141-146

Chapter 141 - Fighting Evil Sect

The fog was very thick in the Sea of Devils and it was filled with Ying energy. Wang Lin had only been here for a short while, but his clothes were already soaked. The sticky feeling of his clothes clinging to him was very uncomfortable.

As for Li Muwan, her face was no longer pale but slightly red, and her skin was silky smooth. Her clothes were also soaked by the fog, revealing her exquisitely charming body.

Wang Lin took one look and withdrew his gaze. His heart wasn't moved at all. If it wasn't for the fact that Li Muwan could make the Distance Heaven's Pill and various other pills, he wouldn't have allowed her to follow him.

The Sea of Devils was a huge basin. After descending for a long time, he still hadn't seen the bottom. However, he noticed that the deeper he went, the stronger the Ying energy was.

Soon, strange creatures started to appear in the fog, some of them even had spiritual energy fluctuations. This made Wang Lin very surprised, but luckily, he was able to detect them soon enough, so there were only a few scares and never any real danger.

Li Muwan was extremely nervous as she had heard too many rumors about this Sea of Devils. There was no reasoning with people here as power was the only thing that mattered. There was also a lack of female cultivators, so unless she had a powerful backing, she would likely have a very miserable fate.

Before the upheaval in Hou Fen, there were always a lot of cultivators stationed at the border of the Sea of Devils. This often included Nascent Soul cultivators. Their sole purpose was to prevent demonic cultivators from raiding their country.

Luckily, the powerful forces in the Sea of Devils were all in the center. The groups on the edges were all small, so as long as they were careful, nothing too big would happen.

Wang Lin didn't know how long they had been flying for when he suddenly stopped. Li Muwan wasn't able to react fast enough, so she ran into his back. Wang Lin coldly looked at the fog in the distance and said, "Come out, now!"

Three thin and tall figures appeared in the fog, but the fog was too thick for Wang Lin to see their exact figures, though it was obvious that they were three male cultivators. One of them shouted in a sharp voice.

"Arrogant! This area belongs to my Fighting Evil Sect. If you are smart, leave behind the female cultivator or else…"

Before he finished speaking, Wang Lin let out a cold snort. "Noisy! Die!" The map had stated that there was no reasoning in the Sea of Devils; only the strong were respected. He waved his right hand and his Ji Realm Divine Sense spread out. Those three were only mid stage Foundation Establishment cultivators, so Wang Lin could kill them at will.

The red lightning suddenly flashed by the three of them. Their eyes became dimmer and dimmer before their souls shattered and died.

Wang Lin walked forward and grabbed their bags of holding. He then kicked their bodies into the thick fog and left without taking another look.

Li Muwan was horrified as she looked at what occurred before her. This was the first time she had seen Wang Lin act. The other three were all at the mid stage of Foundation Establishment just like she was, but they had all died mysteriously without any means to resist.

She was shocked as she looked at Wang Lin's back, then she suddenly thought back to half a month ago, when her brother Li Qiqing said something about the great battle over the spirit vein where thousands of cultivators participated.

During the early stage of that battle, something strange was happening to the cultivators of Xuan Xu. All of the Foundation Establishment cultivators of Xuan Wu were mysteriously dying and falling from the sky.

If it was only one or two, then it wouldn't be so bad, but Xuan Wu only had 200 or so Foundation Establishment cultivators, and almost half of them died mysteriously like this. When she initially heard of this, she didn't believe it; she thought that it was only rumor, but looking at how those three Foundation Establishment cultivators had died, she couldn't help but remember that story.

She followed behind Wang Lin and asked, with a trembling voice, "Senior… senior apprentice brother, back in the Hou Fen Union, which army were you part of?"

Wang Lin didn't turn his head as he coldly said, "The tenth army."

The moment the words "The tenth army" entered Li Muwan's ears, it was like lightning had struck her mind. She clearly remembered that her brother had said that the 10th army was the one that fought that battle. Now she was almost certain that this cold-looking youth was the one responsible for massive amounts of deaths of the Foundation Establishment cultivators of Xuan Wu.

Thinking about this, her last sliver of will to resist evaporated completely. She couldn't even summon the strength to back out. But just then, she suddenly remembered a description of a strange technique that she had read back in the Lou He Sect and blurted out, "The technique you just used, was it the death spell?"

Wang Lin's heart was slightly startled, but nothing showed on his face. He calmly replied, without turning his head, "You also know about the death spell?"

The moment Li Muwan heard Wang Lin's words, she was even more certain that he knew the legendary death spell. The death spell was known as a technique from the ancient cultivation world that was incredibly hard to master. However, once mastered, all one had to do was look at someone, say the word "die," and that person would immediately die.

This type of technique was considered to be one of the most evil techniques among demonic cultivators. It requires one to fuse three types of energy. The first is Yin energy, which comes from female cultivators' Nascent Souls, using the Yin harvesting technique. The second energy is death energy, which is obtained by absorbing energy from the bones of the dead. Although this is similar to Ying energy, the quality is very different. The third energy is killing energy. Once someone has killed enough, their body will produce its own killing intent. Once this killing intent gains its own consciousness, it becomes the killing energy needed.

Fusing the three energies pushes the person to have to survive a trial to continue cultivating this technique. However, every night, the user suffers unimaginable pain, and they have to survive this trial again every three years.

Only after having gone through this cycle countless times can an early stage of the death spell be considered complete. If one wishes to continue cultivating it, the chance of death is even higher. According to some calculations, the chances of completely mastering the death spell are basically zero. Although this technique is very powerful, it is simply too vicious. Only a few demonic cultivators were willing to try to learn it.

After listening to Li Muwan describe the death spell with her trembling voice, Wang Lin's expression slightly changed and he remained silent. This silence caused Lu Muwan to became even more scared and her heart pounded violently.

After traveling in the Sea of Devils for a while, Wang Lin had finally entered the sea part of the area. The fog was much thicker now and the Ying energy was a lot stronger.

Staring at the ground below him, Wang Lin muttered a bit before taking a few steps back. He jumped around until he found a mountain peak. He stood on a rock that was protruding from the mountain as he took a flying sword out of his bag of holding and then pointed at the mountain. The flying sword flew toward the mountain and began carving.

Sounds of metal scraping rock entered Wang Lin's ears. He couldn't help but frown as the mountain was too tough and the flying sword was very weak.

He let out a snort and then slapped his bag of holding again. This time, more than 30 flying swords came out. His Ji Realm Divine Sense entered each sword and the swords rained down upon the mountain.

This way, the progress immediately sped up, and a cave appeared on the side of the mountain. Li Muwan had gotten used to Wang Lin during their travels. Since this guy could complete the death spell, then controlling 30 flying swords wasn't really anything surprising.

She knew that the amount of flying swords one could control was dependant on a cultivator's divine sense.

Time slowly passed and a cave with four rooms was slowly carved out. Thus, a simple cultivation cave was formed. Wang Lin took out spirit stones and set down various formations around the cave.

After Li Muwan saw the formations, she revealed a surprised expression, but after seeing the formation, the surprise disappeared and a sliver of disdain appeared. However, that sliver of disdain quickly disappeared as she hid it.

However, this sliver of disdain was still caught by Wang Lin. Although he was focused on placing the formation, his divine sense had never left Li Muwan. Even on the way here, it was still the same. If Li Muwan had made any unusual movement, Wang Lin wouldn't care that she was a woman; he would've mercilessly killed her.

After Wang Lin finished placing down the spirit stones, he didn't even turn around as he coldly said, "I plan to stay in this cave for a long time. If the formation is broken, I can easily escape, but you will have to rely on yourself." With that, he turned around and looked at Li Muwan.

Li Muwan clenched her teeth and moved up without a word. She took out black flags from her bag of holding and placed them around the cave. However, she still felt unsafe, so she placed more formations down around the cave and even organized Wang Lin's formations to connect them all.

After doing all of this, she clenched her jaw again and took out a blue, crystallic, beast bone. She used her flying sword to cut it into pieces and, after calculating for a while, she placed one piece down.

She continued to place them. When all 18 pieces of the beast bone were in place, three hours had passed. Li Muwan's forehead was covered in sweat. She looked very tired as she said, "Including the formations you have placed, there are a total of 214 formations. However, they are only beginner formations that can only stop Foundation Establishment cultivators from entering. I just used the bone of a crystal beast to lay down the nine skeleton formation. Although the formation is only at 30% power due to the lack of bones, it can still block a Core Formation cultivator for one hour."

"I only have this many crystal beast bones. If you want the formation to be even more stable, then we need more spirit beast bones."

With that, she waved her right hand and tossed out a piece of jade. Wang Lin caught it and scanned it with his divine sense. Inside was information on how to enter the formation. After he finished reading it, he crushed the jade, then looked at Li Muwan and pointed forward.

Li Muwan knew that she couldn't trust him, but there was nothing she could do, so she walked into the formation. Wang Lin left a sliver of his divine sense on her and followed behind.

After safely passing through the layers of formations and entering the cave, Li Muwan took out another small flag. She gently waved the flag and all the formations activated, releasing a thick fog. From the distance, one couldn't see anything at all, and even if they were to take a closer look, they would only see the mountain.

Inside the cave, Wang Lin examined Li Muwan, which caused her face to became even more pale. She took a few steps back and whispered, "Senior apprentice brother, should I refine the Distance Heaven Pill for you now?"

Wang Lin shook his head and said, "I don't dare to eat the pills you refine."

Li Muwan's eyes immediately became red as she silently lowered her head. After a long time, she raised her head, revealing a crying face, and whispered, "Senior apprentice brother has saved my life. Just tell me what I need to do for you to believe me." The current her was very beautiful and alluring.

