the surface of the white jade beads with his fingertip. A warm, gentle light glowed from their surface, and then many sentences appeared in his mind.

It was as if a senior Cultivator was teaching him in his mind.

The contents were novel, but not particularly astonishing.

’But the line of thinking, the entire approach... it’s really not like the philosophy of this world. The perspective is a cut above...’

Bai Mo mused.

After fiddling with the string of jade beads for about a month, Bai Mo had already grasped eighty to ninety percent of its contents.

And he’d managed this while multitasking during his Alchemy sessions in the courtyard.

...

During his leisure time, his Pills began to circulate in Immortal Arrival City.

The shop staff breathed a sigh of relief when they received a new batch of Pills from the Shopkeeper and started arranging the sale.

Drawn by the scent, the men from the Demon Hunting Team showed up. They used their close relationship with the shop to go through the back door and get first pick privately.

When Bai Mo was undergoing Core Formation, these people had helped a great deal, treating the mountains as their own backyard.

They spent more days in the mountains than with their wives.

Wei An, Qin Wen, and the others all remembered this favor.

At night, after the doors were closed, Qin Wen heard a piece of news while helping the men from the Demon Hunting Team choose their Pills.

"A lot more people in the mountains?"

"Where are they from?"

The man picking out Pills didn’t even look up, rummaging through the bottles and jars as he struggled to decide.

"Judging by their skills and methods, they’re the same as us—all Loose Cultivators. No one can look down on anyone else..."

As he spoke, the man finally found the Pill he wanted, left the Spirit Stones, and departed coolly.

The next day, when the shop opened, Lanshan came by to pick up a batch of Pills for breaking Blood Curses.

Qin Wen mentioned the matter of the outsider Cultivators in the mountains to him.

Lanshan thought for a moment, then simply said, "We’ll keep to ourselves, and they should keep to theirs."

"But if they don’t know what’s good for them, we’ll just have to use a few tricks to drive them out."

The mountains weren’t like the outside world; no one knew what happened there. They had clashed with outsiders and shed blood before.

It was just that so far, relying on their home-field advantage, the men of the Demon Hunting Team had yet to come out on the losing end.

Suddenly, Lanshan remembered something. He stopped on his way out and turned back to Qin Wen.

"Some Cultivators found a well-trodden path in the mountains, so the journey is less risky than it used to be."

"Some gamblers, drowning in debt and desperate, risked following the path deep into the mountain range and brought back a lot of good things."

Lanshan had already thought this over for some time; what he said next was the result of careful deliberation.

"Could we ask Shopkeeper Bai for the Xuandao Sect’s route map into the mountains?"

’That audacious?’

Qin Wen hadn’t expected Lanshan’s ambition to have grown so much. He nodded and added the request to his letter to Bai Mo.

The letter was carried away by a messenger goose and, after a long journey, arrived at the cliff’s edge.

Bai Mo was equally startled when he read the letter.

’But on second thought, it seems like it might actually be possible.’

After much development in Immortal Arrival City, Foundation Establishment Cultivators were now frequently emerging from the Demon Hunting Team.

Lanshan, for instance, had already reached Foundation Establishment on the strength of his powerful physique, while his men were cautiously finding their own way.

Led by one or two who weren’t afraid to die, they might just have a chance to sneak into the depths of the Celestial Barrier Mountain and scavenge some loot.

’This won’t be simple.’

Bai Mo didn’t know the sect’s route into the Celestial Barrier Mountain either. Besides, even if he did, he wasn’t sure how he’d justify leaking it to the Foreign Affairs Hall.

One day, after purchasing medicinal ingredients from Medicine Peak, he went to the Foreign Affairs Hall.

Bai Mo tentatively brought up the matter with a disciple in the hall, but before he could get an answer, he overheard some other news.

Disciples from the sect had found the Divine Being of the Divine Kingdom. One was left severely injured and the other on the brink of death, but their quarry had escaped.

When the news reached the sect, it immediately caused an uproar.

If any disciples had harbored doubts before, the Divine Being striking first had dispelled their last shred of hesitation.

Bai Mo saw the two Core Formation disciples who had fought the entity.

Their bodies had a waxy yellow color, their skin covered in cracks like porcelain about to shatter.

They were recuperating in the Foreign Affairs Hall.

Neither of them had died, but the one who had been near death had suffered a massive blow to his vital energy, and his lifespan was halved.

The heavily injured one was still recovering and moved with extreme slowness. It was said his future path of cultivation was now severed.

The Foreign Affairs Hall disciple talking with Bai Mo watched the two leave, then turned back to him and said:

"Those two were lucky to be alive."

"At that time, a powerful cultivator was in seclusion nearby. They released their aura and scared away the Divine Kingdom’s master."

Bai Mo had caught the scent of incense smoke on the two men.

’He had no idea how such injuries could have been inflicted.’

"Oh, right. Junior Brother, what were you asking me about just now?"

Only then did Bai Mo remember his reason for coming to the Foreign Affairs Hall.

"It was about the route into the Celestial Barrier Mountain..."