Seeking Immortality

The so-called immortals eat wind and drink dew, travel to the North Sea in the morning and return to the mountains in the evening. This sentence is the introduction of immortal cultivators that Xu Qingfan read in the book when he was young and followed the second elder to study.

These words describe the abilities of immortal cultivators as mysterious, but in fact they are just the imagination of mortals. Human beings have limited strength, and although the abilities of immortal cultivators are mysterious, they are essentially just more powerful humans. How can they achieve the level of "traveling to the North Sea in the morning and returning to the mountains in the evening"? Or the masters who have reached the Mahayana stage can do it, but how many masters who can reach the Mahayana stage in the history of the immortal cultivation world are there?

The road to immortal cultivation is long and arduous, and it is more difficult to make progress as you go back. To reach the Mahayana realm that is one in ten thousand, extraordinary talent, hard work, and rare opportunities are all indispensable. But how many immortal cultivators can achieve all three?

Thinking back to the time when Lu Huayan took Xu Qingfan to fly from the Southern Wasteland to Jiuhua Mountain, it took a whole day and night. With Xu Qingfan's current skills, he naturally could not be compared with Lu Huayan's. Although he had the help of the magic weapon "Three Zhang Qingling", it took him a full seven days to reach the edge of the Southern Wasteland.

Although Xu Qingfan's spiritual energy had been qualitatively transformed after reaching the Spiritual Silence period, and it was constantly echoing and replenishing with the five elements of heaven and earth, even so, after seven days of constant travel, Xu Qingfan felt that his spiritual energy was exhausted, and his mental fatigue was even worse than his physical fatigue.

But Xu Qingfan couldn't care about these now. He just controlled the "Three Zhang Qingling" and quietly stopped above the edge of the Southern Wasteland, looking at the Southern Wasteland with complicated eyes.

People say that the higher you stand, the farther you can see. But although Xu Qingfan is now standing in the sky hundreds of feet high, he still looks at the Southern Wasteland as boundless as ever, and the layers of barren mountains seem to extend to the horizon.

It seems that God has given all His grace to the prosperous Middle Earth, where the climate is mild, the land is fertile, and there are many plains and hills. In comparison, the Southern Wasteland is undoubtedly not favored by God at all. The land is barren, there are many swamps and poisonous insects, and there are miasma and wild beasts. It looks like a poor mountain and bad water. After walking all the way from the prosperous Middle Earth to the scene of the Southern Wasteland, the difference is even more obvious.

But strangely, after seeing the Southern Wasteland, Xu Qingfan felt more of a sense of closeness. Maybe it was because this was his former home, or maybe it was because there were memories of his childhood here.

After standing still in the air for a long time, Xu Qingfan sighed with mixed emotions, and slowly landed on the ground with the "Three-foot Green Silk". The land under his feet was still only growing a few weeds, which looked even more desolate in the autumn dusk.

Xu Qingfan resisted the urge to bend down and touch the ground under his feet. He placed several spirit stones on the ground in a specific order and set up a most basic protective formation as a means of protection. Then he walked into the formation and activated the protective formation. A layer of faint white light appeared and enveloped Xu Qingfan three feet around him. Then he sat cross-legged and began to meditate to restore the excessive spiritual energy in his body.

The Southern Wasteland is full of dangers and there are many monsters and spirits. Although Xu Qingfan is only at the edge of the Southern Wasteland now, he still dare not take it lightly, especially when meditating, his mind is empty and he has no means of defense even when danger comes. Although Xu Qingfan can only arrange a minimum level of protective formation due to the means and the number of spirit stones, it is enough to help Xu Qingfan buffer for a period of time when danger comes. After all, this is only the edge of the Southern Wasteland, and there will not be any extremely powerful monsters and spirits.

Before entering into meditation, Xu Qingfan carefully checked the formation he set up again. After confirming that there was no problem, he finally closed his eyes slowly and meditated into meditation.

When a cultivator is meditating, he has no concept of time at all. And because Xu Qingfan did not stop at all during this journey, his spiritual energy is now severely depleted, so this meditation took three days without him noticing.

Three days later, Xu Qingfan felt that his spiritual energy was finally fully restored, so he ended his meditation and slowly opened his eyes. In front of him was still a sunset scene, and the entire Southern Wilderness was shining with a layer of golden light under the afterglow of the setting sun, which made it even more mysterious.

But the scene in front of him surprised Xu Qingfan. It turned out that outside the protective formation, a group of strange beasts had been densely packed. There were black wolves, black tigers, black pythons, and a large number of black eagles in the sky. It seemed that the sky and the earth were all black, and Xu Qingfan was firmly surrounded in the middle. Eyes with strange lights of various colors stared at Xu Qingfan in the middle.