Wang Lin wasn't effected by Li Muwan's beauty at all. His expression was still calm as he said, "I don't like forcing people, so I won't demand too much from you. All I need you to do is refine enough pills for me to reach the Core Formation stage. Once I have reached the Core Formation stage, I'll escort you out of the Sea of Devils. But during this period of time, I'll need you to hand over your soul essence blood to ensure nothing goes wrong with the pills during this period of time."

Li Muwan pondered for a bit, then nodded. She pointed her finger at her brow and forced out her soul essence blood. Then she sent the drop to Wang Lin.

After Wang Lin received the soul essence blood, he threw out several bags of holding and said, "All of the materials are here. See what kind of pills you can refine."

Li Muwan checked the bags with her divine sense and immediately exclaimed, "This… this is desolate wood root, and there is yellow core grass. This… there is burning golden root and heaven spirit grass…" The more she looked through the bags, the more shocked she was. A large majority of the materials were for refining pills, and some had long been extinct in Hou Fen. Only disciples that came back from the foreign battleground every 100 years would bring back some.

Wang Lin rubbed his chin and threw out more than ten bags of holding. These were his recent spoils. After removing all the treasures and spirit stones, all that was left were materials he didn't know about, so it was perfect to have Li Muwan identify them.

After checking all of the bags of holding, all of Li Muwan's grief from before disappeared and her face was now glowing. Her face was filled with excitement as she raised her head and asked, "Senior apprentice brother, I can freely use all these materials?"

Wang Lin nodded. "I only want pills. As for the process, you can do whatever you wish."

Li Muwan smiled at Wang Lin for the first time. Her smile was very sweet as she said, with confidence, "Senior apprentice brother can rest assured. I have calculated that I can make 300 Yellow Spirit pills that can help increase cultivation, 50 Poison Avoiding pills, and various other pills with various effects. Once I have finished, I'll hand them to senior apprentice brother. Senior apprentice brother, among the materials you have, the most valuable one is this demon blood vine." With that, she took out a very ordinary looking red wood strip.

"This red wood strip is one of the ingredients for making the Distance Heaven Pill and one of the most important. I have only seen this demon blood vine in ancient records. With this, I have confidence in refining one Distant Heaven Pill; however, the effect will be a bit weaker as I need to find replacements for the other materials."

Wang Lin's expression remained dull as he calmly said, "I won't ask much about matters relating to refining pills." He pondered a bit and said, "I plan on making a trip outside. At least three days and at most half a month. Watch out for yourself."

With that, he was ready to leave. Li Muwan hesitated for a bit, then quickly said, "Senior apprentice brother, when you go out, can you find me a pill furnace? I'm fine with the materials, and the pill furnace I carry is fine for normal pills. However, if I were to use my current pill furnace, the success rate of the Distance Heaven Pill would only be 50%. Normally, the completion of the Distant Heaven Pill uses the sect's Heaven Fusing Furnace."

Wang Lin slightly frowned. He looked at Li Muwan, then left without a word.

Li Muwan secretly sighed. She originally didn't want to lie, but she was afraid that if she had told the truth earlier, he would have left her. However, now that they had reached this stage and she had even turned over her soul essence blood, she decided to bring up the matter of the Distance Heaven Pill's success rate. If anything were to happen in the future, he might kill her in a moment of rage.

After leaving the cave, Wang Lin checked his direction and looked toward where Zhao was. His eyes became cold as he muttered, "Teng Huayuan, I'm about to reach the Core Formation stage. Once I reach the Nascent Soul stage, I'll kill my way back to Zhao and uproot your entire clan. Teng Huayuan, you better not die early. Live and wait for my return…"

The coldness in his eyes slowly disappeared. He took a step, activated the earth escape technique, and quickly charged into the distance. The reason he was going out was to find more spirit beast bones. According to Li Muwan, only by adding more spirit beast bones could the nine skeleton formation be at max power. Wang Lin knew that he was in a rush to reach the Core Formation stage, and in a place as dangerous as the Sea of Devils, he needed a relatively safe place to ensure nothing went wrong.

Another reason was that he needed the skulls of spirit beasts to make the reaction furnace for the refining technique of the War God Shrine. With both the formations and the reaction furnace, spirit beast bones were now a necessity for Wang Lin. According to the description given in the map jade, there were spirit beasts within the fog and spirit beasts bones at the bottom of the sea.

However, many of those spirit beast bones had already been dug up by others, so even after walking for a long time, Wang Lin still hadn't found any. Also, the fog was very thick at the bottom of the sea, so his eyes were useless and he could only see with his divine sense.

As he moved, his expression suddenly changed and he took a step back. Then a flying sword, flying in a wavy pattern, flashed by where Wang Lin was.

Wang Lin was at the peak of late stage Foundation Establishment, the pseudo Core Formation stage, so he was able to completely see through this 40 something year old man who was only at the early stage of Foundation Establishment. This person's face was dark purple and his breathing was very rough. It was clear that he had been hit with a powerful poison, causing him to not be able to fully control his spiritual energy.

The moment that flying sword passed by, another ray of light chased closely behind it.

Wang Lin's face became very strange as the person chasing the early stage Foundation Establishment cultivator was a young man at the peak of the 15th layer of Qi Condensation. This person's face was snow white, had slender eyes, and had a hint of evil on his face.

The evil-looking young man was holding a black beast bone. As he leisurely chased after the middle-aged man, he kept on blowing on the bone. Every time he blew on it, black smoke would come out.

The moment the black smoke appeared, it would quickly catch up to the Foundation Establishment cultivator and enter his body.

"Senior apprentice brother, run faster. Your junior apprentice brother wants to see how long you can last with those 16 deadly poisons inside your body." The young man blew at the black bone again and continued, in a creepy voice, "Senior apprentice brother, junior apprentice brother here has spent a very long time preparing these 16 different deadly poisons for you. How else would I dare to act against you with your Foundation Establishment cultivation? Senior apprentice brother, you won't be able to run away."

The middle-aged man clenched his teeth and remained silent as his flying sword crookedly flew up the mountain.

"Senior apprentice brother, you are already very old. How about you accept death and let me devour you with the foundation stealing technique?" The evil looking youth said very slowly as he closed in on the middle-aged man.

Wang Lin was interested in the beast bone in the young man's man. He moved forward and silently followed behind them.

After the middle-aged man heard what the young man said, he didn't even turn his head as he cursed with a raspy voice, "Sang Muya, you bastard. If it wasn't for me pleading for you back then, how could master have accepted you as a disciple? You dare to do such a vicious thing to your fellow disciples? Are you not afraid of master finding out?"

The evil youth let out a hysterical laugh and said, "Master? If master didn't agree to this, how would I dare to openly ambush you like this?"

The middle-aged man's body trembled as he coughed out a mouthful of black blood. His body weakened and he fell off his flying sword. The evil youth let out a cold snort and stopped three feet away from the body on his flying sword. He stabbed the corpse several times with this flying sword to make sure it was dead before grabbing it to leave.

However, he suddenly stopped as he stared at a dark figure in the fog. Cold sweat covered his forehead. When he was chasing his senior apprentice brother, he had his divine sense spread out and didn't notice anything. However, this person now appeared silently before him, meaning that this person's cultivation level was far above his own.

He threw the body on the ground, then immediately clasped his hands and bowed. The evil expression disappeared from his face and was replaced with a simple and honest expression as he said, "Junior is the Fighting Evil Sect's disciple, Sang Muya. What has senior stopped junior for? Junior will do his best to help senior."

Wang Lin slowly walked out of the fog and coldly glanced at the youth.

The youth felt like his simple and honest expression was seen through at a glance by Wang Lin, so he suddenly felt terrified.

He had only felt like this when he was faced by his master, but his master was at the peak of late stage Foundation Establishment and had foot in the Core Formation stage. Could this young man, who didn't look much older than him, be at the pseudo Core Formation stage already…

The youth's heart trembled and his expression became even more respectful.

"Bring your beast bone here." Wang Lin's voice was cold and void of any emotion.

The more Wang Lin acted like this, the more Sang Muya panicked in his heart. He had grown up in the Sea of Devils and had heard of all kinds of demonic techniques. Although his cultivation level wasn't high, he had managed to cultivate a pair of Demonic Knowledge eyes. He knew that those powerful demonic cultivators were cold and ruthless, and although he had seen many demonic cultivators with those eyes, most were only an imitation. But this senior before him seemed to be cold and ruthless from the soul, especially that pair of eyes that caused even his heart to feel cold.

He quickly threw out the beast bone that was in his hand as he didn't dare to have any thoughts of resisting.

Chapter 142 - A Body of Treasures

Wang Lin flew at a low altitude near the bottom of the sea with a flag in his hand. This was a soul flag with over 100 souls sealed inside, including the soul of Sang Muya from earlier. The soul flag used to belong to Sang Muya and he didn't expect it to be his own grave.

After talking with Sang Muya, Wang Lin learned that everything within a one million kilometer radius was considered the outer rim of the Sea of Devils. There were countless large and small sects in this area, and the Fighting Evil Sect was one of them.

The highest level cultivator of the sect was the sect head, Liu Sen, who was Sang Muya's ancestor. He was at the peak of mid stage Core Formation and was somewhat famous in this area.

The outer rim of the Sea of Devils was very lacking in resources with very few spirit veins. There were very few Nascent Soul cultivators here as many weren't willing to live in this area. Most of them lived in the middle section of the Sea of Devils.

In addition to all of this, Wang Lin also learned that there weren't any spirit beast bones in the outer rim of the Sea of Devils. Those powerful spirit beasts all lived in the middle section of the, and even if one were to wander out here, it was not something the demonic cultivators that lived here could kill.

But Wang Lin still managed to obtain some useful information. Within the outer rim of the Sea of Devils, there were three danger zones. One of the three danger zones, the Corpse Valley, had many beast bones. If nearby sects needed such materials, they would go there.

