This small secret chamber was completely embedded inside the hard and heavy mountain. The two stone doors were of a grayish-black color that was indistinguishable from the cliff face. Their stone surfaces were covered in fine, mottled moss, and the stone patterns merged seamlessly with the surrounding rocks, leaving almost no trace of human excavation.
When an ordinary person flew over the canyon and glanced down at the messy ruins below, they would never imagine that such a place was hidden deep within the cliffs.
If not for Du Qi's eyes being wise enough—scratch that, sharp enough—to catch that unique, narrow, pipe-like ventilation shaft venting outward from high up the cliff face, this deeply hidden secret chamber would likely have been buried forever in these ruins, never to be discovered by anyone.
Du Qi hovered in midair, his gaze firmly locked onto that unremarkable stone door. He subconsciously rubbed his palms together. Beneath the heavy gloom that had been weighing on his chest all this way, a hint of hard-to-conceal excitement slowly rose in his eyes.
Haven be his witness, he had truly suffered too much.
He couldn't even count anymore how many suffocating debts this mess of a Central Continent Alliance had accumulated. The piles of compensation, provisions expenses, cultivator salaries, and funds for repairing the damaged buildings of various sects stacked up like a heavy mountain, pressing down on his shoulders at every moment.
Every day he opened his eyes, what awaited him was always a mountain of requests for money, a bunch of buck-passing and passive-aggressive elders, and on top of that, a Little Ancestor who caused trouble wherever she went.
Come to think of it, letting Du Yi off because of a soft heart last time turned out to be a brilliant move in hindsight.
Du Yi was ruthless and deep-scheming. The cunning gentry clans of the Central Continent each harbored their own designs, repeatedly testing the Central Continent Alliance's bottom line. It was entirely thanks to Du Yi taking action that they were held back. Not only did he help Du Qi block the open and hidden attacks from various forces, but he also managed to squeeze a massive amount of spirit stones and silver out of these stingy clans, slightly filling a portion of the deficit.
Du Qi sneered in his heart. His release of Du Yi was never out of the goodness of his heart. He had long placed countless layers of restrictions on Du Yi, pinning him down with strict limits.
If that fellow dared to harbor any treacherous thoughts or play tricks behind his back, hehe, Du Qi had plenty of ways to let Du Yi personally experience what it meant to beg for life but be unable to live, and beg for death but be unable to die.
On the other side, the old man far away in the South-Central Du Clan was still endlessly courting death in various ways. Letters were sent out one after another in a continuous stream, beating around the bush, with every line probing for news of him, trying every means to get Du Yi to return to the Du Clan so they could make full use of him...
Fortunately, everything was under Du Qi's surveillance. Du Yi did not dare to hide a single thing, obediently handing over every letter he received.
Du Qi flipped through those letters one by one. A faint smile played on his lips, but it was a shallow, cold smile without a hint of warmth, like a thin layer of ice.
“It seems my dear father has already planned everything out, preparing to make full use of me and squeeze out every last drop of value from my body...”
Du Qi calculated silently in his heart. With his current cultivation, it wouldn't be difficult at all to travel to the South-Central Du Clan and back. He also truly needed a legitimate, open reason to step back through the Du Clan's gates.
His mother's memorial tablet was still placed in the Du Clan's ancestral hall, standing lonely among the tablets of the Du Clan's ancestors.
After so many years, the altar in front of the tablet was probably covered in a thick layer of dust. Furthermore, his mother's ashes had always been held by the Du Clan as leverage to control him.
Sooner or later, he would take them all away and place them in a spot where no one could ever disturb them again.
Only, now was not the time to set out.
Currently, storms were brewing everywhere; it was a tumultuous time. Su Li was running around all day, causing trouble wherever she went, and she could conjure up astronomical compensation demands out of thin air at any moment.
If he dared to leave this place for even half a day, the current administrative system, which was barely running, would definitely collapse entirely.
For two whole months, he had poured his heart and soul into gradually winning people over, taking calculated steps to annex the weak. He was using the Beast Taming Sect to slowly transform the scattered Central Continent Alliance into a dictatorship under their absolute control.
Once he left, the path he had painstakingly paved and the slight advantage he had accumulated would instantly crumble.
Thinking of this, Du Qi actually had a rare thought of admiring Zixiao.
To be honest, everyone has their strengths, and this saying was absolutely true. That person, Zixiao, was able to manage such a massive sect properly while cultivating bitterly day and night, without letting endless messes like this blow up every other day. He could truly be considered a talent.
A true talent indeed...
His thoughts drifted away from Medicine Peak and naturally landed on Bai Cen.
Du Qi had heard more or less about Bai Cen's famous deeds. This person had reached a point of near-insane obsession with the Dao of elixirs, to the extent of refining the innate talents of living people into pills.
Anyone who heard of his deeds couldn't help but sigh and call him a ruthless character.
Only, the heart he used to refine that legendary Glass Sword Pill seemed to belong to none other than Shiyi's lover.
Speaking of which, Shiyi really picked up an extraordinary wife. The Sword Heir of the Azure Cloud Sword Sect, who achieved Nascent Soul at the age of twenty-six, possessing talent that surpassed an entire era. What a pity.
He wondered if Shiyi was still alive today.
Du Qi looked up, his gaze sweeping across the few surviving trees on both sides of the canyon that had not suffered in the great battle.
As the season grew late, the emerald green leaves were already showing mottled patches of yellowing colors. If it were this time of year in the Northern Border, the leaves across the mountains would probably have been dyed a brilliant golden yellow, dancing in the autumn wind.
Unknowingly, it had been so long since their group parted ways. He would often find himself wondering how his old friends scattered abroad were doing, and where they were wandering.
If his power became stable enough in the future, the first thing he would do would be to find a way to remove the wanted warrants hanging over their heads.
That way, they wouldn't have to hide anymore and could openly step into the territory of the Central Continent, without having to constantly watch out for pursuers.
Only at this moment, with power tangibly in his hands, did Du Qi truly savor the taste of power.
If he held power in his hands but acted timidly in everything, refusing to use it at all, wouldn't he have taken on all these frustrating troubles and seized this power for nothing?
With various thoughts revolving in his mind, Du Qi slowly reined in his wandering thoughts. He descended and landed firmly on the rocky ground in front of the secret chamber's stone door.
The two incredibly heavy stone doors were tightly shut together, the gap between them narrow and seamless. Originally, this crucial secret chamber would have had guards stationed day and night.
Unfortunately, they encountered some force majeure. For instance, a certain guy who ascended to immortality cleaved the entire Medicine Peak with a single sword strike, opening the mountain gates wide.
Those two poor souls who were originally guarding this place remained missing to this day. No one knew whether they were dead or alive; they had vanished without a trace in that earth-shattering chaos.
Du Qi stared at the two heavy stone doors in front of him, and the slight joy that had just arisen instantly stalled.
A very real, unavoidable problem lay before him.
The key to open the stone door of this secret chamber was kept in Bai Cen's personal storage bag. And during the great chaos, that storage bag of Bai Cen's had been directly swallowed by Zixiao.
So...
How on earth was he supposed to get in now?
Rate on N.U.
