Dungeons of the Divine (Blue Phoenix Book 2) (39 page)

Standing by the lakeside Hui Yue was astonished at the beauty of this cave. The rivers which ran into the lake were filled with water flowers, medicinal herbs, and beautiful flowers.

Next to the rivers and streams were beautiful and elaborate gardens, small glass houses, and tall pagodas. The entire land was made for scenery rather than agriculture and on the lake itself were numerous boats with couples in them.

“This place earns its money from tourism and their academy. Everything that has to do with food and materials gets brought in from other caves while anyone who wishes to go for a stroll or a vacation comes to this cave.” Xu Piao said with a low voice by the white-haired boy’s side.

Nodding, Hui Yue somewhat guessed that this cave was special, but hearing that it was a place for vacations he understood why the atmosphere was relaxed and welcoming. The young man could not think of anything more suitable atmosphere than this when it came to breaking through to Grandmaster. The entire world was filled with essence from the heavens and the earth.

As he thought this, the group slowly made their way down the lake side towards the academy which was to be Yang Bai’s home for the next many years. He would not be returning home to the Demon Dwelling Cave until he had graduated and become a King ranked expert.

Moving around within the Thousand River’s Cave, Hui Yue could almost feel the essence of the heavens and the earth that was how thick it was here. He also guessed that because of this the cave was able to survive on tourism alone. Anyone who wished to enter into secluded meditation would come here and purchase one of the glass houses where they could meditate amongst beautiful scenery and boundless energy.

Having spent half a year together, Yang Bai had become very attached to the entire group and although he was now a thirteen years old and unshed tears were visible within his eyes as they got closer and closer to the academy, to the place where they would say goodbye.

Having been together for such a long time and travelling through the tunnels and caves together the guards had long since become much more like mercenaries. They had increased their skills at getting rid of demon beasts. They had even learned how to dissect beast perfectly without wasting anything after being taught by the nitpicky Hui Yue.

Yang Bai was not the only one who felt strangely nostalgic, Hui Yue and his friends all felt the same way because they to had been travelling together for half a year. Within this half year, the young master had done everything he could to become a part of their group, and although he was not travelling with them on the ground during day he would spend every night at their campfire, listening to stories from their past.

He heard about how they all met each other at an academy and how they became best friends, along with their adventures they experienced at their academy.

Although the youngsters spoke about their time at the Royal Academy, they never mentioned the name of the place and the naïve Yang Bai believed that it was an academy in the Dragon Core. He thought that they all belonged to the most amazing academy in the entire Azure Dragon Caves.

Yang Bai was not the only one who listened intently every time the four friends spoke about their friends and previous experiences. Xu Piao and Xie Lan both found it incredibly interesting, especially since both were aware that these were stories from the world above.

However, knowing that they were from the world above, Xu Piao was astonished to find that although they spoke about another world everything was pretty much the same as it was within the tunnel and cave-system in which he lived.

There were forests where magical beasts lived much like in the tunnels; there were major cities much like the cities within the caves, and there was land which was used for agriculture. One of the differences which he imagined was that one did not have to travel through tunnels to be able to meet other cities in the world above. He knew that the biggest thing about the world above was freedom; the fact that there were no walls closing in on the cities, there were no ceiling above you.

Other than that everything sounded pretty much the same below ground as above.

Another thing which Xu Piao noticed missing from their stories was the Dragon Corps. Within these tunnels and caves, the Dragon Corps was the ultimate power. They had the real power within every cave and they were everywhere. Usually the City Lords of the capitals, the most esteemed position in each cave, were held by a member of the dragon cave. Only two caves were different.

One of these two caves was Cave’s End. A cave so weak and meaningless that the Dragon Corps long since had decided not to bother doing anything apart from picking up their yearly taxes.

The other cave was the Golden Lion’s Cave. As to how they managed to make the cave into a kingdom, Hui Yue did not know, however, his theory was that it had something to do with the Primal Laws.

“We are finally here.” A sigh escaped the servant’s lips. Unlike the others in the group the servant and the butler both felt relief with finally having made their way to the academy, neither of them having enjoyed the trip where they had to live within the carriage. Now they could finally look after their master in a suitable environment.

Hearing his voice, Hui Yue was dragged from his thoughts and a sad smile was present on his face. They were standing right in front of the academy gates. The gates were closed and the guards were all King ranked experts.

Getting inside the academy was impossible, but the guards alerted a professor and after a short while the professor came rushing to meet them, his robe flapping around his body as he rushed down the slope.

