Li Yuan flew for less than half a day before arriving at Qinghe Marketplace.
When his Escape Light landed on the main road outside the marketplace, the scene before him was almost unchanged from his memory.
Two main streets, one east and one west, ran straight through the marketplace. Two side alleys each, to the north and south, extended from the main streets, forming a neat grid pattern. Most of the shops lining the streets were two-story structures of wood and stone, with faded paint on their door panels and old lanterns hanging under the eaves.
The flow of people wasn’t sparse, but you couldn’t call it bustling either. Qi Refining Cultivators stopped in twos and threes before the stalls.
The marketplace’s layout was indeed suitable for expansion. There was open land at the ends of both main streets, and plenty of undeveloped areas outside the north and south alleys. The infrastructure, though old, was complete.
Li Yuan walked along the main street to its western end, then turned into the first southern alley.
The alley was even quieter. A few small shops had their doors half-open, their owners dozing on the thresholds. A three-man patrol team walked over from the other end of the alley.
Li Yuan’s gaze swept over the patrol team, then paused for a moment.
Someone was following the patrol team.
He looked to be in his thirties and wore a patrol officer’s uniform. The Token hanging from his waist was engraved with the three words "Deputy Patrol Officer." His Cultivation was at the Qi Refining Fifth Level.
Sun Liang.
’To think he’s still here, and he’s a deputy patrol officer again.’
Li Yuan thought for a moment and decided not to go up and greet him.
His current status was different from back then. Appearing rashly would only cause trouble for the other man.
With a sweep of his Divine Sense, the entire marketplace came into view.
Li Yuan took out several bottles of rare medicinal pills and a stack of Talismans from his personal storage. He wrapped them into a small package with Spiritual Power and silently placed it in Sun Liang’s house, which he was able to identify by its aura.
After doing this, Li Yuan turned and left the southern alley, returning to East Main Street.
That afternoon, Xu Zhang and Wang Ting’an arrived at Qinghe Marketplace one after another.
The three of them met in a vacant warehouse behind the marketplace.
Wang Ting’an laid out all of Qinghe Marketplace’s land deeds, shop inventories, and personnel rosters on the table, presenting them to Li Yuan and Xu Zhang one by one.
After looking through the lists, Xu Zhang gestured over the map for a while.
"For the expansion, I suggest we build east and south. There’s a large, flat plot of empty land at the end of East Main Street, perfect for extending it into a new commercial street. There’s also space outside the two southern alleys, suitable for building warehouses and seclusion chambers."
Li Yuan looked at the location of the Earth Vein marked on the map and nodded.
"We’ll deal with the Array after the expansion is finished," Li Yuan said. "Let’s lay the foundation and erect the building frames first. Setting up an Array on a complete foundation is far more effective than building and setting it up simultaneously."
Xu Zhang agreed. "I’ll oversee the expansion project. We can procure materials through the chamber of commerce’s channels, which should cut costs significantly."
Wang Ting’an quickly added, "The Wang family will provide full support in terms of manpower. All the Cultivators in the marketplace can be mobilized."
Li Yuan said no more, entrusting all the specific tasks to Xu Zhang and Wang Ting’an.
That evening, Li Yuan left Qinghe Marketplace. He didn’t return to Mist Forest Marketplace but instead flew directly out of Liangzhou.
His destination was Shuizhou.
The Reef Group. The stone gate. The third fork. The Teleportation Array.
A blue light enveloped his body, and space warped around him.
He felt solid ground beneath his feet once more.
A secret chamber.
The Array Patterns were still carved into the four deep-blue rock walls, but the Spirit Gathering Array had ceased to operate, having vanished after its Array Hub was made permanent. The concentration of residual Water Element Spiritual Qi in the chamber was much lower than on his last visit, but it was still far greater than in the ocean outside.
Li Yuan sat cross-legged in the center of the chamber, his gaze sweeping over the Array Patterns on the walls.
The last time he was here, he had already recorded the parts he could understand with his Divine Sense. But at that time, his Array Dao Cultivation was still at Tier Three proficiency, and he couldn’t see through much of the deeper Array Pattern logic.
Now at Tier Three Minor Achievement, with the intuitive judgment from his permanent Array Rhythm entry and the comprehension bonus from the Glimmer of Array Principles working in tandem, his perception of these Array Patterns was completely different.
Previously blurry sections became much clearer. The hidden connections between the Array Patterns emerged one by one in his perception, like seeing the distant silhouette of a mountain range after the fog has lifted.
Li Yuan spent a full half-day re-examining the parts of the wall’s Array Patterns that he hadn’t understood before. His gains were considerable, and his understanding of the design philosophy behind High Tier Spirit Gathering Arrays deepened by another level.
After finishing his study, Li Yuan performed a comprehensive scan of the surroundings with his Divine Sense.
His Divine Sense passed through the rock of the four walls, extending even deeper.
There was only one Teleportation Array in the secret chamber. But a Teleportation Array couldn’t just appear out of thin air. Building one required setting up anchor points at both ends, meaning the construction crew must have entered the chamber through some kind of passage to complete the installation.
About thirty feet deep within the chamber’s eastern wall, Li Yuan’s Divine Sense caught a trace of something unusual.
