Cultivation: I can solidify equipment attributes

Chapter 492 Canglan Sect

Li Yuan arrived at Qinghefang City in less than half a day.

When the light of escape landed on the official road outside the market, the scene before him was almost unchanged from his memory.

Two main streets running east and west traverse the market, while two side alleys extending north and south extend from either side of the main streets, forming a neat grid pattern. Most of the shops on both sides of the streets are two-story wooden and stone structures with faded paint on the doors and old lanterns hanging under the eaves.

The crowd wasn't sparse, but it wasn't exactly bustling either. Small groups of Qi Refining cultivators stopped in front of the stalls.

The layout of the market town is indeed suitable for expansion. There are vacant lots at the ends of the two main streets, and there are also many undeveloped areas around the north and south side alleys. The infrastructure, although old, is intact.

Li Yuan walked along the main street to the west end, then turned into the first alley on the south side.

The alley was even quieter. Several small shops had their doors half-open, and the shop owners were dozing on their doorsteps. A patrol of three people came from the other end of the alley.

Li Yuan's gaze swept over the patrol team, then paused for a moment.

A person followed behind the patrol team.

He appeared to be in his thirties, dressed in an inspector's uniform, with the words "Deputy Inspector" engraved on a token hanging from his waist. His cultivation level was at the fifth level of Qi Refining.

Sun Liang.

Unexpectedly, they were still here, and Ju had become the deputy inspector.

Li Yuan thought for a moment and then decided not to go up and greet them.

My current status is different from back then, and showing up rashly would only cause trouble for the other party.

With a sweep of his divine sense, he could see the entire market.

Li Yuan took out several bottles of rare pills and a stack of talismans from his personal space, wrapped them into a small bag with his spiritual power, and silently placed it in Sun Liang's house. Li Yuan could identify a house by its aura.

After doing all this, Li Yuan turned around and left the south alley, returning to the east main street.

In the afternoon, Xu Zhang and Wang Ting'an arrived at Qinghefang City one after the other.

The three met in an empty warehouse behind the market.

Wang Ting'an laid out all the land deeds, shop lists, and personnel rosters of Qinghefang Market on the table and showed them to Li Yuan and Xu Zhang one by one.

After reviewing the list, Xu Zhang gestured on the map for a while.

"I suggest expanding eastward and southward. There is a large open space at the end of the main east street, which is flat and can be directly expanded into a new commercial street. There is also space around the two alleys on the south side, which is suitable for building warehouses and enclosed rooms."

Li Yuan glanced at the locations of the earth veins marked on the map and nodded.

"We'll talk about the formations after the expansion is finished," Li Yuan said. "Let's lay a solid foundation and build the framework first. The formations will be much more effective when deployed on a complete foundation than when we're building and setting them up as we go."

Xu Zhang agreed: "I will oversee the expansion project. We will use the Chamber of Commerce's channels to purchase materials, which will help reduce costs significantly."

""

Wang Ting'an quickly replied, "The Wang family will fully cooperate in terms of manpower; all cultivators in the market can be mobilized."

Li Yuan said no more and handed over all the specific tasks to Xu Zhang and Wang Ting'an.

That evening, Li Yuan left Qinghefang City and, instead of returning to Wulinfang City, flew directly out of Liangzhou.

The destination is Shuizhou.

Reefs. Stone gate. Third fork in the road. Teleportation array.

Blue light enveloped his entire body, distorting the space around him.

I could feel the ground beneath my feet again.

Chamber of Secrets.

The array patterns on the four walls were still etched on the deep blue rock, but the spirit-gathering array had stopped operating because its core had been permanently destroyed. The concentration of water-based spiritual energy remaining in the secret chamber was much lower than when I last visited, but it was still far higher than that in the outer sea.

Li Yuan sat cross-legged in the center of the secret room, his gaze sweeping over the array patterns on the four walls.

When he came last time, he had already recorded the parts he could understand with his divine sense. However, at that time, his array cultivation was only at the third-level proficiency stage, and he couldn't see through many of the deeper array patterns' logic.

Now that I've reached the third stage of minor mastery, my intuitive judgment of the permanent abbreviations of array rhythms and my understanding of the subtle light of array principles are working together, so when I look at these array patterns again, my feelings are completely different.

The previously blurry parts became much clearer. The implicit connections between the array patterns emerged one by one in my perception, like seeing the outline of a distant mountain range after the fog had been cleared.

Li Yuan spent half a day re-examining the parts of the array patterns on the four walls that he hadn't understood before. He gained a lot, deepening his understanding of the design concepts of high-level spirit-gathering arrays.

After finishing his comprehension, Li Yuan used his divine sense to conduct a comprehensive scan of his surroundings.

His divine sense penetrated the rocks of the four walls and extended deeper.

There is only one teleportation array in the secret chamber. However, the teleportation array cannot appear out of thin air. To build the teleportation array, anchor points need to be set up at both ends, and the construction workers must enter the secret chamber through some kind of passage to complete the deployment.

