23: Chapter 23 Deep Pool

Chen Mo bypassed a mountain ridge, and the terrain suddenly dropped, revealing a long, narrow valley lying before him.

On both sides of the valley were nearly vertical rock walls, covered with deep green moss and hanging ferns.

A crystal-clear stream meandered through the bottom of the valley.

The water quality was extremely clear.

It was so clear that by leaning over, one could see the texture of every grain of sand and every pebble at the bottom at a single glance.

Occasionally, a few small mountain stream fish would swim upstream; their bodies were translucent, their spines faintly visible, and they moved so quickly that they would disappear in a flash.

Chen Mo squatted down, cupped a handful of water, and brought it to his lips to take a sip.

It was cold and sweet, carrying the scent of minerals seeping out from the depths of the mountain.

He had made a detailed plan, so there was no need to rush like he did on the first day.

When encountering complex terrain or areas with particularly dense vegetation, he would deliberately take a detour, wanting to see more types of terrain and expand the scope of his observation samples.

After walking upstream along the valley for about two or three hundred meters, he suddenly stopped.

In a shaded rock crevice by the stream, a medium-sized herbaceous plant was growing.

Its stem was upright, about forty centimeters tall, with seven narrow leaves whorled at the top, clear leaf veins, and slightly curled edges.

A slender flower stalk extended from the center of the leaves, with a yellow-green flower blooming at the tip.

Seven-Leaf One Flower.

Also known as Chonglou.

Chen Mo squatted down, reached out to gently brush away the gravel nearby, and carefully dug out the entire root system of the plant along with the soil.

He had seen it in books before; this was one of the famous "Four Treasures of Shennong" in the Shennong Mountain Range. Its main effects were clearing heat and detoxifying, reducing swelling and relieving pain, and it was especially effective for snake bites.

This thing had extremely harsh requirements for its growth environment and could only be found in valleys with high altitude, suitable humidity, and just the right amount of sunlight.

Nowadays, the price of wild Seven-Leaf One Flower on the market has been hyped up to an astronomical price, but it is a nationally protected rare plant, and it is almost impossible to buy wild ones through regular channels.

He brought the plant to his nose and sniffed it.

A very faint, fresh herbal scent, with no other smell.

Then he channeled his perception to examine the interior of the plant.

Just as expected, there were no signs of any Spiritual Qi storage.

Although there were trace remnants of Spiritual Qi in the root tissue, it was not stored by the plant through active absorption; it was merely left behind by dissipating Spiritual Qi as it flowed past the root system, just like the shrubs he had observed in the back mountain.

Spiritual Qi would flow through them, but it would not accumulate within their bodies.

However, as the concentration of Spiritual Qi continues to increase, it should eventually give rise to Spirit Medicine that truly stores Spiritual Qi in the future.

Just not now.

He wrapped the Seven-Leaf One Flower in a soft cloth and carefully placed it into the side pocket of his backpack.

Continuing upward, he successively discovered a few clusters of Trillium and Dysosma versipellis, both famous rare medicinal herbs of the Shennong Mountain Range, but like that Chonglou, there was no trace of Spiritual Qi.

There were no mutations or changes, no signs of evolving into any kind of Spirit Medicine.

Every time Chen Mo discovered one, he would stop to perceive it for a moment, then pick a little bit and put it in his bag.

This trip into the mountains was the perfect opportunity to make a batch of samples for comparison. After returning, he would dry and crush the samples, test their medicinal properties and Spiritual Qi residue using different methods, and see exactly where the difference between artificially cultivated and wild ones lay.

An hour later, he walked out of the dense forest, and the scene before him made him stop in his tracks.

The valley suddenly tightened not far ahead.

The river surface, which was originally over ten meters wide, gradually shrank into a rapid stream two or three meters wide.

The rock walls on both sides were no longer ordinary hillsides but nearly vertical cliffs. The grayish-white limestone cliffs towered into the clouds, with almost no vegetation on their surfaces.

Looking up, the sky was squeezed by the cliffs on both sides into a long, thin blue line.

Sunlight could not shine in at all, and the entire valley floor was shrouded in gloomy darkness.

The temperature suddenly dropped by several degrees.

This was the Yin River.

Chen Mo did not hesitate at all and continued walking inward along the path on the edge of the canyon.

The further he went, the steeper the rock walls became, and the crack of sky above his head grew narrower and narrower.

There was a section of the road that could only be passed by sticking close to the rock wall; the stone steps underfoot were only half a foot wide, with the rapid stream right beside them.

