42: Chapter 42 Border Town and Whitewash

On the border of the Chen Kingdom lies Pingyang City.

The towering blue-brick city walls were covered in the marks of blades and axes. Outside the city gates, refugees and merchant caravans formed long queues.

Gu Shen wore a bamboo hat and carried the thunder pattern gold-slaying blade, wrapped in layers of tattered cloth, on his back, blending into the crowd. The Thousand Faces on his face disguised him as a down-and-out swordsman with a sallow complexion and a scar on his left cheek.

Stepping into this region, the most immediate sensation was one of "impurity."

The Spiritual Qi between heaven and earth was extremely thin, almost stagnant. In its place was the turbid Qi of the Mortal World. If ordinary Cultivators stayed here for too long, not only would their magic power struggle to make any progress, but their Meridians could even be eroded by the turbid Qi, causing their cultivation level to regress.

Therefore, Cultivators from the five major Sects rarely set foot in the Mortal World.

But this was exactly what Gu Shen wanted. For others, it was a dead zone devoid of spiritual energy, but for him, it was the perfect safe haven.

"Entry fee, ten copper coins! Don't block the way!"

The city gate guards were roughly shoving the refugees.

Gu Shen walked forward without speaking; he simply fished a piece of broken silver from his sleeve and flicked it into the guard's embrace with a finger.

This was some Mortal currency he had casually kept while inventorying the Storage Pouch of the demonic Cultivator earlier. Those low-level rogue Cultivators who licked blood from the edge of a blade at Wild Dog Ridge would always carry some Mortal gold and silver for emergencies.

The guard squeezed the silver piece, then glanced at the long saber on Gu Shen's back and his cold, indifferent eyes. He immediately put on a smiling face, bowing and scraping as he let him pass.

Entering Pingyang City.

The streets were muddy, lined with low-slung tiled houses, and the sounds of hawking and fighting intermingled.

Gu Shen did not go to the bustling inns; instead, he went straight to the agency in the west of the city and found an old agent.

"I want to buy a secluded, detached courtyard. It needs to be quiet, preferably with no neighbors nearby. It doesn't matter if the feng shui is poor." Gu Shen's voice was raspy.

The old agent took a piece of broken silver, immediately beamed with joy, and led Gu Shen to a dead-end alley at the very edge of the west side of the city.

This place was against the city wall, with half the courtyard wall collapsed, the yard overgrown with weeds, and the wooden door of the main house rotting away.

"Esteemed hero, this courtyard originally belonged to a butcher who later encountered robbers, and his whole family died. Everyone around here considered it bad luck and moved away. If you like it, you can take it for ten taels of silver." The old agent carefully observed Gu Shen's expression.

"This will do."

Gu Shen readily paid the silver, took the deed, and sent the old agent away.

He closed the rotting courtyard gate.

Gu Shen stood in the center of the weed-choked courtyard, his Divine Sense spreading out like ripples in water.

Within a radius of thirty zhang, there were only a few stray cats and mice; there was no trace of any Cultivator, not even any strong Mortal Martial Artist.

Extremely safe.

He walked into the main house and swept away the thick cobwebs and dust with a wave of his sleeve.

Afterward, he took the Formation Plate of the Thick Earth Array out of his storage ring and placed it on the ground in the center of the room. In the slots of the Formation Plate, the three Low-Grade Spirit Stones, which had consumed half of their Spiritual Qi, were still embedded.

Hum.

A faint earthy-yellow light barrier rose along the walls of the main house, then quickly vanished.

It isolated detection and sealed off his Qi signature.

After finishing all this, Gu Shen finally breathed a sigh of relief and sat cross-legged on the dusty wooden bed.

Days of traveling and tension left him feeling deeply exhausted. The magic power in his Dantian had been heavily depleted while crossing the Canglan River; now, less than ten percent remained.

He took out a drop of inferior white dew and swallowed it.

Pure spiritual power dispersed, quickly filling his parched Meridians. It didn't matter that the Mortal World lacked Spiritual Qi; as long as he had the white dew refined by the Great Furnace, he could maintain his Peak state at any time.

A sense of hunger struck his stomach.

Gu Shen took out another jar of iron-sealed meat paste, pried it open with the tip of his blade, and swallowed it in a few mouthfuls, suppressing the consumption of his Physical Body.

"The meat in the Mortal World lacks vital essence, and this meat paste left behind by the Ancient Sect is almost gone. I must find more supplies in those Spiritless Ruins."

