Chapter 90: For the Cave Abode!

Lu Yuan controlled the Little Paper Man and the Treasure-Seeking Tower, passing through the Primordial Taiyin Restriction and entering the depths of the cave abode.

He had not expected that Ma Mingyuan, as a human cultivator, would actually come and inform on Black Jade Tower’s plan. His painstaking cultivation of this leek had not gone to waste after all.

Before he could even go harvest it himself, the leek had delivered itself to his door, roots and soil still attached, giving Lu Yuan an unexpected gain.

However, placing him as a chess piece inside Cangxing City was also a decent choice.

In the future, if any sects or cultivation clans wanted to act against the cave abode, this hidden piece might be able to discover it in advance and provide intelligence in time, allowing the cave abode to make preparations early.

After returning to the depths of the cave abode, Lu Yuan used his divine sense to tap open, one by one, the light orb rewards that had appeared during this period.

“This number is much lower than before. Looks like killing that Yinluo Sect Foundation Establishment cultivator had quite a big impact after all.”

Lu Yuan gazed at the visibly reduced number of white light orbs, his expression clouded with gloom.

A Foundation Establishment cultivator had died in the peach blossom forest while trying to capture the Treasure-Seeking Tower. Once that news spread, the cultivators who had planned to enter the peach blossom forest understood that searching for opportunities was not entirely without risk.

He looked over at the Treasure-Seeking Tower. At the moment, it was bending its two long legs, rummaging here and there all over the vast cave abode.

“This calls for severe criticism. Customer traffic has dropped so much.”

Lu Yuan transmitted his divine sense toward the wooden tower.

“The condition we agreed on before was that for every certain number of guests you received, I would let you have the Mirage Yin Pearl for one shichen. Now, the number of guests you receive is already far below the amount of time you’ve possessed the Mirage Yin Pearl.”

“Hand it over. I’ll put it at the bottom of the lake to nurture yin souls. Once the number of guests you receive rises again, I’ll let you play with it some more.”

With the number of cultivators entering the secret realm plummeting, Lu Yuan immediately revealed his true colors and forced the Treasure-Seeking Tower to hand over the Mirage Yin Pearl.

Under his obscene tyranny, the wooden tower was extremely unwilling as it took the Mirage Yin Pearl out from inside the tower.

Watching the Mirage Yin Pearl sink to the bottom of the lake, the Treasure-Seeking Tower planted both arms on the sides of its wooden house, lowered its broad, flat head, and turned it to one side. It looked utterly wronged.

Lu Yuan was not about to indulge it. His divine sense sank to the bottom of the lake.

At the lakebed, bones lay piled everywhere, and yin qi was dense.

Lu Yuan noticed that above two sets of grim white bones, a mass of azure-black fog drifted over each skeleton.

“Those should be the remains of the two Foundation Establishment cultivators. Maybe after one’s cultivation reaches Foundation Establishment, the yin qi after death is heavier, making it easier for resentment to breed.”

“Or maybe, as the only two Foundation Establishment cultivator skeletons present, their resentment was already deep enough to begin with…”

Lu Yuan was moved. These two Foundation Establishment cultivators had brought light orb rewards before death, left behind storage bags when they died, used their Foundation Establishment flesh and blood to nourish the little ones of the cave abode, and even so long after death, they still had to contribute one final bit of strength to the cave abode.

“They really…”

Carrying this feeling of emotion, he shifted his divine sense back to the shore and once again began his monotonous, tedious cave abode life.

…

Ma Mingyuan changed his appearance, restrained his aura, and hurried across the wilderness with a group of Qi Refining cultivators.

After informing the Paper Figure a few days ago, Ma Mingyuan had returned to Cangxing City as quickly as possible, successfully signed up, and joined Black Jade Tower’s team for capturing the Treasure-Seeking Tower.

The team would have more than fifty Qi Refining cultivators in total. Most had been recruited, while a smaller portion were Black Jade Tower cultivators.

At the very front, three Foundation Establishment cultivators led the group. The one at their head was none other than that withered Huang-surnamed elder. Dark green-black little ghosts crawled all over him, making everyone present afraid to let their gazes linger on him for even a moment.

