After stepping onto the "Cloud-Piercing Willow," Gong Chenying had Li Yan temporarily take her into his Spirit-Storing Pouch. Previously, due to recuperating from her injuries, she hadn't had time to refine the things Li Yan had given her.
Items like the storage ring were easy to refine; the residual Divine Sense power on them had long been erased by Li Yan. But the red-glowing spearhead would take some time.
Coincidentally, their journey would take about a month, which was just enough time.
Li Yan understood his Sixth Senior Sister's character very well. He knew that she valued the improvement of her own strength the most. Since she was young, she had been single-minded, always hoping to gain powerful strength through hard cultivation to help the Tianli Clan.
Thus, he took Gong Chenying into "Earthen Patch."
Gong Chenying had an Earth Spirit Root, and her wood, fire, and earth attributes were almost equal, giving a sense of triangular balance. This was a very strange phenomenon, and thus Gong Chenying was also quite skilled in the dao of formations.
The five-element spiritual energy in "Earthen Patch" could be converted into the purest spiritual energy, which would be of great help to her in refining the fire-attribute red-glowing spearhead.
As Li Yan took Gong Chenying into "Earthen Patch," a wisp of his Divine Sense also transformed into a phantom and entered with her.
Sure enough, in the far west of Earthen Patch, in a scorching desert, Gong Chenying was looking surprised as she felt the extremely dense fire spiritual energy. She looked around, at the golden sand grains before her.
As soon as Li Yan's phantom appeared, he briefly described the situation here to her, saying that this was a spirit-storing space he had obtained, and the spiritual energy of heaven and earth was very suitable for cultivation and refining.
Gong Chenying quickly reverted to her usual cold and stunning beauty. She nodded slightly at Li Yan and then sat cross-legged in the desert. In the sky above her, a five-element light ring flickered and flowed, continuously converting into the purest and cleanest fire spiritual energy.
Li Yan smiled faintly upon seeing this. Gong Chenying was just like that, not fond of empty words.
After a cultivator enters the Golden Core stage, they already know more about Spirit-Storing Pouches. After feeling the pure spiritual energy of heaven and earth here, Gong Chenying must have known that this was no ordinary Spirit-Storing Pouch.
What's more, as long as she slightly released her Divine Sense, she would discover the vastness of "Earthen Patch," and the dense, pure earth spiritual energy outside. What kind of Spirit-Storing Pouch could reach this level?
But Gong Chenying did not ask a single question. This was her usual cold and solitary character. Seeing that Gong Chenying had already summoned the red-glowing spearhead, Li Yan's figure also dissipated in the air...
This was an endless primeval forest. Looking down from the sky, the giant tree canopies were like black mushrooms, and a sense of weight and loneliness would spontaneously arise.
In this primeval forest, there was a swamp that was nearly ten thousand li in size.
On the surface of the swamp, from the black mud, a series of dense bubbles would occasionally emerge with a "gurgle," and then either burst or slowly swell before slowly subsiding...
The entire swamp exuded a nauseating, foul smell. The surface of the swamp looked like a layer of black, heavy mirror. Here, fallen leaves would sink instantly, and flying birds could not cross.
Even the lightest feather, after floating down onto it, would sink rapidly into the swamp like a giant rock.
This caused the surface of the swamp, apart from the occasional emerging bubbles, to be as smooth as a mirror most of the time. But at the bottom of the swamp, who knows how many demonic beast corpses and withered branches and fallen leaves were buried...
On this day, a faint green light spot flickered in the azure sky. Soon, a phantom-like object with a flashing green light appeared at the edge of the swamp.
"This place is truly remote and desolate. As soon as we entered the swamp area, even the Wind Beasts and demonic beasts have become extremely rare to see!"
A man's voice came from within the phantom.
"This was originally the border where the territories of the 'Wind Goose Beasts' and 'Wind Iron Beasts' meet. And the spiritual energy here is extremely thin, so demonic beasts generally don't come here either."
"In addition, the 'Black Mirror Swamp' is notorious. It has already devoured nine out of ten of the nearby demonic beasts and Wind Beasts, which has made this place appear even more desolate!"
Another extremely cold voice also came from within the phantom, a voice like the clashing of ice, crisp and rhythmic.
Following these two voices, after a flow of light like flowing water, the green phantom revealed the figures of a man and a woman inside.
The man was dressed in green robes, with short, steel-like hair, each strand standing on end, giving him a capable and robust feeling.
The woman was stunningly beautiful and cold, with short black hair. Her wheat-colored skin gave off a sense of amazing elasticity, as if containing infinite youth and moist vitality.
