During this period, Liu Chen's cultivation had successfully broken through to the Rank 4 Middle Stage. Without hesitation, he took out the two precious Golden Relic Gu he had been saving in his inventory.
After opening a large number of treasure chests, he had only obtained two Golden Relic Gu. This showed how rare they truly were. Even in Shang Clan City, these Gu were not for sale at any price; they were the kind of treasures that were immediately hoarded by major clans the moment they surfaced.
After refining the two Golden Relic Gu, Liu Chen felt a powerful force surging through his limbs like a relentless tide. This energy washed over the walls of his aperture, directly promoting his cultivation to the Rank 4 Peak Stage.
Time flew like a white horse passing through a gap. In the blink of an eye, three months vanished. During this short but productive window, Liu Chen utilized his Rank 4 Peak status and the materials he had purchased to elevate his entire set of Sword Path Gu to the Rank 4 level.
The only regret was his Vital Gu. Due to the limitations of his current body and the rare materials required by the Nameless Sword Path, the sword embryo series remained shackled, unable to break through to the next promotion node. Furthermore, being back on Qing Mao Mountain meant that the food sources for his Rank 4 sword set were extremely limited, making it difficult to meet their increasing needs.
The Fixed Immortal Travel recipe he had claimed from the San Cha Mountain chest continued to sit at the back of his mind like an ember that refused to die. He had reviewed the required materials more than once in quiet moments the Fairy Wind Gu, the Seven Star Gu, Light Of Glory , the shell of a Thousand-Beast King level Fixed Wind Turtle. Every time he ran through the list, the conclusion was the same. Without a city of significant scale and a fortune in Primeval Stones he had not yet accumulated, the recipe remained a map with no road to follow.
Soon, he reminded himself. Not yet. But soon.
Soon, the Jia Clan Caravan returned to Qing Mao Mountain.
With the arrival of the Jia Clan Caravan , the once peaceful village was instantly injected with new vitality. A bustling market formed within hours. Seeing this, Liu Chen's heart moved. He restrained his Rank 4 Peak aura using the Aura Concealment Gu , disguised his face with a transformation method, and quietly merged with the crowd in the caravan. His goal was clear: the Stone Gambling Shop.
Liu Chen walked quickly into the gambling den, imitating the appearance of a common traveler. He stopped in front of a pile of neatly arranged stubborn stones, pretending to examine them while searching for hidden treasures.
Nearby, Fang Yuan walked into the room. He appeared expressionless, his steps steady and calm, as if the entire world had nothing to do with him. After entering, his eyes as sharp as a falcon's scanned the room before stopping at a pile of inconspicuous purple stones.
The corners of Fang Yuan's mouth rose slightly into an imperceptible smile. "Purple is my lucky color," he said softly.
Without hesitation, he walked over and selected ten stones. This action attracted the attention of the surrounding Gu Masters, who cast surprised looks and began to whisper. Stone gambling was a high risk activity; ordinary cultivators rarely dared to try their luck because the chances of finding a Gu were abysmally low. However, human greed was the secret to the shop's longevity.
Fang Yuan ignored the crowd. He stared at a stone in his hand as if he could see through the rock skin. He activated a Moon Blade, and silver chips of stone splashed everywhere as he began to cut.
The first stone was worn away disappointingly, it was a waste stone. Fang Yuan was not discouraged, moving on to the next. One after another, the stones yielded nothing, and the surrounding spectators began to laugh, mockingly labelling him an overconfident fool who didn't know his own limits.
As the cut on the final stone deepened, a hint of the scent of Silk Gu emerged. Though faint, it was as obvious as a bright light in the night sky to anyone familiar with Gu insects.
At this moment, a thin, handsome young man in his twenties hurried into the shop. He looked at the stone with intense interest and concern. "Boy, I want this stone. I will give you forty Primeval Stones for it! I can't bear to see you lose money. Stop cutting before you ruin it."