The strange thing was that every so often, new corpses of newly dead spirit beasts would appear in the Corpse Valley. Some of these spirit beasts were very powerful when they were alive. There was actually no explanation for how they appeared there, much less how they died in the Corpse Valley.

Although the Corpse Valley was mysterious, as long as one doesn't enter the central part of the valley, then generally nothing dangerous happens.

As for the bone Sang Muya was using to deal with his senior apprentice brother, it came from the Corpse Valley. It was made from the bones of a mysterious crow beast. After studying it for a long time, Wang Lin found that this poison only worked on Foundation Establishment cultivators. The effect was drastically weaker against more powerful cultivators.

Wang Lin's current destination was the Corpse Valley. He quickly flew toward the direction Sang Muya pointed to.

What he saw when he arrived outside the Corpse Valley were countless mountain ranges. There were tall and low mountains, and where the mountain ranges met, there were large and small valleys.

This was the Corpse Valley.

The fog here was very thin and didn't affect visibility at all. However, as Wang Lin entered, he felt Yin energy that was very different in terms of quality to the energy outside.

Wang Lin immediately formed a seal and began to chant, then slivers of light gathered before him. Eventually, they formed a ball of white light, but right after it appeared, it began to change colors until it finally settled and became blue.

Wang Lin's eyes lit up. This was the technique to determine the type of Yin energy in the area. Based on the color of the ball, it would tell him which of the four Yin energies it was. There were four colors: purple, blue, silver, and red, which represented heaven, earth, mysterious, and death Yin.

Since the light was blue, then this place contained the very rare earth Yin energy.

Wang Lin took a deep breath and pointed forward. The ball of light immediately flew forward. Wang Lin slowly followed behind the ball of light and observed its color as he searched for beast bones.

Wang Lin's divine sense found several cultivators inside the Corpse Valley, but they were all focused on looking for beast bones. Even if they were to meet, all they would do was nod at each other as they passed by.

Wang Lin pondered a little. There wasn't only one Corpse Valley but countless ones of varying sizes. There were fewer cultivators deep inside the valley, meaning there was a higher chance of finding beast bones there.

After passing through the nine valleys, there were much more remains of beasts. Some of them were terrifyingly large as they took up a majority of the valley.

Wang Lin was standing on top of a giant beast corpse, but after examining it for a while, he gave up on the idea of taking it away. Although this corpse was large, there wasn't spiritual energy in the bones, meaning this wasn't a spirit beast. It just had a large body.

As he got closer and closer to the center of the Corpse Valley, the deeper the color of the ball of light became. After he passed the ninth valley, he no longer saw any cultivators, and the amount of corpses increased.

Wang Lin paused in the ninth valley for a while. He was very careful and had his divine sense spread out. For some reason, after he arrived at the ninth valley, he felt that it was different from the previous eight. He couldn't clearly say what was different, but he felt as if countless pairs of eyes were gathered on him the moment he entered.

Wang Lin sneered in his heart as he swept the surroundings with his Ji Realm Divine sense. The eyes on him immediately disappeared and the valley became silent again.

Wang Lin pondered for a bit, then casually collected beast bones before moving to the tenth valley. When he arrived at the thirteenth valley, the ball of light split into two.

Wang Lin's eyes lit up. He knew that this meant that the quality of Yin energy had broken past rank 10 normal quality and entered rank 1 good quality. Waves of Yin were coming from the 14th valley. Wang Lin felt his body stiffen.

Wang Lin looked around and let out a sigh. In truth, this was the best place for him to go into closed door cultivation. However, although this place looked calm, for it to be considered one of the three danger zones, it must have its dangers. Wang Lin didn't dare to go into closed door cultivation for long no matter how good the conditions were. Before he fully understands this place, he won't stay here for long unless he absolutely has to.

He hesitated for a bit. He had already collected a few beast bones. Although their quality wasn't very high, they should at least be able to increase the power of the nine skeleton formation a bit.

But he was a bit unwilling to walk away now. From his current position, he could see just how big the fourteenth valley was. This fourteenth valley was clearly different from the 13 before it. Its size was almost the same as the previous 13 combined.

In addition to all of this, what was most strange about the 14th valley was that there were no corpses in sight. The entire ground was covered in shining blue frost that looked very mysterious.

From a distance, Wang Lin could see that the fourteenth valley wasn't the center of the Corpse valley; it could only be considered the halfway point. Wang Lin shook his head and decided to head back.

Just as he was about to leave, a roar came from the distance and a giant dragon over 1,000 feet long appeared from the fog.

Wang Lin's expression changed as he took a few steps back and entered the ground. His divine sense spread out and was locked onto the giant dragon.

The dragon's body was very large. As it moved its body, it created huge gusts of wind. In one jump, it crossed 13 valleys and entered the fourteenth valley.

As the giant dragon passed over Wang Lin, a large amount of fresh blood fell from the sky. Wang Lin looked up and saw that there was a giant wound on the dragon's stomach. The wound covered half of the dragon's body length.

Wang Lin looked at the direction the dragon came from and saw a trail of blood. It seemed the dragon was bleeding non-stop on the way here.

The dragon stopped above the fourteenth valley and seemed indifferent about the amount of blood he was shedding as he let out one last roar. The moment this roar came out, the air around the dragon rippled and spread out like waves in the ocean.

The bones in the other valleys were turned to dust and were pushed outward by the air waves.

Wang Lin could feel that three inches of the ground were peeled off. He was extremely shocked. This dragon was probably even stronger than a Nascent Soul cultivator.

This roar lasted for one hour before the dragon's eyes dimmed. It used the last of its strength to smash into the blue ice on the ground and dug into it.

At this moment, Wang Lin jumped out of the ground and charged toward the dragon without any hesitation. In the blink of an eye, he had entered the fourteenth valley. As he floated in the air, he grabbed the tail of the sinking dragon and pulled with all his might.

He only heard crackling sounds as the dragon's body was pulled out by him. His heart pounded as he carried the heavy body and flew out of the Corpse Valley.

The dragon was too heavy. Even when using all the spiritual energy in his body, he could just barely carry it. He could hear his own bones compressing under the pressure, but when he thought about obtaining the body of a dragon that had just died, Wang Lin completely ignored the pain.

After shakily flying out of the Corpse Valley, Wang Lin could see the cultivators that were collecting bones on the outer rim. All of them had activated defensive treasures as they looked at him. They were stunned.

These cultivators were used to these kinds of things happening, so the moment the dragon appeared, they all scattered, opened up their defensive treasures, and found a sturdy place to hide. Even so, there were still people who had their bodies shattered by the roar.

In order to survive, not only would they need a certain level of cultivation but also a quick mind. These people were here year round as they relied on selling the bones from the Corpse Valley for a living.

Because they were here year round, they did sometimes see spirit beasts dying inside the valley, but this was the first time they had seen someone carry out the body of a spirit beast that had just died.

They have never even heard of it, let alone seen it. However, this person had not only done it, but was carrying a complete dragon corpse.

A complete body that hadn't rotted! At this moment, most of the cultivators had lost their reasoning and revealed looks of greed.

Wang Lin could feel countless eyes looking at him. He let out a cold snort as he stepped on the ground and went underground using the earth escape technique with the entire dragon.

The moment he sunk down, his Ji Realm divine sense shot out. All of the cultivators here were below the Core Formation stage, so every single one of them died.

The dragon's body was simply too large. Even though he was constantly drinking spirit liquid, he couldn't move very fast. He could only ever so slowly move toward the cave as he was carrying the dragon.

Chapter 143 - Three Cold Cores

It took Wang Lin ten days to slowly move from the Corpse Valley back to the cave. After he appeared outside the cave, he carefully checked his surroundings. When he was sure that nothing was wrong, he came out and dragged the dragon out with him.

The ground shook and alerted Li Muwan. She opened the formation and poked her head out after Wang Lin called her. However, the moment she poked her head out, her eyes were drawn to the 1,000 foot long dragon. She was dumbfounded for a long time.

Wang Lin dragged the dragon into the formation and said to Li Muwan, "Would the bones of this dragon be enough for the formation?"

Li Muwan nodded in a daze as her mind was a complete mess. She had seen records of this type of dragon. They were powerful enough to kill late stage Nascent Soul cultivators and their entire bodies could be considered treasures.

Inside the head of the dragon was a dragon pill. It was a natural pill that only needed a bit of refinement to become a real pill that will increase cultivation. The dragon's skin was top quality material for making armor and the dragon's bones and tendons were also rare materials. The most precious material of all though was the marrow.

The quality of the marrow depended on the age of the dragon. The older the dragon, the less marrow. Once it reaches a certain age, it will become a dragon pill.

The dragon pill was something even ancient cultivators would dream of. It would allow one to obtain a dragon's body and allow them to switch back and forth. Also, from that point on, they will never reach a bottleneck when cultivating.

However, for a dragon to form a dragon pill, it would need to be alive for 9,990,000 years. This was why no exact records of the dragon pill existed. Its effects were still only rumors and legends.

After passing the dragon to Li Muwan, he no longer bothered with it and went on his way. He had obtained everything he needed besides a furnace in this trip, but he learned that there was a place called the Treasure Refining Pavilion where he could buy one.

The Treasure Refining Sect had a lot of shops all over the Sea of Devils. The closest one was in North Dipper city, 40,000 kilometers away. However, things like a pill furnace usually cost a lot, and after hearing Sang Muya say that the head of the Fighting Evil Sect had spent almost all of the sect's spirit stones for one pill furnace, he gave up on the idea of going to buy one.

He decided to put the matter of the furnace aside for now. Because they had the dragon's bones, the nine skeleton formation will be strong enough to provide them decent protection. Wang Lin was going to go into closed door training, aiming for the Core Formation stage.

Wang Lin sat down in one of the stone rooms and sealed it with a large rock. Then he took out 30 flying swords and pointed at the ground. The flying swords immediately flew into the ground and started digging a tunnel to the bottom of the mountain.

