Chapter 3659: Eye-Opening

In that instant when the question flashed through Ye Chen's mind, he already had an answer in his heart.

Although he did not know exactly when the Age of Dharma Decline began, judging from Meng Changsheng's experience, when he attained the Dao, it was already the Age of Dharma Decline.

Therefore, the cultivators who built this underground city must have lived before the Tang Lindé era, and perhaps much earlier.

In that case, the history of this four-sided treasure pagoda before him must be even older than the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda.

And according to what he saw when his spirit wandered through Chang'an City, at that time the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda was built by Tang Xuanzang and countless cultivators together for the Tang dynasty's rivers, mountains, and state; why then would they have built the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda in the form of this four-sided treasure pagoda before him? Could it be a replica, or perhaps a matter of faith?

If this four-sided treasure pagoda was some kind of totem of cultivators before the Age of Dharma Decline, then cultivators of the Age of Dharma Decline building an identical Giant Wild Goose Pagoda in Chang'an City would have an understandable motive.

With the descent of the Age of Dharma Decline, the last batch of cultivators before it would at least split into two factions: one chose to cultivate painfully in the Age of Dharma Decline, while the other migrated to the Antarctic continent, regarding this place as the final gateway to ascension.

Or perhaps only the highest-ranking among the last batch of cultivators were qualified to come here to make their final struggle, while those left behind were basically abandoned.

Although they were abandoned by the last batch of cultivators who struck for ascension, they did not give up on themselves, but continued to cultivate painstakingly in the world of the Age of Dharma Decline, and even managed to show compassion for all beings, which is why they worked together to build the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda and refine this four-sided treasure pagoda, a feng shui artifact capable of influencing the fate of the nation.

Ye Chen leapt down from the cave mouth and slowly landed on the square plaza below, which was a hundred zhang wide; looking up at this four-sided treasure pagoda, he felt it even more solemn and majestic in its Dharma appearance.

And when Ye Chen stood at the bottom of the square plaza, he discovered that the space here was far more than just a square plaza; around the plaza, there was actually hidden an underground town with a height of about five zhang, extending at least three kilometers in depth, or nearly ten square kilometers in area, where various ancient houses and buildings stood in orderly rows, with four main roads leading to this plaza, and the four-sided treasure pagoda being the central core of the entire plaza.

What Ye Chen could not understand was that this underground town was completely suspended within the rock layer, and within his visual range, all the buildings had no contact with the top; if one referred to geological and physical properties, constructing such a large underground city was not impossible, but it would require a complete and extremely sturdy support system.

Just like the underground parking lot of a large shopping mall, which must have many load-bearing pillars to prevent the top from collapsing, and such underground space is not like building a house, where the top is a poured reinforced concrete slab with inherent integrity and stability that will not shatter or collapse, but here everything is rock; normally, if not anchored, the rock would inevitably gradually crumble and collapse, yet here there is no support at all, no anchoring protection, yet it can still stably support the entire rock mass—this is simply inconceivable.

Ye Chen speculated that even cultivators could not defy the laws of physics, so there must be some formation here serving the function of support and anchoring.

A nearly ten-square-kilometer underground city, if built to modern engineering standards, would require at least a hundred thousand load-bearing pillars, and their service life might be only a few decades, yet here the formation replaces a hundred thousand load-bearing pillars and operates stably for thousands of years; the energy of this formation must already be astronomical.

Ye Chen felt a shock in his heart and unconsciously wanted to tour this underground city, so he chose a main road and stepped forward.

Walking out of the plaza and entering the ancient street, everything around him was like being in a carefully crafted modern film and television base; everything around was so exquisite and beautiful, even as fresh as if just completed.

Moreover, there was not a trace to be found of anyone having ever lived here.

Ye Chen also carefully tried to push open a certain courtyard gate; the gate was not locked, and in fact there was no lock at all, and inside there was not even a simple door bolt.