"Jia Jinsheng," Liu Chen thought quietly from the shadows. "I wonder if you can survive this time now that I've destroyed the Screen Wall of the inheritance."
Fang Yuan remained unmoved by Jia Jinsheng's bid. He continued to cut. Finally, the Gu inside was fully revealed: a rare creature that had transformed into a Mudskin Toad. Its yellow body contrasted sharply with the grey stone. This was a primary material for the Bronze Precious Air Toad, the best mount-type Gu for Southern Border Shang Clan City
s.
"Forty primeval stones?" Fang Yuan raised his eyebrows slightly and took a look at Jia Jinsheng with the corner of his eye, coldly laughing. "It seems you want to forcefully buy the mudball fossil in my possession? Forceful purchase is spoiling the gambling den's rules. Furthermore, you're now on Qing Mao Mountain you want to bully a Gu Yue clansman like me in front of everyone?"
Fang Yuan's words fell, and the atmosphere in the shop turned cold and tense.
His words acted like a spark in a dry forest, igniting the tribal pride of the Gu Yue clansmen present. Several of them stood up immediately, glaring at Jia Jinsheng, clearly dissatisfied with the Shang Clan City
's attempt to pressure a clan member.
"This Mudskin Toad is the primary material for refining the Precious Light Bronze Toad! Its market value is at least six hundred Primeval Stones. Are you going to buy it or not?" Fang Yuan looked at Jia Jinsheng with a cold, superficial smile as he dragged the earthen toad forward, detailing the Gu's rarity and price with practiced ease.
Jia Jinsheng stared at the Mudskin Toad in Fang Yuan's hand, his eyes burning with jealousy. He desperately wanted to seize it. He had always enjoyed taking advantage of others, but now it was Fang Yuan who had made a fortune at his expense, a realization that felt like blood dripping from his heart. After a fierce internal struggle, Jia Jinsheng finally gritted his teeth. "Fine! I'll buy it!"
Seeing this, Fang Yuan handed over the toad and accepted the six hundred Primeval Stones. Amidst the envious glares of the crowd, Fang Yuan walked out of the gambling shop, satisfied with his gains.
Liu Chen had been waiting near the entrance for a long time. From a distance, his eyes locked onto Fang Yuan. Floating beside the protagonist was a dazzling Nine Color Treasure Box radiating a spectrum of iridescent light , the exact same variety of chest he had seen greyed out and sealed at the summit of San Cha Mountain. Only this one was alive, pulsing and fully accessible.
A hint of greed flashed in Liu Chen's eyes. He seized the moment as Fang Yuan turned to leave, quickly passing him like a ghost and activating his Remote Retrieval ability.
"Hmm?!"
The moment Liu Chen scored the loot, Fang Yuan came to a sudden halt. He frowned slightly as a bad feeling welled up in his heart. He quickly looked back, but his sharp gaze found no suspicious people behind him.
"Am I being paranoid?" Fang Yuan muttered to himself. "I always feel as if someone is watching me. That feeling just appeared again, but now it has suddenly vanished..."
After obtaining the treasure box from Fang Yuan, Liu Chen felt a surge of secret joy, but he was far from finished. He quickly turned his attention to Jia Jinsheng and swiped a Bronze Treasure Box from the Shang Clan City
as well, pocketing it as if it were a trivial matter.
Having completed his harvest, Liu Chen did not linger. He slipped away from the caravan and suppressed his Rank 4 Peak aura. He realized that there was no longer any reason for him to stay on Qing Mao Mountain. Without hesitation, he summoned his mount , the Thousand Li Earthwolf Spider.
Liu Chen leaped onto the spider's broad back. With a low command, the massive creature sped away like an arrow released from a string. In the blink of an eye, they crossed thousands of miles, traversing rugged mountains and rushing rivers until they arrived at the desolate peaks of Bai Gu Mountain.
