Chapter 1444: Target, Soul Suppression Palace

After entering the forest, the stout man became somewhat flustered. He didn’t know where he had mistakenly entered. There were perilous lands in the True Earth Domain, places that even Void Refining cultivators dared not enter rashly.

After his initial panic, the stout man calmed himself down and began to constantly search for a way out. But this forest was surprisingly large; he searched for a full ten years.

For ten years, the stout man never encountered a single cultivator in the forest, only strange and powerful demonic beasts he had never seen before. The stout man could only flee, constantly fighting and getting injured by these beasts, then hiding to heal, then going out to search for a way out again, followed by more fighting, fleeing, and healing…

In the process, he also picked some herbs he had never seen before, which contained impressive Spiritual Energy. This was an unexpected gain.

Until today, he had wandered to a part of the forest he had never been to before and had another fierce battle with a giant turtle that resembled a small mountain. In the end, outmatched, he exhausted all his strength to escape its relentless pursuit and, in a panic, plunged headfirst into a patch of fog in the woods.

After entering the fog, the dappled sunlight filtering down from the sky dazzled his eyes. He subconsciously closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, he had appeared in this inexplicable cave.

“This… where is this? Was I swallowed by that thing?”

The stout man quickly snapped out of his daze. He immediately tensed up his entire body and, channeling magical power into his eyes, began to survey his surroundings.

It was completely silent. First and foremost, he did not sense any approaching danger.

This cave was not large. The stout man almost instantly discovered that a few zhang behind him, a sliver of light was faintly visible. It seemed to be an exit, seemingly blocked by a large rock.

The stout man did not move immediately. Years of painful lessons kept him cautiously on guard. He first protected his palm with magical power and touched the stone wall in front of him.

The stone wall was icy cold and extremely hard, just like a real stone wall.

‘This… doesn’t seem to be inside a demonic beast. I don’t feel any flow of Spiritual Energy, it’s just like a real stone wall…’ the stout man thought to himself.

After a moment of thought, he abruptly gathered his magical power and struck the stone wall with his palm.

“Bang!”

A muffled sound echoed in the quiet cave, startling the stout man himself. He subconsciously leaped backward.

“It is a stone wall!”

A look of surprise appeared in his eyes.

With this confirmation, the stout man looked behind him again. On full alert, he approached step by step. He took a full hundred breaths to cover the distance of just a few zhang.

It was no wonder he was so cautious. In his memory, he had been constantly encountering various dangers over the years. Twice, he had actually been swallowed by demonic beasts. In the end, he had to use a life-saving secret art to severely injure the beast’s soul, then cut open its stomach and crawl out.

Now, he was like a bird startled by the mere twang of a bowstring!

And after every perilous encounter in that forest, he was almost always severely injured. He had survived with great difficulty and couldn’t afford to regret a single mistake.

He finally reached the mouth of the cave. After stopping, he first sensed what was behind the pile of rocks. He seemed to hear some wind. However, there was no joy on his face, and his heart was calm. He had been wandering in this forest for too long. Several times he thought he could get out, but in the end, he always found himself in another part of the forest.

“Damn it, at worst it’s just another disappointment!”

The stout man looked at the light filtering through, steeled his heart, and with a sudden infusion of magical power into his palms, he fiercely pushed against the pile of rocks in front of him.

“Rumble!”

With a loud crash, a cloud of dust flew everywhere. Immediately, a large patch of dazzling sunlight shone through, making the stout man involuntarily raise a hand to shield his eyes. But along with it came a gust of fresh wind.

The spiritual power shield on the stout man’s body flickered, and he immediately shot out!

It was a vast, boundless world. Behind him was a large mountain, and in front was a great river.

As the scenery before him came into view, the expression of the stout man, who had flown into mid-air, froze in a daze. In his impression, after flying out like this in the past, he should have still been in a dense forest that obscured his vision, or what greeted him would be a demonic beast pouncing at his face.

“That’s… is that the Huiming River?”

The stout man, seeing the surrounding scenery, was stunned in mid-air.

He was all too familiar with this environment. This was a place he had passed many times before, and also the place where he had last entered the clouds and disappeared.