The rock layer’s structure had an extremely subtle fault at that location. The edges of the fault held the remnants of a deactivated Array; the direction of its Spiritual Power circuits belonged to the same system as the Spirit Gathering Array on the chamber walls.
’There’s something else deep inside the wall.’
Li Yuan stood up, walked to the eastern wall, and formed a blade with his right hand.
Void-Rending Slash.
A gray fissure silently cut into the rock wall, slicing through the hard, deep-blue stone as if it were tofu. Rubble tumbled down, revealing a cross-section deep within the rock layer.
Li Yuan cleared away the rubble and continued to dig deeper.
With each layer of rock he cut through, he discovered more traces of deactivated Arrays. Some were remnants of Defensive Array Patterns, others were fragments of Concealment Array Patterns, all of which had completely lost their function due to age and the depletion of Spiritual Power.
’The passage is deep within this wall.’
The excavation continued for the better part of a day.
He repeatedly used Void-Rending Slash, each cut opening up a passage about ten feet long.
He continuously cleared away the rubble. The tunnel grew narrower, and the rock layer’s structure became more and more unstable, with large chunks of rock occasionally collapsing from the ceiling.
Li Yuan used his Spiritual Power to set up simple support Array Patterns on the tunnel walls, reinforcing them as he dug.
Another four hours passed.
The rock wall ahead suddenly grew thin.
As the Void-Rending Slash made its final cut, the blade’s edge pierced through the rock layer and into the space on the other side.
Li Yuan pushed down the rest of the rock wall in one piece.
A wide, open space appeared before him.
Underwater cave abodes.
Not just one, but a whole row of them.
Over a dozen cave abodes of various sizes were arranged in a line along a naturally formed underwater rock gallery, their entrances all facing the same direction. The gallery walls on both sides were covered with the remnants of numerous Arrays. The residual patterns of Defense Arrays, Concealment Arrays, and Spirit Gathering Arrays were intertwined, but all of them had been deactivated.
In the distance, there were signs of more cave abodes, but they had almost all completely collapsed.
The entrances to most of the cave abodes were filled with silt and rubble. Only three or four remained accessible.
Li Yuan walked into the nearest cave abode.
Empty.
The stone bed, stone table, and medicine cabinet were all still in place, but there was nothing on them.
The second one was also empty.
The third one was slightly better. A few jade slips were scattered on the stone table, and a pile of shattered jade bottle fragments lay in a corner.
Li Yuan picked up the jade slips one by one and probed them with his Divine Sense.
The contents of most of the jade slips were incomplete, their Spiritual Power imprints faded beyond recognition with age. Only two well-preserved slips could still be partially read.
Li Yuan collected all the jade slips he could find. Then, he blasted away the rubble blocking the other entrances and continued to investigate the remaining cave abodes.
At the deepest part of the rock gallery, Li Yuan discovered the entrance to an underground Spirit Vein.
The main trunk of a medium-sized Spirit Vein extended from deep within the rock layer, forming a natural Spiritual Qi convergence zone directly beneath the cluster of cave abodes. The Spirit Vein’s Spiritual Light was much dimmer than normal, and its Spiritual Qi was slowly diminishing.
The area around the Spirit Vein was littered with traces of numerous Spirit Gathering Arrays of an extremely high grade, but they too were deactivated. These Spirit Gathering Arrays had once continuously drawn Spiritual Qi from the Spirit Vein to supply the Cultivators in the cave abodes.
Li Yuan brought all the collected jade slips back to the secret chamber, sat down cross-legged, and began to decipher them one by one.
The workload was enormous.
The content of most of the jade slips was severely damaged, requiring him to piece together fragmented information from multiple slips to restore a relatively complete record.
Moreover, the records from each Cultivator were completely different.
Li Yuan spent two full days piecing together the following information from over a dozen jade slips.
This had been a Sect located at the bottom of the sea, named the Canglan Sect.
In its heyday, the Canglan Sect was a Nascent Soul Grand Sect. The Sect was built on the seabed, relying on a natural Spirit Vein and the abundant resources of the ocean to grow and prosper.
Although the seabed was rich in Spiritual Qi and offered constant opportunities to hunt Demon Beasts for resources, the maintenance costs were extremely high.
The Sect’s periphery required a large number of Defensive Arrays to fend off the incursions of deep-sea Demon Beasts. The operation of these arrays consumed a vast amount of power and required the Sect to have formidable strength to maintain them.
After their Nascent Soul Ancestor passed away, the Sect began to decline. The succeeding Golden Core Cultivators were unable to maintain all the peripheral arrays, and the defensive line gradually contracted. As the outer arrays were eroded by Sea Demons, the cave abodes were filled in one by one by beasts and currents. The Inner Sect was also affected, forced to drain the Spirit Vein to maintain operations in the core area. The Spirit Vein’s Spiritual Qi gradually waned from over-extraction, and in a vicious cycle, many disciples chose to flee.
Ultimately, the entire Sect quietly perished during a long period of decay. The scouring currents, rolling silt, and the destruction wrought by Demon Beasts completely buried the vast majority of its ruins beneath the seabed’s rock layers.