Chapter 320: Igniting the Alchemic Flame (1/2)

Chapter 320: Igniting the Alchemic Flame

Meng Hao’s heart trembled as his eyes snapped open. He pulled his fingers back from the ground; he felt as if some incredible force had battered him out of the strange state he was in just now.

His eyes glittered as he raised his head, allowing his gaze to pass through the rock walls of the Immortal’s cave to look toward the field of rocky rubble.

“So it’s another enemy of the Ji Clan. However, this person seems different from the square cauldron in the ancient Blessed Land. The fact that he noticed me shows that his will is still here!” After collecting his thoughts, Meng Hao rose and left the Immortal’s cave. Moments later he emerged from the fissure in the small mountain.

It was midday, and the sun burned brightly overhead, baking the land until it seemed it would bubble with grease. After leaving the mountain, Meng Hao looked in the direction of the field of rubble. After a moment of thought, he flicked the sleeve of his robe and shot off toward it.

It didn’t take long before he floated in mid-air above the field of rubble, looking down at it. It wasn’t a very large area, perhaps several dozen kilometers wide in either direction. The entire area was strewn with bizarrely shaped rocks, some of which were more than half sunken into the soil. Some, on the other hand, lay on the surface of the ground.

It gave off a very bleak air, as if each and every stone in this place had been here for ages.

Meng Hao didn’t get too close, choosing instead to remain up in the air. However after some time passed, he still had no idea what this place was. It seemed completely ordinary. Maintaining his attitude of vigilance, he sent out his Spiritual Sense to investigate further, but yet again came up empty handed.

“Of course,” thought Meng Hao. “This is exactly how you would expect it to be. Outsiders wouldn’t be able to notice anything unusual, not even me. If I hadn’t been in that unusual state, I would never have sensed anything strange here.” He decided not to rashly proceed forward, instead choosing to turn and leave.

Absolutely nothing happened as he left.

Back in the Immortal’s cave, he thought back to the powerful, archaic voice which had pierced into his mind, and the bone-deep rancor it had expressed regarding the Ji Clan.

“Heavens of Ji….” thought Meng Hao. After all of his experiences, his curiosity had been suppressed for far too long. However, he knew that in the Cultivation world, each step can be fraught with peril; a lack of caution can lead to mistakes that can never be righted.

Therefore, after thinking for a bit longer about the archaic voice, he decided to ignore it until he had a more powerful Cultivation base. At the moment, he was only at the early Core Formation stage, and as such, the situation was just too risky. Even though this person claimed to be an enemy of the Ji Clan, that didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t harm Meng Hao.

“With the help of this Demonic Qi, my Spiritual Sense can be amplified by several times…. Who knows the extent to which I can cultivate the art of Righteous Bestowal? I wonder if I can combine my will with the Qi to produce an Incarnation of myself?” Giving no more thought to the powerful voice, Meng Hao focused his attention onto the art of Righteous Bestowal. His first test of the art had left him with the sense that this technique was definitely beyond ordinary.

“I wonder if it might have something to do with cultivating the Dao Divinity Scripture, and how it made my Spiritual Sense far beyond that of any Cultivator of my same level.” Meng Hao continued to analyze the matter calmly. Eventually the sky outside began to turn dark, and Meng Hao closed his eyes. Enlightenment regarding the art of Righteous Bestowal swirled within his head. He had the feeling that this technique was something extremely important to him.

A month passed, during which time Meng Hao never opened his eyes. One day, he sensed ten or more Cultivators outside of the Immortal’s cave.

They wore deferential expressions, and were kowtowing just outside the cave. Each of them possessed some of the violet-green soil, and two of their number were the Foundation Establishment Cultivators from before.

During the past month, they had returned a few times. Each time, Meng Hao dispelled some of their poison, to the point where it was more than half gone. He had even bestowed them with medicinal pills. They had long since forgotten their other two Fellow Daoist friends who had been killed. In order to earn even more medicinal pills, they had recruited others they knew, and the group had formed a small-scale power base.

A few in the group had harboured ill intentions. However, after the ground shook and fierce tentacles burst out to rip them to shreds and eat them, anyone else with similar thoughts put them to rest.

When you added in the fact that Meng Hao gave out real medicinal pills as rewards, which to these Cultivators were extremely rare, it arose a zealous fanaticism among them.

In addition, the fact that Meng Hao’s Cultivation base was deeply unfathomable to them also had something to do with it.

As for Huang Daxian, even though his Cultivation base wasn’t very high, he held a special position within the group. At the moment, he stood outside of the Immortal’s cave looking complacently out over the group of people. The meat jelly was perched on his head and the colorful parrot on his shoulder.

“I shall impart to you the words of the Patriarch,” he said. “You did well, and this is your reward.” He produced a small bottle, from within which he distributed a tiny medicinal pill to everyone present. As the Cultivators received their medicinal pill, their faces lit with excitement and they immediately consumed the pills.

Meng Hao didn’t have a lot of low level medicinal pills such as these in his bag of holding. Seeing the increase in the number of people during his month of secluded meditation, he had taken a single medicinal pill and refined it into dozens of smaller pills.

Even still, to these Cultivators, something like that was like a precious treasure, as different from the medicinal elixirs they usually consumed as Heaven was from the Earth.

It was thus not difficult to understand why the area around Meng Hao’s Immortal’s cave attracted a dozen or more Cultivators in one short month, all of them willing to join the group.

In fact, they had settled in the area, constructing simple houses that surrounded the Immortal’s cave and the small mountain. Eventually the mountain itself came to be a sort of holy ground….