384: Chapter 384 Twelve Hours

Su Mingyuan returned to the cave and woke everyone up.

After briefly explaining the situation outside, he began to divide them into teams.

"Two teams. Chen Rong leads one team, and Lin Wan leads the other. Once each team goes out, operate within a ten-kilometer radius around the cave entrance; do not go too far. The main task is to scout the terrain and see if there are any other caves, buildings, or stone tablets in the vicinity."

He paused for a moment.

"We are not sure when the Blood Moon will rise again, so everyone must be prepared to retreat at any time. As soon as the sky changes, run back immediately; do not hesitate."

Chen Rong and Lin Wan each nodded and began selecting their people.

Just as Su Mingyuan was about to go with Chen Rong's team, Zhao Ping stopped him.

"Group Leader Su, you should stay in the cave."

Su Mingyuan looked at him.

Zhao Ping showed no intention of backing down.

"The situation outside is still unclear, and we haven't figured out the patterns of the Blood Moon yet. You are the core of the entire team and the one who triggered the portal; if something happens to you, all thirty of us will be trapped in this world."

Several people nearby also spoke up.

"Zhao Ping is right, Group Leader, you should stay."

"Having Chen Rong and Lin Wan outside is enough; we don't need you there."

Zhou Jian also nodded: "Group Leader, this isn't a question of how brave you are, but whether it's worth the risk."

Su Mingyuan looked at these people and did not insist further.

They made sense. He really couldn't take that risk.

"Fine," he said, "Tao Zhe and I will stay behind. Zhou Jian, Liu Yang, Wu Kun, and Han Li, you four stay as well."

Han Li became anxious as soon as she heard this.

"I want to go out too, to see if I can discover other—"

"What can you do if you go out?" Su Mingyuan interrupted her. "Outside, there is nothing but bones and dirt; all the Spirit Medicine is in this cave. You stay here, organize this field of Spirit Medicine, and record all the ones you recognize."

Han Li thought about it, realized it made sense, and stopped arguing.

The two teams left the cave one after another.

Chen Rong led his team to the east, and Lin Wan led her team to the west.

Su Mingyuan stood in the corridor inside the cave entrance, watching the last person's back disappear into that layer of darkness.

Then, he turned and walked back into the valley.

The time that followed was hard to pass.

Han Li, on the other hand, was busy running off her feet, dashing up and down the terraced fields, crouching to look at one plant, then running over to look at another, constantly muttering the names of medicines and Pill Formulas. She found a flat stone surface to use as a table, using the pen and paper she carried to record everything, filling the pages densely.

Tao Zhe continued to study the inscription on the stone tablet, attempting to dig out a little more information from the latter part of the text, which he couldn't fully identify.

Su Mingyuan sat leaning against the stone wall and closed his eyes to Cultivate for a while.

The concentration of spiritual energy in the valley was much higher than on the Bone Plains, and the efficiency of Cultivation was clearly better. After circulating the spiritual energy in his body for several cycles, his Meridians felt warm, which was more effective than eating compressed food.

After about three hours or so, Chen Rong's team returned first.

"We didn't find any other cave entrances within a three-kilometer radius," Chen Rong reported. "The terrain is basically flat Bone Plains, and the density of skeletal remains is about the same as at our landing point. After walking three kilometers to the east, the density of skeletons began to decrease, and some rubble and cracks appeared on the ground, looking like traces left by an earthquake long ago."

"Are there any buildings?" Su Mingyuan asked.

"No," Chen Rong said. "However, at about two kilometers out, we found a few stone pillars half-buried in the soil, arranged very neatly with a spacing of three meters. They look like the remains of some sort of wall or archway, but the upper parts have all collapsed."

"Are there any characters on the stone pillars?"

"Yes, but they are severely weathered, and most are illegible. I used paper to make rubbings of the few that could still be identified, and I brought them back for Tao Zhe to look at."

Su Mingyuan nodded.

Less than an hour later, Lin Wan's team also returned.

Lin Wan's findings were a bit more substantial than Chen Rong's.

"About one kilometer to the west, there is a dried-up riverbed," Lin Wan said. "The riverbed is very wide, about twenty meters or so, but there is no water in it, only dried-out silt and rubble. There are some collapsed stone walls on both banks of the riverbed, which look like the foundations of buildings from a long time ago."

