242 All-God's Auction.

Yao Jun stayed within the cavern he had made for a little over two months, tearing through book after book and memorizing the contents while simultaneously cultivating. He had just recently reached the late stage of the Immortal Rebirth realm, so breaking through again in such a short amount of time was practically impossible, at best he would only be able to bring his Qi cultivation somewhat closer to the peak of the Immortal Rebirth realm.

His body, however, was a somewhat different story. He had been forced to stop cultivating his body just as he was about to break into the middle stage of the Immortal Rebirth realm due to the fact that he was running out of bodies to use for cultivating. Now that he had stocked up on bodies again there was nothing stopping him from having his body enter the middle stage of the Immortal Rebirth realm, something it did after a month and a half.

His cultivation hadn't increased by much when he stopped cultivating after two months, but he had become more knowledgable as well as started working on his next technique, a single target type attack. Since he had killed people from all sorts of clans and walks of life, the books he had contained a vast amount of varied information, some were about making pills, some about arrays, some about forging, some about surviving in the wilds, some were even as simple as just a diary left behind by an unknown cultivator.

He wouldn't become an expert in any topic by reading such a vast number of varied books, but he as he was looking to become more well-rounded and balanced, it suited him just fine to learn a little about a vast number of topics. It was certainly a far cry better than how he was in the past, when he only knew how to fight and didn't even know the most basic information about other topics.

Yao Jun put away the last of the books he was carrying, standing up and stretching his body. His body had barely moved in these past two months, so his joints produced popping sounds when he stretched his body, breaking the monotonous silence that had covered the cave. He gave a slight flick of his wrist, a thin layer of water covering his entire body and giving him a quick clean before being evaporated by a burst of intense heat.

He then stepped toward the cave entrance, the boulder covering it turning to ash as he approached it, allowing the freezing air from outside to blow into the cave. Yao Jun stepped out of the cave and inspected his surroundings, checking if there had been any changes in the last two months.

The first thing he noticed was the fact that the forest where Xuhuan and her mate had lived was now gone, all that remained of it was the volcano that used to be the center of the forest. Without Xuhuan and her mate there to keep it in order, the forest had quickly been taken over by the frozen wasteland that surrounded it, becoming nothing more than another indistinguishable part of it.

The second thing he noticed had changed was that the sky was now covered in large blazing letters that looked like they had been created using a hollow ice casing that was filled with fire. As for how long the letters had been there or what was keeping them in such perfect balance that the fire and ice didn't encroach on each other, Yao Jun had no idea. The letters formed a simple message that caught Yao Jun's interest.

'Godspear Valley will host the All-God's Auction in two months and five days.'

Yao Jun closed his eyes for a quick second after reading the message, thinking back to the time he went through Ardet's memories, checking if he had known anything about this event. After spending a minute going over all the memories he had seen, Yao Jun opened his eyes again, his finger tapping his chin as he murmured to himself.

"Right, there was supposed to be an auction like this during the competition. They're starting it rather early compared to the previous times, seems like quite a few rare items have already been delivered there. The notice usually comes up about five months or so before the competition starts, guess they must have sent it up right after I started reading."

Ardet's memories had indeed contained some information about this All-God's Auction, quite a lot of information in fact. It was an auction that was hosted once, or rarely twice, during this competition. It could take place in any one of the cities that were spread through his place, changing location each competition. The items sold were always of very high quality, some supplied by the clans and sects while others were supplied by the contestants who were looking to sell some of the things they found or acquired.

Yao Jun merged his mind with the surrounding space to scan the frozen wasteland, looking for any cultivators that were still loitering around. With how good the quality of the items up for auction usually was, there was no way Yao Jun would miss this auction. He also had quite a lot of items he could sell to earn some more money, adding on to the funds he already had after scouring all the interspatial rings he had acquired from his killings. But there was one problem, he had no idea where this Godspear Valley was, so he could only find someone else who knew.

He quickly found a small group of people who were currently fighting against what seemed to be a pack of man-sized rabbits that were made from snow and ice. He stepped through space and appeared a short distance away from the groups, quietly waiting for them to finish their battle. The group of five humans had great coordination so they were able to finish off all the rabbits after another five minutes of combat, only suffering three minor wounds in the process.