She wore blue robes and arrow sleeves, looking heroic and valiant. A long spear was slung diagonally across her back. The shaft of the spear was azure, while the spearhead was dark red, with a faint halo of red light.
The combination of azure and red gave it the feel of a divine weapon.
These two were none other than Li Yan and Gong Chenying. Gong Chenying had finished refining the long spear five days ago. Although it wasn't completely refined, she had managed to refine the wisp of spiritual intelligence that had been born in her original halberd into it.
It was unknown who had refined the red-glowing spearhead; the artifact spirit within it had long since died. The artifact spirit from Gong Chenying's halberd would slowly fuse into it in the future.
In the "Earthen Patch" space, she had tested the newly refined long spear and found that even with the original artifact spirit dead, the red-glowing spearhead could still increase her attack power by about fifteen percent, which greatly surprised Gong Chenying.
To increase the power of a magical treasure by even a sliver was extremely difficult, let alone by more than ten percent at once. Even nourishing it for a hundred years might not achieve that.
Zi Kun and Qian Ji were both discerning individuals. As soon as this "Matriarch Ying" came out, they first bowed respectfully.
Then, the two demons immediately concealed themselves within "Earthen Patch," so that if their master, Li Yan, needed them, he could immediately summon them out.
Regarding the two demons' address to her, Gong Chenying and Zhao Min were surprisingly consistent. They both just gave a light "en," and the coldness in their eyes also instantly lessened a lot.
"According to the Great Elder, Yan San should have been here back then. Not long after, he broke the previous rule of the three Wind Beast clans not joining forces and began to combine their forces to attack the Tianli Clan on a large scale."
This piece of information was also a conclusion that the Great Elder and Gong Shanhe and the others had come to after repeated research. Because they had discovered that for a period of time, the high-rank Wind Beasts of the "Wind Goose Clan" and the "Wind Iron Beast" clan had also been to this swamp.
Logically speaking, it was normal for a high-rank Wind Beast to patrol the edge of the territory under its jurisdiction, so at first, they had not thought much of it.
But later, after the great war began, Yan San and the other few fourth-rank Wind Beasts had come here several times in batches, including the experts of the "Wind Elephant Beast" clan.
Such an unusual event had made Gong Shanhe suspicious, which was why he and the Sixth Elder had come here to investigate. After all, with the three Wind Beast clans joining forces in such an uncharacteristic manner, they had to find out the reason in order to devise a countermeasure.
"After the Clan Head and the others had their accident, the Great Elder and the others later felt that this place was a trap set by the other side, deliberately revealing some suspicious points in order to kill Father or anyone else who came."
"It's just that for some unknown reason in the end, they only managed to trap Father and the others, and it has been dragged on until now!"
Gong Chenying looked at the black mirror-like swamp below, her delicate black eyebrows slightly furrowed.
"A trap is a possibility, but I think it's more likely that the Clan Head and the others encountered some other accident."
Li Yan retracted his Divine Sense that had been probing the bottom of the swamp. His Divine Sense was met with a patch of pitch black. His Divine Sense had probed down several thousand zhang, but still had not reached the bottom.
"What do you mean by that, Little Martial Uncle?"
Gong Chenying still preferred to call Li Yan "Little Martial Uncle."
"It's actually very simple. If it really was a trap they set, who were they trying to deal with?"
"Nine times out of ten, it was the Great Elder. Only in this way could they deal a real heavy blow to the Tianli Clan. In that case, the trap inside would be a place of absolute death that could cause fatal harm to a Late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator."
"But in the end, it couldn't even kill a Mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator, and even the Sixth Elder, that Initial-stage Nascent Soul cultivator, might not have perished. That's a bit hard to explain."
Li Yan said, his eyes flickering.
After hearing this, Gong Chenying fell silent for a moment. Then, she still shook her head.
"As the Clan Head, Father should have a life-saving item given to him by the Great Sacrificial Priest. It would be no problem to protect both him and the Sixth Elder."
"In addition, the Great Elder also considered this point back then. After Father lost contact, he felt that it might have been Yan San's doing. And the one who posed the greatest threat to Father was none other than Yan San. So, the Great Elder kept a close watch on him."
"As long as he dared to leave his lair for even a moment, the Great Elder would fly to the front lines, preventing Yan San from leaving even half a step. That is to say, Yan San also had no time to leave and attack Father and the others, so it may have been dragged on until now."
Li Yan smiled faintly upon hearing this.
"But this place is too far from your and the three Wind Beast clans' lairs, already beyond the range that a Nascent Soul-level cultivator's Divine Sense can probe, not even a Late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator."
"For them to use this place to set up a trap, it should be so that you wouldn't discover them when they were setting it up. And it should be that even without Yan San's action, there was a certain chance of killing the Great Elder."
