Chapter 720: Seclusion (1/2)

“Alright,” Catheya nodded, not looking surprised in the slightest that Zac would head off on his way now that the pearls were collected. “I’ll take you out of this place before we find our own paths.”

The descent from the mountain was just as nerve-wracking as the ascent, but thirty minutes later they stood in a secluded spot down by the foot of a mountain, covered by five-meter tall corals and Catheya’s arrays in case any group of trial takers was lurking nearby.

“Remember to come look for me before this thing is over,” Catheya said as she handed Zac a crystal and a sack of herbs. “This is a method to gain even more from the pearls than just eating them as is. And try to not do anything crazy after this, alright? No causing trouble that will cause ripples on the outside.”

“Of course,” Zac smiled. “I’m not crazy.”

“Well, you seem to have a penchant for trouble,” Catheya said with a pointed look, which made Zac scratch his chin with some embarrassment.

“Well, I’ll be careful. I will find you in a year or so unless I’ve found some opportunity that’ll delay me,” Zac promised.

“I’ll look for the places you wanted,” Catheya nodded in return.

Zac swam away a moment later, heading for one of the pathways away from their current spot. A look back showed that Catheya and Qirai soon started moving toward another. There was no time to lose considering the pearls only lasted so long, but he had to find a good spot to seclude himself. Zac made good time as he swam through the valleys, and he didn’t stop for three hours as he made his way forward with the help of his compass.

However, Zac didn't head back in the direction they came from, but rather the opposite. He was planning on passing straight through the mountain range on the way to the inner parts of the ocean, finding a cultivation cave on the way. Eventually, he found what he was looking for; a small crack in the rock which released air bubbles.

Zac hid in a dense patch of bushes as he activated his movement skill. Two seconds later the world shifted into one of death and he flashed forward toward the crack. The intangible form of [Abyssal Phase] had its benefits, and he effortlessly squeezed through the path that normally wouldn’t even fit his hand.

The tunnel kept going for thousands of meters into the depths without widening, but just as Zac started to consider turning back, he found himself in a large cave that was mostly filled with air. The place was roughly one hundred meters across and a bit reminiscent of his cultivation cave back home, except the land was on a ledge five meters above the waters.

The Twilight Ocean formed a small subterranean river that just passed by below the ledge and left through another crack on the other side. The walls and ceiling were covered with the same sort of moss that had dried out the tunnels beneath the Living Pulse. There was also a lone mysterious flower that grew on the edge of the ledge; and Zac could soon match it with [Palvae Granulosa], a medicinal plant used in top-quality race-upgrading medicinal baths.

It was a peak E-grade plant, and each one of its 20-some leaves was worth upwards of 5,000 E-grade Nexus Coins. It wasn’t a bad haul, though not something that mattered all-too-much to Zac. It did spread a nice aroma in the small cave though, and Zac decided to leave it for now.

First thing first; he needed to turn this place into a cultivation cave. He swam beneath the waters again swiftly sealed both the inlet and outlet to the river both with arrays and by physically filling them with stones. It would turn the fresh water in the small river stagnant in a few months, but it didn’t really matter.

Zac secondly added a layer of isolation arrays to the cave. He was over a thousand meters below the valley, but there were perhaps more tunnels in the mountain above. This way he was completely shut off from the rest of the world, and he would be able to work on his cultivation in peace.

He cleared out a patch of moss and placed down his new prayer mat before he took out two boxes. One of them held the death-attuned pearls he had purchased from Catheya and Qirai, and the other held the Death-attuned pearls he generated with the help of the Fragment of the Coffin. The coffin on his back was veritably vibrating by this point, Zac took out one pearl from each box.

It thankfully didn’t look like [Love's Bond] cared about what it was fed as it opened its casket by a small degree. Zac threw one purchased pearl after another inside until he had thrown a full thirty of them into the shrouded insides. That was three times more than what most cultivators managed to absorb, and he realized was lucky that he had purchased a set of spares.

The lid snapped shut after swallowing the thirtieth pearl, and Zac sensed that the coffin had entered some sort of hibernation on his back. He would probably be able to use it in a pinch, but he preferred not to disturb Alea. Instead, he focused on the second box as he took out a set of tools. He essentially had gathered base items for over twenty professions over his years of fighting, including a few alchemy sets, he took out a large pestle from one of these sets before he poured ten pearls into it in one go.

Zac was almost dragged into a bout of inspiration from the sounds as the small pearls clashed together in the bowl, and the air was beset by such pure Dao fluctuations that he could discern small runes appearing and disappearing in turn. However, they suddenly disappeared as a set of runes lit up along the pestle’s rim. It was an isolation array that would trap the medicinal properties of the items being processed, and it helped Zac snap back to reality as he started to work the materials.

He followed the instructions in Catheya’s crystal, quickly grinding the pearls and a few dried herbs into a fine dust. However, he looked down at the compound with hesitation when he was done, and he eventually added ten more pearls. Twenty pearls was overkill, potentially harmful for most cultivators, but his body had always been greedy. He didn’t want to sit down and refine another brew mid-epiphany because he made a too small a dose.

The next step said to simply pour the compound in a liquid of your choice, but Zac had the capability to be a bit extravagant at this point. He took out a Dao Fruit and turned it into a mush that he mixed with the powder and added some water, turning it into a proper Dao Smoothie.

The brew looked like a blueberry shake filled with gold flakes that swirled around inside, and it both smelled and looked delectable. Wasting no time, Zac downed the brew straight from the pestle as to not let any of the efficacy escape. He immediately closed his eyes, and he focused on the Dao Avatar in his mind.

He had thought long and hard on the route he should take with his Fragment of the Coffin over the past years, and he had made tons of revisions over the last half year he had spent in his Draugr form. Half of the origin of his Dao Fragment origin was Hardness, something that probably was once meant to become the Fragment of the Shield for his Undying Bulwark-class.

That didn’t mean the insights he had gathered were useless though, and that they couldn’t remain as a part of his path. He just needed to find a way to properly incorporate the concept into his path, and he felt like he had found the answer during his battle with Yanub Mettleleaf.

Death was the ultimate barrier that most cultivators dreamed of breaking past on their road to Eternity. But fight as they might, it was immutable and intractable, fiercely guarding the great beyond. It trapped the living in their slowly decaying bodies, and together with time turned everyone to dust.