Chapter 3648: Narrow Road Enemies Meet

A sudden thought arose, making Wu Bolin feel a chill down his back.

Although he had not yet entered this formation to investigate, the power displayed by cultivators before the Dharma-ending Era already filled him with fear.

His mind had already begun to consider his retreat.

Since he had nowhere else to go anyway, he might as well stay here and wrestle with this ancient formation; as for the time limit, it would be when the Antarctic summer arrives and the devilish westerly wind belt resumes navigation.

If he could find a breakthrough point before the Antarctic summer arrives, that would naturally be ideal.

If, by then, he still achieves nothing, he will honestly return to the Poqing Hui and proactively report to Wu Feiyan.

At that time, he will lay everything about Antarctica before Wu Feiyan; although Wu Feiyan will inwardly blame him for concealing the legend of the Ascension Gate, he can feign ignorance while understanding the truth, attributing everything to mere coincidence, and then offer this ancient formation to Wu Feiyan to claim merit.

This formation is so perverse that Wu Feiyan could never possibly break it; by then, for him, having said what needed to be said, and since he came out to seek opportunities for Wu Feiyan, even if she harbors dissatisfaction, she cannot punish him.

Even if Wu Feiyan has the ability to break this formation, he would not lose out; once she reaps abundant rewards, she will surely give him some benefit, otherwise who would still willingly work for her? Though Wu Feiyan is ruthless, she still understands this principle.

In that case, although he fails to obtain the treasures within this formation, he will at least suffer no further loss, and Wu Feiyan will have an explanation.

Having made up his mind, Wu Bolin sat cross-legged on the rock, attempting to enter a state of closed-door cultivation.

Although he lacks a cultivation method to generate spiritual energy, closed-door practice can continuously refine the spiritual energy within his body, washing the meridians repeatedly, which can also serve the purpose of slowly enhancing his cultivation.

This is the sorrow of the Dharma-ending Era: cultivators rely entirely on pills and spirit stones for their spiritual energy; once lacking these two, they essentially lose their source of spiritual energy, forced to painstakingly reclaim and carefully cultivate their meager plot of land, like him—after a hundred years of closed-door practice, he has never opened the Niwan Palace.

But before the Dharma-ending Era, cultivators could draw spiritual energy from heaven and earth by circulating their techniques; the speed of closed-door cultivation was nearly divine, and those with good talent could open the Niwan Palace within a few years of enlightenment.

For cultivators today, opening the Niwan Palace is as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns; but before the Dharma-ending Era, opening it was at most equivalent to kindergarten level in the cultivator's world—like a toddler of two or three years old—and a cultivator must at least reach the Foundation Establishment level to be considered truly embarked on the path of cultivation.

The difficulty of Foundation Establishment is such that even after Wu Feiyan cultivated for four hundred years, she still failed to achieve it.

With Wu Feiyan's cultivation level, were it not for the Eternal Youth Pill, her lifespan could not possibly reach three hundred years.

Meng Changsheng is actually the same.

He has cultivated for a thousand years in this barren Dharma-ending Era, yet is only just at the Foundation Establishment level; were it not for the Hundred Reversions Thousand Returns Pill, he could not possibly have survived a thousand years in this world.

Reflecting on the hardships of the cultivation path, Wu Bolin's heart filled with even greater indignation.

He had painstakingly found this legendary Ascension Gate, yet never imagined he lacked even the qualification to enter; his beautiful aspirations were nothing but a fleeting illusion.

As he complained about the injustice of heaven, he failed to notice that a cultivator just like him was rapidly approaching his position.

At this moment, Ye Chen was less than three kilometers from the ice cave dug by Wu Bolin.

The aurora in the sky remained, still a green arrow continuously pointing the way for him; along this journey, that green arrow resembled a game system's guidance to a player, steadfastly flashing in one direction.

During this time, Ye Chen also tried changing direction, deliberately deviating from it to observe its state; the result was that it behaved like a compass—no matter how he moved or changed direction, it kept flashing toward the south.

Perhaps due to sensing the firmness of the mysterious guidance, Ye Chen's anticipation grew stronger in his heart.

As the distance to the cave entrance decreased, Ye Chen could already see that the arrow was no longer parallel to the ground pointing south, but began to tilt, the arrowhead slightly sinking, forming an angle with the horizontal, and this angle kept growing larger.

Ye Chen felt a surge of joy; after running over a hundred kilometers, he believed he had finally arrived.

Fortunately, he did not truly need to go to the Antarctic Point.

At this time, Wu Bolin was not focusing all his energy on the surrounding environment.

Because the surrounding ice layer was over a thousand meters thick, it would greatly weaken his spiritual energy penetration; within this ice cave over a thousand meters deep, he could hardly sense the surface conditions, except for a faint perception around the cave mouth.

Therefore, he was even more negligent than Ye Chen had estimated, simply not wasting spiritual energy on the surroundings, since in his view, he should be the sole cultivator on the Antarctic continent, and since the US military had not come looking for him these days, he certainly faced no safety issues.

Moreover, Ye Chen's cultivation was far inferior to his; when probing the surroundings with spiritual energy, he could not penetrate such thick ice layers, so naturally he could not sense his presence.

However, when he stood on a slightly raised glacier and looked down at the nearby cave entrance, he felt especially puzzled.

He had stayed in Antarctica for quite a while and was fairly familiar with it; the entire Antarctic surface is almost entirely covered by ice and snow—how could a hole suddenly appear on the ground out of nowhere?

At this moment, that arrow was pointing directly toward the cave entrance.

He looked up at the arrow and could not help but mutter: "Could it be trying to lure me into this cave? What's inside?"

Having this thought, he unconsciously released spiritual energy to probe.

The spiritual energy followed the bottomless cave downward; the deeper Ye Chen probed, the more startled he became.

He had thought it was merely a cave tens of meters deep, at most a hundred meters, but he never expected this cave to be bottomless.

Feeling his spiritual energy had already penetrated several hundred meters in, yet still no sign of the cave's bottom.

Ye Chen's spiritual energy continued descending—seven hundred meters, eight hundred meters, approaching a kilometer in depth—yet still no indication of reaching the bottom.

Ye Chen was greatly astonished; the cave walls were smooth and flat, not like a natural formation, likely man-made and probably mechanical, but the cave's width exceeded one meter, far beyond what an ordinary drilling machine could produce; drilling such a hole in Antarctica would seem difficult—who could have made this cave?

Such a deep hole also aroused Ye Chen's desire to explore; he accelerated the infusion of spiritual energy, rushing rapidly toward the depths to investigate.

Next, he suddenly felt the probed environment open up like a long-necked bottle, the lower space instantly expanding greatly, seemingly forming a cavern; just as he was astonished, his spiritual energy suddenly sensed a humanoid object sitting cross-legged within the cavern.

At this moment, Wu Bolin, who had been unable to fully enter meditation, suddenly opened his eyes, his gaze instantly becoming incredibly sharp!

……

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