Wang Lin's eyes became serious as he shot out some spiritual energy that became a ball of fire. The color of the fire gradually became light blue. Wang Lin slightly frowned, but his face immediately lightened up. Rank 1 common Earth Yin. Although it couldn't compare to the Corpse Valley, it was more than enough for common cold cores.

His body moved and jumped into the bottom of the pit. It reached rank 3 common Earth Yin. This was clearly the limit, so he put out the ball of fire and began to cultivate.

Wang Lin had already learned the Underworld Ascension Method once, so he was able to quickly pick it up again.

Time slowly passed and three days later, Wang Lin opened his eyes. His eyes revealed a contemplating expression before he took out the heaven defying bead and gathered the spirit liquid.

Time quickly passed by. Aside from cultivating, Wang Lin only gathered the spirit liquid from the heaven defying bead every day. Once he had gathered enough dew, he would spend part of the day cultivating inside the heaven defying bead with the spirit liquid.

As a result, his progress was very rapid. It only took him one month to form two cold cores. He only needed to form the last one to attempt to reach the Core Formation stage.

This last cold core would take longer to make. After all, he had only formed two cold cores last time. However, he was at the peak of late stage Foundation Establishment, so at least it wouldn't take him years of cultivation for it to finally form.

Wang Lin was confident that he could form his third cold core within three months. As a result, he wasn't in a rush at all. Aside from cultivating and gathering spirit liquid, he found time every day to nurture some devils.

Wang Lin had tried many times, but he couldn't imprint his divine sense onto the devil, so he had to work around it by slowly nurturing them.

Speaking of the devil, he was of great use for Wang Lin. He slowly took out souls from the soul flag and fed them to the devil. All of the souls inside this soul flag were cultivators from the Sea of Devils, and a majority of them were disciples of the Fighting Evil Sect. According to Sang Muya, all of these souls belonged to people who fought with him for the attention of their master. After they were killed by him, he sealed their souls inside.

Time slowly passed, and by the time the devil had devoured most of the souls in the soul flag, a sliver of Wang Lin's divine sense developed inside the devil.

The devil itself hadn't realized that this sliver of Wang Lin's divine sense had developed within itself as it thought about ways to escape.

Three months had passed since he had gone into closed door cultivation. The prototype for his third cold core had already formed. In these three months, he had gone outside several times. The room Li Muwan was in was filled with materials. She even managed to get some soil from somewhere and planted some spirit herbs. There was also a formation of low and medium quality spirit stones laid out around the spirit herbs to ensure they had enough spiritual energy to grow.

A small pill furnace was placed in the center of the room with a pile of failed pills beside it. Li Muwan had started refining pills when Wang Lin had gone into closed door cultivation.

Aside from the failures on the ground, there were also jades scattered on the floor. Whenever Li Muwan get stuck or had some inspiration, she would immediately search through the jades.

Of the four rooms inside the cave, one was used for Wang Lin's cultivation, one was for alchemy, one was for growing plants, and the last one had been renovated into a shower room by Li Muwan.

The Sea of Devils was filled with fog, so the air was very humid. The inside the cave was no exception. Clothes will get wet very quick and stick to your body. Li Muwan was a girl, and adding on the sticky feeling the wet clothes gave her, she really couldn't stand it anymore, so she put in a lot of effort to make this shower room.

Wang Lin didn't care about the shower room at all because all he have to do was cycle his spiritual energy and all of the Yin energy would be sucked into his cold core.

The nine skeleton formation's power had greatly increased with the dragon's bones. However, Li Muwan said that it should be called the nine dragon bone formation instead of the nine skeleton formation.

The moment the formation was turned on, it could trap a Core Formation cultivator for months, or block a Nascent soul cultivator for a few days. However, Li Muwan regretted that they couldn't catch the dragon while it was alive, because if they had infused the dragon's soul into the formation, it would be even stronger. Not only would it be able to defend, it would also be able to attack. Any Core Formation cultivator would die instantly, and a Nascent Soul cultivator would be forced away in a sorry state.

Unfortunately, the soul of a dragon was too hard to obtain, so she could only dream about it.

As for the dragon, Li Muwan took out the dragon's pill and stored it until she obtains a better pill furnace. As for the skin, Li Muwan spent a month removing it from the dragon and stored it for later.

In addition to all of this, there were the dragon's tendons. This was the third mysterious part of the dragon aside from the dragon's pill and marrow. If a treasure refiner was here, they would be able to refine the tendons into weapons that could change their size at will and split into countless branches.

The last part was a small bottle of bone marrow. It was so precious that Li Muwan was scared of using it to refine pills. She handed these things over to Wang Lin and painfully withdrew her gaze.

Wang Lin kept the dragon's marrow and veins and gave everything else to Li Muwan. With her tender hands, she made two inner armors from the dragon's hide.

After Wang Lin put one on, he looked at the other one that was clearly made for a woman and threw it at Li Muwan. She let out a smile as she silently put it away in her bag of holding.

There was still a lot of dragon's hide left after the armor was made, so Wang Lin put it all away to exchange for other resources in the future.

The entire dragon became various treasures.

Another month passed and Wang Lin finally formed his third cold core. The Yin energy cycled through the cold core at his head, chest, and dantian.

Wang Lin opened his eyes and revealed an excited look. He closed his eyes and decided to do it all in one go, so he fused the three cold cores into one.

Situ Nan had explained in detail before about the process of fusing the three cold cores into one. The fusion was divided into the initial step and completion. If he could reach the initial step, then he would truly be half a step into the Core Formation stage. If he were to take the Distant Heaven Pill at the same moment he completes the fusion, then he would have an 80% chance of reaching the Core Formation stage.

He didn't let Li Muwan complete the Distant Heaven Pill because it required a better pill furnace and there was only one incomplete pill. He had to ensure the highest success rate of the pill being completed.

At the same time, he made the backup plan of using the demonic blood root to make a fake Distant Heaven Pill.

Before, he thought buying a pill furnace would be too expensive, but now that he had the dragon's hide, he could try to get one. If it was still not enough, then he would do whatever was necessary to get a pill furnace. He took a deep breath and began to attempt fusing his cold cores.

Chapter 144 - Core Formation (1)

There were cold cores in his head, chest, and dantian. He had to break the balance between the three so the cold core at the head would sink and fuse with the one in the chest. If that succeeded, then that was the initial fusion.

The next step would be for that fused cold core to sink and fuse with the one in the dantian. The moment the three cold cores fuse, there is a chance for a real core to form.

Wang Lin quietly sat inside this small, stone room filled with Yin energy. His eyes were cold, his divine sense was in his body, and his focus was on the cold core in his head.

The first step for him was to make this cold core sink.

Wang Lin knew that it would be difficult to fuse the three cores before, but after experiencing it, he felt like difficult was an understatement. It was more like unimaginably difficult to fuse the three cold cores.

Wang Lin had already tried to sink the first cold core for more than a month, and he never stopped trying the whole time. There seemed to be some mysterious force blocking him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't break through.

The requirements to cultivate the Underworld Ascension Method were to break the Ancestral point, Qi Sea, and dantian three times each with each time being harder than the last. The first time could be said to be difficult, the second time was very difficult, and the third time was extremely difficult. However, what Wang Lin was attempting to do right now was really making his Ancestral point break a fourth time, so one could only imagine the difficulty.

After attempting to break through many times, Wang Lin changed tactics and decided to slowly grind the barrier down. As time went on, that force that was blocking him weakened greatly.

However, the pain caused when grinding it was not something a normal person could imagine. Every time he grinded it, his body would shake and his forehead would be covered in sweat. His clothes had been dry ever since he had started this process.

Turning three cores into one was not something that could be achieved without great determination. However, determination was not something Wang Lin lacked. Even back in the Heng Yue Sect, his determination had left two streaks of blood on the road up the mountain.

If it wasn't for his bad talent, he would have definitely been the focus of the Heng Yue Sect's nurture and care. However, all of this was pointless now with the destruction of the Heng Yue Sect.

Wang Lin's determination was unimaginable. After enduring three months of this pain, the Ancestral point finally broke once more.

The fist-sized cold core slowly sank down toward his Qi sea. As it sunk, slivers of energy from the cold core entered his body,

Every time the cold core sunk, more and more of these threads of energy appeared until the core was finally right above the Qi sea.

Wang Lin took a deep breath and started grinding the barrier in front of the Qi sea without any hesitation.

Another three months had passed before the barrier finally broke and opened. At the same time, the two cold cores collided with each other. Wang Lin heard a boom as a terrifying energy surged through his body.

Wang Lin's face immediately became pale. After his throat moved a bit, he coughed out a mouthful of blood. The moment the blood came out, it froze and hit the wall, causing the wall to be covered in blood-colored ice crystals.

After coughing out the blood, he quickly took out eight medium quality spirit stones, all of which he crushed and turned to dust. The dust quickly circled around him and formed a strange symbol.

The symbol faintly glowed before disappearing. Then a black flying sword appeared and circled Wang Lin once before stopping before him. The devil's figure slowly appeared from the sword.

The devil first looked at Wang Lin and began to struggle on what to do. Just at this moment, the divine sense implanted in the devil activated and it lost every urge to attack Wang Lin, then started to obediently guard him.

After finishing all of this, Wang Lin's body fell to the ground. He only had enough time to place a formation before he passed out.

Speaking of this formation, Wang Lin had prepared several simple formations to use during emergency situations.

The devil guarded the cave and secretly glanced at Wang Lin a few times. He began to struggle again and thought, "Should I attack him? Well… he doesn't seem to be faking it… it's hard to say. This guy is just too sly… Ah, should I fight with him? But if I can't defeat him…" The devil shivered and threw this idea out of his mind.

