Chapter 101: The Demon King's Treasure

The Heart of the Barrier Sea was bizarre!

Unlike elsewhere, there was no clear boundary marker between the second layer of the Barrier Sea and the Heart of the Barrier Sea. There was plainly no obstacle ahead, and the ground beneath was still the same primeval forest as ever. Yet as Feng Ke'er flew through the air, suddenly—"Bam!"—it felt as though she had slammed into an invisible wall. Stars burst before her eyes, and caught completely off guard, she plummeted straight down to the ground. After a bout of dizziness and disorientation finally subsided, she caught her breath and discovered that she had fallen into a vast expanse of sandy ground. Gazing all around, she saw that a faint mist permeated everything, making it impossible to tell whether it was day or night.

At first, Feng Ke'er was genuinely delighted—she thought that Lord Tongtian had summoned her again.

But soon, she realized something was off. First, the mist here was of the ethereal, drifting sort, quite unlike the previous few times. Second, the sandy ground was wrong as well. And the most unlike thing of all: behind the mist, Lord Tongtian's familiar voice did not reach her right away. Especially—she called out "Lord" several times in a row, and no one answered. That was utterly unlike that old geezer's style.

Could this truly be the Heart of the Barrier Sea? At this thought, Feng Ke'er's heart rose into her throat. She quietly drew the Green Lotus Sword, held it horizontally before her chest, and went on full alert. At the same time, she released her divine sense in all directions.

Unexpectedly, her divine sense—the thing she was most proud of—was utterly useless here. After she sent it out, it detected nothing at all.

What a powerful restriction! In all her years of cultivation, this was the first time Feng Ke'er had encountered such a situation.

She took several deep breaths in a row, forcing herself to calm down.

Yes, this should be the legendary Heart of the Barrier Sea. It was said that the Demon King had set up ten layers of restrictions here. And restrictions were capable of limiting divine sense, spiritual power, and so on.

Still, she hadn't expected the restrictions here to be so formidable that they completely suppressed her divine sense. It seemed that the "True Immortal's Tomb" was no bluff.

With a thought, Feng Ke'er tried circulating her qi and breathed a sigh of relief: thankfully, the situation wasn't the worst possible—her spiritual power was still intact. This layer of restriction merely limited divine sense.

With no divine sense to blaze the trail, she could only rely on her eyes to survey the four directions and her ears to listen to all sides. Fortunately, her eyesight and hearing were both quite good. Yet as far as the eye could see, the mist-shrouded sand seemed to stretch on without end. And everywhere was the same sand, the same mist.

Since everything was the same, then let fate decide! After a long spell of deep thought, Feng Ke'er still found no solution. In the end, with a stroke of lucky hope, she decided to simply keep walking forward. It was said that ever since the Demon King had left, quite a few cultivators and demon cultivators had come here to dig for treasures. Perhaps if she was lucky, she might run into one or two of them.

Still, for the first time in over two hundred years, she felt a bit of regret. Restrictions and the like had always been a weak point for her, since she had basically taught herself cultivation. In the cultivation world, restrictions were an esoteric art. Among the various sects and cultivation clans, ordinary disciples only learned the most basic knowledge. The true essence had always been passed down one-on-one from master to disciple in person. As for her sources of knowledge—first was the Tongtian Scripture, second was the resources copied from the Qingyun Sect, and third was the groping and accumulation during her battles with monsters. So perhaps in many aspects she was in no way inferior to the great powers of the Void Transformation stage. But when it came to restrictions, she truly didn't know much—just the most superficial scraps recorded from the Qingyun Sect.

In short, it was all the fault of her own arrogance.

On and on she walked, for who knew how long. Not to mention a human shadow—she hadn't even seen half a ghost shadow. Yet the scene before her remained unchanged, as though this sandy ground would never come to an end. At last, Feng Ke'er began to panic. She really was trapped by the restriction. If she couldn't break it, she would never get out of here in her lifetime!

She must not panic! Forcing herself to calm down, Feng Ke'er simply put away the Green Lotus Sword and sat cross-legged on the sandy ground. First, she practiced the Heart-Cleansing Mantra from the first layer all the way through the third. This was her proven experience: when panicked, doing the thing she knew best was the most effective way to steady her mind.

Sure enough, her chaotic thoughts gradually returned to calm.

