Seeing several formation flags flying towards him, Duan Weiran was startled. His first thought was that Li Yan was going to kill him after getting the answers he wanted.
But his Divine Sense was faster than his body. The next moment, he sensed that there were no strong magic power fluctuations from the floating formation flags. They then floated gently in front of him. He looked at Li Yan with confusion.
"It's better to have a few more tricks up your sleeve when cultivating here. This set of formations is a gift to you, Fellow Daoist." At this moment, Li Yan's figure in the pavilion was already beginning to blur, his words still echoing.
"This... this is... why?" Duan Weiran was somewhat baffled. Which cultivator wasn't selfish? He had no connection to the other party, so why would he help him?
"You are very similar to a friend of mine. Take care, Fellow Daoist!" Li Yan's words drifted over from the distance, and then there was silence.
As he traveled away, when Li Yan spoke the last sentence, the image of Zhuo Lingfeng appeared in his mind.
"Master, why did you help this person? That set of formation flags is also extraordinary," the voice of the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant sounded in Li Yan's mind.
"Hehehe, although it is extraordinary, it is worth it, because he will eventually form a Golden Core," a smile appeared on Li Yan's face.
Ten days later, Li Yan stood before a crimson stone forest. Inside it gathered countless ferocious ghost faces, which rushed towards him the moment they saw him.
Another month later, deep within the "Stone-Transformation Forest," Li Yan, standing in the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation," looked at a piece of "Crimson Mother Essence" in his hand that was emitting a scorching light, a look of relief on his face.
Then he looked outside the great formation, at the overwhelming tide of Vicious Souls, and a sense of good fortune arose in his heart.
If not for the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation," he didn't know what price he would have to pay to go deep into the "Stone-Transformation Forest."
Although his cultivation had greatly increased now, facing tens of thousands of Vicious Souls, Li Yan's scalp also went numb. The first time, after rushing in for two li, he had no choice but to use the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" for defense. But the effect afterward made him extremely excited.
Those Vicious Souls that crashed into the formation were killed in droves by the restrictions that emanated from it. But the Vicious Souls here seemed to have no fear of the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" and continued to attack relentlessly.
This challenged the dignity of the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant as the formation spirit. It began to control the formation on its own, using even greater power to continuously slaughter the Vicious Souls. But in this way, its soul power consumption increased dramatically.
Helpless, Li Yan looked at the magma in the sky. He had no choice but to fly into the magma above to replenish the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant's soul power after a period of time.
But after doing this twice, Li Yan discovered with some helplessness that the magma sky, which seemed very low, took him at least a day for a round trip. And this didn't even include the recovery time for the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant.
In this way, it would take him four days to make a trip into the "Stone-Transformation Forest," and the longest they could stay in the forest was no more than two hours, a feeling of putting the cart before the horse.
But something that happened one day changed the situation. Faced with the fearless attacks of the Vicious Souls, the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant was very annoyed. They were all souls, but it had a noble bloodline. These lowly things actually had no fear.
So, in its anger that day, it actually swallowed a Vicious Soul in one gulp. But after swallowing it, it discovered that the soul power it had just consumed had actually recovered a little.
Li Yan, for his part, was constantly releasing his Divine Sense within the formation, searching everywhere for the "Crimson Mother Essence." The Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant's abnormality naturally did not escape his Divine Sense.
After he asked about the situation, he had the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant try swallowing another Vicious Soul. But this time, the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant was unwilling, no matter what.
Because the taste of that Vicious Soul was too disgusting. After swallowing one in anger just now, its mouth had been filled with a hundred mixed flavors, making it very uncomfortable.
Li Yan didn't care about that. So he ordered the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant to swallow again. Helpless, the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant had no choice but to pick up a small one with a bitter face and swallow it. Immediately, its soul power really did recover a little.
Li Yan couldn't help but be pleasantly surprised. After a thought, he understood the reason. The Vicious Souls here were all fire-type Vicious Souls. For them to be able to form souls, one could imagine how much fire-type essence they contained.
And they themselves were souls. For the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant, which was also a soul body, they were naturally a great supplement.
Next, Li Yan educated the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant with reason and emotion, talking about "good medicine is bitter to the taste," "remarkable effects," and "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for advancement," and so on.
In the end, he really did manage to move the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant. Especially after it had swallowed a dozen or so Vicious Souls, the unprecedented recovery speed of its soul made it begin to feel that it was worth it.
As the number of Vicious Souls it swallowed increased, its Divine Soul, which had not progressed for a long time, actually began to advance, slowly breaking through to the mid-stage of the second rank. In the end, the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant had long forgotten the disgusting taste of the Vicious Souls and became more and more excited.
Its excitement and the growth of its strength also drove the power of the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" to increase. This allowed Li Yan to move and search in the "Stone-Transformation Forest" all day long.
But the effect of the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant swallowing Vicious Souls was ultimately limited. When it reached the peak of the mid-stage of the second rank, the Vicious Souls could no longer bring it the possibility of advancement.
But at this time, the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant had already gotten used to the taste of Vicious Souls. So, even just to maintain the operation of the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation," it swallowed a large number of Vicious Souls without any scruples. After twenty days of this, Li Yan actually managed to smoothly find a piece of "Crimson Mother Essence" of sufficient size.
