Chapter 280: Source! The Depths of Mingtu

What sound?

The instant that strange sound rang out, Baichuan's entire dragon head propped up, his gaze no longer relaxed as before but grown solemn. He could say with great certainty that this inexplicable sound had not traveled through the air, because beneath that howling, unceasing storm, no sound could propagate outward at all — this sound had risen from within his own mind!

But who was he?

That someone could actually send a summoning directly into his mind — in an instant he instinctively activated every kind of power, attempting to block the infiltration of this inexplicable force, and then his keen perception began to spread out wildly, scanning this stretch of heaven and earth without restraint.

But after a long while, Baichuan silently withdrew his keen perception, a flash of disappointment passing through his eyes.

The bizarre environment of heaven and earth had already severely impaired his ability to perceive.

But at this moment Baichuan also reacted — the place mentioned by that voice was the depths of Mingtu.

This was an extremely bizarre power: whenever anyone inwardly thought of the depths of Mingtu, they would naturally hear an inexplicable murmur.

Baichuan still did not understand, for the moment, how this murmur exerted its effect.

But now he discovered that after he had used his power to erect a barrier within his heart-mind, he could no longer hear that inexplicable summoning, and only then did he feel at ease.

It seemed the master of this power was not as terrifying as he had imagined.

In the past, before he had come to understand the various cultivation methods of this world, he might not have paid much heed to such an unguarded state of heart-mind, but after learning about them he understood that in such an unguarded state, some powerful beings could use special secret arts to strike directly at the opponent's Spirit.

After carefully checking that he himself had not been affected in the slightest, Baichuan thought it over and decided to release that barrier, because he had originally wanted to head to those mysterious depths of Mingtu, and without the guidance of this mysterious summoning he could not find the way at all.

At the same time, a sliver of curiosity toward the master of this voice had also arisen in him — he had never heard of nor seen this peculiar method, and he wanted to investigate it to the end.

With this thought, he silently released his heart-mind.

"Come… come… here there is…"

At once, the familiar summoning rang out once more within his heart-mind. This time Baichuan directly closed his eyes, feeling out the influence that summoning brought.

After a few breaths, he opened his eyes again and looked toward the southeast — that was the place to which that half-murmur, half-summoning voice had drawn him.

"Let's see just what divine being you are."

Leaving behind these words, Baichuan gathered up brilliant radiance, transformed into a startling dragon silhouette that swept across the sky and vanished into the distance.

"…here is what you… want…"

A few days later, when Baichuan once again crossed over a massive remnant ruin, causing countless creatures on the ground to raise their heads in salute, that inexplicable murmur within his mind had grown considerably clearer, and the times it appeared became more frequent. Unfortunately, the meaning within the other's words still had not truly become clear.

But Baichuan knew he was getting closer and closer.

"Pu!"

A sharp claw-shadow swept through abruptly, and a six-hundred-year Zhenren Realm shadow-tiger-shaped creature that had tried to surge into the sky to attack him shattered on the spot.

This was not the first time Baichuan had encountered an attack by a native creature of Mingtu.

Now he finally understood why Jin Ming's words had said the depths of Mingtu were incomparably dangerous.

At this point he was merely on the way to those depths of Mingtu, yet he had already suffered attacks from creatures ranging from a hundred years of cultivation at the start to six hundred years now. From this one could infer what manner of powerful creatures might exist in the true depths.

……

Time slipped past in a flash, and another three days went by.

If Baichuan had not been constantly setting aside a portion of his computing power to keep track of Time, he would long ago have lost all sense of Time in this place where day and night never changed.

"Come… come… faster…"

Suddenly the familiar summoning rang out once more, but Baichuan had long grown accustomed to the abrupt appearance of that voice. He waited expressionlessly for the continuation of the summoning.

"…here is the… source you want…"

Source?

At last he had heard the latter half of that sentence, yet more doubts rose in Baichuan's heart. Source? What on earth was that? That mysterious being actually had the confidence, under such bizarre circumstances, to still draw those cautious cultivators from beyond who were above Zhenren Realm to come.

During these past few days, Baichuan had not been traveling the whole time. Later, in order to verify whether his own judgment was mistaken — to guard against the blunder of that summoning being audible only to himself — he had deliberately captured several creatures native to this Mingtu to use as tests, asking them whether they could hear that voice.

The result was that no matter how powerful the creatures he asked, none had heard that mysterious summoning. It was only when he encountered several cultivators from the former dynasty of the outside world who had shrunk back into hiding here that he discovered the summoning could be heard only by cultivators from the outside world at Zhenren Realm and above.

But unfortunately, those cultivators he had encountered were all weak ones — they could only sense that summoning and were utterly unable to go deep into it. In time, those cultivators hiding here stopped paying any attention to the summoning.

He figured that the "source" within that summoning was perhaps something only cultivators above Zhenren Realm would understand — himself excluded, of course.

But not understanding it did not stop him from going there.

……

Time slowly passed another five days. After he had clearly heard the words the other spoke, Baichuan discovered that the words within that summoning never changed again thereafter.

He supposed that the other's reliance was precisely that thing called "source" — that single thing alone was enough to make countless cultivators above Zhenren Realm rush headlong to get there, and even the present Old Dragon Ao Qing had, for some unknown reason, fallen into that place.

On this day, the scenery that appeared before Baichuan finally changed.

What appeared before him was a colossal fissure that stretched across the earth with no visible edge. On its eastern side a massive slope rose abruptly. The fissure was incomparably vast — even his hundred-and-seventy-meter-long dragon body laid across it sideways could not span half its width — and the walls around the fissure were coated with a thick layer of Canglan-colored Ice Frost… no, that was not Ice Frost!

That was Yin Qi!

Because he saw it: Yin Qi so dense it seemed almost solid gushed forth ceaselessly from beneath the fissure. In an instant, Baichuan understood — the reason the Yin Qi throughout this stretch of Mingtu was so dense was likely because of this place.

At the same time, since arriving here, Baichuan had also discovered that the mysterious summoning voice had vanished.

For no apparent reason, a sudden enlightenment arose within him.

The depths of Mingtu — he had arrived.

Beneath this great fissure before his eyes lay the depths of Mingtu.

And the Old Dragon was most likely down there as well.

(End of this chapter)