“Young master Yang Bai?” He asked curiously. With a nod of the young master’s head a smile spread on his face. “Greetings, I am professor Lin. I would like to show you to your dormitory. Have you brought guards and servants with you? Oh these men? Yes, that is great. Please follow me. Say goodbye to your friends now and we will get you ready to start at the academy tomorrow morning.”

Everything happened so fast. As soon as Professor Lin arrived the gates opened and the guards along with the servant and the butler were led inside together with Yang Bai. After which the gates closed once again leaving behind the four guards who purchased the mercenary spots and Hui Yue with his friends.

Looking at the gates Hui Yue smiled a wry smile after which he turned around, “Come let’s find a place where we can stay a while.” He said after which he walked from the academy city, walking on the road leading to the capital of the beautiful Thousand River’s Cave.

The capitals were usually known because they shared the same name as the caves themselves, and the signs on the road led towards Thousand River’s City. A city known for its beauty and small water canals running throughout the city.

The trip to the capital took twelve days, and once more nothing went wrong everything was tranquil within the cave and every traveler they met on their way was friendly and smiling.

The thick air filled with the essence of the heavens and the earth caused Hui Yue’s cultivation technique to work faster than normal, however, no matter how much spiritual energy he refined his body showed no signs of breaking through to the Grandmaster rank. Instead his spiritual energy sea just rose in size. It was reaching its borders but the borders did not expand, instead the sea just constantly clashed against an unknown barrier. A barrier making it impossible for him to increase his cultivation base.

The closer they got to the city the more rivers they saw on the way.

“Why don’t we rent a boat?” Hui Yue eventually said, as they were following a road beside a river and were constantly being passed by one boat after another. By the side of the road there were boats docked, all of which were offering to bring groups of cultivators to the city for a few demon coins.

The group was worn out after half a year of constant migration. Their clothes were filled with dirt and their bodies were sore and exhausted. Although the trip had been simple and not much happened on the way it still had been long and pretty much nonstop travel, only making very brief stops here and there, never giving them enough time to truly relax.

There had been no time to relax because the young master needed to rush towards the academy and now when they finally had time, Hui Yue felt that they needed to spoil themselves.

“Let us take a boat and then relax a little in the capital.” Hui Yue said sighing, his words made a collective sigh sound out aloud from the friends all of them agreeing with his suggestion.

The next boat that they saw Hui Yue instantly stepped towards it, followed by his friends and as they stepped into the boat and sat down joy was visible on their faces. Because they could now spend their time observing their surroundings rather than focusing on moving forward.

The boat was somewhat large. It was oval shaped and had both an upper deck and a lower one, allowing for the passengers to be either on the deck where the view was splendid, or sit in a chamber down under the water where they could cultivate. Should some of the passengers prefer that.

They had walked for three days before deciding to travel by boat. After boarding the rest of their journey passed by in a relaxing manner allowing for them to see the beautiful city long before they arrived at it.

Arriving in the city, the water canals were like the roads spreading throughout the beautiful city creating another way to get around.

The boat on which the group departed from was one of the larger ones that sailed into the city and as soon as they reached the inner circle, the boat was no longer allowed to go further. Only smaller boats were allowed into the inner regions of the city.

All over the rivers winding throughout the city were places where the boats could dock, and docking at exactly one of these places, everyone left the boat and started walking on the dusty roads.

The city was very different from the cities Hui Yue had been to in the caves before as although there were some inns, the majority of the inns were instead rentals. This was where one would rent a courtyard and stay there for as little as a week or as long as a year. These rentals were usually rented out to cultivating guests who wished to stay within the Thousand River’s Cave for an extended period of time to improve their cultivation base.

“How long do you think we should stay?” Hui Yue asked Xu Piao, as the lot of them were standing in front of the clerk renting out courtyards.

“Leave this to me,” Xu Piao said with a big smile on his face as he took out a bag of demon coins which he then passed to the clerk in front of them.

“One year? And one of the high-class courtyards? You will have to have some sort of background for me to rent one out to you.” The clerk said with a hesitating voice, however, Xu Piao pulled out a golden emblem with a silver symbol embedded within. Seeing the emblem, the clerk instantly became slightly confused and bowed deeply. “Milords, we would never dare to charge such esteemed guests for a courtyard, please feel free to use it to your heart’s content!”

Looking at the change in the clerk, Hui Yue could not help but raise an eyebrow in question as to why the man suddenly changed his opinion.

