Cultivation: I can solidify equipment attributes

Li Yuan sat at the table and took out the jade bottles covered with a series of restrictions.

After the message was delivered, the mole's activity frequency dropped significantly, almost to zero.

Five lines of divine sense emerged from between his brows, like extremely fine tentacles, seeping into the demonic energy patterns on the surface of the jade bottles little by little. This was a delicate task; forcibly breaking them would detonate the internal demonic energy and destroy the pills. It took him nearly an hour to dismantle the restrictions on the five jade bottles one by one.

The cork was pulled out, and a faint earthy smell wafted out.

Li Yuan tilted one of the jade bottles, pouring out a dark gray pill into his palm. The pill's surface was rough and lacked luster, and its medicinal properties seemed quite mild, a stark contrast to the domineering style of the demonic path.

This is standard issue for the demonic cultivators of the Dark Abyss Society: the Concealing Qi Pill. Its quality isn't particularly high, but its extreme practicality is its advantage. After ingestion, it can suppress a cultivator's movements and residual spiritual energy to a minimum, making it difficult for ordinary detection spells to locate them. This pill has played a crucial role in the demonic cultivators' ability to infiltrate right under the nose of the Yuan Yang Sect for so long.

The moment the fingertip touched the dark gray pill, a panel popped up.

[Equipable item detected: Qi Concealing Pill (Complete)]

[Equipment Attribute Preview: Concealed Qi (Green)]

[Effect: Significantly reduces the residual aura, decreasing the probability of being detected by detection spells by 50%]

[Preview of Permanentization Requirements: Possess two or more hidden permanent attributes (already met)]

The conditions have been met.

Without hesitation, Li Yuan placed the Qi-Gathering Pill into the empty slot.

"equipment."

[Equipped: Qi Concealing Pill (Complete)]

The conditions for the permanent formation of the gaseous reservoir (green) have been met.

[Qi Conservation (Green) has become a permanent entry]

In the equipment slot, the phantom of the Qi Concealing Pill solidified for less than a breath before dissipating completely into specks of light. The empty slot was freed up again.

At the very moment the entry was made permanent, an extremely intense resonance suddenly arose deep within Li Yuan's sea of ​​consciousness.

The panel popped up again, and the text was flashing.

[System notification: Same source and type of terms detected, meeting the fusion conditions]

[Triple Shielding (Green) + Qi Concealment (Green) begins to merge]

The profound feeling I had experienced during the fusion of the earth veins and spiritual cores reappeared. Various insights into concealment, disguise, and suppression of aura intertwined and converged in my sea of ​​consciousness. The two originally distinct power systems—active concealment and passive suppression—perfectly merged at this moment.

[Integration Complete]

[New entry added: Vanishing Without a Trace (Blue)]

[Effect: When actively concealed, it almost perfectly eliminates all detectable traces; when passively concealed, the residual aura is reduced by 70%; movement speed is unaffected while concealed; immune to detection spells of the same or lower rank]

Blue entries.

Li Yuan immediately activated his spiritual power, triggering the active concealment effect of the Hidden Trace skill.

There was no change in the room, but if another Foundation Establishment cultivator were standing here at this moment, whether using divine sense or detection spells, they would come to the same conclusion: there was no one in front of this table at all.

Li Yuan stood up from the futon and took two quick steps in the narrow stone room.

This is the most fundamental qualitative change. Previously, when using triple concealment, although he could erase his presence, if he moved too fast, the spiritual energy shield would still create extremely faint ripples as it cut through the air. Therefore, he had to deliberately slow down his pace or rely on teleportation techniques to jump between spaces every time he moved stealthily.

Now, his movement while in stealth mode is no longer restricted. The air seems to lose its resistance, flowing naturally past his sides as he moves without stirring up a ripple, or even raising the dust on the ground.

In his passive state, the residual aura is reduced by 70%, and he is immune to detection spells of the same or lower level. This means that even if he doesn't deliberately activate concealment, as long as he restrains his spiritual power, the detection arrays and spells of the Foundation Establishment stage are useless to him.

The stealth system has finally completed the most important piece of the puzzle.

With the ability to actively conceal oneself, the ability to passively disguise oneself, and the ability to perceive and warn of the enemy's dark energy, one can silently kill enemies, change one's appearance, and detect the enemy's demonic energy at any time.

Li Yuan put away the remaining Qi-gathering pills on the table, pushed open the door, and walked out of the stone house.

Now that the ability to conceal oneself has undergone a qualitative change, it's a good time to investigate the suspicious locations provided by that Qian-surname demonic cultivator in the Valley of Dry Bones.

Once outside the market, Li Yuan activated his stealth ability, pushing his speed to its maximum.

The scenery on both sides rushed past in his vision, and only the low whistling of the wind filled his ears. He was like a ghost completely blending into the background, moving through the thick fog on the outskirts of the Ghost Mist Forest. When passing several sentry posts and reconnaissance formations set up by the Yuan Yang Sect, he didn't take detours at all, cutting straight through the edges of the formations.

The array plate showed no reaction, and the cultivators in the hidden sentries didn't even lift their eyelids.

In less than an hour, Li Yuan had penetrated deep into the Ghost Mist Forest and arrived at the first coordinate marked on the jade slip.