“…N-no… impossible, i-imposs…”

The stout man’s lips trembled. He simply could not believe what he was seeing. In his memory, he had countless times wished he could escape that damn dense forest and return to a place he was familiar with. But year after year, all it brought him was constant injury and pain, as well as repeated expectations and huge disappointments.

Today, he had just stumbled into a patch of fog in the forest. How did he suddenly get out? Could it be that his bad luck had struck again, and he had stumbled into another illusionary restriction?

After a full several dozen breaths, the stout man suddenly started flying rapidly in one direction. As he flew at high speed, he looked at the scenery around him, constantly muttering to himself like a complaining old woman.

“That’s Shrimpback Ridge… that’s Heavenly Horse River, and that, that, that… that’s Phoenix Cry Sect…”

He flew very high. Without the ability to use Divine Sense, his line of sight could extend even further. Thus, one by one, places that were all too familiar in his memory appeared in his eyes, until he saw a small sect. He knew of that small sect as well. In the past, he would have only given it a cursory glance with disdain. But today, he felt it was incomparably dear to him.

Finally, the stout man landed on a mountaintop.

He looked around and saw some passing cultivators looking at him with strange gazes. But the stout man suddenly had two streams of hot tears flowing from his eyes. He finally saw other cultivators again, not those damned, unknown demonic beasts.

Then, he actually leaned against a huge rock and began to sob softly, crying like a child without any regard for his image…

Not long after, a piece of news suddenly spread within a certain sect: a disciple of the sect who had been missing for ten years had returned! He claimed to have been drawn into a mysterious place and had even brought back some things—herbs they had never seen before. Although there weren’t many, their quality was quite good. Most importantly, these were all herbs never before seen in the True Earth Domain.

After this cultivator was questioned by the Sect Master and elders, they examined his body and were shocked to find that the disciple had suffered serious injuries—some new, some old and accumulated. Many of these injuries had damaged the disciple’s soul. Although they hadn’t been fatal, they were extremely dangerous. Even after coming out, he would need to consume high-quality pills and recuperate for a long time to recover.

From these injuries, it could be seen that the mysterious place was home to all sorts of strange and bizarre soul beasts, because most of the disciple’s injuries were caused by Soul Power. This was what shocked the sect the most. Even after spending so much time in the True Earth Domain, they had never seen a soul beast.

According to the disciple, after entering that mysterious place, he was fighting almost every day, followed by constant healing and getting injured. Some of the injuries were caused by the attacks of those demonic beasts, while others were the backlash from using secret arts. The external injuries were manageable and could slowly heal, but the backlash injuries to his soul could not heal so quickly. Lacking medicinal pills, he could only let the injuries accumulate.

All these things together immediately caught the attention of the sect. They absolutely believed what the disciple said. When they saw the unfamiliar herbs, they knew it couldn’t be fake. Even the Spirit Transformation cultivators in the sect could only recognize a few of the herbs, and those were from seeing them in ancient texts about spirit plants from the outside world. This meant they had found new species of herbs within the True Earth Domain.

The True Earth Domain had perilous lands and some unknown places. Even the Soul Suppression Palace had not fully explored them all, so such a situation was not entirely surprising.

At once, they had the disciple carefully mark the location of the cave where he appeared, and only then did they let him go back to recuperate in peace.

Subsequently, two Spirit Transformation elders from the sect personally went to find the cave. But no matter how they explored it, it was just an ordinary small cave. After trying all sorts of methods, they couldn’t find any teleportation exit, nor did they detect even a hint of a teleportation formation’s aura.

In the end, the sect went to the place where the disciple had said he disappeared. They dispatched even more Spirit Transformation and Nascent Soul cultivators, who nearly dispersed all the clouds in the area, but nothing unusual appeared. Even later, when they forced the disciple to interrupt his recovery and personally lead the sect elders to search, they ultimately found nothing. The matter eventually became a mystery…

The Soul Suppression Palace, located in the east of the True Earth Domain, was the core of the entire realm and a sacred place in the hearts of all soul cultivators. The entire sect was built within a former perilous land. As the power of the Soul Suppression Palace continued to expand, this so-called perilous land had been hidden away deep behind the sect. The visible range of the entire sect was only forty thousand li in size.