"In addition, we found a broken stone plaque on the edge of the riverbed." Lin Wan pulled a palm-sized stone fragment from her backpack. "Only two characters are left on the plaque; the rest are broken."

She handed the stone fragment to Tao Zhe.

Tao Zhe took it and identified it.

"'Heavenly Palace'," he said. "Only these two characters remain."

Everyone looked at each other.

Heavenly Palace.

The "Heavenly Palace" of the Danding Heavenly Palace.

This indicated that the architectural ruins of the Danding Heavenly Palace were nearby.

Su Mingyuan pieced together the information brought back by the two teams in his mind.

There were stone pillar remains to the east, and building foundations and a stone plaque inscribed with "Heavenly Palace" to the west.

Both directions had traces of the Danding Heavenly Palace, but they were all just broken walls and ruins; the true main body of the Sect should still be further away.

He looked at the mountain in the distance.

Looking from the cave entrance, that mountain was roughly in the due north direction, and the distance was estimated to be over ten kilometers. The palace complex above the mountainside appeared faintly in the dim, yellow light.

If the location of the Danding Heavenly Palace's Sect was on that mountain, a journey of over ten kilometers was not considered far for Chen Rong and Lin Wan's pace.

However, the area in between was covered with skeletal remains; once the Blood Moon rose, there would be moving skeletons everywhere. He had to calculate the time well.

Over the next few hours, everyone rested, ate, and Cultivated in the cave.

Han Li compiled a list of Spirit Medicine, recording a total of twenty-three types of Spirit Medicine she could recognize, corresponding to eleven Pill Formulas mentioned in the notes of the Immortal Master Yuling.

There were seven or eight more she didn't recognize, for which she drew the leaf shapes and stem colors, planning to look them up after returning.

Tao Zhe reviewed the stone pillar text that Chen Rong had made rubbings of and identified a few characters, roughly along the lines of "...Outer Sect Disciple... unauthorized entry prohibited..." and similar rules, further confirming that this area indeed belonged to the outer perimeter of the Danding Heavenly Palace.

Time passed bit by bit.

Su Mingyuan sat inside the corridor of the cave entrance, watching the Bone Plains outside.

The gray-white sky, the dim yellow light, and the endless skeletal remains.

It was very quiet, and nothing moved. He waited for a long time.

It was probably around the twenty-fourth hour after they arrived in this world that the sky began to change.

The gray-white sky slowly darkened, and the dim yellow light gradually transitioned into a dark red.

Su Mingyuan stood up.

"The Blood Moon is about to rise," he called out into the cave.

Tao Zhe was the first to run out, holding paper and a pen.

The two stood at the cave entrance, watching the color of the sky deepening bit by bit.

After about ten minutes or so, the dark red moon rose from the edge of the sky. It was big and red, exactly the same as yesterday.

On the Bone Plains in the distance, skeletal remains began to move. First, it was a few scattered ones, then more and more; green fire lit up in the skulls of the skeletons, they stood up shakily, and then began to attack each other. The sound of bones colliding came from afar.

Tao Zhe recorded the time on the paper.

"The people on guard duty yesterday recorded that the Blood Moon lasted about twelve hours from rising to setting," he said. "The interval from when the Blood Moon set until it rose again now is also about twelve hours."

He looked up at the Blood Moon.

"If the Blood Moon sets again tonight after lasting twelve hours, then we can basically confirm the pattern—the Blood Moon rises for twelve hours and sets for twelve hours, repeating in a cycle."

Su Mingyuan nodded.

"That means our safe activity window is only twelve hours."

"Exactly," Tao Zhe said. "Twelve hours to go out, twelve hours to come back and hide. If you are still outside after the time is up, you have to face the skeletons everywhere."

Su Mingyuan looked at the mountain in the distance.

Over ten kilometers.

Twelve hours.

There was enough time, but it wasn't generous. Once there, they would still need to explore, find things, and leave time to come back.

He looked back into the cave.

Everyone was gathered near the cave entrance, waiting for him to speak.

"We will confirm the duration of the Blood Moon tonight," Su Mingyuan said. "If it is indeed twelve hours, then after the Blood Moon sets tomorrow, we will head in the direction of that mountain."

He pointed to the high mountain due north, which had a palace complex on its mountainside.

"The location of the Danding Heavenly Palace's Sect is most likely there."