Chapter 108: Entering the Mountains

Amid the surging undercurrents, the Small Wind Barrier suddenly opened, revealing a passage.

Li Mu passed through the barrier and guided his flying shuttle slowly along the mountain range. Whenever he spotted a place where he could land, he immediately activated the Ancient Spirit Lamp.

It would consume several dozen medium-grade spirit crystals, but there was no avoiding it.

The range of a Meridian Refining cultivator’s spiritual sense was extremely difficult to determine. Yet Wood Dragon was such a powerful cultivator that the reach of his spiritual sense had to be immense. If Li Mu did not use the Ancient Spirit Lamp to conceal himself, Wood Dragon would probably notice him the moment he appeared.

Even with the Ancient Spirit Lamp, however, Li Mu could not approach too closely. The illusory field it created was incapable of blocking the close-range spiritual-sense probing of a Meridian Refining cultivator.

After entering the mountain range, Li Mu proceeded with extreme caution, slowly extending his spiritual sense as he advanced.

The terror of Meridian Refining cultivators had already been made painfully clear to him by Ye Yibai of Deyang, and it still filled him with unease.

Fortunately, Wood Dragon should currently be at the middle stage of Meridian Refining, nowhere near the late-stage cultivation of Ye Yibai.

After a cultivator advanced from the late stage of Spirit Foundation to Meridian Refining, the qi pool itself did not change, but true power transformed into liquid form. It became several times denser and more abundant. The middle stage was likewise many times stronger than the initial stage. Under ordinary circumstances, the true power of a middle-stage Meridian Refining cultivator was at least ten times that of a late-stage Spirit Foundation cultivator.

Li Mu was nearly without an equal among late-stage Spirit Foundation cultivators. His qi pool was several times larger than that of an ordinary cultivator at the same stage. Yet in terms of the sheer amount of true power, he was still far inferior to a middle-stage Meridian Refining cultivator.

The difference between realms was simply too great.

A Meridian Refining cultivator’s true power had already become liquid. It was dense, stable, and much easier to control. The speed with which such a cultivator could unleash spells and activate magical treasures, as well as the power those techniques displayed, surpassed that of a Spirit Foundation cultivator by an entire level.

Take Li Mu’s Blazing Fire Technique, for example. Even when he used it now, he still needed to spend some time preparing it. An ordinary Meridian Refining cultivator, however, could cast it with a casual wave of the hand, without any preparation at all.

The same applied to movement techniques. A Meridian Refining cultivator could cross several dozen meters in a single instant, while a Spirit Foundation cultivator could manage no more than a dozen or so.

It was an insurmountable disparity.

If he encountered Wood Dragon directly, Li Mu would have no chance of victory. He could only use the Void Escape Art and flee.

But he did have an opportunity.

The mountain range was utterly silent. The wind outside seemed to stop the moment it reached this place, and Li Mu did not see a single person.

That was normal. According to Wood Dragon’s disciples, he had driven all the others away. Apart from Wood Dragon himself, only two strange disciples remained in the mountain range. No one knew what those two looked like or what level of cultivation they possessed.

Li Mu, however, paid them little mind. A Spirit Foundation cultivator could hardly evade the Ancient Spirit Lamp’s detection.

His target was Wood Dragon’s treasury.

Wood Dragon’s disciples had said that he was extremely fond of wealth. If everything in the treasury could be carried away, the blow to Wood Dragon would be immense, and his cultivation would certainly suffer.

Many of his most precious treasures were kept inside Wood Dragon’s spatial ring. The treasury itself contained a large quantity of second- and third-grade materials, and there were rumors that it also held a few low-grade spirit crystals.

There was only one relatively small spirit-crystal mine in the Great Wolf Plain, and Wood Dragon had ordered his immortal slaves to mine it. Every spirit crystal obtained belonged to him alone. Even his eldest disciple had never received a single one.

To rob a treasury under the spiritual-sense surveillance of a Meridian Refining cultivator was astonishingly audacious. Yet Li Mu felt no fear. Instead, his heart swelled with satisfaction.

