148: Chapter 148 Boundary Marker

Morning mist, like gauze, flowed silently through the desolate forest.

Gu Shen paused under a dead camphor tree.

He did not look back, but the AI Crystal between his brows was pulsing at an extremely low frequency, parsing every rustle of the wind, insect chirps, and falling leaves within a radius of ten miles.

At the edge of his Divine Sense, on the distant eastern skyline, a layer of faint, blood-colored formation light was faintly rolling.

That was the direction of Yunze Immortal City; the blockade of the city-protecting formation had not only not been lifted but was instead exuding a sense of reckless brutality.

"Wei Lingfeng self-destructed, and the whereabouts of the blood marrow lotus are unknown. With so many elites from the two major Sects dead, the Immortal City must have already become a slaughterhouse of indiscriminate soul-searching."

Gu Shen made a cold deduction in his heart.

When the interests of the major Sects in the Cultivation World are damaged to a certain extent, they never care about evidence or reason.

The disguise of Thousand Faces is not absolutely safe against the Karma investigations of Golden Core or even Nascent Soul old monsters.

Go to the Immortal City to fence the goods? That would be equivalent to voluntarily putting his head under someone else's guillotine.

Gu Shen shifted his gaze slightly, looking toward the west of the desolate forest.

"The Spiritual Qi of the Great Yu Cultivation World is gentle and orderly; it is a hotbed for Sect Cultivators to undergo Foundation Establishment, but it is also a cage set by the Heavenly Dao. If I want to smelt the Origin of the two worlds and forge that Dao foundation that jumps out of the two worlds, I must not do it where the order of the Heavenly Dao is tightest."

With a thought, he made up his mind.

West, keep going west. Leave the territory of the Great Yu Sects and go to that wild frontier where even Cultivators are unwilling to easily set foot—the Yunmeng Great Swamp.

Gu Shen took a deep breath, and the dark cyan Longevity Art mana in his Meridians quietly receded, replaced by the pure Physical Body kinetic energy bursting from deep within his dark gold bones.

The shadow shoes under his feet shimmered with dark light.

Swish.

Gu Shen's figure turned into an afterimage flying close to the ground, silently disappearing into the vast mountains to the west.

...

This trek lasted for two full months.

He did not take any flying spirit boats, nor did he ride any Magical Artifacts to show off in the sky.

Gu Shen was like a patient lone wolf, using the most primitive running to measure the vastness of the Great Yu Cultivation World.

The multi-threaded processing capability of the AI Crystal allowed him to demonstrate astonishing endurance during this long-distance raid.

One thread controlled the breathing rhythm of the Bone Refining Art, suppressing physical energy consumption to the minimum; another thread constantly adjusted the force angle of his leg muscles, coordinating with the shadow shoes to avoid any mud that might leave footprints; his main consciousness was like a cold radar, scanning the road ahead.

The further west he went, the sparser the population became.

Until the end of the second month.

"Master, there is a clear data discontinuity in the air composition."

At his collar, the Crab, which had been in silent standby mode, issued a faint frequency vibration alarm.

Its electronic voice contained a trace of rigorous analysis: "Microwave spectroscopy shows that the density of conventional spiritual particles in the air ahead is dropping off a cliff. Replacing them is a type of highly active, highly corrosive macromolecular suspension. Judging from the chemical composition, it contains a large amount of unknown neurotoxins and rotten alkaloids."

Gu Shen stopped in his tracks.

He stood on a towering ridge, overlooking the front.

At the end of his vision, the color of the earth changed.

It was no longer the common green hills and clear waters of the Cultivation World, but a boundless, grayish-brown swamp.

Thick, tangible gray-green miasma, like a thick cashmere blanket, tightly covered the water and jungle.

Sunlight was refracted here into a bleak yellow-green, exuding a sense of primitive wildness and dead silence.

The extreme region of the western border of Great Yu, the intersection of the Ten Thousand Mang Mountains and the Yunmeng Great Swamp.

