Li Yan stared at the blue rhomboid crystal in his hand, his eyes filled with contemplation. He examined it again and again.
"Let's go," a cool voice sounded beside him. Li Yan looked up to see a heroic face gazing past the crowd, though her voice carried a trace of exhaustion.
When Gong Chenying had instructed everyone to quickly clean up the battlefield, she herself had swiftly moved into the field. In the battle against the demonic beasts just now, their side had lost seven people and two were injured. Fortunately, the two injured were not too serious and could still fight. She quickly collected the bodies and remains of the seven into a Storage Pouch. The Malevolent Spirit Sect, whenever possible, would always bring back the bodies of their fallen comrades. When she looked up, she saw that the others had also finished clearing the battlefield. However, when her gaze fell on Li Yan, she saw that he, unlike the others who were in the center of the battle collecting scattered spirit artifacts and demonic cores, had walked over to the earthen platform where the second-tier demonic beast had stood. He had picked up the blue rhomboid crystal that had been thrown on the ground and was now observing it in his hand.
Seeing the black shadow overhead, which had become extremely dense, Gong Chenying spoke again.
Li Yan was startled out of his thoughts. He saw that only three or four people remained; the others had clearly already gone out. He smiled at Gong Chenying, and with a flash of light from his hand, the blue rhomboid crystal was put away. He flickered and followed them out.
Once outside, Li Yan couldn't help but suck in a cold breath. They were now on an isolated clifftop on a mountain peak. All around them, sinister winds howled and black clouds roiled, making it feel as if they were standing on a precipice battered by the raging tides of the sea. A dozen or so feet ahead of them on the ground was a black hole that radiated a crimson glow. This black hole stretched downwards, deep into the mountain's interior. Looking closely, the crimson glow within the hole was, shockingly, a pool of brilliant magma. Billows of intense heat rose from the black hole, creating a suffocating sensation.
A narrow path wound its way into the black hole, splitting the magma in two before disappearing into the depths of the cavern. The crimson magma bubbled, and the bubbles would occasionally burst, splattering onto the walls of the black hole, letting out hissing sounds and puffs of black smoke.
"Hurry up and recover. Those who have recovered will then relieve those on guard duty." Gong Chenying, her face pale, was the last to emerge from the sphere. After glancing at the howling black clouds in the sky and then at the black hole at her feet, she observed the situation inside before immediately giving her orders. She then appointed five cultivators who were in better condition to stand guard. In this trial, her use of the small golden axe had consumed even more energy than in the last, draining much of her physical strength as well. Now, her muscles ached all over.
Li Yan's consumption in this trial had also been considerable; he now had less than forty percent of his spirit power left. He had originally intended to create some distance and then look for an opportunity to launch a poison sneak attack, avoiding a direct confrontation with the physically powerful demonic beasts. But he hadn't expected to be preempted by Mi Yuanzhi and his companion from Never-Parting Peak. The two of them had hastily released their Gu-insects when they were still dozens of feet apart. Li Yan was speechless. Gu-insects were inherently long-range weapons, but those two, whether to show off or for some other reason, hadn't even waited for them to get situated after just entering the sphere under Gong Chenying's protection from the demonic beasts' close-range siege. They had released a large swarm of Gu-insects at once. This move actually negated their advantage, turning the fight into something close to a melee with the demonic beasts. Although the Gu-insects displayed formidable attack power, swarming and enveloping a large number of the beasts, the short distance between the two sides allowed several exceptionally ferocious beasts to break through and kill three people in close quarters. Li Yan and the others had no choice but to engage the demonic beasts in direct combat. This was not Li Yan's preferred method of fighting. He liked to use the least amount of effort to solve a problem; he would use his brain before his fists, and his fists before brute force.
Although Li Yan had expended a great deal of energy, his recovery was the fastest here. After half an hour, he felt the spirit power in his body, having undergone a frantic five-elemental cycle, had recovered to at least eighty percent. The remaining twenty percent would likely recover on its own within an hour, even without meditation. The five-elemental circulation of the True Scripture of Gui Water in this space was truly somewhat miraculous.