After one day, the idea he had thrown out of his mind came back again and he began to struggle. "Should I attack him? This is the perfect time. If I miss this chance now, then I might never have another… No, this Wang Lin is too cunning. How could he not have some sort of defense against me? He was passing out, yet he still let me out. This doesn't make any sense." The devil shook his head and looked viciously at Wang Lin. "I'm not going to fall for it. You can continue to pretend."

The idea was once again thrown aside.

Another day passed. The devil looked at Wang Lin and became tempted again. "Forget it, lets fight! I don't think this guy is faking it. I wanna fight, fight, fight!"

His eyes turned red and he jumped at Wang Lin. The defensive formation had no effect, so he managed to touch him.

But shortly after, the devil let out a miserable scream as green gas came out of his body and he seemed like he was about to disappear. He quickly backed up while miserably crying, "I knew this guy was cunning. Why else would he let me out without a care? Damn it, when did he leave that divine sense inside me. How… how am I going to live from now on?" The devil slumped to the ground and began wailing.

After experiencing this, the devil obediently stayed in a corner. He stared at the wall with eyes filled with anger.

On the third day, Wang Lin woke up and let out a bitter smile. He underestimated the difficulty of the fusion. The destructive force created by the fusion was the key part of the process.

He couldn't let this energy escape or the fusion would fail, but if he were to keep it in his body, his body wouldn't be able to withstand it. Wang Lin's expression was very dark and unsettling.

In truth, his body couldn't handle this level of Yin energy, which confused him greatly. How did the senior that practiced the Underworld Ascension Method fuse the three cold cores? Forget about others, how did Situ Nan succeed in cultivating the Underworld Ascension Method?

Wang Lin thought very hard but couldn't come up with an answer. This was one point Situ Nan had never brought up.

"How could I make my body be able to withstand the Yin energy?" Wang Lin muttered to himself for a long time before letting out a sigh, then his gaze landed on the devil in the corner.

After Wang Lin woke up, the devil had constantly been taking peeks at him. Now that Wang Lin looked at him, his body quivered and he quickly said, "I have been guarding you this whole time and was always vigilant."

Wang Lin grabbed the devil and threw him into the flying sword before leaving the stone room.

Wang Lin looked into Li Muwan's room and saw her slumped over a table, sleeping soundly. Her silky hair was tied up in a ponytail. Part of the ponytail was on the side of her face and the rest was behind her ear. Her face was slightly red and had a glow like sunlight reflecting off snow.

The purple dress she had on made her look like a painting and would cause anyone's heart to beat faster. At this moment, there were slivers of white smoke escaping from the pill furnace next to her, making her look like a fairy in a painting.

The decorations Li Muwan had added to her room, like the green vines she had picked up somewhere, made this scene look even more like a painting.

A faint aroma of herbs came out of her room. When Wang Lin breathed it in, his mind immediately became clearer.

He looked for a long time before withdrawing his gaze and looked at the other stone room. His room. Half of the room was filled with herbs and the other half was filled with other materials. The dragon's skull was among those materials.

The dragon's corpse was too large, especially the bones. It would be too wasteful to use it all on the formation, so Wang Lin came out once to tell Li Muwan to save some of it.

After giving out that order, he began fusing the three cold cores. Wang Lin began to ponder. There was a bit of purple on this bone that make it look more like metal than bone. He thought that this must have been formed due to the dragon's unique bodily structure.

Just as Wang Lin was observing, his heart suddenly moved and he turned around. Li Muwan stood up with a yawn and opened the door. She was surprised to see him. All of her drowsiness went away.

In these past few days, Li Muwan's mentality had been slowly changing. At the start, she was always on guard against Wang Lin because she was afraid he might suddenly attack her. After all, people who practice the Death Spell often harvested Yin energy.

But then she realized that this Wang Lin was almost always in closed door training. Before, she thought that her brother was diligent in cultivation, but after seeing Wang Lin, she felt that he was truly diligent.

In her view, Wang Lin was already at the peak of the Foundation Establishment stage and only one step away from the Core Formation stage. However, how could the Core Formation stage be that easy to reach? In Li Muwan's memory, the youngest person to reach the Foundation Establishment stage was 17 years old, but that person took 30 years from there before they reached the Core Formation stage. This person was Hou Fen's ancestor, the first person to reach the Nascent Soul stage, and the person who raised Hou Fen from a rank 2 to a rank 3 cultivation country.

But looking at Wang Lin's appearance, she thought that he was only in his 20s. It would be impossible for him to form his core in a short period of time. When Wang Lin told her that he will send her home once he reaches the Core Formation stage, she secretly sighed. She believed that it would take him a few decades to successfully reach the Core Formation stage. She felt a hint of disdain toward Wang Lin. If he wanted to keep her, he could have just said so instead of using this trick.

Li Muwan pondered for a bit, then asked, "Your… your cultivation has reached a bottleneck?" Her soul blood essence was in his hands, so if he were to ever have some crazy demand, she wouldn't know how to respond. This question had been in her mind for a long time. Today, when she saw his frown, she couldn't help but remember that the death spell required the user to absorb Yin energy from females to cultivate. Based on her calculations, it has been months since he had last killed anyone or touched any woman.

Wang Lin didn't know what Li Muwan's was thinking. He looked at her and nodded.

Li Muwan's heart skipped a beat. She took a few steps back and her face became pale. She struggled a bit as she bit her lower lip and said, "I… I only promised to help you refine pills. If I… I … even if I die, I won't agree."

Wang Lin was caught off guard by Li Muwan. He turned his gaze toward the dragon skull and asked, "Why is the skull of the dragon this color?"

She bit her lower lip and softly said, "The dragon's body is filled with poison, so it is not surprising that the bone is this color."

"Filled with poison?" Wang Lin was shocked as he carefully examined the skull.

"Before a dragon dies, its body gets filled with deadly poison. Once it dies, the poison can change its body to become a type of treasure. The most poisonous part of the dragon is its marrow, and the most valuable part is also its marrow." Li Muwan's expression gradually became cold and her voice calm.

Wang Lin silently stared at the dragon's skull and began to ponder, his expression unsettled. He muttered, "A body filled with poison… why isn't the dragon affected by the poison when it is alive…" An idea flash across his mind. The idea came quick, but it left just as quick. Wang Lin only got a hint before becoming confused again.

Li Muwan coldly looked at Wang Lin. Seeing that his frown had become tighter, she couldn't help but say, "The dragon's body is made of poison from its flesh, bone, innards, and even its saliva, so it naturally won't be affected…"

An idea suddenly flashed across Wang Lin's mind. The idea became clearer and clear and his frown gradually loosened up until he finally let out a laugh and put the dragon's skull inside his bag of holding.

"Since my body couldn't withstand the Yin energy, then let my body completely become one with the Yin energy. As a result, I will be able to withstand it." Wang Lin took a deep breath, looked at Li Muwan, and walked toward her.

Li Muwan's face became every paler. She backed up to the wall, her body trembling, and just as she was about to kill herself with a bitter smile on her face, Wang Lin said, "When I reach the Core Formation stage, I'll send you back to the Lou He Sect."

With that, he turned around, rushed out of the cave, and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Li Muwan was completely stunned. Her mind was in chaos as various thoughts flooded her mind. Finally, she sat down with her back against the wall.

Wang Lin activated his earth escape technique to its peak as he charged toward the corpse valley. After gaining insight from Li Muwan's words, he was now 100% confident in making the three cold cores fuse.

His speed was very fast. He arrived at the corpse valley in three days. He charged directly in and flew from the first valley to the thirteenth valley. Outside of the fourteenth valley, he took a deep breath and stepped in.

In the fourteenth valley, the ground was covered in a layer of frost. As Wang Lin walked on it, slivers of Yin energy entered his feet. Wang Lin hesitated a bit before slowly sinking into the ground with the earth escape technique.

As he sank, the Yin energy became even more powerful. After he sank about 100 meters, he had to stop as the powerful earth Yin energy had frozen his body. This was his limit. If he were to go any deeper, than even his soul would freeze.

As for how deep the fourteenth valley was and what secrets might be within it, Wang Lin didn't care. He carefully controlled his heartbeat and moved his body into the lotus position.

"I'm not leaving this valley until the three cores fuse into one!" Wang Lin muttered this in his heart and closed his eyes.

Time flew by and in the blink of an eye, three years had passed.

The disaster at Hou Fen was finally resolved. The rank 4 cultivation country had sent three Soul Formation cultivators. They had spent 19 days taming all of the fire beasts. They refined them all together into a medium quality spirit beast, then returned to their country.

The quality of spirit beasts have very wide gaps. They are categorized into abnormal, spirit, desolate, and celestial beasts. Each stage has high, medium, and low quality.

The fire spirit that was absorbed by the heaven defying bead was half a step into becoming a desolate beast. According to this scale, it would be at the peak stage of a high quality spirit beast. All of its descendants were low quality spirit beasts. This clearly shows the difference between high, medium, and low quality. If it wasn't for the fact that the fire spirit was in a weakened state, it wouldn't have been so easily devoured.

It has to be said that a high quality spirit beast is the equivalent of a peak late stage Soul Formation cultivator, a medium quality spirit beast is the same as a peak late stage Nascent Soul cultivator, and an early stage spirit beast is the same as a peak late stage Core Formation cultivator.

The dragon that died was a medium quality spirit beast.

Although the fire beasts were gone, the fire spiritual energy in the country made it impossible to cultivate. They could only wait for the fire spiritual energy to slowly dissipate with time.

The battle with Xuan Wu continued, but battles between hundreds of people were very rare now. Most of the battles now were between a few dozen people. After taking about ? of Xuan Wu, the cultivators of Hou Fen really didn't have any more power to push further, so everything stabilized.

As for the battle between the two countries, it turned from killing each other to a training ground for the disciples of the two countries. This was a great insult to all of the disciples that had died during the start of the war.