At the very front, the withered old man soothed the two dark green-black little ghosts on his neck, his eyes cold as he looked in the direction of the cave abode.

When he had first learned that the Treasure-Seeking Tower had appeared near the secret realm, he had not cared much. A wooden tower that bestowed low-grade spiritual herbs and spiritual medicines on cultivators was not worth much of his attention.

But as more and more cultivators entered the wooden tower later, and the generous rewards that appeared also increased, the wooden tower’s importance within the organization rose accordingly.

Especially after he learned that an elder of Yinluo Sect had been killed by a mysterious Paper Figure while hunting the wooden tower, then dragged into the secret realm.

At that point, he could no longer restrain himself. Since that wooden tower was connected to the Paper Figure inside the secret realm, did that not mean the wooden tower very likely contained third-rank Sword-Nurturing Gourds and Earthfire Heart Lotus Seeds?

Thus, he quickly organized a large team composed entirely of mid-stage and high-level Qi Refining cultivators, plus three Foundation Establishment cultivators, himself included.

So many Qi Refining cultivators were gathered in order to jointly control a large ritual implement that would cover the entire peach blossom forest, preventing the wooden tower from seizing an opportunity to escape into the white mist, while also blocking the Paper Figure from coming to its rescue.

The outside would be as solid as an iron fortress, while the inside would strike with thunderous force. The advantage was mine.

Where could you run, wooden tower?

Night fell, and all around them rang out all kinds of absurd, eerie sounds.

The night was full of strange occurrences. The team chose to set up camp where they were, with high-level Qi Refining cultivators taking turns keeping watch.

Ma Mingyuan closed his eyes for a brief rest. After a long while, sensing nothing abnormal in the surroundings with his spiritual sense, he opened his eyes and took a palm-sized paper slip out of his storage bag.

According to Lu Yuan’s instructions, once he activated the paper slip with spirit energy, the Paper Figure would be able to easily sense his location.

After waiting for about half a shichen, a scarlet eyeball suddenly opened on the roof above him. The eye moved slightly, as if confirming Ma Mingyuan’s identity.

Once it confirmed there was no mistake, the eyeball, worried that the Foundation Establishment cultivators might notice it, slowly merged into the roof and disappeared.

Before long, a dark-red, jelly-like viscous weird entity drilled out from underground. It opened its body, revealing an array diagram wrapped inside it, as well as a small paper slip. The paper slip recorded the method for activating the array diagram.

It was the Stone Marrow Spirit, carrying the array diagram and the contact method. It had slipped in from underground and arrived beside Ma Mingyuan.

Ma Mingyuan took a black ore from his storage bag. His flying sword shaved it down into a thin strip, and he rapidly wrote on the small paper slip.

He wrote down the team’s exact number of people, the cultivation levels at each tier, and the detailed capture plan, one by one.

Afterward, the dark-red viscous weird entity wrapped the paper slip inside its body, turned into a puddle of dark-red liquid, and merged into the ground.

The ground returned to normal, as though nothing had ever happened.

Ma Mingyuan adjusted his breathing slightly. His spirit energy circulated at full power as he focused and waited in the darkness.

After a long while, there was still no movement at all. Only then did he slowly exhale a breath of turbid air. Good. He had not been detected by the Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Through the main pupil of the Illusory Yin Eye, Lu Yuan shared the vision of the eyeball avatar and saw everything that happened.

“All this secrecy is making even me a little nervous.”

Infiltrating the enemy camp, secretly meeting with a deeply buried spy on the enemy side, exchanging intelligence—all of this made Lu Yuan feel as though he were watching a spy drama.

It was tense and exciting, and because he himself was participating in it, there was an added sense of novelty and fun.

“Comrade Ma Mingyuan, I’ll record this achievement for you. Once we break the enemy army’s plan, I’ll find an opportunity to properly reward you.”

“I’ve seen all your hard work. The little ones have seen it. The Treasure-Seeking Tower has seen it. It definitely won’t be in vain!”

“For the cave abode!”

The atmosphere inexplicably became sacred.

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