Shrouded entirely in a black robe, Li Guanqi looked no different from any ordinary traveler wandering the cultivation world.
He stood atop a mountain peak a hundred li away from God Burial Valley, his brows knitted tight.
A veil of dark gray fog choked the entire valley, thick enough that even he could not see what lay within.
All he could discern were the towering mountains encircling it, their massive forms thrusting into the clouds, completely ordinary in appearance.
Along the way, across a thousand li, Li Guanqi had encountered almost no fellow cultivators.
He pulled back his cowl, gazing toward the valley with a furrowed brow.
A reek of decay and death drifted from its depths, chilling one to the bone.
Though a hundred li separated them, there was not a trace of life in the surroundings, and the biting cold was enough to raise goosebumps.
Li Guanqi soared through the air until he was a thousand zhang away. Stepping through the void closer to it, he felt the chill grow several degrees sharper.
Standing there, he felt a creeping sensation of dread raise the hairs on his neck.
The sheer cliffs looked as if cleaved by axes and hewn by blades. The valley's periphery was strewn with massive, pale boulders and jagged pillars of bizarre rock.
The immense valley lay in thousand-li silence, lurking beneath the fog like a bloodthirsty behemoth crouched low against the earth.
Beneath the falling night, God Burial Valley exerted an uncanny sense of pressure over Li Guanqi.
Even though no danger had yet presented itself, he found it difficult to breathe.
Looking up at the gloomy, overcast sky, the dark clouds hung unbroken, seemingly having lingered there since antiquity.
Even with his sacred-grade lightning spiritual root, Li Guanqi could not detect the slightest trace of spiritual power in that sky.
Suddenly!
Li Guanqi realized something. Glancing around, he confirmed his suspicion.
No wonder he had felt uneasy from the start.
"Within a thousand li, there isn't a single wisp of worldly spiritual energy!"
After thinking for a moment, Li Guanqi retrieved a large snakeskin sack from his storage ring.
The sack was enormous, and without hesitation, he emptied all the purple gold crystals he had exchanged into it.
A single purple gold crystal was worth ten thousand high-grade spirit stones—a precious resource far more valuable than purple crystals.
If his hunch proved correct, items like storage rings would very likely be unusable within God Burial Valley.
If that happened, he wouldn't be able to replenish his primal energy, and facing any danger in that state would be truly fatal.
In the end, Li Guanqi crammed all his spirit stones into the sack, filling it until it stood half a man tall upon his back.
He hefted the heavy bundle. It felt as though he hadn't carried a pack like this since descending the mountain from Fulong Village.
To think that, after reaching the peak of the Body Integration Realm, he would still end up hauling such luggage.
Besides spirit stones, he also packed plenty of the inscribed talismans Gu Li had left him, as well as pills and other essentials.
Gripping the sword Bixiao in his hand, he strode swiftly toward God Burial Valley.
As Li Guanqi drew nearer to the valley, that uncanny pressure battered his mind once again!
Standing before those strange, towering cliffs, he actually froze in his tracks.
He raised his gaze to the valley steeped in decay and death, an inexplicable sliver of dread welling up inside him.
And it was precisely this dread that had stayed his steps.
Glancing back, he could see lush greenery in the far distance, vibrant with life.
Turning back to face the pale stone cliffs that resembled bleached bones beneath the gray sky, a faint smile suddenly curled at the corners of his mouth.
As if endowed with a spirit of its own, the sword resting in the scabbard in his right hand let out clear, resonant hums.
Li Guanqi's gaze steadily hardened. He knew what his goal was, and he knew what he wanted.
If all he sought was a life of comfort and ease, his current prestige and the sect forces backing him were more than enough to place him among the uppermost tier of people under heaven.
Yet he understood that all of that dazzling glory was nothing more than an illusion without sufficient strength to uphold it.
Only by truly stepping into the Mahayana realm could he take complete control of his life and destiny!
"Whew..."
Li Guanqi's chest rose and fell slightly as he exhaled a breath of stale air. Casting all hesitation aside, he took a great stride into God Burial Valley!
A sinister wind wailed. The valley floor was rugged and uneven, riddled with craters and fissures of varying sizes.
Some chasms plunged into bottomless abysses, and here and there lay mountainous piles of colossal skeletons.
Li Guanqi frowned. As his sea of consciousness stirred, he discovered an invisible power inside the valley utterly suppressing it!
As a result, though he could still sense his divine sense, he could not harness a single shred of its power.
His expression grew grave. Tightening his grip on his scabbard, he lightened his footsteps.
His mind's eye could reach no further than thirty zhang.
Li Guanqi surmised that this dense fog was the root cause suppressing divine sense. God Burial Valley's sky hung oppressively dark.
Raising his hand to test the surroundings, he felt profoundly glad for his foresight!
Without being able to exert any divine sense in God Burial Valley, he could not even open a storage ring.
Gusts of wind howled past his ears now and then, but otherwise, the vast valley remained dead silent—a stillness that set teeth on edge.
He walked for a full two hours. Aside from the scattered bones and weathered scraps of cloth along the path, he encountered almost nothing else.
In such an environment, Li Guanqi felt an urge to mutter to himself just to break the silence.
Suddenly!
Li Guanqi paused, looking down and shifting his foot aside before slowly bending down.
Parting the loose gravel with his hand, he uncovered an exceptionally ancient storage ring.
Cast entirely in azure, its surface was caked in dust. A gentle wipe revealed exquisite, intricate patterns of remarkable elegance.
A faint smile touched Li Guanqi's lips. He hadn't expected such good fortune.
Who knew how many years this storage ring had lain here, yet it had survived the erosion of time without breaking.
Slipping it onto his finger, he thought to see if he could open it once he made it back out.
He continued forward. After the time it took to burn an incense stick, he abruptly halted, springing backward while sweeping his scabbard up to guard his chest.
Beneath the gray fog, a tall silhouette loomed indistinctly in the distance.
Li Guanqi knitted his brows, his nerves wound to the breaking point. Then, as if sensing something, he slowly walked forward.
A moment later, he looked upon a massive beast skeleton rising more than two hundred feet tall, his expression turning solemn.
The remains seemed to belong to some great demonic beast resembling a colossal elephant. Its thick ribs exuded an aura of decay.
Yet faint glimmers of milky-white light still flickered intermittently across the white bone, suggesting this demon had been formidable in life.
Noticing the shattered ribs and severed spine, Li Guanqi murmured, "It seems it met its end in an extremely brutal battle."
Yet the moment Li Guanqi reached out and touched the skeleton, the immense remains instantly crumbled into ash.
A sinister gust swept through, scattering the white bone powder over the ground. Just as he turned to leave, however...
A thumb-sized white bead lying on the ground caught Li Guanqi's eye.
Chapter 1073