Ou Zhenkong stood there in anxiety. But he didn’t want to interrupt Ning Cheng’s words despite the growing anxiousness.
Fortunately, after Ning Cheng handed over the medical pills to Warren and Yue Wanxue, he motioned Qu Zhenkong to come forward. Ning Cheng then raised his hand and placed it onto Ou Zhenkong’s forehead. The motion was so fast that Ou Zhenkong couldn’t react at all. Even Ou Xingshang, who stood at the side, found his expressions changing, but didn’t dare to step forward.
After Ning Cheng’s palm left Ou Zhenkong’s forehead, Ou Zhenkong immediately bowed to Ning Cheng with a face full of surprise and grat.i.tude. “Many thanks for getting rid of the restriction for this junior.”
Hearing Ou Zhenkong’s words, Ou Xingshang also felt relief and thanked Ning Cheng in a hurry. Their clan had to pay an extremely high price to cultivate a Heaven Seated expert. Therefore, if Ou Zhenkong died, it would have been a ma.s.sive blow to his Ou Clan.
Ning Cheng simply nodded and asked Warren, “You should have visited the Cheng Ruolan Artefact Crafting Store, right? Did you meet with Jian Jiao?”
Warren shook his head. “We did wait for some time at the Cheng Ruolan Artefact Crafting Store, and we did hear about Junior Apprentice Brother Jian Jiao. However, Junior Apprentice Brother Jian Jiao never returned during our stay.”
Ning Cheng suddenly frowned. From what he heard from the store a.s.sistant, Jian Jiao should have returned a long time ago. Since Jian Jiao hasn’t returned, then something must have happened to him.
“You can head back to secluded cultivation first; I have a few things to take care of first.” After understanding that Jian Jiao most likely had gotten into trouble, Ning Cheng immediately felt worried. He wanted to directly head out and check the situation.
Ning Ruolan also knew that she had to speed up her cultivation. Now that her big brother returned and looked all right, she also wanted to head back into seclusion. As for Warren and Yan Wanxue, they both had long since wanted to ascend to the Heaven Seated Realm. Now, with Ning Cheng’s help, they also immediately took their leave.
After Ou Zhenkong and others left, Ning Cheng asked, “Sect Master Cang, I heard that a cultivator named Duan Gantai had come here?”
Cang Caihe gave a solemn reply, “Yes, I was just about to bring it up with Sect Master. When this Duan Gantai came here, we had a vague confrontation of sorts. I have to say that although he appeared to have just entered the Life and Death Realm, he definitely has incredible strength. He didn’t use his full power, but I could see that he had great potential. He came here looking for Sect Master, so you must be careful when dealing with him. He doesn’t seem easy to deal with.”
Ning Cheng secretly praised him. Cang Caihe was supposedly one of the three most influential rogue cultivators and the foremost Pill Emperor. As such, he definitely would have a sharp vision and was a good judge of character. Besides, if it were so easy to deal with Duan Gantai, he would not have chosen to cooperate with him to this day.
“Sect Master Cang, I need to go into seclusion for a while before I head out to Devouring Bone Sea and then to Culmination Starland. For the matters relating to Jiangzhou Star and Mysterious Yellow Celestial River, I would like to ask Sect Master Cang to continue to take care of it.” Ning Cheng spoke with an apologetic tone. After setting up the sect, he rarely did any work related to managing it. Moreover, Cang Caihe also visibly didn’t care about things at first, but he still managed to pull it off.
Moreover, Ning Cheng truly had no time to stay around in Covered Snow City to manage the sect. He simply had too many things to do.
He also wanted to search for the Purple Light Treasure Essence in the Devouring Bone Sea as his Celestial River Flame had already reached Grade 2 Nirvana. If he wanted to improve his strength once again, then he had to accelerate the evolution of his flame. Moreover, from Heavenly Emperor Wu Hong’s jade strip, he understood that those pieces of Purple Light Treasure Essence came from the Devouring Bone Sea.
