Chapter 117: Ten Springs Open, the Mysteries of the Divine Hollow

Outside the Jiuli camp, all the Spring Realm cultivators emerged, drawn by the celestial glow emanating from the distant figure. They felt a mix of respect, envy, and admiration.

For the past half month, Sima Tan had been either meditating, practicing martial arts, or consuming Bright Flame Pills. The celestial glow from the direction of Burial Immortal Town continuously converged on him, a visibly mysterious and profound phenomenon. He was truly an extraordinary individual! Even the elders of the Jiuli Daoist Academy, despite their high cultivation levels, lacked the enigmatic charm that Sima Tan possessed—a charm that could challenge one's understanding.

Yin Twenty-Five gazed into the distance and whispered, "His aura is growing stronger and stronger. Is he about to break through to the Five Seas Realm? If he breaks through here, in this region, his body might spontaneously combust. He must be aware of that."

Yao Yin showed a worried expression.

Yin Twenty-Five said, "He can even absorb celestial glow; his body seems to have merged with the entire world. We cannot judge him by ordinary standards."

Yang Yun's vitality was incredibly tenacious. Despite having his limbs broken, enduring multiple beatings over the past half month, and only receiving small amounts of food every two or three days, he was still alive. As he watched the celestial glow ripple outwards from Li Weiyi, who was meditating in the distance, Yang Yun fell into despair. Tears welled in his eyes, feeling that revenge was hopeless in this lifetime. Such extraordinary power was comparable only to the legends of ancient emperors in their youth.

Over the past half month, nearly all of the dozens of Spring-Breaking Needles on Li Weiyi had been consumed. The inner world beneath his Shenque acupoint was completely filled with celestial glow, and a crack had opened in the Heavenly-Human barrier. The celestial glow escaped through this crack, entered his flesh and organs, and finally diffused out through his pores.

"A crack has clearly opened, so why hasn't the spring eye appeared yet? If that's the case, then I'll combine the springs and break through the barrier."

In his martial cultivation, Li Weiyi always pressed forward, striving with all his might to reach higher levels. He maintained his breathing technique, activating all nine spring eyes throughout his body: those in his feet, hands, central meridian, Danzhong, Baihui, Fengfu, and Zutian. All nine spring eyes simultaneously burst forth with spiritual power, which then flowed into the 108 trace meridians. For the past half month, he had not only been absorbing celestial glow to assault the tenth spring, but he had also absorbed the light of the celestial glow to refine his trace meridians. The number of golden trace meridians in his body had reached sixty-two, with the remaining forty-six still silver.

The spiritual power circulating through all his trace meridians rapidly converged towards the Shenque acupoint. Boom! With each convergence, ripples of celestial spiritual energy erupted from Li Weiyi, spreading outwards. After sixty-two impacts of combining the springs and breaking the barrier, the inner world beneath his Shenque acupoint finally showed signs of a spring eye awakening. It throbbed like a heartbeat, growing faster and faster, as if on the verge of bursting forth.

On the sixty-third attempt to combine the springs and break the barrier, the spring eye in the inner world of his Shenque acupoint finally burst through everything, and the barrier completely disappeared. Potent spiritual energy, like a surging wave, merged with the celestial glow and violently gushed outwards. Swish! A mile away, all the cultivators in the Jiuli camp felt the strong currents of energy blowing from that direction.

Yao Yin's long hair swayed, and her expression suddenly changed. "The purity level of this spiritual power is definitely that of the Five Seas Realm!"

"He really broke through!" Yin Twenty-Five said, "Don't worry! If anything goes wrong, he'll surely rush into the energy barrier ahead and enter the Immortal Realm space."

The scene before them was magnificent; Li Weiyi was entirely enveloped in a dense celestial glow, appearing as if he were seated on a sea of clouds. At that moment, he was bewildered and in shock. The inner world of his Shenque was completely different from Zutian, and also unlike the Qi Sea described by Five Seas Realm cultivators. It appeared chaotic, not confined to a specific size, but seemingly boundless. Its boundaries were shrouded in celestial glow, and beyond the glow lay a profound darkness capable of devouring everything.

