Wang Yu
Chapter 647: Underground City
His body suddenly sank, as if he were standing at the bottom of a ten-thousand-foot ocean. For a moment, he felt completely unable to move.
Those golden light strands converged from all directions, surrounding his body and swirling around him, while waves of light cascaded from above.
Han Li raised an eyebrow, sensing two forces surging from the magic formation and entering his body, one gentle and nimble, the other vast and dense.
The two forces roamed throughout his body, sensing everything within.
Han Li did not attempt to block these two forces, because all this, though long in the telling, happened in the blink of an eye. His body paused slightly, then resumed its movement, and he calmly stepped forward.
In fact, since leaving the inn, he had been urging the immortal spiritual power within his body to slowly circulate according to the Water Evolution Four Seasons Formula.
In addition, he had used a secret technique to seal most of his exuberant Qi and blood, thoroughly concealing the aura of the several True Spirit Blood Essences within him, as well as the Great Stellar Cycle Primordial Power.
In short, Han Li had done his best to deal with all information that might reveal his identity. If the Heavenly Mirror Formation still detected his true form, he would have to accept it.
The golden magic formation hummed, and the two forces traveled up and down within Han Li's body, lingering for a moment on the seals within Han Li and on the finger of his right hand, before slowly drifting away.
Han Li secretly breathed a sigh of relief, and soon walked through the magic formation, arriving next to Hu San and Shi Chuan Kong.
The two nodded to Han Li, looking towards Immortal Reverent Blazing Heat at the front.
Immortal Reverent Blazing Heat had already strode into the magic formation with a grand air, and soon passed through smoothly.
"There are no problems with the identities and information of the four fellow Daoists. You can use the inter-domain teleportation array. The teleportation fee is one thousand immortal spirit stones per person," the square-faced man walked over and said.
Han Li and the others each took out a thousand immortal spirit stones and handed them to the square-faced man.
When Hu San handed over the immortal spirit stones, he secretly slipped a storage ring into the square-faced man's hand.
"Please follow me," the square-faced man said with a smile on his face, leading Han Li and the others further forward, and they arrived at another hall.
A space teleportation array was laid out on the ground in this hall, spanning over ten zhang in size. Countless silver array patterns were engraved in the array, no less impressive than the Heavenly Mirror Formation outside.
Silver light flickered, and intense spatial fluctuations emanated from within the array.
Under the guidance of the square-faced man, Han Li and the others stood in the teleportation array.
The square-faced man pointed with his five fingers, and four white lights shot out, sticking to the four of them with a "pa" sound. They were white triangular talismans.
The large man then took out a silver jade token, chanting incantations in his mouth.
The silver-haired youth and the white-bearded old man also stood on the other side of the array, each taking out a jade token and making hand seals.
The teleportation array suddenly glowed with bright silver light, operating intensely.
After a silver light shot into the sky, the figures of the four disappeared without a trace.
The square-faced man chanted a spell, pointing his finger.
The teleportation array quickly subsided, soon returning to its previous state.
The silver-haired youth and the white-bearded old man walked over, standing next to the square-faced man.
"These immortal spirit stones are a reward for you," the square-faced man took out a storage implement and threw it to the silver-haired youth and the old man, turning and walking outside.
"Thank you, Protector Fang," the two were overjoyed, bowing and saying.
After the square-faced man's figure disappeared, the two then opened the storage ring, inside were one hundred immortal spirit stones.
The two immediately divided it in half.
"I've long heard that working on the second floor of the Flying Immortal Hall is a great lucrative job. I didn't expect the profits to be so abundant. If I work for a while longer, I'll be able to save enough immortal spirit stones to buy an Immortal Artifact!" the silver-haired youth said excitedly.
"That's for sure, or why do you think so many people want to come to the second floor of the Flying Immortal Hall?" the white-bearded old man chuckled.
The two talked and laughed softly, walking out with their arms around each other's shoulders.
...
North of the Black Soil Immortal Territory, there is a long and narrow continent shaped like a dragon, called Black Dragon Continent.
Its northern region is crisscrossed by thousands of mountains, and ten thousand rivers flow in competition. The terrain is extremely undulating, with countless mountain ranges stretching for tens of thousands of miles, interspersed with thousands of deep and shallow huge ravines, with rich water systems and extremely complex terrain.
Due to its special topography, although there are many cities throughout the north, none of them are large and majestic cities. The largest in area is the "Black Glaze City" located in the middle section of the Black Rib Mountain Range.
Although the northern part of the Black Mountain Immortal Territory is sparsely populated, it is not a desolate and dangerous place. On the contrary, because it produces a variety of rare spiritual soils, it has become a prosperous place for the growth of many spiritual herbs, immortal grasses, and mountain spirits and demons.
Many chambers of commerce in the neighboring Immortal Territories that trade in spiritual herbs also regard this place as a blessed land for merchants, and have established branches here to collect and plant various spiritual herbs, while purchasing mines and vigorously excavating the earth's spiritual soil.
Black Glaze City is named after a black spiritual soil that is a specialty of the Black Rib Mountain Range where it is located.