As for Wang Lin, after he sunk 100 meters into the ground of the fourteenth valley, he sat there like an old monk. His heartbeat slowed down even more as an endless amount Yin energy entered his body and spread to his flesh and bones.

Gradually, more and more extremely Yin energy gathered in his body, so his flesh was now blue. It was as if it was about to turn to ice. In the past six months, his heart had beaten 9,837,543 times and he had sunken down to 180 meters.

Another six months passed. The Yin energy had invaded all of his internal organs now. His flesh and blood started to freeze and his hands and feet had become ice crystals. It felt as if any amount of force would shatter them. In these six months, his heart had only beaten 487,659 times and he had sunken down to 730 meters.

Another 6 months passed. The ice crystals had extend to his arms and legs. If one looked at it closely, they would see his bones inside the ice. His torso was also starting to turn into ice. His heart had beaten a total of 3,865 times and his body had sunken down to 1460 meters.

Six more months passed. His entire body, besides his head, had became an ice crystal and his heart had stopped beating. His body had had sunken down to 3,672 meters.

Two more years passed. Half way through the third year, his head turned into an ice crystal as well. There was no more signs of life from Wang Lin. He had finally reached the Underworld state required in the Underworld Ascension Cultivation Method.

His body had sunken to 7,979 meters and appeared in a dark blue space. His surroundings were filled with bones of beasts. For some reason, all of the flesh of these beasts had disappeared, leaving behind this sea of corpses.

All of the bones here had been turned into blue ice crystals.

Wang Lin sat inside the sea of bones and spent one month to restore his heartbeat, two months to recover his divine sense, and three months to feel the three cold cores.

Afterward, the cold cores from his Ancestral point and Qi sea collided, creating a surge of powerful Yin energy. However, compared to the Yin energy currently in Wang Lin's body, it felt a bit underwhelming.

He easily fused the two cold cores together and condensed them into one.

Shortly after, the fused cold core sank and arrived at the dantian. The barrier at the dantian lasted only half an hour before it collapsed.

The fused cold core sank and collided with the cold core in the dantian. Suddenly, more than ten times the Yin energy from last time surged forth. This Yin energy was very dense, but it was still a bit short of the Yin energy in Wang Lin's body. Slowly, the three cold cores fused into one.

However, its color wasn't golden but a very full gray.

Wang Lin didn't know that the Underworld Ascension Cultivation Method had undergone some changes due to the heaven defying bead and the Ji Realm. It could be said that the difficulty he faced had never happened before.

The reason the Underworld Ascension Cultivation Method was said to be the fastest way to reach the Core Formation stage was because it formed a prototype cold core first. It would then use spiritual energy to turn it into a golden core.

He had now completed more than half of it, so he only needed more spiritual energy to make that final push. However, the Core Formation stage wasn't that easy to achieve. There was a certain chance of failure.

If he were to fail, the prototype core would shatter and he would have to start again.

Chapter 145 - Core Formation (2)

The three cores fused into one to form the prototype core. The next step will be for it to fuse with the body. If his body doesn't reject it, Wang Lin will begin to nurture it with his spiritual energy and divine sense. After a certain point, it will turn into a golden core. When that happens, Wang Lin will have stepped into the Core Formation stage.

The final push with spiritual energy would require the help of the Distant Heaven Pill. As Wang Lin suddenly opened his eyes, cracks started appearing below his head. His body let out crackling sounds and soon, the cracks covered his body.

As his body moved, the cracks became even larger. Wang Lin slowly stood and violently shook his body. The ice fragments quickly fell as if there was a powerful wind blowing them away.

The clothes on his body also turned to dust and disappeared. Only the dragon hide inner armor still remained tattered on his body.

Wang Lin silently stood in place and closed his eyes. After a long time, he opened them. A blue light shined from his eyes. Although he was only half a step into the Core Formation stage in terms of cultivation, his Underworld Ascension Cultivation Method had reached completion.

A mass of blue flames came out of his prototype core and flowed through his body before appearing in his hand. At this moment, three inches above his hand, there was a silently burning mass of blue flame.

Instead of releasing heat, the flame emitted cold. This flame was the essence of the Underworld Ascension Cultivation Method; the Underworld Flame.

The moment the Underworld Flame appeared, the blue ice around him immediately started to emit a white gas. It was as if it was going to melt. Wang Lin waved his hand and the blue flame disappeared. The white gas slowly dissipated and a dent was revealed in the ice.

Wang Lin examined the power of the flame before looking around and putting on another set of clothes. With his eyes locked onto the bones, he began to think. After a while, he sat down in the lotus position and took out the dragon's skull.

Staring at the skull, Wang Lin's eyes lit up. He decided to go to Nan Dou city to trade for a pill furnace so Li Muwan could complete the Distant Heaven Pill. Although three years had passed in the blink of an eye, he knew through the Soul Blood Essence that Li Muwan didn't meet any danger.

However, after seeing the countless frozen beast bones, he hesitated. The War God Shine's refining technique required a reaction furnace.

After the first failure, he had he never gotten his hands on more skulls of spirit beasts. He told Li Muwan to save the dragon's skull because he wanted to use it to make the reaction furnace. However, due to him trying to fuse his three cold cores, plus the fact that he wasn't sure he would succeed, he hadn't tried it yet. After all, should he fail, it would take a lot of effort to find another one.

But now that he found that he was surrounded by bones, his urge to make a reaction furnace surfaced again. He recalled the steps to make the reaction furnace from his memory before taking out the jade to double check.

He put his hands together, then, as he reopened them, threads of spiritual energy connected his two hands. Wang Lin's expression became serious as he threw his hands up. The threads of spiritual energy flew up as well.

Wang Lin didn't even blink as he joined his hands again and repeated this process over and over again. More and more threads of spiritual energy gathered before him until they were like a tense bundle of glowing silk.

After doing all of this, Wang Lin let out a sigh. The first step to making the reaction furnace was complete. Now he had to see if the skull could withstand the fusion of the threads.

He pointed at the dragon's skull and the threads touched it. The threads slowly fused with the skull and the purple of the skull gradually lessened.

But before long, cracks started to appear where the threads were touching. Then the skull shattered into pieces, leaving only the threads of spiritual energy hanging in the air.

Wang Lin let out a dark sigh, but then he quickly revealed an unwilling expression. He stood up, grabbed the threads, jumped to another corpse, and pressed them down. This corpse was about 500 or 600 meters long and was grey. Its head was very big, almost the same as the size as the dragon's skull.

The moment the thread reached the corpse, it went right through it. Wang Lin was startled. He tried again and the threads once again just went through the bones.

Wang Lin stared at the beast and his eyes lit up. The bones were covered in his blue ice, as if they were frozen. Wang Lin reached out and squeezed the bone. There was a series of crackling sounds, but the bones didn't break.

Wang Lin pondered a bit, then took out the Underworld Flame. The moment the flame got near the bone, waves of white gas floated out of the beast bone. The closer the flame got, the more white gas appeared, and the blue ice melted at a visible rate. Eventually, all of the blue ice melted, revealing the grey bone within.

Wang Lin didn't hesitate; he pressed the threads of spiritual energy down. This time, the threads directly warped around the skull.

But after half an hour, the skull changed colors three times before shattering. There were now a lot less threads. It seemed they had lost a lot of spiritual energy.

Wang Lin frowned. The difficulty of making this reaction furnace was far higher than he through. It seemed the reason there were so few people who had managed to learn the refining technique was due to this reaction furnace.

It already took a large amount of luck to even obtain the skull of a spirit beast, and for a reaction furnace, you want the skull of a spirit beast that had just died, and the higher quality the spirit beast, the better. If you use the skull of a spirit beast that has been dead for a while, the success rate drastically lowers.

Of course, if one could get the skull of a desolate beast, then even if the beast had been dead for a long time, the success rate would increase several fold.

As a result, the difficulty became exponentially more difficult. If he had tried right as the dragon died, then his chance would have been higher. However, back then, he didn't have any time to think about it as all of his focus was on reaching the Core Formation stage.

Wang Lin let out a soft snort as he looked at the endless sea of corpses around him. As for how much spirit beast bones there were, he didn't know.

"I don't believe that I can't make one reaction furnace with this many spirit beast corpses." Wang Lin's eyes lit up as he closed his hand and created more threads of spiritual energy. After replenishing the threads, he grabbed them and placed them on another skull.

One hour later, the skull shattered again.

Just like this, he continued trying. Wang Lin didn't even remember how many skulls he had shattered, but he knew that he had replenished the threads more than 100 times.

His eyebrows furrowed even harder. Finally, he jumped into the air and coldly looked around. He threw the threads of spiritual energy out and they began to circle around him.

His hands constantly open and closed. Everytime he did this, more threads were made. His hand moved faster and faster and the threads appeared like rain. Gradually, the amount of threads of spiritual energy increased.

The number threads of spiritual energy greatly increased and he didn't stop as he used up all of the spiritual energy in his body. He quickly took a few gulps of spirit liquid and continued to make threads.

Time slowly passed and the mass of threads became larger and larger. It was now more than 100 meters wide.

Wang Lin looked at the size of this sea of corpses and thought, "Still not enough." Then he drank more spirit liquid and began to make more threads. Finally, when the mass of threads was more than 1000 meters wide, he stopped. He spread out his divine sense to control all of the threads, then pressed them down. With that, blue flames appeared as well.

There were thunderous rumbles as the threads pressed down and kicked up waves of ashes. The wave of ashes roared forth and all of the bones in its path were turned to ashes and joined this wave.

Along with this wave, there was also a mass of white gas. This sight was very breathtaking. Once all of the white gas dissipated, nothing was left. Wang Lin clenched his teeth as he drank more spirit liquid and created more threads before pressing them down again.

Waves of ashes roared across the area. After the white gas dissipated, Wang Lin's eyes locked onto the corpse of a small beast all by itself in this 1000 meter radius open area.