What was even more incredible was that the spiritual power gushing from this tenth spring was liquid. It was known that even Five Seas Realm cultivators did not condense liquid spiritual power. Only Dao Seed Realm cultivators could condense a small amount of spring liquid in their spring eyes. Moreover, this was done consciously by the cultivators, not through automatic expulsion from the spring eye. The liquid spiritual power gushing from Li Weiyi's Shenque, while certainly not comparable to the spring liquid of a Dao Seed Realm cultivator, was nonetheless astonishing enough.

Whoosh! From the spring eye, the first trace meridian extended like a rapidly growing vine, immediately manifesting as a golden trace meridian. This golden trace meridian did not extend far; instead, it spread out to form countless tiny branches that enveloped his heart. His heart pounded like thunder, becoming even stronger and more vigorous. Whoosh! The second golden trace meridian extended out, wrapping around his lung lobes. His five lung lobes were like five flourishing divine trees, making his breathing and qi circulation easier and more natural. Whoosh! The third golden trace meridian burst from the spring eye, splitting into two and flowing towards his kidneys.

The first eleven trace meridians flowed separately to his five major organs and six viscera. The twelfth trace meridian ran along his spine, passed through his central meridian and Fengfu, and surged directly towards his Baihui acupoint at the top of his head. The number of trace meridians within Li Weiyi reached 120, and the golden radiance on his body could not be suppressed, continuously spreading outwards and merging with the celestial glow and spiritual energy. Another half day passed as he thoroughly assimilated and gained complete control over his newly acquired power. Only then did the golden radiance, celestial glow, and spiritual energy retract back into his body with each breath. He returned to a state of natural tranquility.

Li Weiyi did not rush to directly assault the Five Seas Realm in one go. Instead, he decided to first refine the remaining forty-six silver trace meridians in his body into golden ones. If each golden trace meridian were a dragon vein, then cultivating 120 dragon veins would truly solidify his foundation for his future cultivation path.

Yin Twenty-Five and Yao Yin hurried over.

"You broke through?" Yin Twenty-Five asked.

Li Weiyi opened his eyes; the entire world appeared incredibly clear. Feeling joyful, he nodded with a smile, then quickly put on his clothes. Yao Yin, thinking Li Weiyi had broken through to the Five Seas Realm, asked nervously, "Do you feel your spiritual energy becoming hot, as if it's about to burn?" Li Weiyi replied, "No, not yet."

Li Weiyi stood up, stretched, and looked at the Jiuli cultivators observing them from a distance. Curious, he asked, "Aren't you gathering herbs? Why is everyone back at the camp?" Yin Twenty-Five explained, "You've been focused on assaulting the Five Seas Realm, so we didn't dare disturb you. About seven or eight days ago, the Immortal Realm space on the other side of the energy barrier, accessible via the Spring Realm path, was sealed off by Five Seas Realm cultivators from Tianya Ridge and the Four Great Sects. Any Jiuli cultivator who enters will be killed. More than a dozen young cultivators have already died at their hands, and I barely escaped myself."

"Seven or eight days? That long? I thought only two or three days had passed," Li Weiyi said.

Yin Twenty-Five replied, "The time you spent assaulting your realm was more than seven or eight days; it was probably twice that."

Li Weiyi looked surprised, then realized something. "Doesn't that mean the Longshan Grand Ceremony should have ended ages ago? What's the situation on the Five Seas Realm side?" Yao Yin replied, "The situation is grim! We successively dispatched three suicide squads, a total of eight cultivators, all Seven Spring cultivators, to leave the Five Seas Realm boundary and rush back to Yao Pass City. But they all vanished without a trace, with no news whatsoever."

