Realms In The Firmament

“They sprayed poisonous fog over the sea every night! Such highly poisonous fog could even affect Dream Origin Stage cultivators. Dao Origin Stage cultivators can only stay safe for a short period of time. That is such a great work to do!”

Jun Yinglian clicked her tongue and said, “It takes a lot to do that kind of work… Think about it. How much time has it taken them all these years? Why would they choose to spread the poison like this? Do they insistently spread the poison for ten thousand years just to keep themselves undercover? The Big Dream Mountain covers a huge area, but I believe it only takes dozens of years to kill all living things around it. Why would they keep using the poisonous fog?”

“Hmm. Perhaps, we are overreacting to it. Maybe they didn’t do this on purpose.” Ye Xiao checked the poison carefully and said, “Maybe the men of Demon Soul Dao are cultivating some martial arts that are poisonous. When they absorb the spiritual qi from the air, it is converted into a poisonous fog and the poison will leak out… In the poisonous fog. I can sense some extremely evil energy. It isn’t that strong, but it definitely is there.”

Yue Shuang and Yue Han nodded to agree. They said, “Our brother is right. The ordinary poisonous fog only brings death and destruction. However, the poisonous fog in front of us contains the power of craziness and maze. This isn’t a normal thing…”

“That’s right.”

Ye Xiao nodded and looked far over the sea. He said, “Once the fight starts, we must not show mercy to anybody. Kill them all immediately. Finish it once and for all!”

The other men kept arriving at the later period of the night.

These people hurried to get there like they were possessed. From the base of the union of all sects to where they arrived at, it normally took at least five days to travel. However, within two days, these men all arrived!

Even though they were all Dao Origin Stage cultivators, some of them were so exhausted that they were almost half dead.

The base around the Big Dream Mountain was the farthest one among the four. Also the one with the most complicated environment.

Ye Xiao picked this base for him and his people because he wanted to take the most difficult job and leave the easier ones to others.

There were about two thousand men around him at the moment.

However, all of his men were in ill condition except those who were beyond level seven of Dao Origin Stage. They were tired.

Ye Xiao announced that they could take a break and rest for one night. Once they had recovered, they would resume the journey immediately.

As expected, Ye Xiao and his front line troop arrived on the first day, and the others arrived on the second day. The morning of the third day was when they would set off again.

One night was definitely not enough for everybody to rest and recover.

Ye Xiao sure knew it, so he had prepared some dan beads. Each of these men got one dan bead.

“This dan bead should not be used to recover from exhaustion. Keep the dan beads to the battle. When you feel tired fighting against our enemies in the battle, and if you feel that you are going to get defeated in a battle—eat the dan bead.”

Ye Xiao said, “That is how the dan bead produces the best possible result.”

Everybody grabbed the dan bead in one hand. They looked at the dan fog floating around the dan bead, and they were shocked.

“This… This is… Is this the dan bead with a dan fog? Is this really that valuable dan bead that I’ve heard so much about?”

“This is a treasure from the tales!”

“How could Lord Monarch just give it to us like this?”

“Everybody has one! Wouldn’t it cost too much?”

Before everybody calmed down, Ye Xiao took a deep breath and said, “We are going to go across the sea and march forward to the enemy’s foothold. Please be aware that when we are crossing the sea, you must keep your body slightly close over the water. We can’t let the demonic creatures notice us. Otherwise, this raid will fail. The odds are against us in winning this war.”

“Yes, Lord Monarch!”

“Once we set foot on the Big Dream Mountain, do not attack in just yet. The first thing we will do is hide.” Ye Xiao seriously said, “The front troops will head out first and search for the exact location of their training base. Once we get the location, we will start the surprise raid and destroy their base once and for all!”

Xuan Bing subconsciously disagreed, murmured and said, “Do we really have to do this in such a complicated way? Can’t we just go out together and turn the entire Big Dream Mountain over? We will find the training base pretty soon by doing so!”

Ye Xiao’s mouth twisted. “My maid Bing’er… When did you become so violent? Whom did you learn that from? I am not that violent, am I? Is it Lian Lian? No… Lian Lian isn’t violent… Hmm… Uncle Song. It must be Uncle Song. Uncle Song is the most violent person among all the people who are close to Bing’er. It must be him!”

Song Jue shouted in grief. “I have nothing to do with that! Why would you call me violent? When did I ever became violent? Come on!”

“This place would definitely have some kind of incredibly strong protective array force. I don’t think it is a good idea to forcibly execute such complicated attacks.”

Ye Xiao patted Bing’er on the head and said, “You little girl, always indulged in wild fantasies. I know you greatly improved in a short time, but you got to know that there is still something you can’t do. You must remember this.”

Jun Yinglian glanced at them and felt totally speechless.

