Chapter 585 Enlightenment in the 1st Celestial Realm

After entering the Beimu Mountain Range, Jiang Qiu and the others felt an unprecedented sense of being watched, as if a terrifying presence dwelled within the mountains, looming over them and forcing them to be constantly on guard.

But the Beimu Mountain Range was vast. What were the chances they would just happen to run into the Demon Race, exiled here ages ago, simply by picking a random spot to enter?

So, at first, Jiang Qiu and the others encountered no real danger. They simply traveled north. The mountains did contain some life, but these were all Demon Beasts that hadn’t undergone Spiritual Awakening, not the sapient Demon Race. These beasts became their food.

Three years passed in the blink of an eye. The journey was peaceful, and Jiang Qiu’s group ventured deeper and deeper. Amidst the endless mountains, they couldn’t see any path forward. It was just one mountain giving way to another in an endless series of ascents and descents. They had no idea where they even were.

In this state of affairs, Jiang Qiu had been traveling with Ah Xiong and One-tailed for three years. All the while, the Nine-tailed Fox had yet to awaken, still slumbering within his internal Dragon Race space.

“Haaah… I think we’re lost, Master.” During a break, Ah Xiong, in the form of a petite, flat-chested girl, was crouched by a clear spring. With her bottom in the air and her hands on the muddy ground, she leaned down to drink. The spring water was refreshing. Wiping the droplets from her lips, she asked, “Which way do we go now?”

She couldn’t get her bearings. The canopy here was as dense as the Primitive Ancient Forest, completely blocking out the sky. She couldn’t see the sun even if she looked straight up, and the light that filtered through the leaves was so sparse and fragmented that daytime sometimes felt like night.

Besides, this place was incredibly barren. There wasn’t a single member of the Demon Race here who had undergone Spiritual Awakening. The wild creatures could only serve as food; they couldn’t help her grow stronger. She felt her Realm was on the verge of regressing. Now, she barely had the strength to stand. Having finally found a clear spring, she couldn’t be bothered with appearances as she drank to soothe the meridians in her body.

This was, however, just the nature of a bear—perfectly normal. She wasn’t accustomed to the habit of folding a leaf into a cup, always preferring to stick her bottom in the air and lean over to drink. Her eyes, as always, were shiny and bright.

The young woman One-tailed, on the other hand, simply flicked a fingertip. A stream of water was drawn from the clear spring, resembling a thin fishing line or a bolt of transparent silk as it arced through the air. It wound its way to her, flowing into her cherry-like lips. Her delicate pink tongue was visible, and the depths of her throat could be faintly glimpsed, contracting rhythmically in a captivating display.

GULP~ GULP~

Her throat pulsed gently, making a clear, pleasant sound as she drank her fill of the spring water. Her complexion was fair and rosy, and she looked full of life. She couldn’t help but lick her luscious lips. “So sweet~”

She wasn’t particularly concerned about leaving the Beimu Mountain Range anytime soon, since she also had no idea how to get out. She just found the journey a tad boring.

However, thanks to her Vast Water Spirit Charm, her skin remained as supple as ever, even here in the desolate Beimu Mountain Range. Her eyes were bright, her scarlet pupils projecting a profound divinity, like a goddess looking down upon the world, admiring the rivers and mountains.

Therefore, she didn’t mind the barrenness of the land. Even with the extreme scarcity of Heaven and Earth Spirit Charm, she could draw it in from ten, even a hundred li around her and convert it into her own Vast Water Spirit Charm. Far from regressing, her Realm was still growing, albeit slowly.

Her Realm improved without active Cultivation; she cultivated automatically. This was One-tailed’s unique trait, a fact that amazed even Jiang Qiu. But this was no time to dwell on such matters. He stared into the distance. The sky was not visible, and the path forward was blocked by the Primitive Ancient Forest and a steep, rising slope. “We can’t get out.”

He felt a surge of frustration as he came to this conclusion, but it was the reality of their situation. How could an ant in the midst of a vast mountain range know its own location?

The strangest thing about this region was the inability to fly or use spiritual perception. The Heaven and Earth Spirit Charm was thin, and the land itself was a desolate waste. It seemed there were also various Laws in effect, restricting them. They would never get out just by walking!

They needed coordinates, or a guide. But to find a guide, they would have to locate one of the Great Demons exiled here—existences at or above the True Body Realm, possessing Chaos Bloodlines. Only they might know the way out.

Of course, this was just one possibility. The Beimu Mountain Range was ridiculously vast, after all. Jiang Qiu couldn’t fathom how any member of the Demon Race could possibly know the way.

Without the ability to fly and with their perception abilities restricted, an expert at the Perfection level of the Transformation Realm—One-tailed’s current Realm—could spend a hundred years and still not be able to map a north-south route through the Beimu Mountain Range.

And those exiled Great Demons wouldn’t be so idle as to wander around aimlessly, so they wouldn’t have bothered exploring to figure out their exact location either.

In other words, no one would be idle enough to traverse the entire Beimu Mountain Range just to draw a map. Furthermore, the range was so vast that it would be incredibly difficult to even encounter one of the exiled Great Demons.

When he had first decided to enter the Beimu Mountain Range, he’d thought the exiled Great Demons would be their greatest danger and obstacle. He never imagined they would be defeated by the sheer geography. ‘If I’d known it would be like this,’ he thought, ‘I would have just gone around.’