Heavenly Emperor Wu Hong was a nice person. Unfortunately, Ning Cheng could not do anything to save him. If he could, Ning Cheng would have definitely helped.
……
Five months after coming out from the Ancient Shadow Temple, Ning Cheng once again gave the reigns of the sect to Cang Caihe and left Jiangzhou Star. At the same time, he also left a talisman with Cang Caihe, a talisman with a trace of his spirit sense. No matter whether he was, as long as Cang Caihe crushed the talisman, he would sense it.
Moreover, during the five months in seclusion in Mysterious Yellow Sect, Ning Cheng finally managed to drive out the cold within his body and stabilised his Sea of Consciousness. During that process, his Sea of Consciousness had expanded once again, which further improved his spiritual consciousness’s strength. After the stabilisation process, Ning Cheng then started refining the Measureless Gourd.
But even after refining the Measureless Guard, Ning Cheng could only understand a few things about how this gourd worked. Moreover, he could not find any offensive or defensive uses for this gourd. According to the information Ning Cheng obtained after refining it, the guard had only one purpose, and that was to store things.
Ning Cheng really couldn’t figure out anything beyond it. Why would someone put this gourd in the same place as the Opening Heaven Child Talisman or even that Dao Fruit?
Moreover, after experiencing the dangers of the Ancient Shadow Temple, Ning Cheng started to have doubts. He wondered if the person behind that Futility Bridge had intentionally put those things there. If that person had deliberately placed those five chests, then it most likely was bait to attract experts to jump down from the pentagonal-shaped main hall.
In all honesty, Ning Cheng had not hesitated to jump off at that time as he had the same idea as the other starry sky emperors. Since there were already quite a few treasures in the pentagonal-shaped hall, then there definitely would be many more treasures down below. Who knew that jumping into that pit would actually become such a terrifying thing?
……
In any case, Ning Cheng decided not to return to the Ancient Shadow Temple until his strength reached a certain level. While pondering over these matters, Ning Cheng had already arrived at the Night Essence Celestial River.
Strictly speaking, Devouring Bone Sea did not belong to the Night Essence Celestial River.
Initially, there was an unnamed star in the starry sky near the Night Essence Celestial River. But this star had a variety of poisonous ga.s.ses and mists shrouding it, with only a thin layer of starry sky Essence Qi around it. These conditions did not make a hospitable place for cultivators.
However, because of the limited resources within starry skies, people would still colonise a star. Even if it weren’t suitable for living. This became especially true for rogue cultivators who had to wander around for cultivation resources.
In fact, rogue cultivators looking for resources were the ones who discovered this star, which led to the discovery of the Devouring Bone Sea.
The Devouring Bone Sea covered most of this star. One could say that on this unmanned star, apart from a sprinkle of islands scattered all over, the rest was entirely the sea. This sea precisely was the Devouring Bone Sea.
Even for an ordinary star, Eternal-level experts would find it almost impossible to sweep through the entirety of it with their spiritual consciousness. Which meant that no one in the contemporary times could sweep through the star that contained the Devouring Bone Sea, especially since it was quite a few times larger compared to the average planet.
But despite the size and dangers, many cultivators found various heavenly woods and earthly treasures in the Devouring Bone Sea after its discovery. In fact, the Devouring Bone Sea regularly attracted Eternal experts seeking cultivation resources.
However, although one could find many good things in the Devouring Bone Sea, it was also a perilous area. Of the cultivators entering the Devouring Bone Sea, less than half would manage to make it out alive. As for the cultivators who could not come out, they all disappeared without a trace. However, skeletons often washed up on the few beaches of the Devouring Bone Sea, which gave it the name ‘Devouring Bone’ Sea.
Over time, people started calling the star where the Devouring Bone Sea was located as the Devouring Bone Star.
Ning Cheng had initially thought that there wouldn’t be many people in such a dangerous place like the Devouring Bone Sea. However, when he reached the Devouring Bone Sea, he knew how far-off his thoughts were. The number of people here was not small at all. In fact, the numbers here exceeded that of a bustling starry sky city.