"However, something may have gone wrong in the middle. This is all speculation. We should first find the location marking the Clan Head and the others, conduct a further investigation, and then see if we can find anything."
However, during their conversation, Li Yan also sighed in his heart. The sects and clans on the Wind God Continent lived a rather hard life.
Like Yan San watching the Great Elder, the Great Elder couldn't just walk away, otherwise it would lead to the clan's extermination.
And for a period of time, the three Wind Beast clans only had Yan San as their sole fourth-rank Wind Beast. During that time, without the three clans joining forces, the Tianli Clan, with the Great Elder present, still couldn't exterminate the "Wind Elephant Beast" and "Wind Iron Beast" clans.
The reason was none other than that no one in the Tianli Clan could destroy the "Heaven's Eye Pits." So, at most, they could only kill a few more Wind Beasts.
But even with this idea of killing more of the enemy, the Great Elder still didn't dare. Even if the three Wind Beast clans hadn't joined forces before, as long as he left, Yan San would definitely take the opportunity to attack. The Tianli Clan had, since ancient times, been on the defensive more than the offensive.
This was the helplessness of many cultivators on the Wind God Continent. Since ancient times, they had been dealing with and resisting the Wind Beasts until they either died in battle or ascended. The next generation would repeat their path, one after another. After all, life must go on...
Li Yan quickly cast these thoughts aside. With a flash of light in his hand, the jade slip given to him by the Third Elder appeared in his hand again.
Three days later, above the endless black swamp, Li Yan and Gong Chenying hovered quietly. They looked at the pitch-black swamp below their feet and could not see anything different about it from the other places.
On the surface of the swamp where even a feather could not stay, how could one see any different features?
"This is the central area of the swamp. The Third Elder could only divine that the Clan Head and the others are within a range of about four hundred li. We have been searching this area for two days and haven't found anything."
"My Divine Sense can't reach the bottom of the swamp either. This place looks really troublesome..."
As Li Yan spoke, his eyes were still constantly scanning below, and one hand was constantly rubbing the tip of his nose.
"We can only go down!"
Gong Chenying's words were as concise as ever.
Li Yan did not answer immediately. Instead, he reached out his hand, and with a flash of golden light, four talismans suddenly appeared in his hand, which he then handed to Gong Chenying.
"These are four Golden Bell Talismans. They can resist the attacks of an Initial-stage Nascent Soul cultivator, and each can last for about three breaths."
"Everything below is unknown. With me by your side, you should be fine, but I'm afraid of accidents. You should take them and keep them for emergencies."
These four were Golden Bell Talismans that were strong enough to resist the attacks of a Nascent Soul cultivator. Li Yan had only these four in total, which he had obtained from Chan Master Dajing back then. He gave them all to Gong Chenying.
He considered that if they were in an unexpectedly dangerous situation, with Gong Chenying's combat strength, which was barely comparable to an Initial-stage Nascent Soul, she would be able to escape most dangers in this realm.
Gong Chenying silently accepted them and put them away in her storage ring.
"Alright, let's go down. Since it's a range of more than four hundred li, we don't really need to pick a spot."
Seeing Gong Chenying put away the Golden Bell Talismans, Li Yan smiled faintly. He pointed at the ground below his feet, and then a black, gloomy light flashed from his body. A spiritual power shield of only about a zhang in size enveloped him and Gong Chenying.
At the same time, the "Cloud-Piercing Willow" beneath their feet had already disappeared, and their bodies immediately plummeted downwards like heavy objects!
As soon as the spiritual power shield touched the swamp, in Li Yan's perception, there was no resistance at all, as if the pitch-black swamp was a void.
The two of them only felt their vision go black, and then they fell into an endless darkness, their bodies continuously sinking...
Li Yan released his Divine Sense to a distance of about a hundred zhang around him. This distance could both minimize the consumption of his Divine Sense and give him time to react in an emergency.
Of course, the opponent could at most only be a Nascent Soul-level cultivator. If it were a Spirit Transformation cultivator, even from a distance of a thousand or ten thousand zhang, Li Yan wouldn't be able to sense them, let alone react.
The range of the spiritual power shield was not very large. This was also the best way to reduce the consumption of his own magical power. Li Yan's nose was filled with a faint fragrance.
Li Yan was now an experienced man. He could tell that this was not the scent of any perfume or cosmetic, but a pure body fragrance.
Although Li Yan was tall, he was not much taller than Gong Chenying, at most half a head.
She stood by Li Yan's side, also releasing her Divine Sense to scan the surroundings. Although her slender hands were hanging down, one could feel the faint flow of magical power in them, ready to attack at any moment. This was a habit formed from years of fighting.