Chapter 45: “Doing Business” in the Forbidden Ground, Chen Changsheng Studies the Dao Patterns
“Senior, this price is really not expensive.”
“This coffin is made of top-tier golden-thread nanmu wood. Who within a hundred-mile radius doesn’t know that I’m famous for offering quality items at a low price?”
“If you take it for this price, I really won’t be making much profit.”
In the depths of the Ancient Forbidden Ground, amidst the black mountains, a sound of bargaining drifted faintly through the air.
Looking closely, one would find that a young person was talking to a skeleton.
“This is my rock-bottom price. If you don’t object, I’ll take it that you agree.”
After speaking, the young man waited for a few breaths. Seeing that no objections arose, he swiftly began his work of collecting the corpse.
Indeed, this person was Chen Changsheng, who had been trapped in the Ancient Forbidden Ground for fifty years.
After placing the skeleton into the coffin, Chen Changsheng began inspecting the relics beside the skeleton.
He found three items quietly placed next to the skeleton: a dan furnace, a jade slip, and a small porcelain bottle.
Crack!
As soon as Chen Changsheng’s hand touched the small dan furnace, a pit suddenly appeared on its surface.
Seeing this, Chen Changsheng went on to examine the other two relics, but aside from the jade slip, the remainder faced inevitable destruction.
“Tsk tsk!”
“Time truly is the most powerful weapon!”
“This dan furnace has become utterly useless; what a pity.”
Muttering for a moment, Chen Changsheng began inspecting the jade slip in his hand.
This jade slip was crafted from Thousand-Year Cold Jade, and even a piece the size of a fingernail would be worth a hundred thousand spiritual stones.
Yet the jade slip in Chen Changsheng’s hand was palm-sized.
“Sky-Replenishing Ointment?”
Looking at the formula recorded on the jade slip, Chen Changsheng tilted his head in thought, but couldn’t find any corresponding records in his mind.
According to what was written on the jade slip, this Sky-Replenishing Ointment had the effect of reversing life and d*ath.
No matter how grave your injuries were, or how close you were to d*ath, as long as you possessed this ointment, you could extend your life for another seven days.
As the name suggests, even if the Milky Way was damaged, one medicine could repair it.
After understanding the content of the jade slip, Chen Changsheng flipped it into the system space.
With such a miraculous dan, he naturally wanted to refine it.
However, unfortunately, his knowledge reserve was insufficient; he currently had no way to crack the formula for the Sky-Replenishing Ointment.
This skeleton had been stored here for who knows how many years, and the information that once circulated was long gone by now.
Chen Changsheng could only grasp a rough idea of the words on the jade slip, and the names of the herbs mentioned were unfamiliar to him.
As time passed, the medicinal materials from hundreds of years ago likely still existed.
But the names could have changed countless times, leaving him with the recipe but no corresponding compendium, making it impossible for Chen Changsheng to refine the Sky-Replenishing Ointment.
After “selling” a coffin, Chen Changsheng turned to look at the Bronze Ancient Palace five hundred steps away.
Behind him, there was also a Bronze Ancient Palace, but the distance between the two was only three hundred steps.
Looking at the “distant” five hundred steps, Chen Changsheng smacked his lips, then lay down on the ground to study the golden array patterns on the floor.
Five hundred steps away was the other Bronze Ancient Palace Chen Changsheng was looking for, and the remains of the Left Emperor were likewise there.
When he first arrived in the Ancient Forbidden Ground, Chen Changsheng had initially planned to spend a leisurely twenty to thirty years, then slowly study the golden array patterns.
However, the collection of the Xuanwu Pavilion was depleted in under ten years, and with no other options, Chen Changsheng had to focus on the golden array patterns.
In the beginning, Chen Changsheng’s progress was extremely slow.
It took him an entire year to barely move forward an inch, and even so, he hadn’t fully grasped that inch of the golden array patterns; he could only find a safe way to advance.
Thus, Chen Changsheng dedicated a full fifty years to only move five steps outside the safe zone of the Bronze Ancient Palace.
At this time, Chen Changsheng encountered his first “customer” in this place.
Seeing a corpse lying exposed in the wilderness triggered Chen Changsheng’s professional instincts, prompting him to take out a coffin to collect the remains for the “customer.”
Interestingly, many items on the skeleton had decayed, but a nameless beast skin book was the only thing left intact.
Naturally, Chen Changsheng accepted the price offered by the “customer” without protest.
After a thorough study, Chen Changsheng discovered that the owner of the beast skin book was a master of array formations.
Furthermore, that beast skin book was his life’s work.
Through studying the beast skin book, not only did Chen Changsheng’s understanding of array formations progress by leaps and bounds, but he also learned the name of the golden array pattern.
Typically, array formations operate by leveraging the momentum of mountains, rivers, or following a specific trajectory to unleash various powerful effects.
However, the array patterns in the Ancient Forbidden Ground were not like that; they were derived from the great Dao between heaven and earth.
To be precise, these golden array patterns were a manifestation of the Dao, also known as “Dao Patterns.”
The beast skin book described it like this:
“The Dao Patterns have the ability to reverse mountains and rivers, overturn the sun and moon; only the supreme can control them.”
…
“This progress is still too slow!”
After successfully taking a step forward, Chen Changsheng looked at the remaining four hundred ninety-nine steps and couldn’t help but twitch his lips.
Although his speed had increased several times after obtaining the beast skin book, it still took him forty years to cover these three hundred steps, on top of the ten years spent reading in the Ancient Forbidden Ground.
Chen Changsheng had already spent a full fifty years in the Ancient Forbidden Ground.
It had been one hundred thirty years since his last slumber, and he only had less than thirty years until his next slumber.
Thinking of this, Chen Changsheng immediately took out the beast skin book to flip through it.
However, after several reads, Chen Changsheng still couldn’t recognize all the words on it.
“This is truly outrageous; why can’t a consistently circulating script be created?”
“If I could recognize all the words on it, my speed might increase several times.”
After a brief complaint, Chen Changsheng began retracing his steps.
After fifty years of consolidation, he felt he had grasped some circumstances of the Ancient Forbidden Ground.
During the day, the Ancient Forbidden Ground was highly likely to be safe, but at night, that certainty didn’t hold.
In the first ten years, Chen Changsheng had seen shadows moving outside the Bronze Ancient Palace more than once at night.
This Crimson Realm had never heard of ghosts, and the “things” that could move in the Ancient Forbidden Ground likely weren’t human.
So for safety reasons, Chen Changsheng had always only operated during the day.
At night, he would retreat into the Bronze Ancient Palace and burrow into the stone coffin of the Hundred Defeats Immortal.
After a while, as the sun set, Chen Changsheng successfully retreated from the Bronze Ancient Palace.
Seven or eight coffins lay quietly outside the Bronze Ancient Palace, surrounded by an eerie atmosphere under the night sky.
