"Senior Skull truly spoke the truth. These broken cauldrons really are the keys to entering the Medicine King Cauldron!"
When Xiao Heng shared this discovery with Su Xiaomei, she beamed with delight.
"That's wonderful! As long as we follow the guidance, we should find it very soon."
The three exchanged glances, then kept close to the cliff walls of the abyss, flying downward into Cangwu Abyss without drawing attention to themselves.
When they descended two hundred zhang below the surface, the scenery within the abyss began to look starkly different from the world above.
Because the mist and clouds above never dispersed year-round, the deeper they went, the gloomier their surroundings became.
The cliffs were no longer bare rock; instead, many bizarre and grotesquely shaped plants had taken root and grown there.
There were slender willows that glowed, and predatory pines disguised as boulders.
There were even withered, blackened trees lurking in the dark like giant serpents, waiting for prey to draw near before lashing out violently to inflict deadly harm.
Living alongside these plants were the strange beasts mentioned earlier in the jade slip that they had to watch out for.
Most of these beasts had pitch-black exteriors, making them difficult to detect with the naked eye in the dim, lightless abyss.
Their appearances were even more grotesque and varied, bearing little resemblance to creatures on the surface.
They did not seem like naturally evolved organisms, but rather like the severed parts of various beasts forcibly mashed together.
Long worms that split open down the middle to bare gaping maws for prey;
Strange apes whose heads retracted into their bellies;
Monstrous birds whose wings were composed of countless squirming, slender worms...
All manner of aberrant shapes that made one shudder at the sight.
Moreover, a mysterious power seemed to exist within this abyss, suppressing the range of a cultivator's spiritual sense.
This force grew increasingly pronounced as depth increased.
In unguarded moments during a cultivator's descent, these grotesque creatures would suddenly emerge in swarms—either from within the abyss walls or from the void in the center of the chasm—to attack.
As if harboring a blood debt against outside cultivators, the attacks of these strange creatures would not cease until they were thoroughly dead.
Fortunately, though these subterranean creatures were numerous, their lethality only equated to the late Qi Condensation stage.
For Su Xiaomei's group, whose weakest member was at the Golden Core stage, they posed virtually no threat.
They encountered no true peril along the way. After spending nearly half a day, they finally drew near a colossal boundary stone jutting horizontally out from the cliff face.
Upon it, two massive characters were written in eye-catching, crimson luminescent script: "Thirty Thousand."
It could be seen from far away.
Above this boundary stone, the continuous cliff wall had been hollowed inward, giving rise to a brilliantly lit city suspended over the abyss.
"This is the first outpost for exploring Cangwu Abyss."
"Lincang City."
"Going further down, the abyss becomes increasingly dangerous. Having a place to rest and resupply here is quite necessary."
Xiao Heng watched the steady stream of cultivators coming and going, quietly raising his guard.
Most cultivators who came to explore Cangwu Abyss were by no means people to be trifled with.
Aside from gathering Cangwu Abyss's valuable native treasures, more than half of them were here for the fiery meteor that had fallen from the sky years ago.
In recent years, opinions had always varied on the meteor's true identity.
That it was the ancient Medicine King Cauldron that had once broken through the realm's boundary was merely one of the more widespread speculations.
Regardless, for it to instill such trepidation in every cultivator who witnessed it, that fiery meteor was bound to be extraordinary.
As the saying went: men died in pursuit of wealth.
Thus, it was not hard to understand why outside cultivators tirelessly pursued it.
"Let's go." Xiao Heng and the others did not enter Lincang City.
They flew straight past the boundary stone, arriving at the second layer thirty thousand zhang beneath the surface.
The moment they crossed the boundary stone, it felt as though they had passed through an invisible barrier.
A strange sensation welled up in Xiao Heng's heart.
"My strength has weakened by a few points. It really is just as the rumors said."
His heart grew a bit heavier, and Xiao Heng sent a voice transmission to Su Xiaomei and Zhang Haobo.
"Did you feel it? The existence of the Immortal-Suppressing Force?"
"Yes, a faint trace. But for now, the impact isn't very large," Su Xiaomei and Zhang Haobo both replied a moment later.
"It seems my cultivation is simply weaker, after all." Xiao Heng felt somewhat helpless at this.
He could only hope that the Medicine King Cauldron was located within the maximum depth he could reach.
The "Immortal-Suppressing Force" was the collective name cultivators gave to that inexplicable power enveloping the Abyss of Cangwu.
In practice, as one ventured deeper into the Abyss of Cangwu, a cultivator's strength would be suppressed accordingly.
Within the first layer, down to thirty thousand zhang, it was not yet obvious, only interfering with the reach of spiritual sense.
However, upon entering the second layer, the effect was immediate.
Anyone at or below the middle Qi Condensation stage would become no different from a mortal upon entering.
The spiritual energy in their bodies could not be mobilized, and they would lose the ability to fly.
Only one fate awaited them: plunging toward the bottomless abyss, utterly helpless as they became fodder for the grotesque creatures along the way.
This meant that one had to be at least a late Qi Condensation cultivator to survive in Cangwu Abyss's second layer.
Yet in reality, as depth increased, the creatures in the abyss also grew stronger, while the cultivators' power was continually suppressed.
This made exploration increasingly difficult the further down one went.
Xiao Heng and his companions ventured deeper into the second layer, the Forest of Spirit Whispers, with growing caution.
Trees deeply rooted in the cliff walls of the abyss defied common sense, extending their branches recklessly toward the empty void at the center of Cangwu Abyss.
They formed an endless primeval forest spanning a vertical space of fifty thousand zhang.
Aside from the increasingly diverse and formidable strange creatures, the murmurs and whispers echoing from the forest from time to time were far more lethal.
These sounds induced all manner of hallucinations in cultivators, causing them to lose their minds.
Those with weak wills would fly toward the center of the Forest of Spirit Whispers as if their souls had been stolen, never to return.
All three of them were outstanding talents with extraordinary willpower.
Coupled with their formidable strength, it took them roughly a day to successfully cross the second layer, descending to a depth of eighty thousand zhang.
Here, the dense forest abruptly thinned.
There seemed to be another light source below, and their vision suddenly cleared.
Marking the boundary between layers was no longer a horizontal stone stele like before.
Instead, it was a colossal eyeball growing directly from the cliff face.
The pupil at the center of the eyeball had been replaced by two blood-red characters: "Eighty Thousand."
The eyeball seemed alive, constantly rolling and peering about.
Sensing newcomers arriving from above, it instantly fixed its gaze onto Xiao Heng's group.
An immense pressure washed over them, causing Xiao Heng's body to tense in an instant.
Fortunately, the giant eye merely gave them a glance before looking away, paying them no further mind.
"Whew..."
Xiao Heng let out a breath of relief.
"The second outpost of the Abyss of Cangwu: the City of the Giant Eye."
Chapter 397