Then, because her divine sense was unusable, Feng Ke'er could only strain to search her memory for knowledge about restrictions.

The Tongtian Scripture didn't so much as mention the word "restriction." But at last, she managed to dredge up a fragment of memory from somewhere—among that pile of materials from the Qingyun Sect, it was mentioned that: under normal circumstances, restrictions were colorless and formless. However, when a restriction was attacked, it would reveal its shape.

That sentence reminded her. Even if she couldn't break it, she still needed to know what kind of thing was imprisoning her!

"Ice Cone Art!" Feng Ke'er leaped up and sent volley after volley of ice cones hurtling in all directions—"Bam, bam, bam!"

And then, a miracle appeared: around her, a spiritual energy barrier materialized. It was as though she were trapped inside a giant soap bubble.

Looking closer, she noticed dozens of streaks of white light rapidly darting across the surface of the barrier.

What were those things? With a thought, Feng Ke'er pressed her middle and index fingers to the center of her brow, concentrated her focus, and used the method of the Great God Pangu to examine those streaks of white light.

Ah, so they were exactly eighty-one streams of metal-element spiritual energy. Moreover, she discovered that the movement trajectories of these metal-element spiritual energies were fixed.

A flash of insight struck her. Feng Ke'er memorized the trajectory of each stream, then mobilized eighty-one golden cores from within her body, focusing hard on simulating their movements.

Very soon, there was a delightful surprise. The experimental results proved her guess correct. The eighty-one streams of metal-element spiritual energy, along with their movement trajectories, were the crux of the restriction. They were like a heavenly net that firmly bound her. And at the nodes where these energy trajectories intersected lay the net's weakest points.

All she had to do was shatter those nodes simultaneously, and she could break the restriction.

This, truly, was not difficult at all!

"Ten Thousand Cones Art!"

After the dazzling rain of ice cones, the soap bubble was successfully punctured. The next second, the sandy ground vanished, and the forest returned—the first layer of restriction, broken!

"Whoosh!"—wind stirred behind her head.

A hidden weapon! Feng Ke'er spun around and caught it backhandedly. It turned out to be a millstone-sized chunk of iron essence!

Hehe, the rumors were right—passing a trial really did come with a reward.

Iron essence was an important material for refining treasure-grade weapons. Feng Ke'er knew: a hundred catties of iron ore yielded one catty of pure iron; another hundred catties of pure iron could be tempered into one catty of fine iron; and a hundred catties of fine iron, when purified, yielded one catty of iron essence. So even fine iron was already rare, let alone iron essence.

She weighed the iron essence in her hand and broke into a delighted grin: what a treasure—it weighed at least five hundred catties. Enough to refine over a thousand flying swords at the low-grade treasure level. Hehe, the Demon King certainly had a generous hand!

But for Feng Ke'er, the greatest significance of this trial was not obtaining this chunk of iron essence, but rather that she had completely mastered that restriction and regained her confidence in victory.

After a brief period of tidying up, Feng Ke'er continued advancing toward the central zone.

After traveling roughly ten thousand li, she encountered the second layer of restriction.

This time, what was restricted was her spiritual power.

But that didn't matter. Because Feng Ke'er's divine sense was also capable of attack—as early as her days at the Qingyun Sect, she had tried using her divine sense to condense sword qi. After practicing for over two hundred years, she had achieved considerable success. That move from Lihaitian, "Ten Thousand Trees of Pear Blossoms," she could now completely imitate with sword qi.

After breaking the second layer of restriction, Feng Ke'er received a jade slip and a pair of Flowing Cloud women's boots. Those boots were a low-grade treasure. They were far superior to the pair of animal-hide boots she had refined herself and wore on her feet. She immediately changed into the new boots to try them out—not only did they fit perfectly, as if tailor-made for her, but wearing them made her Windborne Art even faster.

And that jade slip was even more of a treasure. It contained a detailed introduction to a hundred sets of advanced formations. Defensive formations, killing formations, maze formations... all kinds were available. And formations were something Feng Ke'er actually knew very little about. This was exactly what she needed.

So, next, Feng Ke'er wasn't in a hurry to challenge the third restriction. Instead, she paused, not moving on until she had completely digested and thoroughly mastered those first two restrictions and the hundred sets of formations.

As it turned out, entering the third restriction proved that her choice had been wise—the third restriction was actually a combination of "restriction" and "formation."

