Chapter 40: Mo Jingtian and Lu Wuya

You suddenly feel a bit melancholic.

When you left, you only left behind a letter, and then disappeared for over a decade.

You know how much this hurt your father.

However, you quickly adjusted your emotions.

This is something unavoidable; after all, in this simulation, if you're not ruthless and diligent, reality will only bring more tragedies.

In the blink of an eye, several days passed. You followed your father, Jiang Fushan, and a group of cultivators as you evacuated Green Hills City.

You arrived at a place called Spine Mountain.

Here, there was no sign of human habitation, and you could even feel that the spiritual energy in the air was quite thin.

But after entering the mountain, you saw many local cultivators and some of their families.

The Jiang family also settled down here.

Not long after you arrived, your identity as a cultivator was seen through by an old man in the seventh stage of Tribulation Crossing.

He directly saw through the Breath Concealing Talisman you were carrying.

You weren't surprised by this; after all, Bai Ruoxue, who had crafted the Breath Concealing Talisman, was also in the Tribulation Crossing stage. It was normal for it to be seen through by another expert of the same stage.

When your father found out you were also a cultivator, he was overjoyed and handed over all his resources to you.

But looking at the pitiful few thousand spirit stones, and thinking about how Bai Ruoxue had casually given you a hundred thousand spirit stones, you suddenly felt the destitution of the local cultivators.

You didn't accept your father's spirit stones. Instead, you asked him many questions about the local cultivators.

However, your father had only recently come into contact with cultivation and didn't know much.

He only said that the world was vast, and this place was a sealed land. There was an organization called the Immortal Arrival Sect that hunted ordinary cultivators.

The cultivators here were all saved by Old Li, and everyone huddled together for warmth.

You knew who your father was referring to as Old Li; it was the old man who had seen through your identity as a cultivator.

So, you often hung around Old Li, asking him various questions.

Old Li was very forthcoming and told you many things.

This answered many of your doubts.

For example, spirit stones. According to Old Li, in the Southern Regions, spirit stones were basically controlled by the Immortal Arrival Sect.

These cultivators obtained their spirit stones by risking their lives to either steal or rob from the Immortal Arrival Sect's mines.

You also asked him how to avoid Heavenly Thunder.

Old Li smiled bitterly and said that people like them had no way to avoid Heavenly Thunder; they were just relying on the legacies of their ancestors.

He told you that although the Southern Regions were small, over countless years, there had been several extraordinarily talented individuals.

It could be said that for spirit stones, the cultivators here had to risk their lives.

In the entire Spine Mountain, the only one who didn't go out to rob spirit stone resources was Old Li.

Because Old Li was the stabilizing force for everyone here.

He was the only one who didn't fear the Immortal Arrival Sect, and his cultivation level was even higher than anyone in the Immortal Arrival Sect.

But he couldn't move around freely, because if he left, this place would surely be besieged by the Immortal Arrival Sect.

The other cultivators would become homeless, and their families would have no safe place to stay.

It could be said that it was because of Old Li that so many cultivators gathered here, and the Immortal Arrival Sect didn't dare to cause trouble here.

You also asked Old Li why, since he was the strongest, he didn't just destroy the Immortal Arrival Sect.

His answer was that if he destroyed this batch, the next batch of people from the Immortal Arrival Sect would only be stronger.

You instantly understood the meaning behind his words. These were all lackeys of the celestial beings above; as long as the masterminds weren't dead, killing the minions was useless, as more would just take their place!

In the sixteenth year, you left alone.

The spiritual energy in Spine Mountain was too thin. Without spirit stones, it was hard to absorb any spiritual energy.

Although you were refining your Golden Core, you still needed spiritual energy to polish and refine it.

Without spiritual energy, you couldn't make any progress.

In the seventeenth year, you passed through a small town and robbed two Foundation Establishment Immortal Slaves, obtaining over five thousand spirit stones.

In the eighteenth year, you used up the spirit stones you had robbed the previous year; your progress was unclear.

In the nineteenth year, without spirit stones, you cultivated for a year.

In the twentieth year, you decided to break the pattern. Since other local cultivators were also robbing Immortal Slaves, you thought that occasionally doing the same shouldn't attract too much attention.

So you struck again, robbing several Immortal Slaves and obtaining a few thousand spirit stones.

In the twenty-first year, you used the spirit stones to cultivate for a year.

In the following years, whenever you ran out of spirit stones, you would "borrow" some from low-level Immortal Slaves and then hide to cultivate.

This cycle repeated, and in the blink of an eye, several decades passed.

With the Eye of Insight and the Breath Concealing Talisman, you always disguised yourself as a mortal, scouting carefully before striking decisively, rarely encountering any accidents.

Of course, rarely didn't mean never. There were unexpected situations.

The most dangerous time was when you were in the middle of an operation, and a Nascent Soul stage expert from the Immortal Arrival Sect happened to pass by.

A Nascent Soul stage expert could cover dozens of miles in an instant.

You used a Teleportation Jade Plate once but didn't completely escape, as he caught up.

In the end, you had to activate the teleportation array disk twice in succession to completely evade his sight and escape.