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Chapter 454: Chapter 454: Two Paths

These people use the rare treasures of the Lotus Cloud Sect to refine jade pendants, while in another world, the jade pendants are referred to as the source of nano-living bodies...

What kind of connection exists here?

Chen Xuan felt something stir within him, but just as he tried to grasp this thought, it vanished like the moon reflected in water.

"Zzz... Hello, can you hear me?" Lin Qing’s voice suddenly called out from the walkie-talkie.

Though there was some interference, her voice remained clear and discernible.

"Yes, what’s wrong?" Chen Xuan replied.

"Hurry to the west living quarters, there’s something strange happening here!" Her tone was slightly urgent, "If I understood correctly, this area might be eroded!"

Erosion? How can that be?

Could there be infiltration points within the Lotus Cloud Sect?

Chen Xuan exchanged a glance with Shuyue, and in unison they said, "We’re on our way!"

...

After doubling back to the fragrant forest and heading west for a short while, they suddenly felt like they had entered a deep mountain. Here, the dome had risen to the height of the sky, with nine towering peaks arranged from near to far by height, and suspension bridges visible between the peaks. The mountains contained houses, water wheels, and fields... it was just like the pastoral scenery outside.

As expected of the Lotus Cloud Sect, they managed to recreate a range of mountains within the sect.

Solely by size, calling this a disciples’ living quarters feels inadequate—it might as well be a nature reserve.

"It’s called Nine Sons Peak. New disciples live on the first peak; the further you go, the higher the disciple’s rank. The last three are mainly for elders of the master-grandmaster rank," Shuyue briefly explained. "Magic is allowed here, hold my hand."

"Huh? Okay..."

As Chen Xuan took her hand, he immediately felt her grip tighten, then Shuyue formed a finger decision, shooting straight up into the sky!

In the blink of an eye, lush mountains spread out beneath their feet.

"No need for a Wind Riding Talisman?" he asked in surprise.

"There’s a cloud soaring array in operation here, enabling flight without consuming talismans," she explained. "Otherwise, everyone commuting daily on Nine Sons Peak would waste a lot of time."

So that’s it. This array is like free public transportation, but only for internal disciples, Chen Xuan thought. "Does higher rank mean faster flight speed too?"

"How did you know?" Shuyue asked curiously. "There are not only speed differences, but some features are accessible only upon promotion to certain positions, like invisibility, glowing robes, route guidance..."

"Just a guess." Chen Xuan twitched his lips, realizing that even cultivators could not escape comparison.

"Since Nine Sons Peak is this vast, why don’t you grow herbs here?" he asked, thinking of a new question.

"Growing good herbs depends on the abundance of spiritual qi," she shook her head and said, "Didn’t you notice? The sect is comprised of grotto heavens. What we see doesn’t equate to its true appearance, and the fragrant forest is the grotto heaven with the densest spiritual qi. As for Nine Sons Peak... it seems vast at first glance, but only a few places are suitable for cultivation."

Oh, that’s how it is!

No matter if it’s a room, hall, temple, or mountain range he sees, it’s all man-made? It could be as small as a single room or as grand as expansive lands... Chen Xuan couldn’t help but feel amazed, it truly had a taste of "a flower a world, a leaf a bodhi."

Cultivators of such strength deserved the title of True Immortal.

Yet, the stronger the Lotus Cloud Sect, the more eerie the current situation appeared.

They should have the ability to handle any unforeseen events, even doomsday-level calamities, yet immortals should never be at a loss. Chen Xuan could hardly imagine what kind of upheaval the sect had encountered to end up in such a lifeless state.

From above, they quickly spotted Lin Qing and Honglian—they were on the mountainside of the first peak.

According to Shuyue, this was also the only place ordinary disciples could go; the remaining eight peaks had prohibitions, and even she hadn’t set foot there.

Upon landing, Chen Xuan saw the "erosion zone" Lin Qing mentioned.

"Is this... two infiltration points?" he was greatly shocked.

He saw a huge deep well filled by a purplish-red erosion zone, with erosion continuously emerging from beneath and spreading in all directions. Unusually, the spaces flowing out weren’t outline-blurred like botanical garden mist, but rather resembled sticky, soft tentacles!

Honglian was trying to shoot these tentacles, but all bullets seemed to vanish into thin air without any response. It wasn’t surprising; erosion essentially meant world overlap, an infinite, endless entity, and ordinary firepower couldn’t make the slightest impact.

The erosion outside the deep well had a completely different form.

It was nearly pure white, with sharp edges, resembling irregular cracks or branches splitting from a tree trunk, abruptly scattered mid-air. Some larger branches were about a meter wide, while smaller ones were mere centimeters.

Some tentacle-like spaces intertwined with white branches, with some even piercing into them. As they stirred, ripples spread in the surrounding space, as if the two were fiercely fighting.

"Be careful, don’t touch those erosion zones!" Lin Qing cautioned. "We haven’t figured out the environment on the other side of the infiltration points."

Rashly crossing through an infiltration point was undeniably dangerous—over there could exist poisons, lethal radiation, extreme heat, or cold, and if an infiltration point appeared near a neutron star, while it couldn’t cross the erosion boundary and impact this world, reaching a hand inside would result in an instantaneously obliterating gravitational pull.

"Can infiltration points overlap?" Chen Xuan cautiously approached the two.

"It’s my first time seeing this too—records don’t mention such a case," Lin Qing said solemnly. "I wonder if the emptiness of the Lotus Cloud Sect is related to these erosions. Have you found anything on your end?"

"We discovered some corpses that don’t belong to the sect’s disciples... No, to be precise, they don’t belong to this era," Chen Xuan summarized their search findings. "These strange people seemed to have taken the treasures from the vault to refine jade pendants."

"Not of this era?" Lin Qing repeated in surprise, then arched her brow, "Then it makes sense—they probably came to the Lotus Cloud Sect through the erosion space!"

"The question is, where did Liu Shuyue’s hundreds of fellow sect members go? They couldn’t all have gone to another world, handing the Lotus Cloud Sect over to these alien visitors, could they?"

There were still many doubtful points.

Only dried bones remained, indicating they had been there for quite some time, and in a dry, cold environment, full skeletonization takes seven to eight years. Liu Shuyue left the mountain about this long ago, and if there had already been erosion within the sect, she couldn’t have been unaware.

"Have you ever heard of similar erosion anomalies before?" Chen Xuan looked at Liu Shuyue.

She, however, was staring entranced at the deep well.

"I... have never seen this well before," she said.

"Really?" Chen Xuan was taken aback. Come to think of it, digging such a large well on the mountain was indeed strange—it was about the size of a standard swimming pool, surrounded by moss-covered green bricks that looked like they had been there for many years.

"There should have been a tree here."

"A tree?" Honglian was puzzled. "Aren’t there trees all over the mountain?"

"This tree was different, it was a stone tree, its surface resembled rocks," Liu Shuyue reminisced in a low voice. "Master said it was planted by the first sect leader of the Lotus Cloud Sect, a testament to the growth of the immortal sect."

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