This spiritual soil is shaped like oily mud, containing spiritual energy. It cannot be used to plant spiritual herbs, but it can be used to fire puppets.
Because "Black Glaze Soil" itself has unique bonding and spiritual energy storage properties, adding a certain proportion of this soil during the refining of puppets can greatly increase the probability of successful puppet refining and the grade.
For this reason, the black glaze soil of the entire Black Rib Mountain Range has been excavated very seriously.
After nearly a million years of exploitation and excavation, the entire mountain range has been almost hollowed out, and there is very little "black glaze soil" left underground.
Because the veins were exhausted, the entire Black Rib Mountain Range sank, and the ground became flatter and more open compared to other places, suitable for building large-scale immortal wharves for various ferries to dock and operate.
Therefore, starting tens of thousands of years ago, the entire Black Rib Mountain Range has no longer been mined. In addition to some areas being built into several large wharves, the remaining areas were covered with spiritual soil and replanted with various spiritual herbs.
As for the middle section, it was constructed into a huge underground city, which is the current Black Glaze City.
This city goes deep underground for hundreds of miles and is divided into seven layers, hence the nickname "Sevenfold City."
In the deepest seventh-level city underground, there is a teleportation hall with a large area, which can receive monks teleported from the neighboring Black Mountain Immortal Territory.
At this moment, four figures were slowly walking out of the teleportation hall, the leader of whom was a slender man in black, and the other next to him was a handsome man with curly white hair, who were Hu San and Shi Chuan Kong.
Han Li and Immortal Reverent Blazing Heat followed one step behind them, one with a slightly凝 face, and the other with a complex expression.
"What's wrong? Immortal Reverent Blazing Heat, are you a little uneasy about returning to your old place?" Han Li glanced at the old man next to him and said with a smile.
"It's still a long way from my old place. Although I've been in the Black Mountain Immortal Territory before, not too far away, I've never dared to return to the Black Soil Immortal Territory. I don't know what it's like now, so I'm really a little homesick." Immortal Reverent Blazing Heat said with a wry smile.
"This Black Soil Immortal Territory is really a bit different. The teleportation hall is actually built underground."
Han Li glanced around and saw that the dome above was extremely high. A large number of huge bright pearls were inlaid on it, emitting a warm light like the morning sun, illuminating the surroundings.
The hall behind him was embedded in the stone wall, and in front of him was a spacious hall. There were spacious passages on the front, left, and right sides, leading to who knows where.
"Fellow Daoist Li, you may not know, what we are in now is an underground city built according to the mine. There are not only teleportation halls underground, but also immortal inns and many shops. I'll take you around in a while, and you'll know." Hu San was quite familiar with this and turned to Han Li and said.
"Then I'll trouble you." Han Li said with a smile.
The four walked out along the passage on the left, and along the way they could indeed see halls embedded in the mountain walls, many of which were directly hollowed out of the mountain and covered with green bricks to form doors and walls.
Many of them were also decorated with carved beams and painted rafters outside the doors and walls, hanging lintel plaques and various flags and banners, which looked no different from the shops in ordinary big cities.
"Most of the buildings in the Sevenfold City are functional institutions, and there are few merchants and travelers, but the real management of the chambers of commerce are basically located here. In addition, the two largest immortal inns are also built on this floor, there is nothing lively..." Hu San introduced to Immortal Reverent Blazing Heat and Han Li as he walked along the boardwalks outside these shops.
Passing through an arched doorway, and walking hundreds of steps further inside, the group came to a spacious hall. On the side of the hall near the mountain wall stood a two-story stone gatehouse, decorated with various patterns such as flowers, birds, fish, and insects, which looked extremely gorgeous.
A huge plaque hung at the top of the gatehouse, with the three characters "Hundred Crafts Pavilion" written in gold paint.
"What? Fellow Daoist Li, do you want to go in and have a look?" Shi Chuan Kong asked when he saw Han Li stopping in front of the gatehouse, looking up at it.
"Is there any relationship between this Hundred Crafts Pavilion and Hundred Crafts Mountain?" Han Li asked doubtfully.
"Fellow Daoist Li, don't you know? Hundred Crafts Mountain is world-renowned for refining weapons. In addition to doing business with various chambers of commerce, it also has its outer sect elders preside over the opening of shops to sell some magical treasures and puppets. This Hundred Crafts Pavilion is a shop opened by it, and it is distributed in many immortal territories." Shi Chuan Kong explained.
"Haha, I am ignorant..." Han Li said with a smile.
Although he had a lot of interaction with Jingyang Shangren before, the topic of Hundred Crafts Mountain was more focused on the art of refining weapons, and he had never paid attention to these aspects.
"It's not surprising, I heard from Fellow Daoist Jiao San that Fellow Daoist has always been in a remote place like the North Cold Immortal Territory, so it's not surprising that you haven't seen the Hundred Crafts Pavilion." Hu San said.
Shi Chuan Kong frowned imperceptibly when he heard the words, and unconsciously looked up and down at Han Li again.
Han Li noticed Shi Chuan Kong's gaze, smiled at him, and the latter nodded slightly before shifting his gaze away.