11: Chapter 11 The Mysterious Cave, The Yellow Emperor's Opportunity!

"That direction—how far is it from here?"

"Judging by the position of the light pillar, it's just past that mountain range to the south," A-Yao estimated. "But at your speed, it will still take almost half a day to get there."

Lin Ye immediately turned around and went back to the wooden hut to gather his belongings.

With the zhulong staff hung at his waist, the kun tu jade essence pressed against his chest, and the bone needle and beast-tendon thread stuffed into his robes.

As he stepped out of the wooden hut, A-Yao blocked his path.

"Lin Ye. An anomaly descending from the sky will attract all the powerful strange beasts in this area. A secret realm that has survived to this day is often fraught with peril. Are you sure you want to go?"

"I'm going."

A-Yao stared at him for a few seconds before stepping aside.

Lin Ye cupped his fists toward Kuayan and A-Yao, turned around, and dashed off toward the south.

His speed was incomparably faster than it had been a few days ago.

The ground rapidly retreated beneath his feet, and rocks, trees, and grass blurred past.

After crossing two mountain peaks, the sight ahead gradually became clear.

Where the pillar of light landed was a circular valley, at the bottom of which lay a massive collapsed crater at least five hundred meters in diameter.

The light pillar was gushing out directly from the center of this crater.

The surrounding valley was already crowded with strange beasts.

Lin Ye crouched behind a boulder, his pupils narrowing slightly as he scanned them one by one.

On the eastern ridge lay a giant green-scaled python with a body as thick as a water vat; its scales gleamed with a cold light, each as large as a washbasin.

Just lying there motionless, the sinister aura it emanated caused a ring of surrounding vegetation to wither.

Perched on the western cliff was a pitch-black strange bird. Wings folded, its four eyes rotated simultaneously, monitoring every movement in the valley.

A bloody severed limb of an unknown beast still hung from its talons.

In the northern woods, a giant ape-like beast was faintly visible. Standing at least eight meters tall and covered in dark red mane, every step it took made the ground tremble.

It paced back and forth at the edge of the forest, occasionally issuing low growls toward the direction of the light pillar.

Lin Ye withdrew his gaze, his heart beating fast.

He was no match for any single one of them right now.

But he hadn't come here to fight these creatures in the first place.

Lin Ye kept his body low, using the boulders for cover as he slowly made his way along the edge of the valley.

His goal was not the center of the light pillar, but the neglected corners along the valley's rim.

He searched for about the time it takes an incense stick to burn.

At long last!

At the base of a cliff on the southwestern side of the valley, he discovered a cave entrance.

The opening was not large, about the height of a person, with heavily weathered edges, yet faint traces of artificial carving could still be seen.

Lin Ye squatted down and wiped away the moss and dirt on the cave wall with his hand.

Beneath it, a ring of ancient patterns was revealed.

Coiling twin dragons!

The tails of the two dragons met at the top of the entrance, their heads positioned on the left and right, and their bodies coiling into a perfect circle.

The carving technique was archaic and powerful, with every line incised deeply into the stone wall.

Even after thousands or tens of thousands of years of weathering, those two pairs of dragon eyes still radiated an awe-inspiring majesty.

Lin Ye's pupils shrank sharply.

He felt that the pattern looked somewhat familiar.

Reflecting for a moment, Lin Ye suddenly realized...

"The Twin Dragon Pattern? The primitive totem used before the Yellow Emperor unified the tribes. This pattern predates the five-clawed golden dragon common in later generations and can be traced back to the Yan-Huang Era as the ancestral emblem of the Xuanyuan Clan."

The Xuanyuan Clan!

The clan of the Yellow Emperor?!

Lin Ye's breathing grew suddenly rapid.

The greatest regret of his past life was that his mentor had spent his whole life obsessed with the Classic of Mountains and Seas and researching the deeds of the Yellow Emperor, yet was never able to find physical evidence proving the Yellow Emperor's actual existence.

Those rubbings, fragmentary slips, and oracle inscriptions were all merely indirect supporting evidence.

And right now, a cave entrance carved with the emblem of the Xuanyuan Clan lay right before his eyes!

Taking a deep breath to suppress his surging emotions, Lin Ye turned sideways and slipped inside.

The passage was extremely narrow at first, allowing entry only sideways.

It widened the further he went, and after about a hundred meters, the space ahead opened up grandly.

A man-made stone chamber appeared before him.

The chamber was not large, with four smooth walls and a floor paved with polished stone slabs.

The four walls were densely carved with ancient script and simple drawings.

The form of these characters was even older than oracle bone script, lying somewhere between pictures and symbols, but Lin Ye could barely decipher them.