Strangely, Xu Qingfan had grown up in the Southern Wilderness since he was a child, but he had never seen these black beasts. Moreover, after these strange beasts surrounded Xu Qingfan, they did not rush to attack directly as usual, but just defended Xu Qingfan. Moreover, although the beasts were of different species, they lived in harmony, and each group of beasts formed a formation, as if someone was controlling them.

"Is this... a blood wolf?" Xu Qingfan carefully observed the various beasts around him through the protective formation, and finally recognized the type of the beast closest to his body. If the black wolf in front of him was reduced in size by half, and the black fur was changed to cyan, and the purple-cyan flame pattern on the forehead was removed, wouldn't it be the image of the blood wolf that roamed the southern wilderness when Xu Qingfan was a child?

"Violent tiger, horned python, iron-winged eagle, why have they all turned into this?" After recognizing the blood wolf, Xu Qingfan also quickly recognized the types of other beasts, and he was filled with doubts about these beasts. The beast was horrified by the astonishing transformation. These were beasts that were dangerous to one side when they were young. Not only have their fur turned black, their bodies have more than doubled in size, and a purple-green flame pattern has appeared on their foreheads, which looks extremely strange.

"What happened here after I left Southern Wilderness?" Xu Qingfan thought in horror.

After seeing Xu Qingfan stand up, the various beasts surrounding Xu Qingfan couldn't help but commotion, but they soon calmed down. Then, the beasts in front of Xu Qingfan stepped aside to make way for a wider passage, and a dark-skinned man nearly three feet tall suddenly appeared and walked slowly towards Xu Qingfan along the passage. But those beasts with ferocious faces seemed to be as well-behaved as domestic cats in front of this man. Every time the man took a step forward, the beasts beside him would obediently bend down, as if worshiping him.

Seeing this scene in front of him, no matter how slow Xu Qingfan was, he knew that these strange beasts around him were controlled by this mysterious man in front of him.

When the mysterious man came closer, Xu Qingfan discovered that this mysterious man also had the same purple-green flame pattern on his forehead as those of the beasts, but it was more lifelike, with a faint purple-green light flashing constantly, as if there were real flames on his forehead. A purple-green flame seemed to be burning continuously. After Xu Qingfan's induction, he found that this mysterious man had no spiritual energy fluctuations at all. He was obviously not a cultivator, but his body was strangely exuding a strange sense of oppression, which made people feel fearful.

Seeing this mysterious man walking up to him, he just stared at him coldly without any intention of saying hello or introducing himself. Xu Qingfan had no choice but to speak first: "I am Xu Qingfan, a monk from Jiuhua Mountain. May I ask? Who are you? Why do you want these beasts to surround you?"

It's just that the person in front of him doesn't know whether he is an enemy or a friend. Although he has not shown any obvious hostility towards Xu Qingfan yet, Xu Qingfan does not dare to rashly open the protective formation around him.

"Leave here, the Southern Wasteland is the holy land of the Jiuli tribe." The mysterious man finally spoke, his voice was low and hoarse, with a strange and soul-stirring charm, but it was as slow as if he hadn't spoken for a long time.

After hearing the words of this mysterious man, Xu Qingfan frowned slightly and said, "I grew up in Nanhuang. Although I haven't been back for nearly thirty years, in my impression, Nanhuang does not seem to belong to one family. land."

"Leave here, Nanhuang is the holy land of the Jiuli tribe." The mysterious man ignored Xu Qingfan's words and just said stubbornly.

"I have something important to do when I return to the Southern Wilderness this time, but I can't go back now." Xu Qingfan looked at the mysterious man's numb and indifferent eyes and explained with a frown.

"Leave here, Nanhuang is the holy land of the Jiuli tribe." The voice was still low and hoarse, but there was a hint of anger in the tone, which finally gave Xu Qingfan the feeling that "the person in front of him still has feelings."

Hearing the mysterious man's commanding words one after another, no matter how good-tempered Xu Qingfan was, he couldn't help but feel a little angry. Although the man in front of him was extremely strange and could control countless strange beasts, Xu Qingfan was not afraid, so he calmly He said: "I have some mortal relationships that I have to come to Southern Wilderness to resolve, so I will never change my mind and leave. However, maybe you will change your mind."

Just when Xu Qingfan thought that the mysterious man was going to repeat what he said before, the mysterious man just looked at Xu Qingfan with an indifferent expression. For a moment, Xu Qingfan seemed to feel a purple-green light flashing from the eyes of this mysterious man. Then, the mysterious man said nothing more, just turned around and left silently from the original road.

As the mysterious man disappeared among the vast herd of beasts, a cold word came in the air.

"Obey!! Or, die!!"

As the voice fell, the strange beasts that had been lying around quietly stood up one after another, roaring and rushing towards the protective array arranged by Xu Qingfan.