He was however not dumb enough to ask that question in front of the clerk and instead stayed quiet. He saw the clerk give the memory stone key to Xu Piao. He then made a bow towards the clerk before they all left for the new house which would be theirs for the next year.

“Are you sure we should rest here for a full year?” Deng Wu asked with a frown. They were after all on a mission from Zhou Long, a mission to give some information to the Dragon Core, the final cave in the cave system.

“Don’t worry about the mission.” Hui Yue said while laughing, “It is highly likely that Zhou Long is going to arrive at the final cave before us. And even if we take it easy, he most likely have spies following us wherever we go.”

The thought of being spied upon caused Deng Wu, Wang Ju Long, and Sha Yun to shiver while they looked around them with nervous eyes. Seeing this, Hui Yue could not help but laugh out loud as he followed behind Xu Piao and gestured for the three suddenly paranoid friends to follow.

The courtyard they were given was located in the middle of a park along with three other courtyards. All of them had quite a distance between one another allowing for privacy, and right in front of their courtyard was a small serene lake where white swans swam around amongst the beautiful water lilies.

Their building was as white as newly fallen snow, even the walls around it were painted white and two guards were standing in front, ensuring that no one entered without permission.

Seeing Xu Piao and Hui Yue arrive with a somewhat large entourage the two guards straightened up and looked suspiciously at the men. They were not in any way disrespecful, however, their eyes were vigilant as they blocked the road.

“Excuse me sirs,” One of the guards said with a deep voice, “I will need to see your permit to stay within this compound.”

Hearing this, Xu Piao flashed the key stone he was given by the clerk and the two guards instantly bowed deeply as the gate opened up.

“We welcome you home, lord,” The guards said in unison as they bowed down. Hui Yue and the others were slightly taken aback but Xu Piao seemed somewhat used to it.

Walking past the still bowing guards, Hui Yue could not help but wonder whether or not they would behave like that every time they entered the courtyard, or if it was a one time thing. He did not have time to keep wondering for long, as Xu Piao was waiting inside the courtyard with a large smile on his face and his mercenary emblem hanging by his hands.

The mercenary emblem had a large ‘B’ marked upon it, the same symbol which Hui Yue had seen earlier that day and it finally made sense to him. The reason that the clerk behaved the way he had was because Hui Yue. As he and everyone else on the missions were considered B rankers.

“So a whole year huh?” Hui Yue asked as he looked around. The courtyard had three houses and a stable. One of the houses in the back was a few stories tall, and by the side of the tall house was two smaller houses. One was a bath house, and the other was a house to train in. When he entered the training house it had a large white pearl in the middle and the essence of the heavens and the earth was increased by double within the room..

Sitting down, the white-haired boy instantly entered meditation. He did not pay any attention to his friends nor was he bothered with what else the courtyard had to offer, the young man only paid attention to this room filled with energy.

Seating on the ground, Hui Yue’s brows furrowed and his cultivation techniques were working at their highest capacity. The energy was refined into Qi which was further refined into spiritual energy. The spiritual energy was increasing constantly within the spiritual energy sea, and as each drop of newly refined spiritual energy dropped into the sea it caused great waves to appeared.

They crashed into the invisible barrier which made it impossible for further his cultivation.

Seated in meditation, no one who looked at him would be able to tell that he was currently at a bottleneck, however, they all knew that he highly valued cultivation and they quietly left the room, leaving him alone to cultivate.

Walking into the main house, the one with a few floors, the group was astonished to see that everything was made from white marble. The house was as white and beautiful as if it was one large pearl.

They quickly each chose a room, and after having looked through all of the rooms the group rushed back to the house which Hui Yue was seated within.

The reason the others joined quickly was because they understood how important it was for their strength to increase. Currently Hui Yue was the strongest, not counting Xie Lan and Xu Piao, and the friends refused to stay weak, none of them wanting to be a burden for Hui Yue.

Seated, Xu Piao smiled with a proud expression on his face as he saw how eager the youngsters were to start cultivating. Unlike them, Xu Piao was an upper dantian cultivator. What he needed was not constant refinement of Qi to spiritual energy, instead, he needed to gain understanding of the Wu Wei which he was relied upon.

While Qi was a force refined from the essence of the heavens and the earth, and spiritual energy was an energy refined from Qi, the energy of Wu Wei was much more complicated.

Wu Wei was refined from spiritual energy, however, you could only refine a certain amount of spiritual energy depending on your understanding of the essence of the heavens and the earth. One needed to go back to basics and fully understand what the energies within the world consisted of. Only when one understand more, could one's’ powers increase.

