The Eternal Saint of Alchemy

The light filtering through the crack in the door was silvery-white, not glaring, but very steady.

In the center of the stone chamber was a bluish-gray stone platform, about a foot off the ground, upon which sat an open jade box.

The jade box was covered with a piece of black cloth, and there was a clear mark on the cloth, indicating that someone had entered this stone chamber before the Twin Realms Platform and taken the contents of the jade box.

The soft fabric at the edge of the indentation was slightly wrinkled, indicating that it had been removed recently, at least shortly after the miners of Anvil Village discovered the opening.

Old Hunter Pei squatted down at the entrance of the stone chamber and looked around. Then he said, "There are shoe prints on the ground. The shoe prints are the anti-slip patterns commonly seen in the far north. This means that at least three people have come and gone. They were already inside before the miners of Iron Anvil Village discovered the collapse."

Xiao Fan stood in front of the stone platform, touched the soft cloth inside the jade box with his crimson short staff, and extracted the spiritual energy inside.

The extracted residual spiritual energy did not conform to the Dual Realm Platform system, but there were many similar waveforms on the edge of the silver-white plain near the ancient sect's stronghold in the Southern Continent.

The locations of the "narrow corridor" and the "stone chamber" are clearly marked in the "Erjietai" record.

Mining operations in the Tiezhenji mining area did not stop because of this discovery. The woman surnamed Shi has arranged for people to reseal the collapsed entrance to ensure the normal operation of the ore vein.

Before leaving Iron Anvil Village, Xiao Fan and Bai Ye checked the shape of the footprints together in the narrow corridor. They confirmed that the direction, spacing, and shape of the footprints were exactly the same, indicating that the three people were the same person.

On the way back to the Twin Realms Platform, Bai Ye noticed something very strange: the spiritual energy records on the Silver Frost Sword showed that the items in the stone chamber were taken away at exactly the same time when the ancient sect retreated from the Silver Plains.

This period of time was just enough for them to travel from the edge of the Silver Plains to the north of Anvil Village, and then continue their retreat.

Sitting on his horse, Xiao Fan listened to this analysis and said, "Let's organize the transcript first, don't rush."

The arrest warrant for Shuangjietai had been in effect since winter until the last week of early winter. At the same time, Tiefengbao, Qingluzhuang, and some other gathering places of independent cultivators in the north submitted applications to Shuangjietai to resume operations through various channels.

Together, Master Cheng and Elder Hunter Pei sorted out all the requirements and divided them into two parts: one was the regular cooperation, and the other was the preparation before the beginning of summer.

The people on the bounty list reacted much faster than expected.

In the first week of spring, someone from the registration office will come to pick up the tasks. As for the bounties that were piled up after winter, they will be mostly dealt with after spring begins.

Grandpa Pei added two pages to his notebook, writing down precautions for road traffic conditions after the spring snow melts. He also systematically compiled the terrain changes during spring travel and attached them to the end of each task document for future reference by staff.

In the second week after the start of spring, Xiao Fan conducted a spring operation inspection of the pipeline network from Shuangjie Station to the tower.

The entire verification process went smoothly. The spiritual energy flow index at all connection points was within a safe range, and there was no accumulation of thawing stress that would occur after the low temperatures of winter.

Spring production has resumed at the Tiezhenji mining area, and spring inspection records at Beita are being kept according to the new schedule.

Xiao Fan did not tell anyone about this.

He left the copy of the spiritual energy remnant extraction and analysis inside the array room and added the annotation "narrow corridor" to the new version of the full map of the bronze plate. However, the specific location and internal condition of this narrow corridor are not yet marked on the newly released version of the map.

Bai Ye also noticed this, but she didn't ask any questions. Instead, she synchronized the spiritual energy records on the Silver Frost Sword, including the coordinates of the corridor.

In the third week after the start of spring, a middle-aged monk arrived alone in the central part of the Aurora Plains.

The man was tall and slender with a calm expression, and wore an ordinary blue robe.

He walked to the wall, glanced at the various notices on the wall, walked to the registration room, took out a fist-sized gray ore from his pocket, and placed it on the counter.

Ning Yao put down the ledger, took the ore, weighed it in her hand, looked at the patterns on it, and examined the traces of spiritual energy remaining on it, confirming that these ores were not from the deposits north of the Aurora Plains.

Ning Yao took the ore to the array room and asked Xiao Fan to inspect it.

Xiao Fan placed the crimson short staff against the surface of the ore and sensed it for a few seconds. He then determined that the ore contained a spiritual energy structure that was extremely rare in the Aurora Plains.

This spiritual energy fluctuation has a structural consistency with the low-frequency fluctuation of the southern node of the Shuangjietai backup network, but it is not formed by a pipe, but rather more like a homogeneous matrix formed through long-term deposition.

The middle-aged monk said that he came from a family in the south of the aurora, who had been collecting rare minerals for generations. This was a piece of mineral he had found during his exploration, and he wanted to see if the Twin Realms Platform would be interested.

If you are interested, you can exchange information with the Twin Realms Platform to help him complete next year's mineral vein survey.

After discussing with the middle-aged cultivator, Cheng Xiushi and the middle-aged cultivator agreed on a condition: the Twin Realms Platform would provide support for mineral vein exploration twice a year, and the Twin Realms Platform would be notified immediately if any mineral with a similar spiritual energy structure to the Twin Realms Platform's pipeline network was discovered.

The middle-aged cultivator agreed, signed the contract, and then left the Twin Realms Platform.

The grayish-white ore was placed in the research materials room inside the array chamber, and placed on a shelf along with the remaining spiritual energy samples in the narrow corridor.

To this day, the spiritual energy between the two samples has remained stable and synchronized, providing a reference for subsequent identification.

At the end of the second month of spring, an independent exploration team from north of Blackstone Pass discovered an anomalous spiritual energy point similar to Twin Realms Platform. However, that place had already been visited by someone else, leaving behind three pointed marks that resembled the silvery-white plains.

After receiving the message from the main hall, Cheng Xiushi compared it with the existing records in the narrow corridor and the coordinates of the Southern Continent Ancient Sect's residence, confirming that the Southern Continent Ancient Sect had added another new stronghold near Shuangjietai and Tiezhenji.

The new outpost was much smaller than the previous one, nestled among low bushes and windswept rubble, within the coverage area of ​​the Twin Platform Pipeline.

However, its activity methods are completely different from before, becoming more covert.

Inside the array chamber, Bai Ye used the Silver Frost Sword to examine the area and confirmed the abnormal spiritual energy location: the spiritual energy groove in the narrow passage.

The two lines are close together, allowing for continuous operation on the same line.