Feng Ke'er seemed to have stepped into a massive labyrinth. Within the labyrinth, both her divine sense and her spiritual power were entirely sealed.

And now, she was at her wit's end. With no divine sense and no spiritual power, she couldn't make the restriction reveal its form. She had no choice but to obediently feel her way along the walls through the labyrinth.

Fortunately, she had just crammed a wealth of formation knowledge. So this labyrinth didn't manage to stump her.

After she walked out of the labyrinth, the illusions dissolved, the restriction was lifted, and it too was broken.

This time, the reward was even richer. With a clatter, more than a dozen treasures dropped from an ancient tree. Half of them were jade slips; the rest consisted of three mid-grade treasure items—a Daoist robe, a long sword, and a flying boat—along with various heavenly materials and earthly treasures.

By studying those jade slips, Feng Ke'er learned quite a few new formulas for alchemy and artifact forging.

Same rule as before: only after she had fully mastered the knowledge in the jade slips did she continue on her way. Well, it seemed she had turned this journey into a study trip.

And so it went—walking, stopping, breaking restrictions, learning—and over a hundred years slipped by without her even noticing.

Diligence pays off. Feng Ke'er successfully unraveled the tenth restriction.

On the final occasion, she received the Demon King's entire treasure hoard.

Amidst the mountain of treasures, Feng Ke'er discovered an earth-element crystal. This was a precious treasure for purifying and transforming spiritual energy. For earth-attributed demon cultivators, or cultivators with earth spiritual roots, it was a rare and invaluable treasure for refining one's spiritual roots. It seemed the Demon King probably wasn't of the earth attribute—otherwise, such a treasure wouldn't have been left lying here.

Feng Ke'er spent over a year completely refining that earth-element crystal. By then, her body already contained three pure types of spiritual energy: ice spiritual energy, fire spiritual energy, and earth spiritual energy.

With the addition of pure earth spiritual energy, the space Feng Ke'er created with her spatial arts reached a new level: by combining the three types of spiritual energy, her space was no longer a blue, glittering ice-sculpture world, but a brownish-red sand chamber.

Furthermore, after countless experiments, Feng Ke'er discovered that the flow of time within the space was directly proportional to the concentration of spiritual energy within it. In other words, the denser the spiritual energy inside, the faster time passed.

The Demon King's treasure hoard included tens of thousands of high-grade spirit stones. How could her storage pouch possibly hold that many? Feng Ke'er, with great reluctance, embedded all the rest into her space. As a result, the spiritual energy concentration soared straight upward. In the end, after the concentration stabilized, she tested it and found that compared to the outside, the ratio was ten to one. That is to say, one day outside meant ten days had already passed inside the space.

Hmm, the space was an excellent place to refine spiritual energy. Beyond that, it was also an ultra-large-capacity warehouse. The Demon King's entire treasure hoard was stored within it. More importantly, its safety performance was superb.

Just as she was leaving the Heart of the Barrier Sea loaded with treasures, deep in the second layer of the Barrier Sea, True Lord Tianlong stretched lazily and instructed his disciple: "Pack up. We're going back to Kunlun Mountain." At last, the guardian mission was successfully concluded, and he could return to report to his master.

Feng Fuxi was astonished: "Master, didn't you say you'd only take me to Kunlun Mountain after this disciple advanced to the Ascension stage?" He had originally thought that his master brought him to the Barrier Sea also for the Demon King's treasure. But from start to finish, his master had only let him train in the second layer of the Barrier Sea, never saying a single word about the True Immortal's Tomb. It was truly strange.

True Lord Tianlong rolled a strange glance at him and cursed with irritation: "Who told you to be so dense, only reaching the eighth layer of Void Transformation even now?"

This scolding was a bit unreasonable. In the mortal realm, one could count the Void Transformation cultivators aged one hundred and thirty on one finger—and only this one present. But the dragon in question, thinking of how this very person was the reincarnation of a distinguished Golden Immortal, draped in immortal artifacts, and personally taught by his own Great Demon King, felt he hadn't scolded him one bit wrongly.

Hmph! If it were this old dragon, one hundred and thirty years would have been enough to recover his full cultivation!

With a curl of his lip, the master tossed aside his "dense" disciple and stalked off, leaving him behind.

(To be continued)

Tongtian Scripture 101 - Chapter 101: The Demon King's Treasure — Update complete!