As Xu Piao watched  the four youngsters while smiling, the smile grew in size as he looked at Hui Yue. On the outside everything seemed to be normal, but for someone like the Guild Master who had profound knowledge and heightened senses towards the essence of the heavens of the earth he felt astonished as he sensed how endless amounts of the energy within the room was pooling into the young body at a speed which should not be possible to to refine at.

Hui Yue gritted his teeth as he was forcing his body to its very limits. So far, he had not succeeded in overcoming the bottleneck which was suppressing him, but instead of giving up and expecting that he would eventually overcome it, Hui Yue forced his body to suck in even more essence refining it at a speed never seen before. Now the spiritual energy in his sea was no longer dripping one drop at a time but instead became a steady stream of silvery liquid which pooled into the roiling spiritual sea.

Although this was already quite fast, it would have been possible for Hui Yue refine even quicker if he had been ready to give up on his high quality Qi, however, the young white-haired boy remembered the warning he had been given by Lan Feng before and his determination was steeled. Even if he refined less Qi he would not go down on quality.

The stream of spiritual energy that was pouring into his body causing more and more waves to clash against the barrier.

At first it was an unmoving barrier and one or two waves were unable to make it shake even in the slightest, however, now one wave after another crashed into the barrier and it trembled with each hit. The more it trembled, the more Hui Yue pushed his cultivation technique. Sweat appeared on his face, his eyebrows furrowed, and his teeth clenched. Every muscle within his body was taut and his hands gripping so tight that a small stream of blood trickling down from his palms.

Wave after wave crashed, sweat streaming down his face and the young man was barely breathing as his entire focus was on the waves that were crashing against the barrier.

Finally, after what seemed to have been a whole year, cracks started to appear in the barrier. Feeling how it was giving, excitement grew in Hui Yue’s heart. The diminishing energy was suddenly reinvigorated forcing his body to continue the fight against the barrier. One wave after another and finally the spiritual energy waves flooded through the barrier, allowing for it to crumble completely. His spiritual energy quickly settling in a way that showed that it no longer stuck against the barrier.

His body had changed and so did the sea. Seeing the waves that had constantly clashed against the barrier, the waves that had been fighting at the edges of his spiritual energy sea that now finally relaxed, it was obvious that the borders of the lake were far taller than they had been previously.

The sea which now extended past its previous borders suddenly looked like a lake in a drought due to how spread out the sea was.

The spiritual energy sea was not the only thing which had changed in size, the five elemental flames which were floating above the sea had grown to double their previous size. Also the cave, itself, seemed larger as well.

His body was filled with sweat and grime. The impurities which had been inhaled while cultivating were pressed out through the pores of his body, and as Hui Yue opened his eyes a satisfied smile appeared on his face.

Although it seemed as if his spiritual energy sea had thinned out, it was many times stronger than it had been before, up to ten times as strong as previously. This was how qualitative the difference between a Master and a Grandmaster ranked cultivator was.

Standing up, Hui Yue could hear his bones cracking, and looking at his body it was obvious to see that he had grown somewhat.

Hui Yue decided to go to the main house and found a random room. Looking around he was astonished as he saw that each of the rooms had access to a hot steam bath and with excitement he jumped straight into the bath, not caring whether or not the room he had picked belonged to anyone of his teammates. If they saw him naked, then so be it; however, he did not wish to run around with grime covering his body for longer than absolutely necessary.

Lying in the water, a long sigh escaped Hui Yue’s lips and as he saw his reflection. A brow was risen as he noticed how he was looking less and less effeminate. Although he still had the features of a very effeminate man, it was now easy to see that he truly was a man and not a woman as many had previously assumed.

A satisfied expression on his face he closed his eyes and leaned back in the warm water. He felt many times stronger than before and although he still did not feel like he was ready to take on Scarface, he was certain that he was on the right path. One more breakthrough and he should be capable of dealing with upper dantian ranked experts as well. Unfortunately, breaking into the Duke rank was not as easy as he had expected.

Hui Yue slowly fell asleep in the water, his body exhausted and he was mentally tired as well, and after having slept for an hour Hui Yue opened his eyes and felt that something was wrong. Without waiting for long, he found a robe which he clad around his body and just as he was about to leave the hot steam bath, he paused for a moment as he heard voices on the other side of the door.

“How long do you plan on pretending to be friends with these people?” Xie Lan asked Xu Piao with a sigh, her voice impatient, shocking Hui Yue deeply.