258 The Ethereal Territory

Gale Prairie truly lived up to its name. The strong wind was blowing so hard that ordinary people would barely be able to move forward.

The carriage was useless now. Su Mo abandoned it and headed for the location of the treasures on foot.

"The wind is so violent here. Perhaps this is the perfect place to train my sword skills. The wind will inspire and help me catch onto the sword will. Maybe I can improve my Wind sword will!" Su Mo reflected on this idea as he stepped forward.

Although he had already known of the sword will for a long time, his proficiency in Wind sword will had not improved.

To improve the Wind sword will, he must understand the will of the wind. Since Su Mo had been concentrating on elevating his cultivation recently, he'd had time to do this.

Su Mo then made up his mind to advance his sword will when he was free.

Two days later, Su Mo finally arrived at the destination marked on the map.

The place lay in the deep of the great prairie, where little hillocks rose.

"Here it is!"

Su Mo looked around. This was a vast grassy hill, where everything was open and clean. Su Mo saw nothing that could be called a treasure.

Su Mo's brow furrowed. His effort would be in vain if there was no treasure here.

"Is it possible that the treasure is buried in the ground?" Su Mo murmured to himself. Everything here could be seen in the light of day. If there was a treasure, it must be hidden under the ground.

However, the spot marked on the map was not specific. Su Mo only roughly knew that the treasure was around here. The little hillocks that covered hundreds of square miles were too large for him to find what he wanted.

But Su Mo would not retreat empty-handed. He decided to attempt a full search.

Drilling was a piece of cake to Su Mo now.

With a kick on the ground, he bounced up high and then turned over with his head down before he started to fall.

Su Mo mustered up his genuine Qi and formed a sound, oval hood in front of him. His genuine Qi spun wildly like a drill rotating at high speed.

Swoosh!

The hard ground turned into soft, fragile tofu as the hood of his Genuine Qi hit it. He drilled into the earth in a blink of an eye.

Su Mo kept heading downward until he was several kilometers beneath the ground.

This was as deep as he could go. The hard rock formation and the sizeable amount of underground water here all put a large amount of pressure on Su Mo.

Then, he started to search for his target in the surrounding area. He went up and down, and sometimes he drilled out of the ground to change the drilling site.

Working for a whole day and night, he surveyed every corner of this place, but he did not find anything.

In the end, he got out of the earth and stood on a hillock, his expression sullen.

"Damn it! Where the heck is the treasure?" Su Mo cursed. He had worked so hard and had spent such a long time searching for the treasure, yet ended up with nothing. It was sensible for him to lose his temper.

He pulled out the two incomplete maps and had one last look before he crumbled them in his hand with Genuine Qi.

That was when something unusual happened.

Spots of light, one after another, emerged from the debris of the maps and quickly disappeared into the earth.

"What's this?" 

The abrupt change staggered Su Mo, who was completely lost. Suddenly, the earth began to shake like an earthquake.

After a dozen seconds, a golden beam shot up in the sky in the distance.

It was a tremendous, dazzling beam, with a diameter several kilometers wide. It looked as though it had pierced through the firmament and reached the end of it.

At that moment, all the experts in Wuning were alarmed. Even those thousands of kilometers away could see the huge golden beam.

"Is the land of treasure opened?" 

Su Mo was amazed, he had not expected the secret to be hidden in the map itself.

Su Mo instantly headed for where the beam was and soon arrived right before the beam.

He could sense a mysterious energy fluctuation on the beam that was powerful enough to destroy everything. Su Mo dared not stay too close. He studied the beam 30 paces away.

"Where... can I enter?" 

Su Mo checked the place and did not see any entrance. He was confused.

He then continued to look over the area around the beam. This time he did it more carefully, but unfortunately, the entrance was still unseen.

"Could this beam be the entry?" Su Mo thought.

He picked up a stone and cast it to the beam as a test before he acted personally.

Slash!

The stone did not make it; it turned into ashes one meter away from the beam.

Su Mo's face changed. He thought for a moment before he summoned a Medium Lv 2 long saber and threw it at the beam.

Slash!

Similarly, the saber crumbled the moment it touched the beam, although it was much harder than the stone.

"How... could it have such a horrific destructive power?" 

Su Mo's face grew severe. Even a durable weapon like the Medium Lv 2 saber had met the same doom as the rock in the face of the beam. Just how strong was the beam?

Su Mo was left with no alternatives. He did not know where the entrance was, and he was unwilling to leave without gaining anything, either.

After a long struggle, Su Mo found a spot nearby and sat down cross-legged.

Just then, a blue light flashed through the sky and arrived before the beam.

An old man in gray walked out of the light and floated in the air. He watched the golden beam in contemplation.

"Is it the Ethereal Shrine?" the old man said to himself and then shook his head, having another guess. "No, this should be the Ethereal Territory!"

A few moments later, he darted a look at Su Mo beneath him and left.

"Huh!"

Su Mo sighed with relief at the sight of the old man's departure. The one look that man gave him made him freeze as if he was suddenly put in an igloo.

He was sure that the old man's cultivation was above the True Spirit Realm, perhaps in the True Strength Realm, a realm which very few people were in.

At that instant, from a different direction, two blue lights cut through the sky and touched nearby.

Two people emerged from the light, a middle-aged man and an old woman.

"Ha-ha! The Ethereal Territory finally shows itself. What a grand opportunity for our disciples!" Looking at the beam, the man roared with laughter.

"The Ethereal Territory will open in 10 days. We must hasten to inform our disciples!" the old woman said impassively. They then left without a glance at Su Mo.

"The Ethereal Territory? Is that the place where the treasure hides?" 

Su Mo's eyes glinted with excitement. If the territory was going to open in 10 days, he would definitely wait.

After that, more and more people came and went.

The news that the Ethereal Territory quickly emerged spread throughout Wuning.

Batches of young martial artists were coming to the Gale Prairie. In less than two days, more than 1,000 people had gathered near the beam.

At the same time, martial artists from every corner of Wuning were trickling in. Some of them were in the Spiritual Martial Realm, and many in the True Spirit Realm.