Chapter 14: Building the Cave Abode (Part 1)

  After several months.

  "A Xiang, this time you leave, but don't know when we can meet again. Master doesn't have anything good to give you, so I'll leave this sword as a keepsake." Yu Feng turned his hand over, and suddenly a six-inch wooden sword appeared in his originally empty hand. This was the broken evil-suppressing sword he had tempered from peach wood before, but after entering the middle stage of Qi gathering, he had again brutally tempered it, and now it was greatly different from its past form.

  "Master, isn't this the one you used? I don't want it, my father gave you a ritual procedure which you didn't even collect. Now I also can't use this sword, you'd better use it yourself." Li Xiang's eyes had already turned red, and he hadn't put away the wooden sword. He was very familiar with Master's belongings, now probably except for a Qian Kun ring, there were only a Soul Collecting Bottle and a few Peach Wood Charms left.

  "Stupid kid, Master gave it to you so just take it. Why be polite with Master? Master doesn't need that silver because I have no use for it. In the future, Master will rarely be in the mortal world, and even if I wanted silver, it would be useless. This sword looks like it's only six inches long, but with a bit of magic power, it can grow to three feet. Although it was forged from a 300-year-old peach wood spirit, after my refinement and nearly a year of spiritual energy tempering, it has become a top-grade magical artifact. If it weren't for its mere 300 years, this sword could have become an even higher-level artifact. As it stands, this sword is already unafraid of water or fire, and can slice through iron like mud. Inside, I've set up a spirit-gathering array with my divine thoughts, which will be very helpful to you when you enter the prenatal realm. Hurry up and take it! If you don't, Master will get angry!" Seeing Li Xiang refuse to accept the sword, Yu Feng pretended to be angry.

  "Master, I'll take it. Don't be angry, you have to go and I don't know what else to say. Just, Master, please take care of yourself, we will definitely meet again." Li Xiang had no choice but to accept the sword, but he was worried about Yu Feng's future.

  "Alright, let's go back. Everyone is waiting. Don't act like a spoiled child." Yu Feng pulled him towards the small pavilion.

  After parting with the Li family, Yu Feng did not stay any longer and rushed back to Jiujiang the next day. Standing in front of his old home where he had lived for over ten years, looking at everything familiar before him, he could no longer maintain a calm mood. He slowly circled around the old house, evoking endless emotions within him. In less than two years, things have changed beyond recognition.

  It's been over a year since I came back, and the house has accumulated quite a bit of dust. In some places, spider webs have even formed. After cleaning up the whole house, it was already dusk. But Yu Feng didn't stay here, instead he kept walking towards those two graves, standing quietly there until the moon hung in the deep sky.

  Yu Feng didn't say a word, but in his heart he bid farewell to the three closest people to him, and also bid farewell to his own life of over ten years. Because with his current cultivation, he knew that their souls were no longer here, if there was reincarnation, these three closest people should have already started their new lives.

  Yu Feng silently wished them well for their new life in his heart, then told himself: "I am no longer Yu Feng, but I am still Yu Feng." The dust had settled, and his state of mind had taken another step forward. Although his cultivation had not improved, his life had already entered another world.

  Just before approaching the valley, Yu Feng's divine sense felt a strong aura of yin energy. After bidding farewell to the past, he walked towards the location of the yin energy, with a familiar feeling in his heart. Only then did Yu Feng discover that this was not ordinary yin energy stagnation, but the legendary Supreme Yin Energy. He recalled a sentence from the Jade Scroll: "Nine Yins Absolute Ground".

  He subconsciously thought that this extreme yin energy would bring him great benefits, although the memories in the jade slip told him that extreme yin energy was a disaster for ordinary living beings, and even for ordinary cultivators, it had not insignificant harm. Wasn't he an ordinary cultivator? He felt that he wasn't much different from other cultivators, although he hadn't seen any other practitioners, but from the jade slip, he knew he was similar to them.

  No matter what, he had already entered the Nine Yin Absolute Ground and didn't feel anything out of place. Moreover, it seemed that he could absorb this extremely yin energy, which was not as Yu Jian said that the extremely yin energy couldn't be absorbed by humans. Maybe there were also mistakes in Yu Jian's memories, it seems that from now on, he can't blindly follow those memories.

  Yu Feng took out all the arrays, similar to those set up in the Li Mansion. First, he laid down a hidden escape array, followed by a large gathering spirit array connected to nine small arrays. After some thought, he also set up a bewildering array outside the valley, which would prevent ordinary people or living beings from entering the valley, lest they mistakenly enter and lose their lives. Although it was strange that the Nine Yin Absolute Land had never been discovered before, he didn't think deeply about it.

  In that valley, there were over a dozen black skeletons, which should be the black-clothed men who killed their own parents as Grandfather said. Only twenty years have passed, and only their corpses are left here. These corpses have been placed in this land of absolute darkness for twenty years, absorbing too much dark energy to turn into jet-black bones, becoming the top-quality material for refining magic artifacts - Nine Yin Corpse Bones. When refining magic artifacts, even adding a small amount of Nine Yin Corpse Bones would greatly increase their power. For example, the magic artifact he refined, the Soul-Collecting Bottle, became a top-tier artifact from a mid-tier one after adding just a tiny piece of Nine Yin Corpse Bone the size of a little finger. Its power increased by five or six times. If not limited by its material, this Soul-Collecting Bottle still has further possibilities.