Li Weiyi's brows furrowed. The distance from the Five Seas Realm boundary to the rendezvous point with the nine commanding officers was a hundred li. Even if the Four Great Sects only dispatched one Five Seas Realm expert, they could completely cut off the path. Li Weiyi asked, "The Jiuli tribe's Five Seas Realm cultivators haven't appeared on either side?" Yin Twenty-Five nodded. "That's the most worrying thing. If the Jiuli tribe's Five Seas Realm cultivators have been completely wiped out, then we can only wait for death here! Entering the Immortal Realm space means death, and going to the Five Seas Realm boundary also means death."

"How much food is left?" Li Weiyi asked. The Longshan Grand Ceremony was originally planned for nine days, but now about twenty days had passed. Yin Twenty-Five said, "The young cultivators participating in the Longshan Grand Ceremony have been reduced by a third. With the food salvaged from enemy corpses, we have enough for another three to five days without a problem."

"We could kill our mounts; that should make it last longer."

Li Weiyi looked at Yao Yin, who seemed hesitant to speak, and asked, "What do you want to say?" Yao Yin clenched her fingers, her nails digging into her palm, and after a long struggle, she spoke, "Yin Twenty-Five didn't tell you the whole truth. More than a dozen Jiuli cultivators died at the hands of the Five Seas Realm experts from Tianya Ridge and the Four Great Sects, but originally, all these cultivators were captured alive. They wanted to force you to go in, so they made a brutal threat: they would kill two people every day you didn't show up. To this day, there are still five or six hostages in their hands."

Boom! Fury surged within Li Weiyi. His eyes darkened suddenly as he asked, "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Yin Twenty-Five explained, "In the battle half a month ago, not all Spring Realm cultivators escaped towards the Five Seas Realm boundary; a small number also fled into the Immortal Realm space. It was they who spread the news of your rampage to the major powers, and perhaps Wang Daozhen also contributed to that. In short, whether they want revenge or to eliminate you in your infancy, they will stop at nothing. They are too powerful and outnumber us. If you go out there, you will surely die. What could we do? We couldn't let you, someone not even of the Jiuli tribe, fall into such a dilemma—either going out to be killed or suffering inner torment and guilt. You have already done more than enough, so after discussing it, we decided to keep it hidden for now. Let us be the bad guys, let us bear the inner torment and guilt. You just focus on breaking through your realm."

Li Weiyi gradually calmed down from his anger, his gaze fixed on the energy barrier ahead. Yao Yin worried, "Don't put any psychological burden on yourself. This matter itself is beyond what our cultivation levels can resolve. It's something the Jiuli tribe's Five Seas Realm cultivators should handle. That battlefield doesn't belong to us, and it has nothing to do with you. The reason I'm telling you is that I don't want to hide things from you, nor do I want to deceive you."

"You're right! If you hadn't told me today, it would have meant you didn't respect me, a divine hermit, at all." Li Weiyi stood tall and straight, his calm exterior concealing a sharp killing intent.

Yin Twenty-Five said, "From the first day they were captured, we've been waiting for the Jiuli tribe's Five Seas Realm cultivators or the hidden experts from the Yin Gate to arrive, but they never did."

Li Weiyi looked towards the Jiuli camp in the distance, his gaze sweeping over the young figures. "This place has clearly become an isolated island, seemingly safe, but in reality, we are trapped. I'll go out and investigate. We have to find a way out somehow. If all else failed, he still had a last resort."

"I'll go with you," Yao Yin said.

Li Weiyi shook his head. "I have a high-grade magical artifact, the Nightcloak, which grants invisibility. Do you have anything like that? You need to stay here and hold the fort. I don't trust Yin Twenty-Five's strength enough for that."

Yin Twenty-Five's mouth twitched. He asked, "Which way will you go back to Yao Pass City?" Li Weiyi replied, "Going back to Yao Pass City is undoubtedly a dead end. After all this time, how could the nine commanding officers not know something happened in Burial Immortal Town? If they know but can't clear the path, what does that indicate? It's possible the outside world has already changed, and war has broken out everywhere."

Yin Twenty-Five and Yao Yin's expressions changed dramatically. Li Weiyi's analysis might have been extreme and pessimistic, but it was not impossible.