23 Sleeping beauty

The next morning Fen Chang woke up from his sleep just before the sun rose. Even after waking up that early he still feels refreshed and ready to tackle the day ahead.

The first thing Fen Chang did was make some breakfast using the alpha wolf meat and combines it with some rank 1 herbs. Fen Chang has a large surplus of rank 1 and 2 herbs which are used by the alchemists he has to create pills for him army. So, he tends to use them for cooking since he can still gain small amounts of QI from them via eating.

Fen Chang though hasn't had any of those pills made by his alchemists. Even though they are all perfect quality and wont produce pill poison or affect his foundation. Fen Chang is only going to start eating them when he can create his own more effective ones. He would rather increate his army's strength than his own personal once with the pills from his alchemists.

Fen Chang is hoping to increase his talent before having too many pills as if he where to eat a pill only 10-20% would be effective due to his low talent. This is why he lets his army use them instead of him.

After breakfast and a workout, it is now bright and the sun has just risen enough for there to be light. So, in the cold morning Fen Chang exits his small cave and takes a better look at the surroundings.

There is a large waterfall going into a large very deep pond that has a river branching off it. The surroundings are massive trees covered with a few inches of snow and bright green leaves that look unfazed by the cold. The morning sun shining down made the water vapor from the waterfall shine like lots of small specs of light.

The snow covered the surrounding grass and looked to be untouched with it all looking very fresh apart from where he walked across last night.

Scanning the area more Fen Chang noticed some things. 'Seems something came through here during the night. Out of all this pristine snow fall on the ground there is a large drag mark heading towards the pond below the waterfall. Like something giant was dragged along before disappearing into the water. There is nothing on the other side and the tracks seem to be one way. This means there is something in this pond.'

Fen Chang goes back under the waterfall quietly. Staring at the pond with vigilance. The tracks show the object was very big, at least the size of a large truck in width. The pond itself had a roughly 10-meter diameter, so something large was able to fit inside it. The depth was unknown, but Fen Chang assumes its very deep as the light from the sky is only able to penetrate a certain way down before becoming an inky blackness.

The thing that made Fen Chang the most curious is that there were no footprints or even any other sort of tracks apart from the drag marks. Fen Chang would have assumed that maybe snowfall covered the tracks but it didn't snow last night since his own footprints from last night were still there.

Fen Chang thought it might be a boulder since it would produce a dragging like track without the need for something to push it, but at the same time there where no broken trees or even a place for a boulder to have come from.

The tracks start at the edge of the forest and head into the water, there is no tracks in the actual forest itself. Its as if what ever this thing is, appeared out of nowhere and made its way into the pond without anything pushing it.

Due to not wanting to risk what ever is in the pond being some giant monster, Fen Chang chose to try some baits to test if it even was a creature.

Fen Chang followed along the edge of the rock along the waterfall avoiding the pond and made it to the trees. He then pulls out one of the wolf carcases, and stuffs a bunch of special grades 1 herbs inside of it through its mouth.

Well to most people they were known more as weeds than herbs due to them being invasive and not having any uses. It was called Qi Boosting Grass. It's a special type of grass that produced insane amounts of Qi that made anyone looking at it think it's a grade 5 or even 6 plant, but this Qi is actually fake and has less Qi than even normal grass.

Due to its aura, it attracted lots of beasts and due to it being useless and attracting beasts' cultivators wiped it out. Fen Chang was lucky and managed to find a seed at a stall in the capital city, he has then be growing it to be used as baits for monsters. He used modern techniques to create various types with varying strength, range and time.

The one he stuffed the wolf with are ones that make them look like grade 3 plants but only have a small range. So creatures outside of the pond area wouldn't even notice but all creatures within would think it's a grade 3 plant without question.

It made the perfect material for baits. Once the wolf was stuffed, he grabbed a long stick and pushed it towards the lake while he was hidden in a bush and under snow completely masking his presence. He had also covered his footprints in snow as he went.

Inch my inch the carcass was pushed towards the lake by the stick that was moving under the snow. Once next to the lake, Fen Chang pulled a small piece of string he attached to the corpse. Once pulled the wolfs stomach split open and blood and guts mixed with the herbs were spilling out with small bits of blood dripping into the river.

Why the string? Well Fen Chang didn't want to leave a trail of blood and make whatever was in their come out when he was near and unprepared. So, the herbs where stuffed in and was then sealed up by a piece of string so nothing leaked until he was far away.