Gu Shen calculated in his mind.

Just as he was preparing to close his eyes and rest, a burst of extremely noisy carriage and horse sounds came from the street outside the courtyard wall.

Logically speaking, this dead-end alley in the west of the city was extremely remote; usually, even the night watchman wouldn't come here, so why would a caravan pass by?

Gu Shen frowned slightly, and his Divine Sense silently probed outward.

Outside the wall.

A dozen heavy single-wheeled carts were struggling to move forward on the muddy street. The ones pulling the carts were all emaciated Mortal laborers, and those guarding the carts were a dozen Jianghu men wielding steel blades and wearing black short-sleeved outfits.

"Hurry up! You dare to dawdle on a job for the Black Tiger Gang? This batch of white ash soil must be sent out of the city before dark and transported to Dragon Tooth Valley in the north!" The scarred, burly man leading them brandished a leather whip, lashing it fiercely across the back of a slow-moving laborer.

White ash soil?

Gu Shen's Divine Sense swept over the soil covered by oilcloth on those carts.

The moment he perceived it, Gu Shen's eyes suddenly narrowed.

That was not just ordinary white ash soil. Mixed within that layer of gray soil were extremely fine white bone fragments, and it emitted a chilling corpse Qi that only a Cultivator could detect.

This was yin-gathering soil, which could only be formed in the depths of a mass grave where thousands of Mortals were buried, after being nourished by Yin Qi for a hundred years!

"Mortal Gangs could never recognize this stuff, let alone have any use for it."

In Gu Shen's mind, the blood-sucking, ghastly white bone trees in the White Bone Forest flashed instantly.

The Formation classics of the Great Yu Cultivation World recorded that if one wanted to set up a sky-covering Blood Sacrifice Array in a place of extreme Yin, one must use a massive amount of yin-gathering soil as the foundation to stabilize the Formation so it wouldn't be washed away by Yang Qi.

Gu Shen understood everything in an instant.

The massive blood array that the Blood Fiend Sect and Danding Sect were colluding on required a staggering amount of Materials. Not only did they kill Loose Cultivators to use as ingredients, but even the Materials for the Formation were being continuously scoured and transported from Mortal kingdoms by secretly controlling Jianghu Gangs in the Mortal World!

"It seems that the great array in the White Bone Forest cannot be completed overnight. The maturation of the blood marrow lotus will likely take a very long time."

Gu Shen withdrew his Divine Sense, completely hiding himself within the isolation of the Formation.

He had no intention of going out to punish the wicked, nor did he have any thought of intercepting that batch of yin-gathering soil.

That was a death trap involving the interests of the high-level officials of the two major Sects. Anyone who attempted to touch this transport line would be crushed into powder by the Sect Cultivators guarding it in secret.

He was merely a fugitive at Qi Refinement Level 6.

"No matter how much the world outside turns upside down, it has nothing to do with me. I am just borrowing a plot of land in this Mortal World to serve as my anchor point for crossing worlds."

Gu Shen closed his eyes, no longer paying attention to the caravan moving away outside the wall.

Although this courtyard was dilapidated, with the protection of the Formation, it was better than any inn in the outside world.

With a thought.

In his Sea of Consciousness, the [Heaven and Earth Furnace] shook violently, scattering endless gray mist.

...

The deathly silent Spiritless Ruins.

Gu Shen's figure quietly appeared.

He did not appear in the restricted area on the third floor that he had dismantled, but precisely landed on the first floor of the ruins, in that dark storage room where he had first hidden and where the iron-sealed meat paste had been stored.

Before crossing worlds, he had already set the coordinates.

The fourth floor above the third was a death zone soaked in monster corpse puppets; he absolutely could not go there.

As for the second floor, he had only passed through it hurriedly before and had not explored it carefully. Since he was going to lay low in the Mortal World for a long time, this vast Ancient Sect Spiritless Ruins was his only backyard for acquiring resources and honing his combat skills.

Gu Shen gripped the thunder pattern gold-slaying blade at his waist.

Pushing open the iron door of the storage room, the hall outside was still shrouded in thick gray mist.

Without the roar of the Tier 3 Cursed Corpse, the first floor was terrifyingly silent.

Wearing his shadow shoes, he followed the edge of the hall and, with practiced ease, arrived before the broken refined iron staircase leading to the second floor.

"I don't care about Mortal disputes, but I will eat up every last thing left behind by this Ancient Sect."

Gu Shen stepped onto the stairs, like a lone wolf, diving into the deeper darkness.