28: Chapter 28 Departure

Afternoon sunlight slanted across the Deep Pool, and the mist kicked up by the waterfall refracted into a faint rainbow in the light.

Chen Mo sat on the gravel beach by the pool, notebook in hand, not rushing to write.

Today was the fifth day since arriving at the Shennong Mountain Range, and he had now roughly traversed every direction of the core area.

He flipped to the first few pages of the notebook, which contained a simple map of the core area, marking the search route for each day.

The first day, he entered from the south slope and went straight north along the Yin River to the source.

The second day, he searched the west and north.

The third day, he went to Banbi Cliff.

The fourth day, he searched the east.

The fifth day, he went to the south.

The five routes resembled an opened folding fan, roughly covering the entire three-hundred-plus square kilometer range of the core area.

He had visited Banbi Cliff on the third day of entering the mountains.

That place was the origin of the most famous Wildman legends of the Shennong Mountain Range; since the 1970s, people had continuously claimed to have found footprints and hair of Wildmen there.

Chen Mo had spent an entire morning in that area, searching carefully inch by inch—caves under the cliffs, clearings in the dense forest, mudflats by the streams—he had walked through every place that could theoretically hold traces.

The result was nothing.

Not to mention footprints, he hadn't even found a decent lair.

The caves under the cliffs only had bat guano and rodent bones; the clearings in the dense forest were sand-bathing grounds for wild boars; and the mudflats by the streams only had hoof prints of Black Bears and muntjacs.

The official conclusion had been settled thirty years ago: Wildmen in the Shennong Mountain Range did not exist, and those so-called eyewitness accounts were either misidentifications or fabrications.

Before coming, Chen Mo had still harbored a trace of doubt; after all, he had personally experienced an "abnormal event" that overturned common sense, making it difficult to view unknown creatures with completely traditional thinking.

But now that he had walked through the core area in five days, verifying the official conclusion with his own eyes and perception, that trace of doubt was gone.

Wildmen did not exist.

However, another matter did stay on his mind.

In a patch of old fir forest in the south, he had found a giant tree said to be a thousand-year-old ancient fir.

The tree was astonishingly thick, estimated to require seven or eight adults to wrap their arms around it; the bark was covered in moss and lichens, and the trunk stood straight, piercing the sky.

After approaching, he used his Inner Vision ability to probe its interior; water and nutrients were flowing slowly in the xylem of the trunk, and the cell division speed of the cambium was extremely weak but stable.

The root system was extending outward in the deep soil at a speed that was extremely slow but indeed exceeded conventional limits.

This change was extremely subtle; even if ordinary people held instruments, they wouldn't be able to measure it.

If the Spiritual Qi concentration did not increase further, it would likely take a considerable amount of time for these thousand-year-old trees to show visible abnormalities.

But with this Inner Vision ability, Chen Mo could capture those slightest changes; they were indeed being gently transformed by Spiritual Qi.

On the way, he also made a detour to check on those poachers.

Three days had passed, and they were still active near the river, though their campsite had shifted eastward.

Chen Mo, as usual, snuck to the side and crouched for a while to listen to their conversation. Zhang Biao had the loudest voice, complaining that this business was hard to do, and after several days, he hadn't even caught a glimpse of a golden monkey.

The one called Zhang Ying replied that he had seen a white one yesterday, but it ran away before he could pull the trigger.

An albino golden monkey.

Chen Mo had only seen five in the core area over the past few days; they were indeed extremely rare.

However, albino individuals were already rare in the wild, and what poachers chased was precisely "rarity" — the rarer the animal, the more valuable it was on the black market.

He did not stay any longer.

Whether these people could catch the golden monkeys was not his concern.

He was only confirming their range of activity.

Pulling back his thoughts, Chen Mo put his pen to the paper and began to record.

First was the training effect of the past few days.

The training effect of the Deep Pool far exceeded expectations — an average of seventeen hours of training per day, with about half the time spent on underwater weight-bearing training, and the rest of the time distributed between Standing Post and control training.

His punch force had risen from 917 kilograms before entering the mountains to 1,262 kilograms now, a net increase of 345 kilograms in five days, an average increase of nearly 70 kilograms per day.