The courtyard was about two or three hundred square meters, not very large, but there were no living facilities to be seen in the courtyard—no washing pool like ordinary farmers use for laundry, no stone mill for grinding grain, not even a coop for raising poultry, and not even a water well; the courtyard was paved entirely with smooth, clean, ancient-looking blue stone bricks, and nothing else besides.

Passing through the courtyard, inside was a row of three houses; the main hall had no tables or chairs, but was fully covered with exquisitely woven reed mats, on which were several round futons, seemingly used specifically for meditation.

Even more strangely, the two side rooms on the left and right were not traditional bedrooms; entering the left side room felt more like a closed-door cultivation training room, while the right side room had a handcrafted baby's bed and some handmade wooden toys.

Ye Chen speculated that the people living here, aside from newborns, had almost all reached a very high level of the grain-avoiding realm; they lived here without needing to eat or drink, nor to use the toilet, so there was no kitchen or toilet in the courtyard.

There was also something very miraculous: in every room, there were sources of light formed from condensed spiritual energy, illuminating the place even without sunlight, making it everywhere like daytime, as long as one did not look up at the top, one would hardly feel that one was underground.

It was as if the entire underground city was operating by relying on the same powerful formation, which functioned like a power plant supplying a city's energy needs, continuously providing energy to this city.

Even more strangely, there were no cultivation-related items in the rooms—no elixirs, no magical artifacts, nor any visible cultivation methods, which was far from what Wu Bolin had speculated.

Ye Chen visited several similar independent courtyards, and the results were all the same; not to mention elixirs, magical artifacts, and cultivation methods, not even a box for storing elixirs had ever been seen.

Yet Ye Chen did not understand; he could not figure out where the people here had finally gone; if those who failed to pass their tribulation or could not endure until tribulation died here, they could not possibly have buried all their belongings together, could they?

Even if their descendants buried them together with their belongings, what about the last batch of cultivators? They would no longer have the ability to handle their own leftover belongings, would they? Yet looking around, there was not a single personal item used for cultivation to be seen; it did not feel like they had struggled to the end here, but rather like they had withdrawn from this place in an orderly manner as a whole.

After visiting several courtyards, Ye Chen tried sitting on a futon in one of the courtyard rooms, circulating his heart method mantra to continuously purify the spiritual energy within his body; while the endless spiritual energy from the outside made him feel his eyes opened wide, and with his own physical form, it was like fitting a car with an inexhaustible, inexhaustible oil field.

Cultivating in this environment, the speed was probably dozens of times faster than in the outside world of the Age of Dharma Decline; Meng Changsheng's thousand years was only at the Foundation Establishment level, but if a child born here had such powerful spiritual energy as support, plus the guidance of those powerful cultivators, perhaps a dozen years would be enough.

In this underground city, besides these household courtyards, there were also institutions similar to schools and government offices, and even a place called the Hall of the Medicine King; in the main hall of the Hall of the Medicine King, at the very center, what was enshrined was not a statue of a deity, but a huge cauldron over two zhang tall, which Ye Chen could feel was itself a magical artifact.

This was the only magical artifact Ye Chen had discovered so far in the underground city; as he touched the cauldron and tried to pour his spiritual energy into it, it was fine—it felt like throwing a pebble into a heavenly pond, and his spiritual energy could not even sense the vastness within.

However, Ye Chen did feel that the cauldron and the entire Hall of the Medicine King were of one piece, with an extremely grand internal formation; if one wanted to use it to refine elixirs, let alone how strong the elixirs produced would be, just the spiritual energy required to operate this cauldron would, for someone of his cultivation level, probably already be astronomical.

If the medicine cauldron he obtained from Hong Changqing were a two-thousand-watt household electric rice cooker, then this cauldron would be a blast furnace for smelting iron and steel—completely beyond what someone of his stature could operate.

Ye Chen even felt that, to the original inhabitants of this place, this cauldron was certainly not any individual's personal magical artifact, but rather a production center for elixirs for the entire underground city's residents; perhaps such a cauldron would require dozens or even hundreds of top experts to exert force simultaneously to get it running!