He did not stop at the surface. Liu Chen directed the spider to dig straight down, boring hundreds of meters into the earth. There, he used the spider's strength to carve out a spacious underground chamber. Far from the hustle and bustle of the clans, this was the ideal place to open his most valuable prizes.
Once everything was arranged, Liu Chen withdrew the two Colorful Treasure Boxes from his system. One had been obtained from the Shang Clan City environment during his earlier stay, the other claimed just now from Fang Yuan himself. His heart hammered with anticipation as he randomly selected the first one and opened it.
With a crisp click, a brilliant, multicoloured light shot out from the chest, instantly illuminating the entire cavern. The system prompt rang clearly in his mind:
"Congratulations! Reward obtained: A Rank 6 Fairy Gu House. This house can communicate with the Treasure Yellow Heaven to facilitate bartering and trade."
Before the voice could even fade, an exquisite window manifested before Liu Chen's eyes. This window was unique; it possessed a vivid, living face with clearly visible features. The window seemed to feel Liu Chen's gaze; its eyes snapped open, and it spoke with a cheerful, chatty voice:
"Haha! Are you my master? That's great! Master, do you have any treasures you want to trade? There are so many precious things in the Treasure Yellow Heaven..."
The window was incredibly talkative, but Liu Chen looked at it with a mixture of shock and wariness. Before it could say another word, he quickly shoved it into his system inventory to avoid attracting the attention of any nearby Gu Immortals.
His mind raced even as he pressed the window shut.
The Treasure Yellow Heaven. He turned the words over carefully. If this Gu House could truly interface with the immortals' trading market, then the Fixed Immortal Travel recipe sitting dormant in his inventory was no longer merely a map with no road. It was a destination with a potential shortcut. The Fairy Wind Gu, the Seven Star Gu, Light Of Glory ingredients that were virtually untraceable through ordinary Shang Clan City
channels might be findable through an immortal level trading platform. He did not know yet whether the window's reach extended to materials of that tier, but for the first time since San Cha Mountain, the weight of that recipe felt slightly less immovable.
One problem at a time, he told himself. Open the second box first.
His curiosity regarding Fang Yuan's box had been building since the moment he had lifted it. He decided to open the second Colorful Treasure Box without another moment's delay. As the light faded, the system voice echoed again:
"Congratulations! Reward obtained: Acquired the lifelong memories and experiences passed down by Fang Yuan, the leader of the Blood Wing Demon Cult."
"Hahaha! It's actually his memories from five hundred years ago , a True Inheritance of a Gu Immortal!" Liu Chen laughed with excitement.
A massive influx of information surged into his brain. He now possessed five hundred years of hard won knowledge from a distant past life. The value of this inheritance was simply immeasurable. Liu Chen realized that he was now standing on the exact same starting line as Fang Yuan, but with his current Rank 4 Peak strength and the system's aid, he could obtain far more resources than the original protagonist ever could.
And within those five hundred years of memory, among all the paths Fang Yuan had walked and all the resources he had gathered across a lifetime, lay the answer to one very specific question: where, exactly, could the ingredients for the Fixed Immortal Travel Gu be found?
For the first time, the recipe in his mind stopped feeling like a distant aspiration and began to feel like a plan.
"I can't stay here!" Liu Chen's intuition suddenly screamed. Opening two Immortal tier rewards in succession was an extremely rare event, and he feared he might have caught the attention of a high ranking Gu Immortal.
In order to avoid being tracked, he immediately urged the Thousand Li Earthwolf Spider to gallop away at its maximum speed. The spider was a blur as it crossed mountains and rivers. Liu Chen clutched its back tightly, feeling the thrill of the wind as they ran for thousands of miles in a single breath until he was certain they were far from his original location.
Finally, he stopped in a secluded, nameless valley. The environment was quiet and devoid of people , the perfect hiding place. With five hundred years of experienced memories now aiding his judgment, Liu Chen believed that even a Gu Immortal would find it nearly impossible to track him down now.