Considering that most of the early period was spent searching and judging whether it was necessary to continue moving the camp, the progress brought by the Deep Pool's pressure limit training was visibly fast.

His Mental Power attribute had also increased by 0.1, reaching 2.8.

It was 2.3 before entering the mountains; in five days, it had increased by 0.5 under the dual effects of limit training and natural enlightenment.

This magnitude of increase was unimaginable in the past — previously, every 0.1 increase required pushing oneself to the brink of collapse with extreme willpower.

But that night standing on the cliff top watching the Milky Way made him understand one thing: the expansion of the mind does not just come from pressure, but from broadening.

Broadening one's horizons, broadening one's thoughts.

The most direct effect of the increase in Mental Power was the progress in control over these past few days.

The Force Multiplier had increased from 1.6 times to 1.9 times.

This increase meant that with a punch force of 1,262 kilograms, the force delivered reached nearly 2,400 kilograms, which was 2.4 tons.

He didn't go and hit anything to test his destructive power.

The numbers on the system panel and the curves formed by previous tests were enough for him to accurately judge his actual destructive power.

Speed was also increasing.

On the way back from Banbi Cliff, he did a simple sprint, covering a hundred meters in less than four seconds, with peak speed steadily improving.

His vertical jump could already clear ten meters, which was about the height of a three or four-story building.

He added a note next to the data: "Deep Pool training has significant effects; after returning, consider finding a similar water pressure environment as a regular training ground."

Or come here again.

Then he began to write the conclusions of his observations over the past few days.

First: No Spiritual Qi gathering phenomenon was found in the core area of the Shennong Mountain Range.

The Spiritual Qi was evenly distributed throughout the core area, exactly the same concentration as the outside world.

The previous hypothesis that "famous mountains and great rivers might have Spiritual Qi enrichment zones" could not be established for the time being.

Second: None of the animals and plants observed in the core area showed obvious mutations.

Black Bears, wild boars, Leopards, golden monkeys, muntjacs, forest musk deer, small mountain stream fish, and albino giant salamanders all remained within the range of normal body size and behavioral patterns.

In terms of plants, the thousand-year-old ancient fir was slowly absorbing Spiritual Qi, but the change was extremely weak and did not exceed the scope of normal growth.

All animals and plants were only passively receiving the dissipation of Spiritual Qi; no individual capable of actively absorbing spirit energy particles was found.

Third: The poachers were still active on the east side of the core area, targeting albino golden monkeys.

The possibility of them heading west was extremely low, and there was no intersection with him.

After writing this, he closed the notebook, leaned against the rock wall behind him, and sat with his eyes closed for a while.

In five days, he had gone through the Shennong Mountain Range and arrived at a clear and definite conclusion: Spiritual Qi was fair.

It sprinkled evenly into every corner of this world, not favoring any famous mountain, not favoring any ancient tree.

The "grotto-heavens" and "rich Spiritual Qi" written about in those novels did not exist, at least at the current stage.

Perhaps in the future, as the concentration of Spiritual Qi continues to rise, some special geological structures or dense vegetation areas might produce weak enrichment effects, but certainly not now.

As for those Cultivation Techniques that "actively absorb Spiritual Qi," since even the core area of the Shennong Mountain Range could not find any creatures capable of actively absorbing Spiritual Qi, would those Daoist priests in the Daoist temples have any essential difference from ordinary people?

The opportunity to answer this question should be at the neighboring Taihe Mountain.

Taihe Mountain was the number one mountain of Daoism, the location of the Quanzhen Sect.

If there were no peculiarities there either, then it could be basically concluded that the so-called "Internal Skill," "Mind-Cultivation Technique," and "Qi cultivation" had lost their realistic basis in the face of this Spiritual Energy Revival.

This might even mean that this emergence of Spiritual Qi was the first time in history for this planet.

Packing up his equipment, he stood by the pool and took one last look at the Deep Pool.

The ink-blue water surface remained silent, the roar of the waterfall still echoed in the canyon, and he did not know which corner the albino giant salamander had hidden in.

In five days, this Deep Pool had witnessed the entire process of his strength increase and had also accompanied him in completing a transformation of his mind.

He turned around and walked out along the canyon.