Once they were done battling and were about to start taking the rabbits apart, Yao Jun stepped forward and approached the group, a thin layer of energy covering his entire body as he tried his hand at using his strengthened illusions. The five people quickly turned to face him and raised their weapons, but then quickly lowered them again after their eyes landed on him, each of them calling out in a surprised yet cheerful voice.

"Su'er?"

"Chun'er?"

"Little Qing?"

"Brother Yong?"

"Senior Sister Ah Liu, you're here?"

Yao Jun had utilized his mental energy the moment he started to approach the group, affecting what they were seeing. At first, he wanted to do what Guo Luo had done for them before, using her mental energy to fully alter their appearance. But he quickly discovered that it was far harder to do so than Guo Luo had made it look, so he had been forced to mix his outward illusions with an inward illusion, making the five people believe that they were seeing those closest to them.

There were two different types of illusions, inward and outward. Guo Luo had specialized in outward illusions, once that looked completely real and corporeal, something that everyone could see. Inward illusions were what Yao Jun could use after absorbing Little Gray and acquiring mental energy, they were focused on altering what only specific individuals were seeing or experiencing. Outward ones were harder to defend against but easier to tell were illusions while inward ones were easy to defend against if you were strong enough, but it was hard to tell that they were illusions once you actually fell for them.

After absorbing Xuhuan, a Divine beast focused on fire and illusions, both of those aspects of Yao Jun had greatly strengthened, allowing Yao Jun to use outward illusions. But looking at the result of his first attempt, he could only admit that he would need to practice it quite a bit more before his outward illusions were anywhere near as good as Guo Luo's. Yao Jun addressed the group of five, using his mental energy to have their own brains alter what they were hearing and seeing, making sure that they didn't find the scene strange.

"Where is Godspear Valley located? Is it far from here? What does it look like and where will the auction take place?"

Yao Jun could have just used his power to overwhelm these five and force them to answer his questions, but he felt it was a good opportunity to test out his illusions. And either way, he would end up receiving his answers, so it didn't really matter which approach he took. The five people swiftly answered, eager to please whoever it was that they were currently seeing.

"I told you yesterday but you've already forgotten it? Really, you have to pay better attention, otherwise, you might forget some vital information in the future. Godspear Valley is located rather far to the east from here, it should take about three months if we walk there from here. It looks like a massive spear carved directly into the continent, it's impossible to miss it, the auction will take place in the spearhead of the valley, the place where the city is located. You'll be able to at least remember that much, right?"

Yao Jun nodded his head faintly after receiving their answers, space around him rippling as he teleported onto one of the floating islands that hovered above the continent. He had gotten his answers and learned which direction he had to head, there was no longer a need to spend any more time here.

The people said they would need three months to walk to Godspear Valley, but as Yao jun could just teleport through space, he managed to save himself quite a lot of time. After only a month of traveling, Yao Jun spotted Godspear Valley, which looked like a massive cross-headed spear carved directly into the landscape, the edges of the valley completely smooth.

Since Yao Jun was standing on one of the floating islands, he was just barely able to see a city built in the spearhead part of the valley. He teleported a bit closer so that he could properly see the city, giving it a quick examination from above before he actually entered it.

The city was incredibly vast, easily several thousands of kilometers in each direction. The city was very uneven in shape and the buildings came in countless different sizes and shapes, Yao Jun guessed that the city might have started out small and then more and more people had arrived and built their houses, slowly growing the city to its current state.

At the center of the city stood a massive coliseum-like building that was so big that it was larger than some cities Yao Jun had seen in the past. He didn't need anyone to tell him that this building was where the All-God's Auction would take place, there were currently six Heavenly Deities present within the coliseum, each of them spreading their aura as far as they could to make sure that everyone understood that they had to play nice inside this city.

Yao Jun's eyes narrowed faintly as he looked at the city, he could fell Tang Guanyu's token tremble slightly. He could feel that there were two more tokens currently within the city, one that was moving around the city and one that was staying completely still within the coliseum. Even if he ended up not buying anything during this auction, just finding two of the tokens would make this entire trip worth it.

Yao Jun teleported down to the ground, making sure he arrived a good distance away from the city so that no one discovered him. He then put on a disguise and descended into the valley, entering the city shortly afterward. This auction was one of the grander parts of this competition, even those that could enter the top 10 of the competition would rush here to see what was being sold. The auction was only a month away, and this one was sure to be a very lively one.