An ordinary person walking this kind of road would have to move sideways, hugging the wall, inching along step by step, while their hands would have to grasp cracks in the rock wall or pre-installed safety ropes.

Chen Mo, however, had his hands in his pockets, trotting along those half-foot-wide stone steps, his pace fast and steady, no different from walking on flat ground.

Along the way, he saw a few more rare medicinal herbs, similar to the varieties he had collected outside the canyon. As usual, he stopped to perceive them for a moment, then picked one or two as samples.

By the time he walked out of the narrowest part of the canyon, it was already past noon.

The terrain before him suddenly opened up.

The canyon expanded again here, the rock walls on both sides retreated, and the sky turned back into a wide expanse of gray-blue.

Not far ahead, a huge rock wall stood at the end of the canyon. The rock wall was hundreds of meters high and grayish-white overall.

The rock wall was covered with countless springs of varying sizes.

Spring water gushed out from the springs, tracing thousands of long, thin, silvery-white arcs in the air, merging into waterfalls that poured down from heights of tens or even over a hundred meters.

The water curtains hit the protrusions of the rock wall and shattered into billions of water droplets, churning and flying in the gloomy canyon, filling the air with mist.

All the waterfalls flowed into a Deep Pool below the rock wall.

The area of that Deep Pool was not large, with a diameter of less than thirty meters, but the color of the water was extremely deep—an ink-blue that appeared because it was too deep.

The waterfalls hit the surface of the pool, stirring up continuous white splashes, but the water beneath the splashes was almost motionless, revealing a bottomless tranquility.

The pool water flowed over a low natural stone dam, spilled out from the mouth of the pool, and rushed down along the canyon, forming the Yin River he had walked along to get there.

Chen Mo stood there, and the only thing that welled up in his heart was shock.

This kind of shock was very primitive.

When humans still lived in caves, seeing waterfalls and Deep Pools was probably exactly this feeling.

Nature was showing you its most immense power, and you could only stand there, looking up.

If this were the old him, he might never have been able to see such a scene in his entire life.

It was not because of how far the journey was, but because ordinary people simply could not reach this place.

From the outer periphery of the Shennong Mountain Range to the source of the Yin River, one had to cross several mountain ridges, pass through dense, impenetrable primeval forests, climb over stone steps only half a foot wide, and then squeeze into deep, lightless canyons.

There were no signposts on the road, no man-made plank roads, and every step required extremely strong physical fitness and professional skills.

And now, it only took him an hour or two.

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the mist-filled water vapor.

It was cold and moist, carrying an indescribable freshness.

It was very quiet all around.

Apart from the roar of the waterfalls, there was no other sound—no birds, no insects, and no sound of wind blowing through trees.

Just then, he caught a glimpse of white in the corner of his eye.

There was something in the Deep Pool.

A very faint, shallow white shadow was moving slowly.

He immediately softened his breathing and followed the white shadow with his gaze.

It was an animal about half a meter long, with a flat body, short limbs, and a laterally flattened tail like a wide piece of aquatic grass.

Its whole body was snow-white, so white that it was almost translucent, and one could faintly see the outlines of the pale red blood vessels and internal organs beneath its skin.

It was swimming slowly at a depth of less than a meter below the water surface, its movements extremely slow, like a piece of white cloth being pushed by the current.

Albino giant salamander.

Chen Mo had seen it in the materials.

Ordinary giant salamanders are brownish-black, the same color as the mud and stones, which is a typical protective coloration.

Albino individuals are extremely rare, the result of a genetic mutation that causes a complete lack of melanin. They have almost no chance of survival in the wild because white is too conspicuous, and the young would be eaten by predators.

But there were no predators here that could threaten it; it was the largest creature in this Deep Pool, the uncrowned king.

He did not move.

It was not because he was afraid of startling it, but because he did not want to disturb this body of water too much.

This albino giant salamander reminded him of all the animals he had seen along the way—wild boars, Black Bear, Leopard, and the translucent small fish in the mountain stream.

None of them had any traces of Spiritual Qi, no mutations, no crazy growth.

The one before him was the same; its body length was about the same as an ordinary adult giant salamander, its movements were slow and calm, and no accumulation of Spiritual Qi could be sensed on its body.

This once again confirmed his previous judgment: the concentration of Spiritual Qi was still far from enough to cause obvious changes in living things.

He squatted by the Deep Pool for a long time, and only after the albino giant salamander slowly dived into the deeper parts and disappeared into the ink-blue pool water did he stand up and continue walking forward.