“Senior Skull was indeed not lying. These small cauldrons truly are keys to the true Medicine King Cauldron!”
When Xiao Heng shared this discovery with Su Xiaomei, her face lit up with joy.
“Nice! If we follow the guidance, we should find it soon enough.”
The three exchanged glances, then pressed close to the walls of the abyss, keeping a low profile as they descended into the depths of the Cangwu Abyss.
After descending about two hundred zhang, the scenery within the chasm began to differ drastically from the surface.
Thanks to the perpetual, unyielding mist above, the surroundings grew dimmer the lower they went.
The cliff walls were no longer bare rock but hosted a menagerie of bizarre, twisted plants. [1]
There were glowing willow-thin tendrils, pines that mimicked stone to ambush prey.
There were even withered, blackened trees that coiled like giant serpents, lying in wait to lash out at any creature that drew near.
Coexisting with these flora were the exotic beasts mentioned in the jade slip—creatures to be wary of.
Most of these beasts were pitch-black, nearly invisible to the naked eye in the abyss’s murky gloom.
Their forms were grotesque and varied wildly, utterly unlike any surface-dwelling life.
They didn’t seem to have evolved naturally, but rather as if fragments of different creatures had been forcibly fused together.
Worms that split down the middle to gape and feed.
Grotesque apes with heads retracted into their bellies.
Bizarre birds whose wings were made of countless writhing, slender worms...
It was a host of aberrations that chilled the blood to behold.
Moreover, a mysterious force that suppressed the range of a cultivator’s divine sense seemed to pervade this abyss, growing increasingly pronounced the deeper they descended.
During their descent, these aberrant creatures would emerge without warning from crevices in the cliff face or from the empty void at the chasm’s heart.
They attacked in swarms, as if harboring some deep-seated blood feud against outsiders. Their assaults only ceased when they were utterly destroyed.
Fortunately, while numerous, these native creatures of the abyss possessed offensive power only equivalent to the late-stage Qi Refinement realm.
For Su Xiaomei’s party, whose weakest member was at the Golden Core realm, they posed little threat.
The journey was tense but uneventful. After half a day, they finally neared a massive boundary stele thrust horizontally from the cliff wall.
Upon it, two large, glaring words written in luminous red script read: “Thirty Thousand.”
It was visible from a great distance.
Above this stele, the cliff face had been hollowed out almost entirely. Built within was a brilliantly lit city, suspended over the abyss.
“This is the first waypoint of the Cangwu Abyss, Lincang City.
“Further down, the abyss grows increasingly perilous. So, having a place here to rest and resupply is quite necessary.”
Xiao Heng watched the ceaseless flow of cultivators coming and going, his vigilance rising.
Most cultivators who came to explore the Cangwu Abyss were not to be trifled with. Their purposes for being here, aside from gathering the abyss’s valuable local specialties, largely revolved around that meteorite that fell from the heavens years ago.
In recent years, theories about the meteorite’s true nature abounded. That it was the true Medicine King Cauldron, which breached the world’s boundaries in ancient times, was just one of the more widespread conjectures.
Regardless, anything that could instill such dread in the hearts of every cultivator who witnessed it must be extraordinary indeed.
As the saying goes, men die for wealth.
Thus, it was easy to understand why cultivators pursued it with such relentless diligence.
“Let’s go.”
Xiao Heng and the others did not enter Lincang City. They flew straight past the boundary stele, descending to the second layer thirty thousand zhang beneath the surface.
The moment they crossed the boundary stele, it was as if they had passed through an invisible barrier.
A strange sensation washed over Xiao Heng.
My strength has diminished somewhat, just as the rumors said.
A weight settled in his heart, and he sent a mental transmission to Su Xiaomei and Zhang Haobo.
"Can you sense it? The presence of the Immortal-Suppressing Force?"
Moments later, both Su Xiaomei and Zhang Haobo responded affirmatively.
"Yes, indeed a trace of it. But for now, the effect isn't too severe."
Upon receiving their answers, Xiao Heng felt a wave of helplessness.
It seems my cultivation is simply weaker after all.
He could only hope that the location of the Medicine King's True Cauldron lay within the maximum depth he could endure.
The Immortal-Suppressing Force was the collective term cultivators used for the inexplicable power enveloping the Cangwu Abyss.
Its primary manifestation was the progressive weakening of a cultivator's strength the deeper they ventured into the abyss.
Within the first layer, from the surface down to thirty thousand zhang, the effect was not yet obvious. It only interfered with the range of one's divine sense.
But upon entering the second layer, the effect became immediately palpable.
Those at the mid-stage Qi Refinement realm or below would become no different from mortals the moment they entered.
Unable to mobilize their internal spiritual power, they would lose the ability to fly.
They had only one fate: to fall endlessly toward the bottomless depths, helplessly becoming food for the aberrant creatures along the way.
This meant that only cultivators at the late-stage Qi Refinement realm or above could survive in the second layer of the Cangwu Abyss.
In reality, however, the deeper one descended into the abyss, the stronger its creatures became, while the cultivators’ own strength was steadily suppressed. Exploration thus grew increasingly perilous with every layer.
Xiao Heng and his two companions advanced cautiously into the second layer, the Forest of Whispering Spirits.
Trees rooted deep within the abyssal cliff walls stretched their branches wantonly toward the hollow heart of the Cangwu Abyss, defying all logic. Together, they formed a primeval forest that extended beyond sight, occupying a vertical span of fifty thousand zhang.
Beyond the growing number and strength of aberrant creatures, the intermittent murmurs and whispers drifting from the forest are even more lethal. These murmurs induced hallucinations, eroding a cultivator’s sanity. Those with weak wills would drift toward the center forest as if their souls had been stolen, never to return.
Xiao Heng and his companions were outstanding prodigies, their wills equally formidable. Combined with their solid cultivation, they managed to traverse the Forest of Whispering Spirits in roughly a day.
They descended to a depth of eighty thousand zhang.
Here, the dense forest abruptly thinned. A different light source seemed to shine from below, and their vision suddenly cleared.
Unlike the previous layer, whose boundary was marked by a horizontal stele, the threshold here was defined by a gigantic eyeball growing directly from the cliff wall.
At its center, where the pupil should have been, two enormous blood-red characters had replaced it:
Eighty Thousand.
The eyeball seemed to be alive, rotating and peering into the abyss.
Sensing their arrival, it instantly fixed its gaze upon Xiao Heng’s group. An overwhelming pressure swept over them, causing Xiao Heng’s body to tense instantly.
Fortunately, the great eye merely glanced at them before shifting its attention elsewhere, as if they were of no further interest.
“Hah...”
Xiao Heng finally exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“The second waypoint of the Cangwu Abyss, City of the Great Eye.”
1. Instant Made In Abyss vibes ☜