A temporary city had long been established somewhere at the edge of one of the larger islands in the Devouring Bone Sea. One could see cultivators moving through this place to trade materials and team up with others to enter the Devouring Bone Sea.
“Boy, you stole this old man’s things and want to get away, don’t even dream about it…..” Ning Cheng was just about to select a store to buy a map of the Devouring Bone Sea when a somewhat familiar figure appeared in the range of his spiritual consciousness. Ning Cheng unconsciously heard the words, not intending to eavesdrop.
However, whether it was the voice or the figure, Ning Cheng quickly recognised it. He knew this person. More precisely, he knew this starry sky beggar.
Within the starry skies, many dressed up as wanderers or adventurers, but not many would choose to dress up like a beggar. However, this fellow liked to dress up like a beggar and swindle everyone. Even Ning Cheng had almost wandered into this fellow’s path sometime in the past. Fortunately, Ning Cheng had a good head over his shoulders and ended up playing this beggar at his own game.
As Ning Cheng walked towards the shop, he saw the old beggar slap a couple to the ground.
“Well, boy, I was looking for you. I didn’t expect you to come to my door. This old man had told you to come to the Bright South Celestial River, so why didn’t you show up? Don’t worry, wait a little bit as I straighten up these two ants. This old man will then settle my accounts with you.”
When the old beggar saw Ning Cheng, his eyes immediately lit up in joy. Back then, he wanted to leave a mark on Ning Cheng, but he never expected that Ning Cheng would counter him instead. It’s just that he felt too lazy to go look for Ning Cheng, and didn’t think of meeting Ning Cheng in this place.
Ning Cheng only showed a slight smile, didn’t speak, nor did he leave. This old beggar was the Celestial River King of Bright South Celestial River. When he had first met the Bright South Celestial River King, he was still a Celestial Novice ant, tens of thousands of times weaker than the Bright South Celestial River King. However, when Ning Cheng met him this time, he was already a Life and Death expert. But Bright South Celestial River King was still hovering in the Heaven Seated Realm.
If he was an ant in front of Bright South Celestial River King back then, Bright South Celestial River King was now an ant in front of him.
The world truly was unpredictable, who could think that in just a short time, the power difference would reverse? Bright South Celestial River King was still a chess piece under Striking Order Heavenly Emperor. Yet, he and Striking Order already address each other as brothers.
When Bright South Celestial River King saw Ning Cheng waiting patiently, he felt a little satisfied. He then shifted his attention to the couple who he had just slapped to the ground and spoke, “Just two ants, and yet dared to steal this king’s things. What’re your names?”
Ning Cheng secretly felt nothing but disdain for this fellow. This couple clearly had Celestial Novice cultivations. Therefore, Ning Cheng absolutely would not believe that these two Celestial Novice Cultivators would steal something from a Celestial River King. Most likely, something on the couple must have caught the eye of Bright South Celestial River King, who then found an excuse to seize them.
Ning Cheng couldn’t be more precise on what kind of a person was this Bright South Celestial River King. If it weren’t for that middle-aged scholar back then, this king would have definitely taken him away at that time, instead of wasting an image card on him.
“This junior is called Lie Junfeng, and this is junior’s Dao Companion Bei Xialan.” Although Bright South Celestial River King had dispersed the Celestial Shatterer male cultivator’s cultivation, he still spoke with a respectful voice. Even the people next to him could feel the sincere respect coming from his tone.
Ning Cheng secretly admired this fellow. If this person hadn’t run into Bright South Celestial River King who wasted his cultivation, he would have definitely become a compelling character in the future.
Wait, just then Ning Cheng thought of something else. He suddenly felt the names Lie Junfeng and Bei Xialan familiar.
At this time, Lie Junfeng continued, “Senior, this junior had turned blind, seeing senior’s glaze scroll, it had made me greedy.”
While talking, Lie Junfeng fell to his knees and raised a scroll with both his hands.
When Ning Cheng saw the glaze scroll, his expressions immediately changed. He finally recalled who Lie Junfeng was.