Wang Lin revealed a happy expression and immediately flew toward the corpse. He took a closer look and found that there was nothing unusual about it.

The bone was very white and looked very normal. Wang Lin's eyes lit up as he pointed at the sky. He quickly grabbed the threads of spiritual energy and pressed them against the small beast's skull.

The skull's color quickly changed. One time, two times, three times… after it changed color nine times, the skull detached from the spine and floated into the air.

The threads had completely fused with the skull. After the skull changed color nine times, it slowly morphed into a bowl shape while emitting waves of spiritual energy.

Wang Lin caught it in his hand and began to examine it.

The origin of the War God Shrine's refining technique was very mysterious. Rumor has it that it was found with the Heaven's Way technique by the War God Shrine's ancestor. The later generations spent a lot of time developing it into the current refining technique. The reaction furnace is a part of this and has 10 ranks of quality.

The higher the rank of the reaction furnace, the better it is. It's also easy to identify the rank. When it is being made, the number of times it changes colors determines what rank it is.

"Rank 9!" Wang Lin muttered to himself. He felt very regrettable. With this vast amount of spirit beast bones at his disposal, he still wasn't able to make a rank 10 reaction furnace.

However, a rank 9 was better than none. Wang Lin took out the jade and checked it again.

What the jade didn't mention was that even the Nascent Soul cultivators in the War God Shrine only had rank 6 reaction furnaces. As for the rest, almost all of them were rank 3 or lower.

Wang Lin's reaction furnace being rank 9 had a lot to do with the corpse of that little beast. This little beast was a rare desolate beast in this sea of beast corpses.

After a desolate beast dies, its bones aren't much different from a spirit beasts'. Unless you are an expert on this, it is hard to tell them apart.

After Wang Lin's divine sense withdrew from the jade, he began to ponder. The War God Shrine's refining technique focused on three key points: transfer, melt, and fusion.

Wang Lin became very focused as he took out materials from his bag of holding and threw them into the reaction furnace. These were some of the materials recorded in the jade. After he got familiar with the contents of the jade, he was able to find some in his bag.

Chicken Blood Stone: when infused with spiritual energy, it can produce a lot of heat.

Violent Moon Vine: a type of plant that can produce decomposition effects after being refined by the Heaven Star Wood.

Heaven Star Wood: a type of wood with corrosive properties.

Wang Lin had all three of these materials in his bag. Although it was not much, it was enough for refining a treasure. Wang Lin had always been very confused about the materials he had obtained in the foreign battleground, but at least he knew a bit now

He started putting the Violent Moon Vine inside the reaction furnace. Every time he placed a piece, he would crush it with a piece of spirit beast bone. His divine sense was focused on the inside of the reaction furnace. Gradually, the reaction furnace was filled with a thick, violet paste.

Staring at the reaction furnace, Wang Lin muttered as if he was waiting for something. Then his eyes lit up and he flicked a drop of his blood inside.

At this moment, bubbles appeared inside the reaction furnace. Wang Lin didn't panic as he calmly sent spiritual energy into it.

The jade gave a detailed description of what the reaction furnace did. The reaction furnace takes a side route in refining by using the reaction furnace as a medium to allow the refiner to directly manipulate the materials inside.

Wang Lin took a deep breath. After hesitating for a bit, he took out the Heaven Star Wood, crushed it, and sprinkled it into the reaction furnace.

The violet liquid quickly started bubbling and released a pungent smell. Wang Lin quickly took out his only piece of Chicken Blood Stone and threw it in.

After finishing all of this, his expression became even more serious as his hands quickly formed seals. The violet liquid inside the reaction furnace quickly gathered together to form a violet ball.

Wang Lin pondered for a bit, then waved his hand. The ball split in half. One half floated upward while the other sank back into the reaction furnace.

Under Wang Lin's control, the ball that floated up went higher and higher. Wang Lin pondered a bit before pointing at his chest and forehead. He spat out a mouthful of purple spiritual energy, then the spiritual energy immediately entered the ball.

The first step of the War God Shrine's refining technique, transfer, was complete. Now it was time for the second step, melt.

This melting process required treasures to use as materials. Wang Lin slapped his bag of holding and 35 flying swords came out.

Wang Lin pointed at one of the flying swords and stabbed the ball with it. Slowly, the tip of the sword melted until the entire sword melted into the ball.

After that, the remaining 34 flying swords melted into the ball under Wang Lin's control. Finally, the ball began to emit a rainbow-colored light that was very blinding.

The entire process, from placing the Violent Moon Vine into the reaction furnace to now, had taken two hours. In these two hours, Wang Lin focused all of his attention on refining. Not only did he not relax, but he became even more focused as he took out the black flying sword from his bag of holding.

It could be said that this flying sword had been through a lot with him. From when he got it after killing Zhang Hu's master, to being chased by Teng Li, and finally when he died in the battle outside the Jue Ming Valley. Then he was saved by Situ Nan's Nascent Soul and the sword's body was destroyed. However, due to its connection with Wang Lin, the sword spirit was able to survive by staying within Wang Lin's soul.

Afterward, Wang Lin tried to find multiple new bodies for it, but none of them worked. This black sword was the latest one, and after using teleportation a few times, it was already a mess.

Wang Lin grabbed the sword and gently rubbed it. The sword hummed loudly. Shortly after, an illusionary image of the sword flew out. The devil also flew out and stood to the side. He stared blankly at his surroundings. No one knew what he was thinking about.

Wang Lin took a deep breath and grabbed the ball. He clenched his teeth, sent out an order, and the black flying sword flew right into the ball.

Wang Lin's divine sense immediately spread out and surrounded the ball. The last step of the War God Shrine's refining technique, fusion, started now.

Time slowly passed. The ball slowly elongated and gradually solidified. After an unknown amount of time had passed, there was a loud cry, then a crystal-clear flying sword appeared before Wang Lin.

The moment this flying sword sword appeared, a vortex of spiritual energy appeared next to Wang Lin. After circling Wang Lin a few times, the vortex entered the flying sword. Wang Lin looked at the flying sword for a long time before opening his mouth. The flying sword flew inside.

The devil was startled. He forced a smile, rubbed his hands, and said, "This… since you swallowed the sword, where am I going to live?"

Wang Lin raised his head and looked at the devil. He waved his hand and the dragon's tendon flew out from his bag of holding. He reached inside the reaction furnace and scooped out the half of the ball that had gone back into the reaction furnace. His eyes lit up and the dragon's tendon immediately flew into the ball.

After he refined it for a while, the ball became smaller and smaller. Finally, it turned back into the dragon's tendon, but now it was a golden color. Wang Lin looked at the devil and he obediently entered it.

He waved his right hand and the dragon's tendon came down. After observing it for a while, he put it away. He raised his head and looked at the icey, blue wall above him. The blue Underworld Flame appeared in his hand and he flew up.

He charged through over 1000 meters of dirt and rock like he was breaking through paper. His speed was too fast, and adding on the destructive power of the Underworld Flame, it caused the Corpse Valley to tremble. This caused the expressions of all the cultivators inside the Corpse Valley to change. They all quickly left the area as the trembling on the ground intensified.

A few key cultivators saw that a loud roar came from the 14th valley as a black shadow charged into the sky and disappeared into the fog.

The cultivators stared confusedly at the 14th valley for a long time. After all of this happened, various rumors began to spread. Finally, the rumor became that it was a corpse that had been sleeping inside the Corpse Valley for tens of thousands of years. Then it suddenly woke up and charged out from underworld. The thing that flew up was the cultivating corpse.

After Wang Lin flew out, he didn't stop and continued flying north. According to the information he had received from Sang Muya, Nan Dou city was about 300,000 kilometers north of the Corpse Valley.

Wang Lin knew that he had already spent a lot of time refining, so he didn't want to waste any more time. He only had one goal right now, and that was to get a pill furnace to complete the Distant Heaven Pill.

After two days and nights of flying, a city came into Wang Lin's view. This city was very large, and at first glance, he couldn't even see where it ended. This was Nan Dou city, one of the 999 cities in the Sea of Devils.

The city was named Nan Dou because that was the city's lord's name. He was a Nascent Soul cultivator with many experts under him. It could be said that he was the ruler of this area.

Basically, if someone owned a city, they must have at least a certain status, and the city's lords were always well know. Under the city's lord, there were various sects, but none of them could compare to the city's lord.

Luckily, Nan Dou City's lord disappeared 500 years ago, so this area had been going out of control like a headless dragon. This was also what allowed large sects like the Fighting Evil Sect to form.

Nan Dou City became a lordless city in the Sea of Devils and was managed by a few of the large sects. However, Nan Dou City was at the edge of the Sea of Devils, so resources were scarce, and the lack of spirit veins made it so Nascent Soul cultivators would rarely come out here. This resulted in a situation where within millions of miles of Nan Dou City, there were no Nascent Soul cultivators but a lot of Core Formation cultivators.

Someone once said that if a Nascent Soul cultivator were to appear here, that person would become Nan Dou City's new lord.

It was not like there hadn't been any Nascent Soul cultivators that wanted to rule the city, but none of them could stand the lack of spiritual energy and barren land, so they all eventually gave up.

At some point, Nascent Soul cultivators stopped coming. After all, there were almost 1000 cities in the Sea of Devils, so there was no reason to come to a crappy city like Nan Dou.

The current Nan Dou city was managed by the Punishing Heaven Sect, the Soul Extinguishing Sect, and the One Heaven Path Sect. Although the Fighting Evil Sect had the power to also be a ruler, thanks the power of the three sects, they couldn't get a foothold in the city.

After all, splitting the ownership of the city three ways was very different from splitting it four ways. Also, no one liked watching the Fighting Evil Sect wiping out other sects as they grew in power, so the three sects agreed on this matter.

After paying ten low quality spirit stones and obtaining the token for entering the city, Wang Lin quickly walked through the streets toward the Treasure Refining Pavilion in the east.