Calculating the time, based on the last trial, this one should provide at least two hours of recovery time. There was still about an hour and a half left.
He opened his eyes and saw the five cultivators looking around vigilantly, their expressions revealing their fatigue. He sent them a voice transmission, telling them to recover while he stood guard. After a brief discussion among themselves, three of the cultivators began to recover, while two continued to stand guard with Li Yan.
Among the two who remained on guard, there was a fatty whom Li Yan was somewhat familiar with: Mei Bucai from Lord Lao Peak. There was a deep, bloody gash on his left arm, which was not bandaged. Li Yan remembered scanning the cultivators here with his divine sense when they first came out, and he had noticed Mei Bucai's injury then. At that time, the wound had been quite alarming, but now it was already starting to scab over. It seemed he had used some mid- to high-grade medicinal pills. Lord Lao Peak truly lived up to its reputation.
Mei Bucai simply smiled at Li Yan and didn't come over. He and the other person spread out a bit more, forming a triangular formation with Li Yan that enclosed the other cultivators in the middle. Li Yan couldn't help but admire him inwardly. He didn't look it, with his rich young master appearance, but he had such a thoughtful mind. He was quite a talent.
Of course, Li Yan didn't go over either. Firstly, this was the best way to stand guard. Secondly, ever since the slaughter of the second trial, with casualties constantly appearing, the atmosphere in the team had grown increasingly heavy. The conversations among them had become less and less frequent. Whenever they weren't fighting, everyone was either seizing the time to recover or sitting in silent contemplation. Although Gong Chenying was a valiant fighter, she was not skilled at boosting morale. To put it bluntly, morale was currently somewhat low.
Li Yan, however, was indifferent to this. He was naturally a man of few words. Whether at the Strategist's Valley or Little Bamboo Peak, he spent most of his time cultivating silently by himself. He actually preferred this quiet, undisturbed state. In truth, this quietness and low morale were two different concepts. Cultivators were mostly solitary by nature, but Li Yan was not moved by the so-called low morale. As long as no one was talking loudly around him, that was for the best.
Li Yan was facing the cliffside. He sat cross-legged, facing the cliff and with his back to the others, gazing at the dark sky beyond the precipice. It was a pitch-black expanse, but it wasn't the giant black shadow; it was roiling, leaden-dark clouds. Gray clouds rose from below the cliff, obscuring the view of what lay beneath. Li Yan probed with his divine sense for a while, and his expression changed slightly. He heard a strange, rhythmic sound, like a woman's low sobbing. Listening closely, Li Yan soon felt his mind sway, and he felt an impulse to stand up and leap directly off the cliff. He quickly bit his tongue, and his mind cleared somewhat. He hurriedly withdrew his divine sense, not daring to probe any further. He looked around and carefully sensed the spirit power within his body. There were no abnormal fluctuations; it was joyfully circulating in its five-elemental cycle of generation. Only then did he feel relieved.
After a moment's thought, Li Yan slapped his waist pouch. With a flash of blue light, a blue rhomboid crystal appeared in his hand. Li Yan stared at it. This crystal was different from the one in Gong Chenying's hand; its core was black. The moment this thing had appeared at the entrance of the spherical mountain's passage, Li Yan had felt a familiar urge to hold it, but only the team leader could take it. At the end of the first trial, Li Yan had searched the yellow sphere for it, but unfortunately, that monk Zhizhong had crushed it to powder, leaving nothing behind. Of course, he wouldn't ask Gong Chenying to let him have a look at hers; that was the key to their team's survival.
Li Yan held the blue rhomboid crystal before his eyes and observed it carefully. A look of doubt flashed in his eyes. A flow of spirit light surged from his hand as he quietly infused spirit power into it. But just an instant later, Li Yan was horrified. The blue rhomboid crystal in his hand flared with a brilliant light, and the spirit power in his body began to gush out uncontrollably, surging madly into the crystal, completely beyond his control. In just half a breath, ten percent of his spirit power had been forcibly drained. Terrified, Li Yan tried to cut off the flow, but something that made his hair stand on end occurred: no matter how hard he tried, the spirit power in his body continued to pour out like a torrent. He couldn't help but curse his luck. At this rate, he would be turned into a dried-up husk in just ten breaths.