The core area of the sect was the Soul Suppression Palace on Summit Cliff to the rear, where the Supreme Elders, the Sect Master, and the guard army were stationed. The forward area was managed by the Arc and Arrow Hall, the Star Subduing Hall, and the Strange Sparrow Hall. Each of these four areas covered a territory of ten thousand li.

Apart from the direction extending north into the perilous land, where outsiders were forbidden to enter, the peripheries in the other three directions were scattered with various powers, large and small, like stars in the sky. They were sects and families, stretching outward from the periphery of the Soul Suppression Palace for hundreds of thousands of li. In these three directions, there were dozens of markets alone, a testament to the prosperity and flourishing state of the region.

On this day, a streak of rainbow light flew in from the distant horizon. Its speed was not fast, but not too slow either. Many cultivators in the air, upon sensing the Soul Power within the rainbow light, simply let it fly past. It was an Initial-stage Nascent Soul cultivator.

Within the rainbow light, Li Yan looked at the scene below, his face devoid of expression, making it impossible to know what he was thinking.

He had seen many sects on his way here. Below him now should be a rather large market. Around him, streaks of escaping light would occasionally flash past.

Even without releasing his Soul Power, Li Yan could sense from his divine soul that where those streaks of light passed, it was like ripples suddenly appearing on a calm lake. Li Yan could sense the size of those ripples, which was the result of these people’s own Soul Power resonating with heaven and earth, indicating their different cultivation realms and varying strengths.

As he got closer to the Soul Suppression Palace, Li Yan even sensed a few Void Refining Realm experts fly by. Those people did not conceal the fluctuations of their Soul Power at all.

Li Yan, of course, like other cultivators, would detour far away when he encountered experts at the Late-stage Nascent Soul or above, to avoid trouble. Although Divine Sense could not be used here, with Li Yan’s caution, he was still constantly operating the “Tidefall” cultivation method to lower his cultivation to the Initial-stage Nascent Soul, making it perfectly match his soul cultivation realm.

His Nascent Soul had already formed, so the soul cultivation method would not cause him to undergo Nascent Soul Formation again and face the Nascent Soul Heavenly Tribulation. Instead, it allowed him to smoothly cultivate to the Nascent Soul Realm.

After Li Yan brought the stout man to the place where he had been captured, he randomly found a nearby cave, released him, sealed the entrance, and left immediately. This man had accompanied him for more than ten years and could be considered a “meritorious subject.” After modifying his memories, Li Yan also placed some of the herbs he had obtained from the outside world into the man’s Void Shadow.

During these years, the man had served as his sparring partner every day. If all the injuries he had sustained were to be revealed, his body would surely be covered in dense scars.

Li Yan was not the type to discard someone after they had served their purpose. Not only did he constantly test his various techniques on the man, but he also learned many applications and skills of those techniques from him.

However, when he soul-searched the man for information, Li Yan still did not touch a forbidden area in the stout man’s memory. A glance at the flashing red light there told Li Yan it was connected to the three hun souls again.

But after pulling the man into the Earthen Patch, there were far too many ways to obtain information from him. Besides soul-searching, Li Yan once again used various illusion arts on him, and even planted a contract, thereafter successfully obtaining his cultivation method and soul arts.

This made Li Yan overjoyed. The stout man’s sect was a mid-sized sect, so its cultivation methods were naturally a secret not to be passed on. The cultivation methods in the True Earth Domain were generally similar.

But they mainly came from two sources: one was the most primitive cultivation method of the Soul Suppression Palace, which was the most powerful in this realm; the other was the cultivation methods of various other soul cultivator sects that were later drawn in. But after these cultivators entered this place, it was already the domain of the Soul Suppression Palace, and the places where one could advance to the Body Integration Realm were also firmly in their hands.

Thus, these foreign soul cultivators either had to join the Soul Suppression Palace or establish their own sects. The Soul Suppression Palace didn’t pay too much attention to these matters. The strongest in the True Earth Domain—Body Integration cultivators—were in the Soul Suppression Palace. Those other sects could develop as they pleased, but they would only be stuck at the Void Refining Realm for their entire lives, unable to threaten the Soul Suppression Palace at all.