Qin Sang followed instructions and took several quick steps forward, whereupon the view opened wide before his eyes.
It turned out this grassland was merely a small corner of a vast domain; only the grassland itself was so serene and peaceful.
Beyond the grassland, multi-colored rays stretched tens of thousands of feet, chaotic clouds blocked the sky, and the earth lay shattered and broken. Everywhere were treacherous crags, sheer cliffs, soaring precipices, and bottomless chasms. Even space itself gave an unsettling impression of turbulence.
This sensation was no illusion. As far as the eye could see, in this stretch of space alone, storms raged continuously in more than a dozen places—clear proof of the instability.
Standing inside the stone fissure, he could hear no sound from the storms, but with the naked eye alone, he could discern how terrifyingly ferocious they were.
Yet even storms of such immense power could not shake those glowing clouds in the slightest, remaining firmly bound in place.
Rays of light intertwined with turbulent clouds, dense and unyielding.
Without question, these were all incomparably perilous ancient restrictions.
Among them stretched threads of white, black, and silver. Some could no longer even be called threads—they spanned tens of zhang in length and several zhang in width, drifting in midair like clouds.
Back in the ancient cultivator's abandoned abode, Qin Sang had seen similar black lines and recognized them at a glance: they were all spatial rifts!
For Foundation Establishment cultivators like them, danger was omnipresent, leaving virtually no safe ground to stand on. It was hard to imagine how Yunyouzi had managed to find a safe route.
Seeing the sights of the inner valley and realizing they had to traverse such a terrain to reach its depths, daring though Qin Sang was, his face still paled slightly. The step he was about to take out of the stone fissure suddenly seemed too perilous to make lightly, and he pulled his foot back as if scalded.
"This grassland is a rare sanctuary of peace in the inner valley. There is no need to worry, Brother Qin..."
Yunyouzi took the lead and stepped out. Standing on the grassland, he cast his gaze around, sweeping past anomaly after anomaly, before finally fixing his eyes on the space between two storms. Raising his finger, he pointed toward it, a trace of excitement in his voice.
"Right there. We have been inside for a while now, and a long journey still lies ahead. Thanks to that senior clearing the path, we haven't expended much energy. To avoid any unexpected complications, let us set off now. Brother Qin, you must follow right behind me and not stray from the path. Otherwise, it will be very easy to trigger a restriction or spatial rift."
Before his voice had even faded, Yunyouzi summoned his escape light and flew straight toward the destination.
Qin Sang let out a breath and followed without hesitation. Having come this far, there was no reason to shrink back. He only hoped that nothing had changed along the route Yunyouzi knew.
In the blink of an eye, the two flew across the grassland and arrived before the storms.
The two storms whipped up countless rocks and sand, rising from the ground as two tornadoes. They were extremely close to one another, yet they did not merge.
Yunyouzi seemed not to notice the stones being shredded by the tempest. With a flicker of his figure, he plunged straight into the gap between the two storms. Qin Sang hesitated for a split second, then dashed in after him.
The immense destructive force he had imagined never came; between the raging tornadoes, it was astonishingly calm.
Qin Sang marveled inwardly as he glanced left and right. Seeing that Yunyouzi had not slowed his escape light and was already flying out of the gap, he hurried to keep up.
Thus, the two streaks of escape light traveled one after the other, navigating between countless perils that could easily spell their doom.
Their speed varied, and at times they had to make wide detours to chart a safe passage.
Qin Sang remained on high alert throughout, strictly adhering to Yunyouzi's warning. He followed in his tracks step for step, never taking a single stride out of line.
What gradually put his mind at ease was that Yunyouzi barely paused along the way, always appearing full of confidence. Whenever they encountered what seemed to be an impassable dead end, Yunyouzi invariably found a way around it, a delightful transition from gloom to open skies.
Under these circumstances, Qin Sang did not dare relax in the slightest, memorizing the route firmly in his heart.
Once they reached their destination, if Qin Sang could pin down the strange figure and send Yunyouzi inside, the two of them would go their separate ways. He could hardly linger in a place like this waiting for Yunyouzi.
The two had already agreed that after leaving Wuya Valley, Qin Sang would return to Qingyang Market to wait. If Yunyouzi did not appear within a month, Qin Sang would deliver the token to Li Yufu.
After countless twists and turns, they penetrated deeper into the inner valley. Having grown proficient at shadowing Yunyouzi's route, Qin Sang had the spare attention to observe their surroundings.
What piqued his curiosity most was naturally the origins of Wuya Valley.
Legend held that the Ancient Immortal Battlefield was formed when ancient immortals fought and shattered the spatial fabric. Had Wuya Valley also been created by the shockwaves of that great war?
What lay within those ancient restrictions? Could there be ancient treasures inside?
According to what Yunyouzi had mentioned, most restrictions were actually completely empty.
Some Nascent Soul cultivators would prepare for a long time and spend vast fortunes on methods to break a restriction, only to end up with nothing. Such occurrences were by no means rare.
Just as Qin Sang was letting his thoughts wander, Yunyouzi's figure abruptly halted. He turned his head sharply and looked toward the left with a grave expression.
Assuming they had encountered danger, Qin Sang took fright. Just as he was about to ask, he saw Yunyouzi make a gesture for silence. After glancing around, Yunyouzi flew up to a steep hillside and hid behind an ochre boulder, gazing into the distance toward the horizon.
Qin Sang followed and looked along Yunyouzi's line of sight. In the distance stood a cluster of mountains; at the edge of his vision, two mountains pressed closely against each other, forming a crevice that faced right toward them.
Spiritual energy within the crevice coalesced into surging waves, mighty and vast, ultimately forming a river of spiritual energy that abruptly swooped down like the Heavenly River falling from above, crashing violently into the depths of the crevice.
Lying flat on the hillside, they could not see what was being struck by the 'Heavenly River', but they guessed it was likely an ancient restriction.
Qin Sang's heart skipped a beat. Such an unnatural surge of spiritual energy did not seem naturally formed.
Could it be...?
The thought had barely crossed his mind when he immediately saw that, after the spiritual energy dispersed, two figures clad in black robes were revealed.
The two hovered in midair, their black robes completely concealing their bodies and obscuring their faces. They were looking down, seemingly conferring about something.
Yunyouzi turned his head, mouthing words with a grave expression:
"Nascent Soul!"
He then made a hand gesture to Qin Sang, warning him not to look directly at them.
Qin Sang recalled that Nascent Soul cultivators possessed extraordinarily sharp spiritual perception and might detect his gaze. He hastily withdrew his eyes and watched only with his peripheral vision, feeling secretly fortunate that they were far away and that ancient restrictions stood between them, cutting off their aura; otherwise, they would have been discovered long ago.
This was the very first time Qin Sang had seen Nascent Soul cultivators with his own eyes—and two at once, no less!
He had imagined countless times what it would look like when a Nascent Soul cultivator took action.
Would the heavens collapse and the earth shatter, or rivers reverse their flow?
From the look of it now, that river of spiritual energy did not seem to have caused terrifying destruction; he wondered whether they had held back.
Qin Sang made a 'sword' gesture to Yunyouzi, silently asking whether the Wuji Sect expert who killed the star venom frogs was one of them.
Yunyouzi slowly shook his head, indicating he did not know.
Chapter 380