Chapter 226: Qiankun Pouch

Jiuyou pressed deeper, his escape light cutting a thin golden thread through the gloom; the darkness behind him quickly closed back in, like water filling a sliced crack.

Roughly thirty thousand li in, the evil ghosts along the way began to thin out. The yin qi, however, grew even denser, creeping along the ground like a layer of shallow black water.

Though fewer in number, the ghosts were growing stronger in quality. He might encounter only a handful every few hundred li, but even the weakest were at the Golden Core realm. He also ran into two ghosts nearing the Nascent Soul Stage; both fell to a casual strike, costing him hardly any effort.

At about fifty thousand li deep, he finally encountered his first true Nascent Soul Stage ghost king. Evil ghosts raised in a place of dense yin fiend energy like the Ancient Battlefield were a touch more ferocious than fiends of the same tier elsewhere. Their intelligence had just awakened, and though still far inferior to demonic beasts, they already knew to seek advantage and avoid harm.

The ghost king sensed Jiuyou's aura from afar and immediately turned tail, vanishing into the black mist. But Jiuyou was faster. With a flash of gold, he was instantly on its heels. One sword stroke fell, and the ghost king dissipated without even a chance to look back.

After that, he cut down several more Nascent Soul Early Stage ghost kings without the slightest effort. Xuan Zhenzi watched with an itch in his heart, clicking his tongue repeatedly as he lamented not being able to visit this place himself back in his day. What a pity; otherwise, every last one of those evil ghosts would have been unable to escape his grasp.

Along the way, Jiuyou's soul power reserves neared saturation. Every slain ghost was fed into the Nether Capital Gate to be slowly refined. He couldn't help but feel a twinge of annoyance. Previously, he had only known this place to be dangerous and never probed it deeply. Had he known it was a ready-made treasury, why would he have bothered instigating that war and taking such a roundabout route?

Two days later, Jiuyou deployed sixty-three Ember Moon Swords and slew a Middle Nascent Soul Stage ghost king. Sword lights crisscrossed in layered slaughter; the ghost king barely put up a semblance of resistance before it was carved to pieces.

Xuan Zhenzi watched from the side and nodded repeatedly. He noted that if this sword array were completed and unleashed at full power, its might would likely force even a Deity Transformation Cultivator to temporarily avoid its edge. It was a pity that a Nascent Soul Stage cultivation base could not sustain such a peak offensive; wielding sixty-three swords was already the limit of Jiuyou's Divine Sense.

He followed the map onward, occasionally pausing to cut down a few ghosts blocking his path. Over the course of two days, he covered more than a hundred thousand li, finally halting in a vast, low-lying expanse.

Calling it a plain was a stretch—it was more a basin sunk among the surrounding mountains, enclosed on all sides save for this one gap. The terrain was low, causing the yin qi to gather and stagnate here, thick as ink. From a distance, it looked like a pool of still black water.

Jiuyou surveyed it for a moment, then raised a hand and slashed out with his sword.

Golden light spanned a thousand zhang, cleaving a massive rift through the basin's yin qi. The mist closest to him was split in two by the sword qi, revealing a fleeting gap. The instant the yin qi tore open, he caught sight of a black shadow, swift as a specter, flashing into the unsealed black mist.

Jiuyou's eyes turned cold. He communicated with the Heaven and Earth Ring to track the shadow.

No matter how deep it hid, it could not escape the Universal Pivot's perception.

It was a ghost king shaped like a black tiger, wreathed in black qi, yet it possessed a pair of snake eyes and a set of ox horns. Its four limbs were thick, ending in five-fingered structures that eerily resembled human hands. Its cultivation had reached the Nascent Soul Late Stage—a bona fide overlord in this Ancient Battlefield.

Jiuyou wasted no words; his opening move was a killing blow. His cultivation method and magical treasures inherently countered yin fiend entities, and his own cultivation crushed it outright. The ghost king had virtually no capacity to fight back; after a few exchanges, it was beaten to within an inch of its life.

Just as Jiuyou readied a final sword stroke to end its life, Xuan Zhenzi suddenly called out, "Wait."

Jiuyou withdrew his sword and glanced over. All along the way, Xuan Zhenzi had cheered more vigorously than Jiuyou had killed, hollering at every evil ghost they met; for him to suddenly call a halt now was somewhat unexpected.

Xuan Zhenzi quirked his mouth into a look of idle amusement and lazily explained his idea.

As it turned out, he had never tried using the Heaven and Earth Ring to sift the impurities from a yin fiend creature to retain only pure soul power; this was his first attempt. And this Nascent Soul Late Stage ghost king happened to be an ideal test subject.

Jiuyou listened, then slowly sheathed his sword, his gaze settling on the dying ghost king.

The ghost king lay prone on the ground, its snake pupils contracting. It tried to push itself up with its limbs but had no strength left. With those two strange gazes fixed upon it, the once-imposing ghost king shuddered; though it was a creature of the dead, it suddenly felt a chill crawl up its spine.

After subduing the ghost king, Jiuyou casually sealed it into the Nether Capital Gate and turned his attention back to the basin. The yin qi had not fully dispersed, but it was no longer as thick as before, exposing wide tracts of cracked, scorched earth at the bottom of the basin along with several broken pillars half-buried in the soil.

He studied it for a moment before speaking slowly, "Ancestor, do you know how to take an ancient divine restriction away with you?"

"An ancient divine restriction?" Xuan Zhenzi's voice emerged from the Heaven and Earth Ring, tinged with surprised interest. "Tsk, tsk. You really have been keeping things from me."

He paused, following that line of thought for a while.

"But hearing you say that, I can guess the gist. The yin qi here is this dense because someone most likely moved the divine restriction that originally suppressed this place, releasing these evil ghosts. Taking the restriction and leaving the ghosts to run rampant—truly a rotten thing to do."

By the end of his sentence, a note of schadenfreude had crept into his voice.

Jiuyou did not respond to his remark.

"Let's get back to the main topic. Taking the divine restriction directly is impossible." Xuan Zhenzi stroked his beard. "But you can move the entire mountain the restriction sits upon. I have a Mountain Moving Art here; with your current cultivation, you should be able to execute it."

As he spoke, a ball of light drifted from his brow, transforming midair into a dense, flowing incantation. Jiuyou committed it to memory, firmly etching every character into his mind.

"However, this art consumes an enormous amount of magical power and Divine Sense," Xuan Zhenzi added. "So you will need a Qiankun Pouch to go with it. Do you know what a Qiankun Pouch is?"

Seeing Jiuyou shake his head, he continued, "To put it simply, a Qiankun Pouch is an upgraded Storage Pouch. Its interior forms a miniature world of its own. Not only is the space far larger, but it can also hold living things; keeping spirit beasts or spirit insects is no trouble at all. Swallowing a whole mountain is more than easy. A universe within—hence the name Qiankun Pouch."

Hearing this, Jiuyou thought of Perfected Jinli. That man had managed to bring the Taiyi Divine Restriction out of here all those years ago; he had most likely used a Qiankun Pouch as well. Only where that item had ultimately ended up was now impossible to trace.

As he pondered, the Heaven and Earth Ring suddenly gave a slight tremble, like a stone dropped into still water. Immediately afterward, Xuan Zhenzi's voice shot up, "Not good, something's coming. Very strong. Run!"