Cultivation: I can solidify equipment attributes

The following day, after finishing his business in the market, Li Yuan returned to the stone house and sat down cross-legged.

There were two empty slots in the special equipment inventory. He had previously equipped the large spiritual vein from Mozhou in those slots, but had freed them up after making them permanent. Now that he had two empty slots, he could reorganize them.

There was a malevolent vein directly beneath the market, which had been unable to be equipped with previously because the special equipment slot was full. Li Yuan probed downwards with his divine sense and touched the core node of the malevolent vein.

A panel pops up.

[Special item detected: Fiend Vein (Underground of Ghost Mist City)]

[Equipment Attribute Preview: Demonic Vein Nourishment (Blue)]

"equipment."

[Equipped: Fiend Vein (Underground of Ghost Mist Market) - Special Slot]

Subsequently, Li Yuan extended his senses along the earth's veins towards Mozhou, touching that large spiritual vein once again.

The content displayed in the panel is different from before.

[Special item detected: Large Spirit Vein (Mozhou Stone Wasteland)]

The affix 【Spirit Vein Enrichment (Purple)】 has been made permanent, and its effects are now permanent. The affix effects will not stack after equipping the item.

[Equipping this item grants: Access to Spirit Veins]

[Equipped?]

The effects of the entry will no longer be repeated, but the control permissions remain.

This means that once a spirit vein is placed in a special equipment slot, it no longer provides attribute bonuses, but rather pure control capabilities. He can remotely control the spiritual energy output of the spirit vein, which is crucial when reforming a broken core.

However, there's no rush to equip anything right now. There's only one special slot left, and it's not too late to reserve the control over the Mo Zhou spiritual vein until before the core is broken and reformed. If we encounter other items that require special slots along the way, filling them up prematurely would put us at a disadvantage.

Li Yuan withdrew his senses, got up, and pushed open the door.

It's time to go deep into the Ghost Mist Forest.

---

The stealth and disappearance feature is now fully activated.

Li Yuan's figure completely dissolved into the thick fog, without even causing a ripple in the air. The concealment effect enhanced by his Golden Core cultivation was almost absolute; he moved at high speed through the Ghost Mist Forest like a non-existent gust of wind.

The route avoided the activity area of ​​the Yuanyang Sect's exploration team, cutting into the woodland from the northwest of the market, then turning southwest, and venturing deep into the heartland along a beast trail that had not been marked by any force.

With the enhanced range of his divine sense at the Golden Core stage combined with the doubled perception distance due to his affinity with spiritual veins, his control over his surroundings far surpassed that of the Foundation Establishment stage. The rock strata dozens of feet underground, the activity patterns of demonic beasts three miles away, and even the changes in the concentration of spiritual energy carried by the air currents in the high sky were all clearly projected into his mind.

Two hours later, the terrain ahead suddenly sank.

A massive rift valley stretches across the heart of the Ghost Mist Forest, tearing the earth open with a wound tens of meters wide and bottomless. The rock walls on either side of the rift are almost vertical, their surfaces covered with vast expanses of dark green moss and writhing vines. Thick fog surges up from the valley floor, shrouding the rift in a grayish-white mist.

The former site of the ruins' branch temple is located in a deep abyss chasm.

Li Yuan stopped behind a dead tree at the edge of the rift valley and bent down to investigate.

The divine sense of a Golden Core cultivator was like a sharp knife, piercing straight through the surging fog and heading towards the bottom of the valley.

One hundred zhang, two hundred zhang, three hundred zhang.

The full view of the valley floor gradually became clear in my consciousness.

Li Yuan withdrew part of his divine sense and turned his attention to the area around the rift valley.

Not right.

There are an unusually large number of second-tier monsters at the edge of the rift valley.

Within his perception range, at least a dozen second-tier demonic beasts were active within a three-mile radius of the rift valley. Unlike normal territorial herds that each occupied their own territory without intruding on others, they exhibited a restless and agitated state. Several were running back and forth along the edge of the rift valley, emitting low growls, as if provoked by something yet dared not approach.

Li Yuan lowered his divine sense to the depths of the rift valley, carefully sensing the energy fluctuations at the bottom.

Something is seeping out from the bottom of the valley.

Extremely faint spiritual energy pulses. The frequency was very low, and the intervals were very long, like the beating of a sleeping heart. Ordinary cultivators' perception would be completely unable to detect fluctuations at this level, but with the absolute sharpness of the Golden Core stage Dark Fiend's Insight, each pulse was clearly recorded.

Li Yuan focused intently on discerning the characteristics of this pulse.

It seems familiar.

That was the aura he had sensed from the jade bead sealed by the giant mist array in the core area of ​​the Xuan You branch hall. Not exactly the same, but clearly from the same source. Like two leaves growing from the same tree, different in texture but identical in quality.

There is some connection between the jade bead and this site.

As the spiritual energy pulse spread outwards, although its intensity had weakened to an extremely weak level, its effect on the demonic beasts remained significant. This pulse may contain a special frequency that stimulates animal instincts, causing the surrounding demonic beasts to fall into a state of sustained excitement.

Li Yuan recorded the frequency, interval, and intensity attenuation curve of the pulses, and then moved eastward along the edge of the rift valley.

On the eastern side of the rift valley wall, an inconspicuous grotto caught his attention.

The entrance to the grotto was mostly obscured by vines, appearing almost integrated with the natural rock face from the outside. However, Dark Fiend's keen perception detected extremely faint traces of demonic energy remaining inside the grotto.