Not moving, Fen Chang watched as more and more of the blood flowed into the river and the rich Qi wafted out of the wolfs body. 'This should be more than enough to catch any creature's attention unless it's like rank 6 or above but that's pretty much impossible here. The most a creature here could only be rank 3 ore below as all the rank 4's would live in the inner area. That's if this is even a creature, it could have been a rock or something. But better safe than sorry.

…

It has now been 20 minutes and still no movement within the water. Seeing that nothing was coming up made Fen Chang think nothing was in their but just in case he pushed the wolf body into the water and let it sink.

He already planned for this and had a second string attached so if something attacked the body then he would feel the tug on the string. He would also be able to know if the body hit the bottom of the pond when the string in his hand was no longer tense.

Waiting patiently, it took around 5 minutes for the string in his hand to no longer be tense and he could feel anymore string would cause it to become slack. This meant the body hit the floor of the river and nothing had come to eat it.

'This is strange, I defiantly thought this would be a creature. What's even more strange is that even if there was no creature there should be some sort of underwater creature down their, but nothing took the bait. That means this pond is clear of creatures, or that the creature is smart enough to recognise the bait, but even then. It's a well-hidden bait so that's not the answer.'

Fen Chang looked thoughtfully at the pond before deciding 'The only way to know is to jump in, I guess. I have my inner world I can go to if things get hairy.'

Fen Chang changed out of his clothes and only left himself only in some underwear. Although Fen Chang plans to dive in and check it out, that doesn't mean he won't be safe about it.

So, he first gets some specialised lights he made with basic inscriptions. Similar to the fires where it creates fire using an inscription and a rune to supply the power, this one generates light along with a rune to gather power. Fen Chang created lots of these in case he needed them.

He goes near the pond and throws a bunch of these lights down it. He watches as the lights fall illuminating wall to wall of the darkness within the water. The light suddenly stops as Fen Chang ties a piece of string to a pole holding the lantern in place.

Fen Chang repeats this process and eventually uses the entire pond down to the floor bed is fully lit up.

Looking towards the bottom of the pond, the only thing Fen Chang can noticeably see are a few plants growing along the walls and rocks. At the bottom there was what seemed to be a small cave. By the fact there was nothing else apart from the wolf corpse Fen Chang assumes what ever went into the pond last night went through the cave.

Seeing as the only way to find out what the thing is, was the go through the cave. Fen Chang dives into the water with a strange looking thing covering his mouth and nose.

Fen Chang not knowing of his future adventures made tools for all possible outcomes. This was one of his tools. It is a water breather that has multiple grade 1 runes and inscriptions enchanted on it which allows it to take in water, separate the oxygen and then release the de-oxygenated water. Though it is still flawed and only allows for 30 minutes of breath and requires a constant flow of Qi from Fen Chang to keep the runes active.

After 30 minutes the runes need time to recharge and a clean out of the small particles that didn't get discharged.

Fen Chang being quite proficient at swimming due to training at the palace manged to get to the bottom within a few minutes. Along the way he stopped and analysed the plants growing on the walls.

They were called Pond Drooping Flower. They where rank 2 plants that only grew under specific conditions in ponds. Seeing the free rank 2 herbs, Fen Chang plucked them all and also took a mental note of the conditions for growth. So, he can cultivate them in his inner world.

He then continued down to the bottom and collected the wolf corpse. Fen Chang grabs a couple more lanterns and keeps throwing them as far as he can in front of him while swimming through the cave.

…

After a few minutes of swimming through the barren cave Fen Chang finally sees light that is not being produced by his lanterns. Increasing his focus, he once again pulls out the corpse and uses it as bait and pushes it over to where the light is.

Once again not getting any reactions he makes his way over to the light with sword in hand. Underwater would be disadvantageous for his scythe and the cave isn't big enough for it as well.

Once near the light, Fen Chang saw that it was coming from above him in what seems to be an open cave area with air. Fen Chang then swims up and exits out the water with his vigilance as high as it can possibly go and ready to go into his inner world with a thought.

Taking a look at his surroundings Fen Chang first looks for the light source. On the ceiling of the cave is what seems to be a giant crystal emitting a bright soothing glow.

Around the cave Fen Chang noticed nothing out of place. No beasts, no other cave connections, no man-made objects. Just rocks, the weird crystal and a weird object in the middle that also looked to be made of some sort of crystal.

Seeing no visible danger. Fen Chang walks over to the centre object and peers into it. What he sees stuns him and causes his thoughts to go wild. Within the glass like blue crystal is a beautiful woman with a glowing white stone where her heart is meant to be.