Gu Shen could clearly feel that standing on this dividing line, the Spiritual Qi of the Cultivation World became extremely violent.

The normally gentle Five Elements Spiritual Qi was like wild horses off the leash here, colliding and biting each other.

When ordinary Qi Refining Cultivators come here, let alone breathing and Cultivating, even taking a deep breath would cause the chaotic and violent Spiritual Qi to make their Meridians ache faintly.

But Gu Shen felt completely comfortable.

The main Cultivation Technique in his body, the Longevity Art, had long been transformed into dark cyan mana with highly toxic properties when he was refining mutated wood marrow in the Wasteland.

This living environment, filled with toxic miasma and disorder, actually faintly resonated with the power within his body.

Gu Shen walked down the ridge and stepped into the edge of the grayish-brown mud swamp.

"Blub... blub..."

In the mud ahead, several basin-sized toxic bubbles emerged.

Gu Shen did not release his Divine Sense; that was the most foolish provocation for a Cultivator in an unfamiliar environment.

He just narrowed his eyes slightly.

The mud churned, and a giant toxic crocodile, over three zhang long and covered in scales like black iron, slowly emerged from the swamp.

It had no eyes; its head only had two rows of intricate breathing holes, and the aura it emitted was comparable to that of a human Cultivator at the Peak of Qi Refining Level 8.

But this was not the most lethal part.

"Master, infrared thermal imaging shows that this beast is just a sentry. Ten to thirty zhang deep in the mud to your front left, there are thirty-eight cold-blooded heat sources of the same size lurking."

The Crab's voice gave the physical coordinates extremely calmly.

Gu Shen's fingers, which were pressing on the thunder pattern gold-slaying blade, slowly relaxed.

If he were to start a massacre here just for the Materials of a few Tier 2 Yao Beasts, the smell of blood would immediately attract the truly terrifying existences from deep within the Great Swamp.

Being a newcomer, staying low is the best strategy.

The dark gold iron bones in Gu Shen's body vibrated slightly, lowering his heartbeat to the minimum.

The Thousand Faces breath-concealing technique, combined with the faint withered wood aura of the Wood Armor Technique, disguised his entire person as a piece of lifeless, rotten wood.

Stepping in his shadow shoes, light as a swallow, he followed the heat source blind spots marked by the Crab, and with a footwork that looked slow but was actually incredibly fast, he slid silently past the edge of the toxic crocodile pack's territory.

The toxic crocodile that had surfaced twitched its breathing holes, twisted its massive body in confusion, and finally, having detected no strange aura, sank back into the mud.

Avoiding a series of peripheral low-level Yao Beast territories, Gu Shen stopped in front of a giant mangrove forest covered in barbs.

Between two thick tree roots, a dilapidated blue stone stele was half-buried.

The stone stele was covered with claw marks and corrosive pits; only two ancient and warning-filled characters could be barely identified: [Yunmeng].

This was a boundary stele left by an unknown generation of powerful figures in the Great Yu Cultivation World after they had surveyed the boundaries of human survival.

East of the boundary stele was the Sect territory with strict Laws and rigorous rules.

West of the boundary stele was the absolute jungle where Yao Cultivators ran rampant, Essence Spirits abounded, and no human morality was observed.

Gu Shen reached out and wiped the mud off the boundary stele.

He turned his head and glanced at the east.

There, there had been the White Bone Forest blood formation that treated Loose Cultivators as medicine ingredients, and Soul Transformation great Cultivators who fought until the heavens crumbled for the sake of competing for rare items.

"The Heavenly Dao sets the game, and the Sects play the chess. As for your rules, I, Gu, will not be playing along for now."

Gu Shen turned around and lowered the bamboo hat on his head.

His gray robes rolled up with the wind, and he stepped over the blue stone boundary stele without hesitation, his entire person completely merging into the boundless, thick miasma of the Yunmeng Great Swamp.