As a graduate student in archaeology, his mentor's notes contained numerous comparative charts analyzing these ancient scripts, which he had read through countless times.

Walking up to the first stone wall and scanning the first few lines, Lin Ye froze completely.

"'I toured the Great Wilderness and arrived here, seeing turbid Qi blighting the sun and evil beasts devouring men. Mindful of future generations, if anyone should reach this place, I hereby pass down to you the method of Qi refining.'"

"Zhen."

In later generations, this character was the exclusive royal self-appellation for emperors.

But in the Yan-Huang Era, "Zhen" was a common first-person pronoun that anyone could use.

However, one who would use this character, master the Twin Dragon Totem, and be qualified to "tour the Great Wilderness"...

There was only one such existence in ancient Chinese history.

The Yellow Emperor!

Lin Ye's hands trembled slightly, his expression turning excited. "The Yellow Emperor truly lives up to his reputation as an ancient benevolent sovereign who benefited humanity! Just because the turbid Qi here was once too heavy, he specifically created this cave to leave behind a Qi refining technique for future generations."

He read further down.

What was carved on the wall was a Qi refining technique; it was only about two-thirds complete, with the latter portion incomplete due to cracks in the rock.

However, the core concept was preserved remarkably intact.

"'Take heaven and earth as the cauldron, essence and Qi as the ingredients, and the mind and spirit as the heat control.'"

The more Lin Ye read, the more astonished he became.

This was on a completely different level from his previous desperate attempt to forcibly absorb the Zhulong Divine Sense.

Forcible absorption was like swallowing external energy raw and pouring it violently into his body.

Qi refining technique was first decomposing the energy, then refining it, and finally recombining it into an existence perfectly compatible with oneself.

In other words, the function of the kun tu jade essence was to harmonize.

Turning violent energy gentle, like conditioning with medicine.

Whereas the function of the Xuanyuan Qi Refining Technique was refinement!

Completely converting external energy into one's own, like recasting in a furnace.

Stacking the two together would increase efficiency at least severalfold!

Lin Ye suppressed his wild joy and continued reading further.

The subsequent walls of the stone chamber were carved with other contents.

One showed a simple map marking the mountains, rivers, and cardinal directions of the western Great Wilderness.

At the destination on the map was carved an ancient seal character...

Xu.

Beside it was a line of small characters: "'The Mount Kunlun Xu, eight hundred li square and ten thousand ren high. Upon it resides the Queen Mother of the West, guardian of the Elixir of Immortality.'"

Another line below read: "'I once ascended Mount Kunlun seeking the elixir, but failed to obtain it. I leave this here for one fated to inherit my will and ascend Mount Kunlun once more.'"

Lin Ye frowned slightly.

The Yellow Emperor personally ascended Mount Kunlun to ask the Queen Mother of the West for the Elixir of Immortality, but returned empty-handed?

This differed from the myths passed down in later generations.

In mythology, it was Hou Yi who sought the elixir; accounts of the Yellow Emperor seeking it were extremely rare.

Did the Queen Mother of the West refuse to give it?

Or was there some other reason?

The stone carvings offered no explanation.

But this piece of information was itself a foreshadowing.

Kunlun Xu, eight hundred li square and ten thousand ren high... this place was somewhere he would have to go sooner or later!

Because this Kunlun Xu was very likely the legendary Kunlun Divine Palace where the Queen Mother of the West resided!

The opportunities and supreme treasures there would be even greater!

The Tree of Immortality, the Jade Pool, the Fine Jade of Kunlun, the Spiritual Waters of the Four Rivers, the Divine Flat Peach Tree, the Kunlun Mirror, the Taiji Diagram, and so forth...

Then.

Lin Ye walked to the exact center of the stone chamber, his gaze falling onto the ground beneath his feet.

A translucent jade slab about a foot square was embedded in the center of the floor.

Sealed beneath the jade slab was an object...

A drop of blood.

A drop of blood, dark gold in color, suspended right in the center of the jade!

After countless tens of thousands of years, this drop of blood still emanated a faint dark-gold light, pulsating gently as if a heart were beating.

Just standing beside the jade slab, Lin Ye felt his shoulders weigh heavily under an invisible pressure.

This pressure was completely different from Zhulong's.

Zhulong's was a destructive, wild force that crushed everything in its path.

But what this drop of blood emanated was a heavier, far more vast regal aura of dominion.

It was as if ten thousand troops were bowing their heads before you all at once!

Next to the jade slab was carved a line of characters:

"'This is a drop of my life blood essence, left for a destined successor of future generations. If obtained, it can cleanse the marrow and alter the meridians, forging the foundation of a Human Sovereign. However, none without perseverance may endure it, and none without benevolence may inherit it!'"