But at this moment, the other two guards had their backs to him, and the rest were cultivating with their eyes closed. Li Yan had just shifted his body to the edge of the cliff to avoid disturbing others, placing the blue rhomboid crystal on his lap. Although the blue light was now extremely bright, it was impossible to notice unless one was looking from the side or front.
As his spirit power gushed out, Li Yan found it extremely difficult to even open his mouth, let alone call for help. His mind raced, but after a few breaths, to his utter despair, he couldn't think of a single solution. He sighed inwardly; such a reckless act deserved such a consequence. He could feel that less than twenty percent of his spirit power remained. He might as well release his control and let the blue rhomboid crystal absorb it all.
How could Li Yan have known that even a powerful Foundation Establishment cultivator like Gong Chenying could only sustain infusing spirit power into the blue rhomboid crystal for less than two hundred breaths? The difference in spirit power between a Foundation Establishment and a peak Qi Condensation cultivator was like the difference between heaven and earth—one was a small ditch, the other a vast lake. Even if Li Yan's spirit power was deeper than his peers, comparable to an early tenth-level Qi Condensation cultivator, it was still weak.
Just as Li Yan closed his eyes to await death, a sudden change occurred within his body. The True Scripture of Gui Water, which had almost stopped its automatic circulation because Li Yan was trying to control his spirit power, now, after he gave up control, caused the water-attribute spirit power in its vessel to boil like a cauldron. It generated an irresistible suction force, madly absorbing the remaining spirit power from the other four vessels within his body. In an instant, a shallow pool of black water formed in the water-attribute vessel. Because there wasn't much spirit power left, the pool of black water was not large, just a thin layer at the bottom. Due to its scarcity, it was almost translucent; it was more accurate to call it a pool of gray water.
But it was this very pool of gray water that, while the blue rhomboid crystal on the outside was madly absorbing, generated a counteracting suction force. The shallow layer of black water seemed to take root at the bottom of the water-attribute vessel, holding on firmly. At the same time, this counteracting suction slowly stirred up a vortex pillar within the vessel. At first, it was at a stalemate with the external blue rhomboid crystal, neither able to pull from the other. Gradually, the black water vortex pillar in the spirit power vessel began to rotate slowly in the opposite direction. As it started, its speed slowly began to increase, until the vortex pillar was spinning faster and faster, more and more urgently.
With this change in his body, Li Yan, who had already given up hope, felt the difference, and his eyes slowly began to brighten.
As the black water vortex in his body spun, it actually began to pull large amounts of spirit power from the blue rhomboid crystal on his knee, pouring it back into his Dantian's Purple Mansion. The reason it was 'large amounts' was because Li Yan sensed that the spirit power being transferred back was not just his own that had been drained, but also some other spirit power that did not belong to him. This made Li Yan feel uneasy, but he was currently unable to stop this strange transformation. This foreign spirit power felt out of place in his body. Li Yan had read many ancient texts on Little Bamboo Peak. In this world, there were some evil cultivation arts that allowed one to absorb others' spirit power for one's own use, and these methods allowed for cultivation progress of a thousand li in a single day. Li Yan knew of one such art, the very same Spirit-Absorbing Art that Strategist Ji had once planned to use on him. These arts all had a major drawback: the spirit power from different people ultimately had to be assimilated. Otherwise, the chaotic mix of different spirit powers would lead to cultivation deviation. He never thought his own body would end up in such a state. Li Yan could already feel the impurity of the spirit power and his aura becoming chaotic. This spirit power was desperately trying to break out of his Dantian's Purple Mansion. When that happened, his qi and blood would surely flow in reverse, leading to death. The situation, which had just turned around, once again plunged Li Yan into terror.