Chapter 111: Chapter 109: Zhen Trigram: The Lost World

ROAR—

The dragon’s roar was vast and distant. In a flash, Song Ciwan’s hands flew, and she snatched the three cast coins she had nearly thrown away back into her palm.

The moment the cast coins landed back in her palm, the Black Dragon Head vanished once more.

Song Ciwan finally let out a soft breath. For some reason, though the dragon’s roar had faded, a heart-pounding resonance still lingered around her Divine Soul.

’There are truly too many secrets in this Illusory Nether City.’

’I wonder what that so-called "lost era" or "previous epoch" really is?’

’In any case, it couldn’t be the former Yun Country dynasty.’

’The Yun Country was a dynasty from a thousand years ago. Even though it was a former dynasty, if we’re talking about a "previous epoch," the Yun Country probably... doesn’t qualify, does it?’

Song Ciwan fiddled with the three cast coins in her palm. Various thoughts flowed through her mind, but she had no answers to any of her questions.

Of course, it wasn’t as if she absolutely needed an answer.

After calming her emotions, Song Ciwan pushed all her doubts to the back of her mind.

She cupped the three cast coins in her hands and shook them, silently chanting Xie Yunxiang’s name in her mind.

According to the Heaven and Earth Scale’s explanation, the Ancestral Dragon Coins possessed the power of Divination. Song Ciwan didn’t actually know any Divination Techniques; at most, she understood the basic rules of Liuyao Divination.

But she decided to give it a try, to see if the Ancestral Dragon Coins’ innate Divination ability alone could help her find Xie Yunxiang’s location.

The three cast coins rattled in Song Ciwan’s palms for a moment. Then, she scattered them on the ground before her.

In the gray mist, two of the cast coins landed with the character side up, and one landed with the pattern side up.

With the character side representing Yang and the pattern side representing Yin, the result was two Yang and one Yin. In Liuyao Divination, this first reading was Lesser Yang.

Song Ciwan gathered the three cast coins, placed them back in her palm, and shook them again. A moment later, the coins scattered on the ground. The hexagram this time was Lesser Yin.

...

After several more repetitions and repeated Divinations, taking the mean result, she finally obtained the Zhen hexagram.

With her half-baked level of skill, Song Ciwan could only determine that the Zhen hexagram pointed due east. As for anything else—like good or ill fortune, or the hexagram’s specific judgment—she didn’t even consider it.

Song Ciwan kept the three cast coins she had used for the Divination with her and left the remaining seven stored in the Heaven and Earth Scale. She then followed the mountain path, heading in the direction indicated by the Zhen hexagram.

The gray mist pervaded the mountain path. If not for the guidance of the cast coins, Song Ciwan wouldn’t have been able to tell her directions at all.

Her visibility was limited to a radius of about fifty meters.

She walked for some distance as the mountain path grew steeper. Along the way, Song Ciwan encountered two more Wooden Men by the side of the path!

Unlike before, the three cast coins she carried in her robes vibrated slightly right before each encounter with the Wooden Men.

Song Ciwan was already on high alert, but with the warning from the Ancestral Dragon Coins, she became even more vigilant.

The Wooden Men by the path still stood in that same posture, gazing into the distance. The indistinct murmurs they made tugged at the heartstrings.

But Song Ciwan was no longer bewitched by these murmurs. Her mind was as clear as ice. Upon seeing the second Wooden Man, she formed a Finger Technique from a distance and shot out a flame.

Fire overcomes wood. The Wooden Man instantly burst into flames, and after burning to ash, it left behind a Primordial Longevity Pearl.

She had obtained this second Primordial Longevity Pearl with no effort at all!

Song Ciwan picked up the Primordial Longevity Pearl and stored it in the Storage Talisman she carried.

Soon, she encountered a third Wooden Man. This one was slightly different from the previous two. Judging by their physiques, the first two Wooden Men had been more feminine, while this third one was more masculine.

What they had in common was that, regardless of their apparent gender, their bone and muscle structure displayed a kind of perfection that transcended the mundane world.

The decaying old wood couldn’t conceal the superiority of their forms; the posture of each standing Wooden Man seemed to tell an ancient story.

"Ma-hsi-ku-ne-na-i-ya..."

"Xi Wu!"

"Xi Wu..."

The flames died down, and the murmurs faded from clear back to indistinct.

Song Ciwan obtained her third Primordial Longevity Pearl, but she didn’t feel particularly happy. On the contrary, a strange sense of melancholy lingered, impossible to shake off.

She composed herself and stored the third Primordial Longevity Pearl in her Vast Sea Grotto Heaven.

She continued east, and after rounding a bend, she suddenly saw a sunken world of mist appear before her.

It was a deep, misty valley with no end in sight!

From her high vantage point on the mountain, Song Ciwan looked down into the misty valley. There, she saw countless towering spires, one after another, piercing through the thick mist that blanketed the valley floor.

The glorious tops of those towers, with their bizarre styles, hooked eaves, and upturned corners, were connected by mirrored corridors and lit by dim fires. Alongside them were steel structures that seemed like something out of a science fiction story set among the stars. All of it was presented right before Song Ciwan’s eyes!

’Illusory Nether City... What kind of world is this, really?’

Standing on the mountain, Song Ciwan was left dumbstruck. An indescribable sense of shock struck her at that moment.

And just as Song Ciwan was rendered nearly speechless by the shocking corner of Illusory Nether City she had glimpsed through the mist, the thousands of other Cultivators who had entered this world were also having their own unique encounters.

Some had entered the city directly, the green leaves in their hands emitting a faint glow.

Others, like Song Ciwan, were stranded in the desolate mountains where, amid the rolling hills, there were always murmuring sounds and standing Wooden Men.

One Martial Artist, bewitched by the murmuring, walked right up to a Wooden Man, standing head to head, face to face, and body to body with it.

Then, his entire body leaned forward. The next moment, the Wooden Man before him seemed to turn into a watery mist that enveloped him completely!

No, to be more precise, he himself seemed to become a shadow, overlapping with and walking right into the Wooden Man’s body.

Once inside, the Martial Artist never came out again.

The Wooden Man remained standing by the path, silent and unmoving, looking ancient and resolute.

The only difference was that a green leaf fell from the Martial Artist’s body and spontaneously combusted into ash in mid-air. Meanwhile, the Wooden Man’s decaying body seemed to have gained a slight sheen.

Back on the mountain path, Song Ciwan performed another Divination.

This time, the direction indicated by the Ancestral Dragon Coins was precisely toward Illusory Nether City up ahead!

Song Ciwan immediately started down the mountain.

She executed her Lightweight Grasshopper Skill, her body as light as a swallow’s as she sped forward.

The thick gray mist receded on either side of her. The murmurs within the mist faded in and out, but Song Ciwan ignored them completely.

As long as a Wooden Man didn’t appear directly in her path, she didn’t go out of her way to provoke them.

She continued on like this for an unknown amount of time. Gradually, the gray mist began to thin, and the path beneath Song Ciwan’s feet started to level out.

The spires that pierced the gray mist, which she had previously looked down upon, now required her to tilt her head up just to see their lights shining high above the fog.

After another moment, a massive city wall appeared in the thinning gray mist!

At the city gate, row after row of City Guards, each standing three to five zhang tall and holding a giant pointed spear, stood there silently and expressionlessly.