The Treasure Refining Pavilion had three floors. The items in each floor were several time more expensive than the ones in the last. Currently, there were about seven or eight cultivators bargaining with the workers inside.

Chapter 146 - Core Formation (3)

Before Wang Lin entered, he took out a black cloak to cover his head. After entering, he looked around the first floor and found that it mostly contained flying swords. All of the swords were high quality and sealed in boxes with talismans on each end to prevent the sword qi from escaping.

In addition to all of these swords, there was a crystal pillar in the center of the room with three flying swords floating in the middle with the tips of the swords pointing down.

The three flying swords dimmed and brightened. Sometimes they would even shine brightly.

As Wang Lin looked at the three swords in the center, a worker walked up. He was about 20 years old and looked very bright. He carefully examined Wang Lin. It was pretty normal for customers to hide their faces because many cultivators didn't want to be recognized. As for Wang Lin's cultivation level, he had the Treasure Refining Pavilion's own special technique to check. The more he checked, the more excited he became, because Wang Lin's cultivation level kept changing between Core Formation and peak late stage Foundation Establishment.

Although this worker was surprised, he didn't show it on his face. He respectfully asked, "Does senior have his eyes on these flying swords?"

Wang Lin withdrew his gaze and looked at the worker. He was instantly able to see that the worker was at 7th or 8th layer of Qi Condensation and calmly asked, "Does the Treasure Refining Pavilion sell pill furnaces?"

The worker nodded and smiled. "Senior, I'm afraid that you will only find pill furnaces in our Treasure Refining Pavilion, as they are not things normal people can buy. If senior is interested, please follow me to the second floor."

Wang Lin calmly walked toward the stairs. The worker quickly followed to lead the way. Just before he stepped on the ladder, he turned and looked at a cultivator that was currently bargaining with a worker. He pondered for a moment before stepping onto the stairs.

After arriving at the second floor, the worker quickly went to talk to a middle-aged man in a room to the right before quickly returning downstairs.

The middle-aged man didn't have any hair and his eyes occasionally shone. He got up, clasped his hands, and said, "What quality of pill furnace does fellow cultivator want?"

Wang Lin took a look at the middle-aged man and found that this middle aged man's cultivation level was at the peak of Foundation Establishment, just like him. He was surprised by this. The first floor had a Qi Condensation cultivator and the second floor had a Foundation Establishment cultivator. Does this mean that there is a Core Formation cultivator in charge of the third floor?

Wang Lin's expression was relaxed as he asked, "Could you take out a few for me to see?"

The middle-aged man laughed and pointed at the chair to the side. "Fellow cultivator, please sit and I'll go grab them for you." With that, he poured a cup of tea before walking next to a wall and hitting it. Ripples appeared on the wall, then it turned more and more illusionary.

Then three beautiful girls walked out, each holding a white jade tray. On each tray was a large, red box. Each box was about two square feet.

These three wooden boxes were the exact same size, but the patterns engraved on them were different. There were also seals placed on every box.

The three beautiful girls walked up to Wang Lin and gazed at him.

The middle-aged man picked up one of the wooden boxes, placed it on the table, and said, "Fellow cultivator, this is forged from the Greenstar Rock and Mysterious Fog Crystal from the depths of the Sea of Devils. It took 49 months of refining to create this Mysterious Green Pill Furnace. This is a rank 3 pill furnace." With that, he tapped the box, causing it to open, revealing a fist-sized pill furnace.

Wang Lin's expression was calm. He remembered that Li Muwan told him that the pill furnace she carried around was only a rank 2 one and that she would need a rank 4 or better pill furnace to ensure there weren't any problems with the Distant Heaven Pill.

After taking one look, Wang Lin withdrew his gaze. He didn't say a word.

The middle-aged man faintly smiled. He waved his arms and the box returned to the jade tray. He passed over the second girl and directly grabbed the box from the third girl's tray. He gently placed it on the table and smiled. "I believe fellow cultivator must be refining a top quality pill. This pill furnace is refined from the cores of 99 low quality spirit beasts from the Sea of Devils. It's called the Hundred Beast Pill Furnace. If you use this pill furnace to refine a pill, there is a high chance of the pill absorbing some of the beast cores' aura. This will increase the quality of the pill." With that, he tapped the wooden box. The box slowly opened, revealing a blood-red pill furnace. If one looked closely at it, they would see the face of 99 spirit beasts.

These spirit beasts looked as if they were real. They even gave off slivers of spiritual energy. This furnace was also in a sealed state. If it was unsealed, the spiritual energy inside it would surge forth.

Even Wang Lin was tempted by this Hundred Beast Pill Furnace, but his expression didn't change at all.

The middle-aged man touched the wooden box and said, "Fellow cultivator must know that low quality spirit beasts are equal to Core Formation cultivators. Our sect spent a lot of time and effort to make this pill furnace. This pill furnace has reached rank 5."

Wang Lin withdrew his gaze. After pondering for a bit, he asked, "What price?"

The middle-aged man smiled and answered, "The standard price is 100,000 high quality spirit stones, or you can take out a treasure that is equal to that price."

After hearing this price, Wang Lin's heart sank, even though he was prepared for it. No wonder the Fighting Evil Sect's sect head used up almost all the money of the sect to buy just one.

The smile remained on the middle-aged man's face as he poured himself a cup of tea, took a sip, and said, "This Hundred Beast Pill Furnace is indeed expensive. How about fellow cultivator considers the Mysterious Green Pill furnace from before instead? Although it is still 100,000 spirit stones, it is mid quality spirit stones, which is only 10,000 high quality spirit stones."

Wang Lin looked at him and slapped his bag of holding. A piece of dragon hide appeared on the table.

"Dragon's hide!" The middle aged man said, in surprised tone. He picked it up and carefully examined it, then said, "This is the hide of a medium quality dragon spirit beast. How much more of this do you have?"

Wang Lin's expression remained calm. He didn't answer. Instead, he asked, "How much is needed to exchange for the Hundred Beast Pill Furnace?"

The middle-aged man lowered his head and calculated for a bit before raising it. He looked at Wang Lin and said, "If the dragon is at least 1,000 meters long, then the entire hide would be enough to exchange for it."

Without a word, Wang Lin slapped his bag of holding and the dragon's hide formed a small mountain before the middle-aged man. Wang Lin didn't even look at the middle-aged man as he grabbed the pill furnace and walked down the stairs.

The middle-aged man breathed rapidly and looked at the dragon's hide. He spread out his divine sense and found that although it was missing a small piece, it was not much different from a complete dragon.

The complete hide of a medium quality dragon spirit beast. It has to be said that a medium quality spirit beast is the same as a Nascent Soul cultivator. Even in the inner parts of the Sea of Devils, it could be considered a powerhouse. Although the middle-aged man had seen a lot, he had only seen the complete hides of low quality spirit beasts. As for the hides of medium quality spirit beasts, he had only seen pieces. This was the first time he had seen the complete hide of a medium quality spirit beast.

When he raised his head, Wang Lin had already put the box inside his bag of holding and quickly went down stairs.

Wang Lin knew well that it was not wise to display his wealth to others. This was why he decided to cover himself. However, he still didn't feel safe. Even though he didn't understand the value of the dragon hide as much as the middle-aged man, he knew that it was a rare material. If the middle-aged man were to start thinking about the other parts of the dragon and got greedy, it would cause trouble.

Unless it was absolutely necessary, he didn't want to trade the dragon's hide, but the price of the pill furnace was simply too high. Aside from the dragon's hide, the only other thing he had was the spirit liquid.

In comparison, if he were to take out out something heaven defying like the spirit liquid, it would cause even more problems. After considering the choices, he decided to trade the dragon's hide and quickly leave.

He left the Treasure Refining Pavilion and coldly looked across the street. When he went upstairs, he had already noticed someone spying on him, so he left a trace of his divine sense on that person. When he came out, he noticed that that person was in the inn across the street.

There were quite a few people in the inn, including three Core Formation cultivators next to the person Wang Lin had left a trace of his divine sense in. Wang Lin pondered a bit and decided to not detonate the divine sense. After making a few turns, he took a step and activated his earth escape technique. However, there was a flash of white light and he didn't enter the ground. The entire city was covered in a formation that prevented his earth escape technique from working.

Wang Lin's brow furrowed as he jumped into the air and flew toward the city gates.

He only flew for a bit before a black-clothed cultivator arrived at the spot where Wang Lin attempted to use the earth escape technique. He looked at the direction Wang Lin flew in and licked his lips. His eyes were filled with greed. This cultivator was one of the people that was bargaining on the first floor when Wang Lin entered.

This person was named Wei San. He was one of the disciples of the Fighting Evil Sect who had come to buy stuff in Nan Dou. When he saw Wang Lin enter the second floor, he was tempted and casually took a few glances before watching from the inn across the street. He even sent out a voice transmission jade to fellow Fighting Evil Sect disciples who were also in town buying stuff. After a long time, he saw Wang Lin leave and calculated that Wang Lin must have gotten some treasures. Wei San couldn't help but get some evil ideas.

But he couldn't see through Wang Lin's cultivation level. Based on his guesses, Wang Lin must have been at the Core Formation stage. This made him want to back down, but when his fellow disciples arrived with some elders, he was very happy and explained everything in detail.

Besides him, more than ten people appeared, all at various cultivation levels. Most of them were at the Foundation Establishment stage, but three of them were covered in black fog.

These three were the three cultivators that caused Wang Lin to worry.

Wei San turned around and respectfully said, "Elders, I can't believe that you three are in Nan Dou as well. I'm sure that that person must have some sort of treasure on him."

A husky voice filled with anger said, "Wei San, you exaggerated too much. I thought it was really a Core Formation cultivator. Hmph, how could a mere pseudo Core Formation cultivator have any treasure? What a waste of time."