78: Chapter 78 Blackrock Mountains

The Flying Sword made a turn beneath his feet and flew toward the depths of the valley.

The sword light skimmed along the cliff face, casting a long, narrow shadow on the rock wall.

Deep in the valley, there was a hidden cave.

The cave entrance was tightly covered by a cluster of dead vines; from the outside, it looked like nothing more than an ordinary rock wall.

Jiang Yan used his Flying Sword to push aside the vines and slipped inside. The cave was small, about a zhang square, with a layer of fine sand on the ground that felt soft underfoot.

There were several natural cracks on the cave walls, allowing light to leak in and illuminating the interior in a semi-bright, semi-dark state.

The air held a dry, rocky scent, without the rank odor of a Yao Beast or the stench of bat guano.

He leaned Chen Feng against the cave wall. When Chen Feng's back hit the rock, there was a dull thud, and his head lolled limply to one side, his chin resting against his chest.

Jiang Yan was in no hurry to interrogate him. He first sat cross-legged and took out the Storage Pouches of both men.

He turned the openings downward and dumped the contents out.

There were not many things in Liu Yuan's Storage Pouch.

A dozen or so Low-Grade Spirit Stones rolled all over the ground, creating several small pits in the fine sand.

A small bottle of Bigu Pills. Uncorking the bottle, six or seven pills remained inside; they were gray-brown, round, and of the lowest grade.

A few First-Tier Low Grade Fireball Talismans.

A two-hundred-year-old Lingzhi mushroom lay alone in a jade box.

The rings on the cap were sparse, and the medicinal efficacy was mediocre.

However, the pouch of poison powder still emitted a rank, pungent smell that made one's nasal membranes sting.

The mouth of the pouch was tied tightly, with more than half a bag of dark green powder remaining inside.

Jiang Yan placed it separately in the corner furthest from himself.

No Magical Artifacts. No Jade Slips. No Cultivation Technique Secret Manuals.

Chen Feng's Storage Pouch was more bountiful.

About twenty Spirit Stones.

Two bottles of Spirit-Returning Pills. He uncorked the bottle and sniffed; they were First-Tier Medium Grade Medicinal Pills, and the medicinal fragrance was quite rich.

A few First-Tier Medium Grade Wind Blade Talismans. The Talisman paper was much newer than the Fireball Talismans, the spiritual patterns still retained fully charged spiritual energy, and a faint cyan halo flowed across the surface of the paper.

That First-Tier Medium Grade cyan Flying Sword was of decent quality.

There was still residual spiritual energy in the Wind Blade Restriction on the sword body. Jiang Yan scanned the spine of the sword with his Divine Sense—five Restrictions; the engraving technique was quite regular, not something carved by a novice.

A piece of animal skin map, when unfolded, marked the trends of mountains and rivers for hundreds of miles around.

Several places on the map were circled with cinnabar. The circles were drawn quite casually, and the ink had long dried; it was likely marked by Chen Feng himself.

A two-hundred-year-old Polygonum multiflorum. The root was intact, the medicinal efficacy at the broken end was well-preserved, and when brought close to his nose, it had a faint, sweet, fishy scent.

A Loose Cultivator.

As barren as sifted mining slag.

Jiang Yan expressionlessly sorted these items into categories and put them away.

Spirit Stones with Spirit Stones, Medicinal Pills with Medicinal Pills, Talismans with Talismans, each occupying a corner in the Storage Pouch, neatly arranged.

Then he walked to Chen Feng and squatted down.

Chen Feng had already recovered.

His pupils refocused, no longer in the vacant state of having been blasted into a blank slate by the Divine Sense impact just moments ago.

But the excruciating pain from his severed limbs twisted his face into a near-hideous expression. He had clenched his teeth so tightly that he bit through his own lip, and blood trickled down from the corner of his mouth, dripping onto his chest.

When he saw the ordinary-looking, square-faced man before him, his Adam's apple bobbed several times. He opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, finally squeezing a few words through his teeth.