This is a low-lying basin covered with gray-black vines.

Li Yuan stopped on the branch of a withered tree, simultaneously extending his spiritual affinity perception and dark energy insight. The sensory network spread like mercury, covering every corner within a radius of several miles.

There were no remnants of formations, no unusual spiritual energy nodes, and no trace of demonic energy accumulation. More than ten feet underground, there were only some ordinary rock strata, not even a tiny branch of a spiritual vein.

An ordinary dead zone.

Without stopping, he immediately changed direction and headed to the second coordinate.

Below a cliff thirty miles away.

Again, nothing was found. Apart from a few low-level demonic beasts lurking in the crevices of the rocks, there were no signs of human intervention.

The third coordinate is located deep within a poisonous swamp where sunlight never shines.

Li Yuan hovered above the swamp, his divine sense penetrating the viscous mud and probing deep into the earth. The result was still disappointing. There was nothing but marsh gas and decaying silt.

All three locations were empty.

Li Yuan stood at the edge of the swamp and pondered for a moment.

The demonic cultivator surnamed Qian had no reason to lie about this. Since these coordinates were listed as suspicious locations by the Dark Abyss Society, someone must have sensed abnormal spiritual energy fluctuations here.

Either this fluctuation is cyclical and is currently in a dormant phase, or these locations are merely tiny pores exposed by some vast array system, with the true core area far away.

Without further clues, there's no point in forcing an investigation.

Li Yuan didn't dwell on the matter too much and turned back the way he came.

When they returned to the market, it was already broad daylight.

Li Yuan had just sat down in the stone house and hadn't even had time to pour himself a cup of tea when there was a knock on the courtyard gate.

Xu Zhang stood outside the door, looking much more serious than usual.

"Master Li".

"Come in and speak."

The two sat down inside the room. Xu Zhang didn't exchange pleasantries; he simply took out a plain jade slip without any markings from his sleeve and pushed it onto the table.

"There are a few pieces of information that I feel I must let you know immediately, which are just a summary of messages from the Chamber of Commerce headquarters."

The Mingyuan Chamber of Commerce has tentacles that extend across four states. Although their intelligence network does not involve the core secrets of the sect, their sensitivity to trends and personnel movements is often several times higher than that of the Yuanyang Sect.

Li Yuan picked up the jade slip and probed it with his divine sense.

The first few reports were routine updates on price fluctuations of goods along the trade route between Jingzhou and Yunzhou. His gaze paused slightly as he scanned the last report.

"The Tianyue Sect has recently intensified its focus on the Liangzhou area. Ten days ago, two Tianyue Sect teams entered Liangzhou through the Luoxia Corridor, and their current whereabouts are unknown."

Tianyue Sect.

That Nascent Soul sect that spanned three states and completely suppressed the three Golden Core sects in Jingzhou.

Li Yuan put down the jade slip and looked at Xu Zhang.

Xu Zhang lowered his voice: "The people of Tianyue Sect basically don't get involved in Liangzhou affairs. They have more than ten Golden Core cultivators in their sect, and even a Nascent Soul ancestor who has lived for over a thousand years. In terms of size, Yuanyang Sect is just a slightly larger sect compared to them."

"What are they doing in Liangzhou?" Li Yuan asked.

"I don't know the specifics." Xu Zhang's expression was somewhat grave. "But it's not good news."

Li Yuan's gaze narrowed slightly.

He had previously overheard a conversation between disciples of the Tianyue Sect in a teahouse in Baijing Market. The Nascent Soul Ancestor was searching the world for an opportunity to break through to the Divine Transformation Realm, and had even ordered disciples skilled in formations to study spatial topics.

Li Yuan himself didn't know what was hidden deep within the Ghost Mist Forest. It was the jade bead sealed in the core of the Xuan You Branch Hall's formation, along with the sect leader's extraction of spiritual veins to cultivate something mentioned in the disciple's diary.

Originally, it was just a contest between two Golden Core sects, the Yuan Yang Sect and the Sha Mo Sect, within the territory of Liangzhou. These two sects were of similar strength and were wary of each other, so the Golden Core cultivators had always maintained restraint and dared not easily intervene.

But Tianyue Sect is different.

They possess overwhelming strength. If that Nascent Soul ancestor truly has his eye on this place, even sending just two or three Golden Core elders would be enough to disrupt the existing balance in Liangzhou.

"Do the higher-ups of the Yuanyang Sect know about this?" Li Yuan asked.

"Of course they know. The Tianyue Sect's men swaggered in through the Sunset Corridor without any attempt to conceal their presence." Xu Zhang sighed. "The Ghost Mist Forest is now a powder keg about to explode. Our Chamber of Commerce has already begun to scale back its operations in remote markets."

After Xu Zhang left, Li Yuan sat at the table, his fingers tapping unconsciously on the surface.

All forces are rapidly converging. The demonic cultivators of the Dark Abyss Society, the Golden Core cultivators of the Fiend Demon Sect stationed in Blackwater Valley, the exploration team of the Yuan Yang Sect, and now the unshakeable Tian Yue Sect has joined the fray.

The vortex in the Ghost Mist Forest is getting bigger and bigger.