  To know that this extremely yin energy, although it is very harmful to cultivators, can only be found on the last layer of the Yellow Spring Road in the underworld. It is more harmful to others, but the remaining wind has the greatest benefit. Since then, Yu Feng decided to occupy this place and thought about its importance to himself. He felt that relying solely on these few formations was not secure enough, so he spent another half a month laying down countless prohibitions and formations in the valley, using up all the materials on his body before finally letting out a sigh of relief.

  Those materials were given by Li Xiang when Yu Feng was about to leave, unfortunately they were all used up here.

  After arranging these things, Yu Feng was satisfied and walked through the valley with his hands behind his back. He felt that relying on these formations and restrictions, even if it were a late-stage Qi-refining cultivator who forcibly broke in, as long as he didn't understand the changes of the formation and restriction, he would be doomed to die. Unless it was a high-ranking expert at the Nascent Soul stage, there was no possibility of forcing his way in.

  Yu Feng had originally planned to come and close the door for cultivation, but now his mind has changed. It seems that he still needs to make more preparations before closing the door. He decided to store up more materials before closing the door.

  Ingredients.

  He then wandered around Jiangxi for over a month, found a large iron mine, and saw that the official in charge of managing the refined iron was also greedy. He didn't bother to be polite with him, and within four days, he secretly transported back tens of thousands of catties of refined iron using his storage ring. As for how the corrupt official covered up the matter, he didn't care; after all, it was a small fortune, and others might suspect that he used those refined irons to make weapons and rebel, guessing that he wouldn't live long either.

  In that month, many corpses were still found in the wild, and even one of them was a female corpse. At that time, the nine states were in chaos, although there was nothing in Jiangxi Province, but many people escaped from the war-torn areas, unfortunately died in a foreign land, and no one collected their remains. When I collected these remains, I still felt a sense of guilt in my heart, after all, at that time, I still had the idea that the dead were more important than the living, and yet I couldn't even leave a bone for others.

  Later, Yu Feng thought about it and felt that since people die and their souls disappear, they should have all been reincarnated by now. He figured that staying behind wouldn't be of much use anyway. Comforting himself with this thought made him feel a lot better in his heart. At least he hadn't gone to dig up other families' ancestral graves like some other demonic cultivators, or recklessly killed people to refine their corpses.

  Yu Feng spent nearly half a year to refine all the fine iron into iron essence, this speed is almost ten times faster than last time in Li's mansion. Firstly, his cultivation has improved significantly compared to last time, secondly, the spiritual energy here is much better than Li's mansion, which resulted in this effect. After that, Yu Feng used a small portion of the fine iron to forge a flying sword, although it was only an extreme-grade artifact at this moment, he believed that after being nurtured for over ten years, it would definitely become a spiritual instrument.

  All this kept him busy and he hadn't even started his closed-door meditation yet. Instead, every day, from tens of miles away, on top of a stone mountain, he used his flying sword to excavate the mountain and quarry stones, using his flying sword to carve the Huagang rocks in the mountain into huge stone blocks, each weighing several thousand catties, which was also the maximum weight that Yu Feng could carry now. Every day, he excavated the mountain and quarried stones, then transported them back to the valley.

  Under this valley, almost all of which have been dug out by him, there is a space of about three miles in diameter, sixty feet underground, all paved with layer upon layer of flat granite, all of which were completed by Yu Feng alone. This underground place is also the most concentrated place of the extreme yin energy, and the cave eye of the nine yin absolute land is exactly in the center of this underground palace.

  Yu Feng had already decided to build a cave mansion here, and that valley, oh, it's no longer called a valley now, it has become a small hill, all of which were formed by Yu Feng piling up the deep soil excavated from inside.

  To complete this cave construction, Yu Feng spent a full three years. And that mountain he had been excavating and quarrying for so long was now half its original size. Fortunately, it was located deep in the mountains, if worldly people were to discover that the mountain had shrunk by so much, who knows what they would make of it.

  The Jiuyin Valley is no longer the small valley it once was, and has become a small mountain. Yu Feng also planted many flowers, grasses, and trees on top of it. The cave mansion is divided into three layers: the first layer is the empty space outside the valley that was transformed, the second layer is thirty or more zhang underground, occupying an area roughly two li in size, divided into hundreds of small rooms.

  Yu Feng didn't know why he built so many, but one was that he had already dug them out in a moment of madness and was too lazy to change them again. The third layer, which is the lowest level, occupies the largest area, with an interior space as large as three li square.

  The three layers of the cave mansion are all built with Huajing rock that has been refined by the leftover wind. The lowest layer, in the center of the cave mansion, has a huge Xuan Yin gathering array to gather the Xuan Yin energy from all directions and bring out the greatest effect of the Jiuyin Absolute Land. Outside the Xuan Yin gathering array is a giant array composed of 99 eighty-one spirit gathering array methods, using these endless spiritual energies to support the normal operation of various restrictions and arrays throughout the cave mansion.