This is not natural demonic energy, but rather the lingering aura left behind by demonic cultivators.

Li Yuan pushed aside the vines and entered the cave sideways.

The interior of the cave was not large, about three zhang square. Scattered on the ground were some dried food scraps and a few pieces of burnt charcoal. In a corner was a pile of carelessly discarded debris, including several broken spirit-guiding copper pipes and some fragments of broken array plates.

The Dark Abyss Society's temporary stronghold has been abandoned for some time.

Judging from the concentration of residual demonic energy, this stronghold was last used about one to two months ago.

Li Yuan rummaged through the clutter in the corner. Most of it was worthless; the guiding copper tubes were severely corroded, and the fragments of the array plate were only low-grade items.

But in a crevice deep within the grotto, he found a hard object that had been deliberately inserted.

Pulling it out, it revealed a small package wrapped in oilcloth. Unwrapping the oilcloth, inside were two items: a small bag of array materials and a jade slip.

The array materials are dark-attribute array stones used exclusively by the demonic path. They are of low quality, but there are enough of them to set up two or three second-tier arrays.

There was a simple demonic seal on the jade slip. Li Yuan gently brushed it away with the demonic energy of his Demonic Yuan Technique, and the seal silently crumbled.

Divine sense probed in.

The jade slip contained a partial topographical map of the Abyss Rift. The markings were not very detailed, but they showed the general direction of the rift, the changes in its width, and several safe routes to the bottom.

Two locations are also marked in red on the map.

Li Yuan compared the information on the topographic map with the results of his earlier divine sense scan. The Dark Abyss Society members had only explored the outer perimeter of the rift valley and knew nothing about the overall layout of the complex at the bottom.

Although this intelligence was rough, it confirmed one thing: the Dark Abyss had long coveted the Abyss Rift, but had never been able to penetrate it.

Li Yuan put all the array materials and jade slips into his storage bag.

After leaving the grotto, Li Yuan selected three well-hidden locations along the outer edge of the rift valley and began setting up a monitoring array.

The three nodes are arranged in a triangle, covering the main access routes on the east, south, and west sides of the rift valley. The formation is centered on dark attribute array stones, driven by his own spiritual power, and further enhanced by his third-tier beginner-level array formation skills to achieve spatial folding and concealment.

Once set up, any cultivator or large demonic beast approaching the rift from these three directions will trigger the array's passive sensing. The signal will travel along the earth's veins to his perception network in the market, allowing him to receive an alert even if he is hundreds of miles away.

The placement of the first and second nodes went smoothly. Deploying the array in the complex rift valley terrain required precise calculations of the influence of leyline orientation, rock density, and spatial folds on the array pattern. Each variable continuously refined his practical application of the third-order array theory.

The third node was chosen on a scree slope on the west side of the rift valley.

Li Yuan crouched behind a boulder, probing the ground with his divine sense, calibrating the last positioning parameter of the array's core.

Dark Fiend's passive perception network suddenly detected a rapidly approaching biological aura.

Second-tier superior grade.

They were less than fifty feet away, rushing towards us at full speed from the dense forest on the west side.

Li Yuan raised his head.

A gigantic spider tumbled from the treetops, its eight long, jet-black legs piercing the ground like iron spears, firmly supporting its body, which was at least two zhang wide. Its body was covered in a dark purple carapace, and its abdomen continuously expanded and contracted, spewing wisps of grayish-green mist from glands on either side of its mouthparts.

Poisonous Mist Spider.

The fog spread extremely quickly, forming a thick, poisonous curtain on the ground. Li Yuan could sense the highly corrosive toxins permeating the air; ordinary spiritual energy shields would be completely eroded within a few breaths in this poisonous fog.

The Poison Mist Spider was clearly agitated by the spiritual energy pulses emanating from the depths of the rift. It didn't spot Li Yuan immediately, but in its frantic wandering, it ended up heading straight for the position where he had set up his formation.

In a few more breaths, the core of the formation will be crushed.

The poisonous mist spider swooped down from the forest, before it even truly landed.

Li Yuan then opened his divine sense and pinned it in mid-air.

After advancing to the Golden Core stage, one's divine sense has become almost tangible.

The golden elixir pulses, and demonic energy transforms into spiritual energy in the blink of an eye.

Sky-Splitting Slash.

As the gray fissure swept past, it wasn't the spider's body that broke first, but rather the churning poisonous mist in front of it. The mist curtain seemed to be cleaved in two by an invisible giant blade, collapsing violently to both sides. Immediately afterward, the spider's head and forelimbs fell to the ground together, and the remaining force of the fissure cut a smooth gash more than ten feet long in the rock wall behind it.

Li Yuan glanced at the gullies carved into the gravel slope and finally truly grasped the meaning of the words "Golden Elixir".

Li Yuan glanced at the gullies carved into the gravel slope and finally truly grasped the meaning of the words "Golden Elixir".

This is no longer a technique used by Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Li Yuan withdrew his spiritual power and glanced down at the corpse of the Poison Mist Spider. Its venom glands had ruptured, and the green fluid was corroding the surrounding rocks; there was nothing usable left.

He waved his hand, unleashing a burst of fiery flames that incinerated the corpse on the spot.

He then crouched back behind the boulder to continue the final calibration of the third monitoring node.

The array's positioning parameters were reset, and spiritual energy was injected. The array patterns lit up briefly beneath the ground before disappearing into the spatial folds, becoming completely imperceptible from the outside.

All three monitoring arrays have been deployed.

Li Yuan stood up, his gaze sweeping one last time over the thick fog churning in the abyss chasm.