"You—who are you—what do you want—"

His voice was horribly hoarse, like sandpaper being ground hard against an iron plate.

Jiang Yan flicked a strand of spiritual energy into his Meridians.

It was not an ordinary impact of spiritual energy.

The strand of spiritual energy was extremely thin, like a red-hot iron wire, drilling into a Meridian node at Chen Feng's collarbone and crawling up along the inner wall of the Meridians.

When it reached the Jianjing acupoint, it suddenly exploded, turning into dozens of even thinner needles of spiritual energy that simultaneously pierced into the surrounding Meridian branches.

Chen Feng's entire body jolted against the rock wall.

The back of his head hit the rock wall with a dull thud, knocking down a layer of fine rock dust that sprinkled onto his shoulders.

A muffled scream escaped his throat, and his body convulsed violently on the sandy ground, sliding down the rock wall as his back scraped against it.

Twenty breaths.

Jiang Yan withdrew his spiritual energy.

White foam hung from the corners of Chen Feng's mouth as he slumped powerlessly against the cave wall.

His eyeballs were still moving, but very slowly, the pupils reflecting the few rays of light leaking down from the cave ceiling.

"I ask, you answer."

Jiang Yan's voice was very flat. It was not a threatening tone, nor an interrogative one; it was just a plain sentence, as if he were commenting on the weather.

"First question. What is this region called, and is there a Cultivation market nearby?"

Chen Feng panted for a long while. The heaving of his chest gradually slowed, and a few dry, gurgling sounds came from his throat, as if he were swallowing something stuck in his windpipe.

"This place—" he began, his voice so hoarse it was almost unintelligible, "this is—the Black Stone Mountains. A southern branch of the Manghuang Mountains."

"Black Stone Mountains."

Chen Feng's voice echoed in the cave, as hoarse as two pieces of sandpaper rubbing against each other.

The back of his head was still pressed against the rock wall; sweat streamed down his temples, coalescing into a murky droplet at the tip of his chin, which dripped onto his blood-soaked robe.

"If you walk south to the end of the Manghuang Mountains, the terrain collapses, forming the Black Stone Mountains. It runs east-west, stretching for seven or eight hundred miles."

He swallowed his saliva, and as his Adam's apple bobbed, the blood vessels on the side of his neck bulged beneath his skin.

The hemostatic powder on his severed arm wounds had been washed away by sweat, and blood beads began to seep out again.

Jiang Yan squatted in front of him, holding the animal skin map he had found in Chen Feng's Storage Pouch.

The trends of the mountains and rivers marked on the map indeed matched the terrain he had traveled through.

The thick black line representing the north-south trend of the Manghuang Mountains began to fork to the east and west at the southern end of the map, like a giant python whose head had been severed, its body still twitching and lashing out to both sides.

"Is there a Cultivation market nearby?"

"Yes." Chen Feng licked the cracked blood scabs on his lips, his tongue stained with a layer of dark red powder.

"Black Stone City. It's about two hundred miles from here. Black Stone City is the only market in the Black Stone Mountains; Loose Cultivators within a radius of five hundred miles all settle there."

"What is the situation in the city? Who is in charge?"

Chen Feng was silent for a moment.

In that very instant, his gaze drifted half an inch to the left.

It was not deliberate; it was an instinctive reaction of his body in the midst of extreme pain—when people recall and calculate, their eyeballs drift toward the upper left corner.

Jiang Yan flicked his finger.

A tiny thread of spiritual energy pierced into Chen Feng's Jianjing acupoint.

Chen Feng's entire body jolted against the rock wall, the back of his head hitting the rock with a dull thud, knocking down a layer of fine rock dust.

A muffled scream escaped his throat, and his body convulsed violently on the sandy ground four or five times.

"I'll talk! I'll talk—" His voice squeezed out from between his teeth, laced with a sobbing tone, "It's the Li family! Black Stone City is the Li family's territory!"