14 Spirit Bottle

11:45 am Wednesday

Luckily for Tie Zhu, he did not have to wait too long for the ferry to arrive, and it was not long before the ferry docked at the island port. Upon landing on the island, Tie Zhu sucked in a deep breath, noticing that the air here was indeed a bit more fresh here than compared in the city.

Although the Island was some distance away from land, it did not stop tourists from flocking to it as the national reserve was still a tourist attraction. As such, there were many shops and restaurants lined near the entrance of the port competing to attract customers in a lively scene. Watching the strangers slowly pass by, Tie Zhu could not help but think back to his past where he had once come here with his parents. Although it had already been 10 years since then he still had fond memories as he came to worship the ancient temples on this island and asking the gods for their blessings.

A lot had happened in those past 10 years, where he had had once been the top student with a promising future, however that all changed just 2 years ago.

'I won't let you down. I will become someone you can be proud of!' He thought resolutely to himself.

"The spiritual essence here is around 3 times more concentrated than in the city, you should try looking around the island though as this area is still heavily inhabited." Wang Yazhu suddenly reminded Tie Zhu.

Hearing Wang Yazhu's reminder Tie Zhu immediately snapped out of his nostalgic thoughts, following the stream of visitors along a path that winded up into the sparse bush lands. The area that was opened up to tourists consisted on only 1/4 of the island as this area was where the ancient temples were located. The other 3/4 of it was a dense forest that was largely left untouched as the terrain was extremely rugged.

After following the common trail for 15 minutes, Wang Yazhu suddenly noticed a strange fluctuation in spiritual essence. It was as if the surrounding spiritual essence was being diverted towards a specific location. Although this fluctuation was near unnoticeable, he was once an Ascended God and had an extremely strong spiritual awareness able to detect the tiniest of abnormalities.

"There's a strange fluctuation in spiritual essence here, the cause of it is a bit north from here, however it might be useful for your cultivation!" He said with a hint of excitement in his voice, as he thought in his mind that the sooner Tie Zhu can advance the faster he can take over his body!

When Tie Zhu heard this he immediately stopped, looking around at the strangers passing by. He wanted to find a chance to slip off from the trail without attracting attention from anyone else. Once he noticed that the distance between him and others had slightly grown he was quick to take this opportunity, disappearing into the more dense bush land hiking his way to the northern part of the island through the dense rugged terrain.

* * *

"Huff, huff, huff, how much further is there to go?" Tie Zhu said panting for breath as he had traversed the rugged terrain, climbing steep hills through the twisted forest for the last 45 minutes. Due to the terrain his progress was rather slow and if he estimated that he had traveled around 2.5 kilometers.

"It's not much further, it should be up right ahead in that cave. I can sense that something in there is absorbing the surrounding spiritual essence within a radius of at least 2 kilometers. Even if you didn't investigate the cause and started cultivating here you wouldn't be disappointed, from what I can tell the Spiritual essence here is fairly reasonable. It is about 5 times the amount in the city, although part of that reason may be from whatever is absorbing the essence, this area is quite an ideal location. The distance between here and the common path is far enough that no one would accidentally end up here and is well hidden. Whoever set this up must have never expected that someone would come along and find their secret." Wang Yazhu replied.

In fact the tiny fluctuations of spiritual essence that Wang Yazhu noticed were so incredibly minute that unless a cultivator was at the core formation rank they would have never noticed. In this case one had to just curse their luck for running into this unfortunate situation.

Hearing Wang Yazhu's response, Tie Zhu decided that he might as well investigate source absorbing the spiritual essence. Even though he had yet to begin cultivation as soon as he took his first step into the cave a comfortable cool feeling washed over him due to the excess spiritual essence. His hair on his skin stood up on edge as goosebumps visibly formed due to the sudden change in environment.

"Why did the environment change so suddenly?" Tie Zhu questioned, confused about the sudden change.

"Interesting, to attempt to hide this someone even set up a small barrier to prevent the leaking of spiritual essence. As a result much of it has been trapped in here leading to this buildup of spiritual essence. Whatever is absorbing the spiritual essence should just be hiding beneath those rocks over there just to the left." Wang Yazhu said.

When Tie Zhu heard this he eagerly rushed to the pile of rocks that Wang Yazhu had indicated, gently removing the surrounding rocks. As he removed the last stone what he saw caused him go gasp slightly. It was an elegantly designed transparent crystal bottle, with a Qilin delicately engraved on the side. The contents inside shone a dull blue light that radiated such energy that just being close to it made him feel comfortable. "Whats this..?" he asked while he was mesmerized by the bottle.

"Oh, lucky for you. This just happens to be a mid-tier Earth grade Spirit bottle. Spirit bottles are able to absorb the surround spiritual essence and condense it into a liquid state. This not only makes it easier to absorb but also removes all the impurities allowing your future cultivation to progress more smoothly. For anyone under the core formation stage this would be a priceless treasure and from the looks of things this one is around 85% full. For it to be able to reach this level it must have been storing Essence for at least 2 years." Wang Yazhu explained.