readbooksol Chapter 335 - 181: Golden Core Strikes; Cracking Storage Bags
Chapter 335 - 181: Golden Core Strikes; Cracking Storage Bags
The exchange happened in a flash, lasting a mere three breaths of time.
The two then clashed for another seven or eight rounds, but the fight remained a stalemate.
The situation was much the same in the other ongoing fights.
Although the Golden Core True Men appeared to be holding nothing back, their surging Magical Power engulfing hundreds of yards with every move,
they were, in fact, being cautious, steadily probing each other’s capabilities.
This isn’t to say they were intentionally going easy on each other. They were simply starting with conventional techniques, holding their trump cards close to their chests.
In most cases of Magical Combat between Cultivators of the same rank, it was difficult to determine a victor quickly.
The higher a person’s Cultivation, the more they valued life-saving techniques, and thus, the longer their battles lasted.
The reason Xiao Chen could so often make short work of his opponents was that he held advantages on multiple fronts, his overall Combat Power simply overwhelming theirs.
However, the gap between the Golden Core cultivators within the Yellow Springs Traveling Palace was not nearly so wide.
Thus, a tense stalemate was inevitable.
Through constant probing, they gradually escalated the intensity of their battles.
And it wasn’t just inside the Yellow Springs Traveling Palace. Even the Cultivators who had been lucky enough to escape with their lives soon found themselves embroiled in combat once more.
The sect Cultivators who stuck together were better off.
There was safety in numbers, allowing them to protect themselves and retreat in an orderly fashion.
The Loose Cultivators, however, were not so fortunate.
Other Loose Cultivators who tried to leave the dangerous area were ambushed and killed en route.
.
At first, it was just a few who, suspecting others had obtained Treasures in the Yellow Springs Traveling Palace, decided to take advantage of the chaos to rob them.
Later, others saw that their fellow Cultivators were injured and gave in to malicious thoughts.
Whether their targets had actually obtained any Treasure from the Earth Palace didn’t matter; killing them would guarantee some kind of profit.
At that moment, all order had completely broken down.
Some even seized the opportunity to settle old grudges, and the fighting spiraled, drawing in more and more people.
In the end, nearly all the Loose Cultivators were slaughtering one another.
All of Hezhou was plunged into chaos and turmoil.
And just as everyone was still fighting to the death for the inheritance of the Yellow Springs Traveling Palace,
Xiao Chen had quietly slipped away with all the Treasures, using the Teleportation Array to land directly inside a great mountain thousands of miles away.
The only downside was that he had landed quite literally *inside* the mountain.
He was completely buried from head to toe in a thick layer of earth.
Any other Magic Cultivator would have been half-dead by now, if not killed outright.
That just went to show the double-edged nature of random teleportation: its main feature was a completely random destination.
Not only would your enemies be unable to find you, but even you couldn’t guess where you’d be thrown before you teleported.
But he still had to teleport. After all, for thousands of miles around the Yellow Springs Traveling Palace, the most dangerous place by far was the Traveling Palace itself, swarming as it was with Golden Core True Men.
「One hour later.」
"BANG!"
An arm suddenly burst out from a cave halfway up the mountainside.
Then, Xiao Chen pulled himself out of the dirt. "Oof, finally out. I was about to suffocate in there."
The core of this mountain was granite mixed with dense Spirit Soil.
It was a good thing his Body Refining was so advanced; otherwise, there was no way he would have gotten out so quickly.
He turned his head to scan his surroundings and saw a black bear just behind him. It had just woken from a deep sleep and was now staring at him blankly, its mouth agape and its big, dark eyes wide.
"Well, fancy seeing you here."
Xiao Chen recognized it at a glance. It was the very same black bear he’d encountered in a cave when he went West of Elemental Magnetic to achieve his breakthrough.
"What a coincidence, us meeting again so soon."
"Is this your new home?"
The black bear recognized Xiao Chen, too. It immediately scrambled up and bolted out of the cave on all fours.
A good while later, a roar echoed from the distance.
Since the bear clearly didn’t want the cave anymore, Xiao Chen simply sat down cross-legged to rest and recuperate.
Seeing the black bear had allowed him to pinpoint his approximate location, and he immediately relaxed.
A remote location was fine. As long as he hadn’t been sent into the Ten Thousand Demons Mountain Range or teleported east to Quanzhou,
he wouldn’t have to worry too much about his safety.
He rested for a short while, replenishing his stamina and Magical Power.
Only then did Xiao Chen unhurriedly take out the pile of Storage Bags on his person and slowly begin to crack their seals.
That’s right, he had now accumulated a "pile" of Storage Bags.
Most of them came from the six brothers who had been guarding the Bronze Gate before the Earth Palace.
From those six alone, Xiao Chen had obtained a full thirteen Storage Bags.
A few more came from some foolish Demon Cultivators in the maze, as well as from Zhou Xingyuan, who had suddenly appeared in the Earth Palace wielding the Geng Metal Divine Thunder.
Zhou Xingyuan had also been carrying three Storage Bags, bringing the grand total to a full twenty-three.
Aside from his previous demon hunt near Qingyang Mountain, this was the most Storage Bags he had ever acquired at one time.
By now, while Xiao Chen couldn’t be called an expert at cracking open Storage Bags, he was at least proficient through practice.
Normally, it took over two hours to complete the Refinement of a single Storage Bag.
Yet he managed to finish all of them in just sixteen hours.
His cracking speed was nearly three times that of an ordinary person.
’How is everyone so poor? Not even a single Spiritual Artifact among them.’
Xiao Chen shook his head slightly, looking over the contents of the Storage Bags.
Objectively speaking, this haul of Storage Bags was much better than the last.
Most of those Demon Cultivators from last time had been rushed to their level through Demon Techniques. They had little to no personal wealth and were practically destitute.