Materials and spirit crystals were precisely what he needed now. If he could use them to provoke Wood Dragon, then the act was worth carrying out.

Surprisingly, everything went smoothly. No one was guarding the treasury, and although the restriction array on its door was fairly powerful, Li Mu dismantled it with ease.

Destroying it by force might have caused fluctuations in his true power. Li Mu therefore proceeded with great caution, though he could not eliminate every disturbance entirely.

He collected the fragments piece by piece and placed the damaged formation into his Spirit Pagoda. A few ripples of true power inevitably spread outward.

Yet nothing happened. Everything remained as calm as usual.

Glancing toward the mountain peak a thousand meters away, Li Mu felt fortunate.

“Could Wood Dragon have taken a Bedrock Pill and become completely absorbed in his cultivation?”

The thought brought a smile to his face. If Wood Dragon had really taken a Bedrock Pill to aid his cultivation, then he must be deeply focused. Wood Dragon should now be at a crucial stage of refinement and would not want to suffer even the slightest interruption.

Li Mu entered the treasury, his face blooming with a smile.

The treasury was enormous and filled with countless materials. At a glance, he saw large quantities of first- and second-grade items. Piled all around them was an entire hill of dust.

This was not the ordinary sand that could be seen everywhere. Despite sharing the same name, it was actually a third-grade material, extraordinarily hard. The Duststorm Formation had been refined from this substance.

Li Mu did not bother inspecting anything in detail. He swept everything into his storage and moved around the treasury several times. In moments, the entire place had been emptied.

Yet he found no spirit crystals.

The discovery left him somewhat disappointed. Had Wood Dragon hidden them somewhere else?

Li Mu left the treasury and headed toward his true destination: the forbidden grounds.

One of Wood Dragon’s disciples had told him about the place. According to that disciple, numerous spirit-locking restrictions had been established around it, sealing away spiritual power and forbidding all disciples from entering.

Previously, one disciple had carelessly wandered into the forbidden grounds and been killed by a single strike from Wood Dragon.

“If anything inside is destroyed, the Wood Ancestor will fly into a rage and nearly abandon his cultivation altogether.”

Those had been the disciple’s exact words.

“In that case, let me be the one to destroy it.”

After rounding several hills, Li Mu arrived at a desolate mountain pass. The entire entrance was covered with restriction arrays, and not the slightest trace of spiritual power could be sensed.

This had to be the forbidden ground the disciple had mentioned.

His plan had been as solid as iron, and everything had unfolded exactly as he had expected. Yet the ease with which things had proceeded inevitably aroused some suspicion in Li Mu.

Without even examining the restriction arrays at the mountain pass, he lengthened his stride and entered the mountain.

What met his eyes was a bizarre peak.

The mountain was pitch-black, its surface smooth and polished, with a faint radiance shimmering across its walls. It seemed to have been deliberately constructed, and its color differed slightly from that of the surrounding landscape.

Apart from a single enormous closed door, there was not the slightest opening anywhere on the mountain.

He could enter only through that door.

Li Mu approached it, carefully observing his surroundings and remaining alert for any danger that might emerge at any moment. A place designated as forbidden grounds could not possibly be lacking in various restriction arrays.

Yet when Li Mu reached the great door, not the slightest change occurred.

“What is this? Could Wood Dragon really be that lazy? Perhaps his spiritual sense can scan this entire place, so he saw no need to set up additional defenses. But there has still been no reaction at all. Could he truly have taken a Bedrock Pill?”

Suspicion rose in Li Mu’s heart. He knew very well that even a Meridian Refining cultivator would not be so lazy when it came to cultivation.

Had something happened?

Perhaps Wood Dragon had already made preparations outside, waiting for him to enter.

Even so, Li Mu could not flee immediately after arriving. Besides, he had considerable confidence in his Void Escape Art. After using it more than a hundred times in succession, even a Meridian Refining cultivator would be unable to catch him.

He opened the great door.