25: Chapter 25 Wild Dog Ridge

Great Yu Cultivation World, Black Wind Forest.

In a pile of rotting leaves, a black beetle was gnawing on a piece of bloody flesh.

Suddenly, a faint ripple in space emerged.

The beetle scrambled into the soil in a panic.

Gu Shen's figure appeared out of thin air in the tree hollow where he had left.

The moment he appeared, he flattened himself against the ground like a dormant toad, remaining completely motionless. He even switched his breathing to the Fetal Breath technique.

One incense stick of time passed.

Two incense sticks of time passed.

All was quiet, save for the rustling of the wind through the treetops. There was no Divine Sense sweeping by, nor the eerie laughter of demonic Cultivators.

The once heavy scent of blood in the air had been washed away by the continuous rain, leaving only the sour stench of rotting vegetation.

Gu Shen slowly raised his head and looked into the distance.

Scattered throughout the forest were several mutilated corpses, including apprentices in the grey robes of the Baicao Pavilion and Blood-Clad Guards in blood-red cloaks. The Storage Pouches on the bodies had long since vanished, and even the Magical Artifacts in their hands had been stripped clean.

"It seems the battlefield has already been cleared."

Gu Shen stood up and brushed the dirt off his body.

Whoever cleared the battlefield was either a high-level expert from the Righteous Path who arrived later, or one of those black-market vultures who specialized in trading from the dead.

Regardless of which it was, it meant this place was temporarily safe.

Gu Shen touched the storage ring in his bosom and cast his gaze toward the deeper parts of the Black Wind Forest.

He chose not to return to Qingyun Market immediately.

As a member of the herb-gathering team who had deserted his post, his current status was that of a "dead man." If he appeared at the entrance of the market alive, he would immediately be seized by the Law Enforcement Hall for soul-searching.

"Since I've become a Loose Cultivator, I must go where Loose Cultivators belong."

Gu Shen recalled the markings on the animal-hide map inside his storage ring.

Three hundred miles outside the Black Wind Forest, there was a lawless zone not under the jurisdiction of the five major Sects, known as "Wild Dog Ridge." It was a paradise for bandit Cultivators, evil Cultivators, and fugitive Loose Cultivators.

It was also his new destination to offload stolen goods and purchase items for Foundation Establishment.

Gu Shen pulled up the hood of his grey robe, obscuring most of his face. The shadow shoes beneath his feet shimmered with a dark light; with a flicker of his figure, he vanished like a lone wolf into the vast, poisonous miasma, silent and traceless.

The continuous rain finally ceased.

The poisonous miasma within the Black Wind Forest, pressed down by the rain, had settled to waist height, resembling a roiling, grey-black swamp.

Gu Shen stepped on his shadow shoes, leaping nimbly between the thick tree branches.

Three more days had passed since that battle between the Righteous and Demonic paths. During these three days, he hid in hollow, withered trees during the day and only traveled at night under the moonlight.

For a Foundation Establishment Stage expert capable of flying on Magical Artifacts, a three-hundred-mile journey would take no more than half an hour. But for a Cultivator at the Qi Refining Stage who had to rely on his own two legs and hide his tracks in the dangerous dense forest, it was a long and perilous journey.

Hoo.

Gu Shen landed on a thick, horizontal branch, his chest rising and falling slightly.

After two consecutive nights of travel, combined with keeping his Divine Sense extended at all times, he had consumed nearly half of his spiritual power.

In this dangerous wilderness, once one's spiritual power dropped below seventy percent, it was akin to handing half one's life over to the King of Hell.

Gu Shen did not hesitate; he probed his Divine Sense into the storage ring, retrieved a drop of essence white dew (inferior) extracted from a Level 1 Corpse Dog, and swallowed it.

A faint but pure spiritual energy dissipated within his abdomen.

In a mere ten breaths, the consumed magic power was fully replenished.

"Although inferior white dew is useless for increasing cultivation, as a consumable for recovering magic power, it is a hundred times better than the Qi-Returning Pills sold in the market, and it has absolutely no pill toxins."

Gu Shen silently accounted for the remaining five drops of inferior white dew in his storage ring and set off again.

...

Two days later.

At the edge of the Black Wind Forest, the terrain gradually rose. A grey-black mountain ridge, stretching across the wasteland like the bones of a colossal beast, appeared in Gu Shen's line of sight.

Wild Dog Ridge.

This was not a mountain, but a precipitous ridge over ten miles long.

On both sides of the ridge were bottomless abysses of poisonous miasma, with only a rugged stone path in the middle leading upward. Densely packed stone houses, wooden sheds, and caves were piled together without any order, like parasites growing on the beast's bones.

The air was thick with a scent of blood and inferior strong liquor, even more intense than in the Black Wind Forest.

There were no protective Formations here, only the law of the jungle.

Gu Shen stopped in a thicket three miles away from the mountain path.

He began to change his appearance.

The grey robes of a Baicao Pavilion apprentice he had been wearing had already been torn and crumpled back in the Black Wind Forest. At this moment, he grabbed two handfuls of poisonous purple sap from the ground and smeared it fiercely onto his face and neck.

Accompanied by a slight stinging sensation, his originally sallow complexion quickly developed a layer of sickly, dark purple patches, making him look like a Loose Cultivator who had practiced some kind of poison art for years, leading to a buildup of toxins.

He let his hair hang loose, obscuring half of his face.

Afterwards, he hung the fierce-looking gold-severing saber in the most conspicuous position on his waist.

In this lawless land, feigning weakness would only attract the biting of countless hyenas. Showing appropriate aggression, while simultaneously appearing as a half-cripple suffering from the backlash of poison arts, was the safest disguise.

As for the black turtle shield and the resentful bone flute, they remained locked tightly in his storage ring, never to be shown easily.

Once prepared, Gu Shen hunched his back, his eyes sinister, and walked slowly toward the mountain path.

At the entrance of the mountain path, a makeshift checkpoint had been set up using a dozen sharpened giant logs.

Three burly Cultivators were sitting by the checkpoint, roasting the leg of an unknown Yao Beast. The leader was a one-eyed man at Level 5 Qi Refining, with a menacing aura of Evil Qi about him.

Seeing Gu Shen approach, the one-eyed man didn't even lift his eyelids, and a lackey at Qi Refining Level 3 walked over, carrying a blade.

"New here? Do you know the rules?" The lackey looked Gu Shen up and down.

Gu Shen did not speak; he merely intentionally released a trace of his aura at Qi Refining Stage 4 Perfection, while his right hand rested seemingly casually on the hilt of his gold-severing saber.

The blade, mixed with geng metal sand, emitted a sharp, air-cutting aura even while still in its scabbard.

The lackey's footsteps faltered, a flash of apprehension passing through his eyes. His tone softened slightly: "Entrance fee is ten crystal fragments. Regardless of what enemies you've provoked outside, as long as you pay, you can settle down in Wild Dog Ridge."

Ten crystal fragments.

Gu Shen fished out the only half Spirit Stone from his bosom, and in front of the lackey, forcefully snapped off one-fifth of it and flicked it over.

"I know the rules." His voice was hoarse, carrying a metallic grinding sound characteristic of poison arts.

The lackey caught the crystal fragment, weighed it in his hand, gave a cold snort, and cleared the way.