About three zhang deep in the east wall of the secret chamber, Li Yuan's divine sense detected a strange thing.

The rock strata showed an extremely fine fault at that location. Traces of a broken array remained at the edge of the fault, and the path of the spiritual energy circulation belonged to the same system as the spirit-gathering array on the walls of the secret chamber.

There's something else deep inside the rock face.

Li Yuan stood up, walked to the east wall, and made a knife shape with his right hand.

Sky-Splitting Slash.

The gray fissures silently cut into the rock face, slicing through the hard, dark blue rock as easily as cutting tofu. Gravel fell, revealing the cross-section deep within the rock strata.

Li Yuan cleared away the rubble and continued digging deeper.

Each layer of rock cut open revealed traces of defunct arrays. Some were remnants of defensive array patterns, others were fragments of concealing array patterns, all of which had completely lost their function due to the passage of time and the depletion of spiritual energy.

The passage is deep within the rock face.

The excavation lasted for most of the day.

The Sky-Splitting Slash repeatedly cuts, creating a passage several feet long with each cut.

The rubble was constantly being cleared. The passage became narrower and narrower, and the structure of the rock strata became increasingly unstable, with large chunks of rubble collapsing from the top every now and then.

Li Yuan used his spiritual power to lay down simple support array patterns on the walls of the passage, reinforcing it as he dug.

Two more hours passed.

The rock face in front of us suddenly thinned out.

When the Sky-Splitting Slash delivered its final strike, the blade pierced through the rock layer and cut into the space on the other side.

Li Yuan pushed down the remaining rock face in one piece.

Before me lay a vast expanse of space.

Underwater cave.

Not one room, but a whole row.

A dozen or so caves of varying sizes are arranged along a naturally formed underwater corridor, with their entrances facing the same direction. The rock walls on both sides of the corridor bear numerous traces of array formations, with remnants of defensive, concealment, and spirit-gathering arrays intertwined, but all of them are now ineffective.

Further away, there are traces of more cave dwellings, but they have all basically collapsed completely.

Most of the cave entrances have been filled with mud and gravel, with only three or four remaining accessible.

Li Yuan entered the nearest cave dwelling.

empty.

The stone bed, stone table, and medicine cabinet are still there, but there's nothing on them anymore.

The second room was also empty.

The third room was slightly better. Several jade slips were scattered on the stone table, and some broken jade bottle fragments were piled up in the corner.

Li Yuan picked up the jade slips one by one and probed them with his divine sense.

Most of the jade slips were incomplete, and the spiritual energy imprints were so blurred and illegible due to their age. Only two well-preserved jade slips still contained some information.

Li Yuan collected all the jade slips he could find and blasted away the rubble. He continued exploring the remaining cave dwellings.

At the deepest part of the rock corridor, Li Yuan discovered the entrance to the underground spiritual vein.

A medium-sized spiritual vein extends from deep within the rock strata, forming a natural energy convergence zone directly beneath the cave complex. The spiritual light emanating from the vein is much dimmer than normal, and the spiritual energy is slowly diminishing.

The area around the spiritual vein bears numerous traces of high-grade spirit-gathering arrays, but these arrays are now ineffective. These arrays once continuously extracted spiritual energy from the vein to supply the cultivators within the cave complex.

Li Yuan brought all the jade slips he had collected back to the secret room, sat down cross-legged, and began to decipher them one by one.

The workload is enormous.

Most of the jade slips are severely incomplete, requiring the fragments from multiple jade slips to be pieced together to reconstruct a relatively complete record.

Moreover, the records of each cultivator are completely different.

Li Yuan spent two whole days piecing together the following information from more than a dozen jade slips.

This is a sect located at the bottom of the sea, named Canglan Sect.

At its peak, the Canglan Sect was a major Nascent Soul sect. The sect was built on the seabed, relying on natural spiritual veins and abundant marine resources to grow and expand.

Although the seabed is rich in spiritual energy and can be used to hunt monsters and obtain resources, the maintenance cost is extremely high.

The sect needs to set up a large number of defensive formations around its perimeter to resist the invasion of deep-sea monsters. The operation of these formations consumes a great deal of energy and requires the sect's strong strength to maintain them.

After the Nascent Soul Ancestor passed away, the sect began its decline. The subsequent Golden Core cultivators were unable to maintain all the outer formations, and the defensive line gradually shrank. After the outer formations were eroded by sea monsters, cave dwellings were filled in one after another by demonic beasts and water. The inner sect was also affected, forced to forcibly deplete spiritual veins to maintain the core area's operation. The spiritual energy of the veins gradually weakened under excessive extraction, creating a vicious cycle that led many disciples to flee.

Ultimately, the entire sect quietly perished in a long period of decline. The erosion of water and the rolling of silt, coupled with the destruction by demonic beasts, completely buried most of its remains beneath the seabed rock layers.