Every time Jun Yinglian saw Ye Xiao patting, teasing and calling Xuan Bing a silly girl, Jun Yinglian would feel a cramp in her heart…

She wasn’t mad at him. She definitely wasn’t. In fact… she just couldn’t feel more awkward about what she was seeing!

Xuan Bing didn’t get annoyed by Ye Xiao. She just threw up her shoulders. However, she was quite confused. “What is wrong with me today? Why couldn’t I figure out such a simple fact? A secret base that is so important to the organization certainly has some kind of powerful protective array. It should be unimaginably powerful. Otherwise, those people who cultivate inside the base would have broken the entire mountain into pieces.”

Sometimes a mountain would look reachable in a distance; but in reality, it was far enough to exhaust a horse. Well, going across the sea was the same. When they were crossing the sea, it turned out surprisingly big. The Big Dream Mountain was right in front of their eyes, but it took them a long time to cross the sea.

A lot of things surprised them again and again. They had spent a long time going across the sea, but they were surprised that they actually didn’t encounter any trouble. They flew over the water like seagulls, going through the rolling waves but didn’t get impacted at all. Apart from spending a long time crossing the sea, nothing else went wrong.

In a dark night like this, they moved through the waves like that, and they actually did it without being noticed.

The Big Dream Mountain which had been far away, surrounded by fog and clouds finally showed itself before everybody’s eyes when dawn was about to approach!

The Big Dream Mountain!

The mountain had two peaks.

Both peaks were surrounded by clouds and mist under a shining light. On each of the peak, six words kept rolling and rolling in the air. The words shined like fire. It was blurry but recognizable.

It was giving the people some pretty weird feelings.

Ye Xiao stared at the scene, frowned and took a deep breath.

“The story is true!”

Xuan Bing, Jun Yinglian, and the others all saw the words, so they had the same thought as Ye Xiao did.

The glowing clouds were rolling on the left peak. There were six words—life is like a big dream!

On the right peak, the same situation. There were also six words—so much to be live with!

The two sets of words were shining at the same time. They made an antithetical couplet hanging in the sky, formed by the clouds and fog. They had been there for tens of thousands of years, and nobody could ever erase any of the words!

It was not done by some random god, but by a god that was beyond all other gods!

“Life is like a big dream; so much to be live with…” Ye Xiao took a deep breath and said, “Living in a dream and not being awake. Time passes, and a lot has happened outside the dream…

“What is this kind of level of thought?

“Was it the legendary hero from the Undying Realm? Only the undying hero can say words like these… But… Why would such a hero come to this mountain and sleep for years?”

Ye Xiao was alarmed all of a sudden. He sensed a fierce qi coming from the clouds around the mountain.

It was something hostile.

The fierce qi made him feel a chill on his back even though he knew it was pretty far away.

Before the Big Dream Mountain, the huge sea waves rolled up and looked like piles of snow.

Ye Xiao and his people landed ashore at this pathless place.

Ye Xiao waved one of his hand and everybody stayed low on the ground. They tried to hide somewhere covert.

They were all experienced cultivators in the martial world, who were skillful in hiding their traces. They moved carefully like the experts they were. The biggest movement they made was to shake some bushes. Everything went back to being silent after a while.

Ye Xiao was satisfied, and he nodded. It was good to bring some skillful men with him.

Most of the people who followed Ye Xiao were itinerant cultivators. At this moment, these cultivators had proved to everybody that they were good at adjusting to a special environment. Once they made a move, they would definitely do it better than any superior cultivators from the Sky Ice Palace.

They were trained in countless life-or-death encounters. Training in a safe place would never bring such experience and skill.

Ye Xiao spread his spiritual mind for a second and drew it back immediately. Everybody knew what he was going to do next.

Ye Xiao suddenly turned himself into a phantom which was like a part of the air in the foggy sky. He was just gone and disappeared!

“Intangible Shadow!”

Xuan Bing’s eyes lit up when she saw that.

The technique Ye Xiao just did was an incredible technique that only top-level Dao Origin Stage cultivators could do. He made his body blend into the surrounding atmosphere, in the dense fog, and in the air.

That incredible move was even more wonderful than Wu Fa turning into a cloud of dark fog.

The special technique would make the cultivator invisible to others. When the surroundings were white, he would become white; when it was black, he would turn black. He was invisible.

Wu Fa and Xuan Bing could also turn into a shadow, but they weren’t intangible!

Xuan Bing was surprised that Ye Xiao actually improved so much within just a few days!

“Xiao Xiao has reached such a wonderful level. If he improves one more step, he will enter the Golden Stage in which he will be one tiny step away into becoming a god in the upper realm. He is so close to breaking the limit of the Qing-Yun Realm now…”

She was happy for Ye Xiao but also anxious about it.

“I… I have to catch up to him… I have to stay with him, so we could travel the world and enjoy the views together.”