This piece of "Crimson Mother Essence," even without the one he had gotten from the Blood Leaf Adept, was enough for Li Yan to use for refining magical treasures.
"To think it would be so smooth. It's time to leave!" A sharp glint flashed in Li Yan's eyes as he thought about his next plan.
Now that the "Crimson Mother Essence" was in hand, Li Yan looked at the Vicious Souls outside the great formation, which were still ferocious and fearless of death, and hesitated. He wanted to capture a portion of them, seal them, and carry them with him, in the hope of being able to supplement the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant's Divine Soul in the future.
But thinking of the seal on the Vicious Souls outside the Northern Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda, and the two Golden Core cultivators who guarded it year-round, he couldn't be sure if he could really hide it from their detection.
Apart from heavenly materials and earthly treasures, any living thing here, stained with the aura of a Vicious Soul, would be killed by the one-way seal of the Northern Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda.
It might even treat the person carrying them as a Vicious Soul after Body Seizure and activate the formation to kill them without mercy. And if the Jingtu Sect disciples guarding the tower discovered it, they would also kill on the spot.
Both of these were things Li Yan could not afford, especially the former. Let alone him, probably even a Nascent Soul cultivator would not dare to challenge the guardian formation of the Northern Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda.
But looking at the fire-type Vicious Souls outside the great formation, Li Yan knew that if he missed this opportunity, it would be difficult to enter here again.
After thinking it over and over again, Li Yan finally chose to believe in the methods of his own sect. This was, of course, not the Malevolent Spirit Sect, but the Five Immortal Sects.
True Lord Qianchong, a terrifying existence at the Body Integration stage, a supreme being who could destroy all the cultivators in the entire mortal realm with a wave of his hand. The spatial magical treasure he refined was probably something that even the original master of the Northern Abyss Demon-Suppressing Pagoda would have to look up to.
What's more, there were Snow Mosquitos in his "Earth-Spot" space. He had originally planned to take some out.
Having made his decision, Li Yan no longer hesitated. He began to use the "Great Dragon-Elephant Formation" to hunt a large number of Vicious Souls. After capturing one, he would directly seal it and throw it into the "Earth-Spot" space. This left the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant, which had been on a killing spree, staring dumbfounded and astonished.
It saw Li Yan capture a Vicious Soul, and with just a flash of spiritual light in his hand, that Vicious Soul would lose its aura. No matter how it tried to detect it, it couldn't find the Vicious Soul at all.
So, it simply stopped and carefully observed Li Yan's actions. Li Yan didn't care at all about the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant's observation.
The existence of the "Earth-Spot" was an impossible thing in this world. If not for the worry that people would find it too strange for him to store and retrieve things, he wouldn't even need to hang a Storage Pouch on his waist for cover.
With the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant's knowledge, even if it watched for a hundred or a thousand years, it wouldn't be able to see through it. It would only know that Li Yan had another universe on his person. But the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant had already acknowledged him as its master. Li Yan knew everything it was thinking, so naturally, there was no need to hide it anymore.
After observing for a full half an incense stick's time, and seeing that Li Yan didn't even have the interest to glance at it and was still capturing Vicious Souls on his own, the Purple Divine Dragon-Elephant couldn't hold back anymore. It could only fix its puzzled gaze on the Storage Pouch at Li Yan's waist.
'That Storage Pouch can only be considered a better one. Its rank is not too high. Living beings cannot enter, and even if souls could be stored, it couldn't hold so many.'
Thinking of this, it finally just dived headfirst into the Storage Pouch at Li Yan's waist, and then flew out again with a look of bewilderment.
It felt more and more that Li Yan's methods and origins were incredible. But it also knew that Li Yan must have a spatial magical treasure of great divine arts.
It had followed Li Yan for some time. Of course, it knew that if Li Yan wanted to tell it, he would have told it long ago. The fact that he hadn't put it away now was already a sign of his trust. Naturally, it was impossible to press further.
Half a day later, Li Yan shot up into the sky from the "Stone-Transformation Forest," leaving behind the Vicious Souls, which were now beginning to show fear in their eyes, letting out unwilling roars at him, but no longer daring to chase out of the stone forest by even half a step.
Li Yan, of course, had no intention of continuing to explore here. Instead, he sped along the path he had come from in the back garden.
...
Looking at the familiar restrictive power emanating from the formation in the pavilion, which completely concealed the entire pavilion and made Duan Weiran's figure invisible, Li Yan smiled slightly, and then his figure disappeared from the spot.
On his way through the back garden, apart from killing a Pseudo-Core cultivator who wanted to hunt him, he had whizzed past the pavilions where cultivators were cultivating.
Another day later, Li Yan's figure appeared outside the mountain of the "Flame Palace." Looking at the erupting magma here, and those unknown monsters with large heads and thin tails.
Li Yan always had a feeling that he had seen this kind of monster with a large head and a thin tail somewhere before, but he just couldn't remember it for a moment. No matter how he searched all the records and jade slips he had seen in his memory, he came up with nothing. He could only shake his head, and then his figure blurred and disappeared again.
Half a month later, looking at the ice house glittering in the sunlight before him, and feeling the bone-chilling wind between heaven and earth, Li Yan closed his eyes and released his Divine Sense. In an instant, his powerful Divine Sense covered the hundred-li glacier. After feeling that there was no one following him, a smile appeared at the corner of Li Yan's mouth. He had finally returned to the exit of the first level.