She took a deep breath and started to operate her shadow movement technique. She couldn’t make an Intangible Shadow as Ye Xiao did, but she was already close to being invisible. She was quite sure that nobody would notice if she followed Ye Xiao, even though she couldn’t do it as well as Ye Xiao. However, unexpectedly, when she operated the movement technique, she realized that whatever had stopped her from becoming intangible inside her body was already gone. She had no idea how and why, but it was gone.

Inside her dantian, it wasn’t a chaotic cloud anymore. In the dantian, there was a fast-spinning vortex. In the middle of the vortex, something was growing and forming.

“What is this?” Xuan Bing was shocked. She thought she knew her own cultivation condition the best. Besides, since she always moved like a cloud of dark fog, she paid most attention to her own shadow movement technique. She always knew that something inside had been stopping her from turning intangible, no matter how well she could do the shadow movement. No matter what it was, it troubled her for many years.

Even after what luckily happened to her in the Land of Han-Yang, even after her Ling Xiao Ice Art had improved to a peerless level, she still couldn’t break to the intangible level of the shadow movement technique. It truly was a pain in her heart.

What had happened at the moment that made her suddenly broke through? She hadn’t cultivated these past days. There must be a reason for such a great improvement!

She couldn’t figure out the reason, and she just couldn’t believe what was happening. However, one thought came up in her mind. She blushed and murmured to herself. “No… Why are you thinking about that thing… No matter how surprising this is, it has nothing to do with that thing…”

She didn’t continue talking to herself. She didn’t say what that thing exactly was. Her blushed face had told a lot about that thing.

At that moment, she looked attractive and adorable.

Jun Yinglian was lost in the scene of such a beauty. What a beautiful woman!

When Xuan Bing thought about something she didn’t want to admit, what filled up her mind was how she and Ye Xiao had made love and got the impurity inside her body removed because of the lovemaking they did…

Other than that, she got her cultivation improved greatly as well.

There was nothing else that could make her improve so much!

During recent days, she had been with him making love all the time…

Perhaps, making love with Ye Xiao was exactly the reason why she had improved a lot this time…

As she deeply thought about it, she blushed even more. However, she bashfully cursed, “What an indecent guy…”

Ye Xiao had arrived at the top of the mountain.

He moved just like a blow of wind.

As he was moving up to the mountain’s top, something surprised him. The entire Big Dream Mountain was full of restraint traps!

The Demon Soul Dao really had spent a lot here! First, it was the poisonous fog, and now restraint traps were everywhere!

The restraint traps outside were complicated and hard to notice. Ye Xiao was sure that any of the traps could trigger an alarm!

Once the alarm was triggered, things could go really nasty.

Ye Xiao’s people had been hiding in full effort. If the enemy paid more attention to finding somebody, it would be easy to find these hidden men. After all, it would be close to impossible to finish the raid once the enemy was alerted. Therefore, what Ye Xiao should do was to remove the restraint traps before proceeding with their big plan!

Ye Xiao kept moving up to the top of the mountain while staying invisible in the air. Watching the Big Dream Mountain with all those restraint traps, he helplessly frowned.

The mountain must be inside the demon’s hands for a long time. How many traps were set around the mountain?

Ye Xiao couldn’t figure it out.

It was more than difficult to break the restraint traps without alerting the enemies, not to mention entering the central area and figuring out the exact location of the training base afterward!

Ye Xiao frowned and got lost in his thoughts in the fog.

The Big Dream Mountain was silent, like a land of death.

Ye Xiao knew that there must be some kind of energy restraint blocking the sound from getting out.

If the restraint was removed, the sound from the secret base would shake his ears.

Ye Xiao was lost in his thoughts for a while; his eyes then suddenly lit up.

…

After a while, a small white shadow boldly rushed into the dense fog and ran wildly around the mountain.

“Meow…”

Erhuo officially took its turn.

For Ye Xiao, the mountain was full of restraints that he couldn’t touch. However, this place was only a wonderland for Erhuo.

Who would care if a small cat triggered the traps? Nobody!

Erhuo kept running around the mountain, knocking down the restraint traps one by one. The traps broke as it scratched the energy screens. After that, it ran into another trap… Scratched and ran… Again and again…

Suddenly, somewhere convert in the valley of the Big Dream Mountain, the alarms were ringing!

The sharp and shrill sound of the alarms kept ringing everywhere.

There was an incense burner somewhere making yellow smoke all of a sudden.

“What? Is that a large-scale invasion?”

In a silent room, a black-clothed man sitting in meditation suddenly stood up. His eyes looked like they were shining with bolts of lightning. “Go and check it outside!”

Outside the room.

Several men in black clothes flew out in each of the rooms of this place. Everyone hovered around over their rooms and then left in a hurry.

They were like a lot of goshawks suddenly flying up.

However, some of the men in black clothes didn’t fly out. They started to figure out their enemies location. Within just a few seconds, these people were ready to fight. They had even set up some traps to defend the base from the invasion.