MARTIAL ADVERSITY, VOLUME 8 - Season 12 Episode 18

In this world, in order to keep some secrets, silencing witnesses or exterminating whole families wasn’t an uncommon practice. Yang Yan had experienced Yang Kai’s strength and murderous intent, even First Order Saint Kings weren’t worthy to be his opponents. She was clear that if Yang Kai really wanted to act against her, with his strange Demonic Flame, even with all her precious artefacts she may not be able to survive.

At this moment, Yang Yan deeply regretted learning about this big secret.

Yang Kai however just glanced over at her and asked, “What nonsense are you talking about?”

Yang Yan immediately smiled, “I knew you weren’t like this. Quickly put these Space Spirit Crystals away, it would be bad if anyone else saw them.”

Yang Kai agreed with her and swiftly swept the hundreds of Space Spirit Crystals into his Demon Mystic Tome.

Even now, Yang Kai was feeling somewhat absent-minded. If these Space Spirit Crystals were really found by the Stone Puppet recently, then they could only have come from below Dragon Cave Mountain, because the Stone Puppet was always burrowing beneath this place.

However, what Yang Kai couldn’t understand was that he had clearly and carefully scanned the underground situation with his Divine Sense yet never once discovered anything resembling a mineral lode. If there really was a Dark Space Stone mineral lode here, Wu Yi and her Hai Ke Family should have known about it; after all, they had been rooted here for countless years.

It seemed it was necessary to investigate this matter.

Yang Kai reached out and picked up the Stone Puppet before beckoning to Yang Yan, “Come with me.”

Yang Yan didn’t ask anything, seemingly knowing what Yang Kai wanted to do and simply following after him, her face filled with a look of expectation.

Outside the cave, the pair quickly flew some ten kilometres away and sought a well-hidden spot before Yang Kai lowered the Stone Puppet and told it to start digging.

The Stone Puppet soon disappeared, leaving a small hole behind just big enough for one person to descend through.

Before, the Stone Puppet would only dig holes big enough for itself, but this time Yang Kai had instructed it to make the hole big enough for him and Yang Yan to pass through.

Yang Yan became even more excited, her face flushing as she stood silently, waiting for Yang Kai to head down first.

After half an hour, Yang Kai nodded to Yang Yan and jumped into the hole in front of him.

It had to be said that the Stone Puppet was a natural at digging holes as the passage Yang Kai fell through was perfectly cylindrical and straight, its surfaces completely smooth, as if they had been polished. The whole way down, Yang Kai never felt a single obstruction.

The hole was quite deep, making it hard to imagine it only took half an hour to dig, only further highlighting the Stone Puppet’s ability to Yang Kai.

After about as long as it would take to burn a stick of incense, Yang Kai suddenly noticed that the channel come to an end and he couldn’t help feeling like he was falling from a high altitude. Swiftly stabilizing his body, the next moment Yang Kai’s feet touched ground.

There was a rapid crunching sound ringing in his ears and without even looking, Yang Kai understood it was the Stone Puppet gnawing at some kind of ore. Pulling out a glowing stone for lighting, Yang Kai didn’t have time to examine his surroundings before above his head he heard Yang Yan cry out, “Yang Kai help me! I… I’m stuck!”

Yang Kai looked up and his face quickly turned black.

Yang Yan was indeed stuck, the two towering weapons on her chest lodged tight into the tunnel’s exit as her lower body dangled above his head, constantly pedalling back and forth as she wiggled her upper body.

Yang Kai reached out, grabbed Yang Yan’s ankles, and yanked her down, causing her to let out a great yelp.

“That hurt!” As soon as Yang Yan fell down, she covered her chest with both hands and gently began rubbing them, turning a tear-stained look towards Yang Kai, seemingly blaming him for not showing any delicacy.

Before she could find trouble with Yang Kai though, the glow from the luminous stone in his hand lit up their surroundings, and Yang Yan was stunned silent, her small mouth opening wide as her tender body shuddered, immediately forgetting about the pain she was trying to rub away from her chest.

Yang Kai also seemed to have received a huge shock. He kept turning his head in different directions, so excited he felt his heart just might burst.

The two of them were now standing in an underground cave, one that had probably been mined out by the Stone Puppet over the past few days. The length and width of this mine was only several tens of meters, but all the walls were reflecting a dizzying array of light.

Large and small Space Spirit Crystals were scattered everywhere, as if they were worthless pieces of rock, and among these Space Spirit Crystals were thin veins of Dark Space Stone.

Inside the underground cave, Yang Kai and Yang Yan breathed heavily as the crunching sound of the Stone Puppet echoed in the background.

After a long silence, Yang Yan suddenly let out a yell and rushed over to a plate-sized Space Spirit Crystal and swiftly excavated it from the wall, clutching it with her hands as a look of extreme satisfaction filled her face and silly laughter leaked from her lips.

However, Yang Yan’s reaction wasn’t that strange and Yang Kai’s current mood wasn’t much calmer than hers.

He had never dreamt that a few thousand meters beneath Dragon Cave Mountain, a place seemingly devoid of any valuable spirit grasses or spirit medicines, there would be such a rich Space Spirit Crystal lode!

From a conventional standpoint, this couldn’t be called a Dark Space Stone lode anymore because nearly half of the ore here was actually Space Spirit Crystal. It was now fully qualified to be called a Space Spirit Crystal mine.

Soon, Yang Kai understood why he hadn’t been able to detect this place.

First of all, the location was very deep, and Yang Kai had not checked it too carefully. Secondly, there was just too much Space Spirit Crystal.

This rare ore was the primary material used to create Space Rings, and one of its functions was blocking Divine Sense. If this wasn’t the case, anyone would be able to see what was inside someone else’s Space Ring with their Divine Sense.

The huge amount of Space Spirit Crystals here actually isolating this mine from Yang Kai’s Divine Sense, a near-perfect camouflage.

Something Yang Kai’s extremely powerful Divine Sense couldn’t detect was obviously indetectable to the Hai Ke Family. It was actually quite ridiculous that the owners of this land were completely unaware that they were sitting on such a massive treasure trove and just because Wu Yi was a woman, they had assigned this ‘barren mountain’ to her.

However, if it weren’t for the Stone Puppet’s innate sensitivity to rare ores, this treasure might have gone undetected forever.

Yang Kai hadn’t had any significant dealings with the Hai Ke Family, but because of his relationship with Wu Yi, he didn’t have a very good impression of them.

This mountain had been given to Yang Kai by Wu Yi for him to live on. Now that he had unearthed such an enormous amount of wealth here, Yang Kai naturally wanted to do something to thank her.

Unfortunately, Wu Yi’s strength was too low and she didn’t have the qualifications to occupy such a mineral lode, if he were to hand it over to her, it would only bring disaster to her and her Hai Ke Family.

As such, Yang Kai made up his mind to look for opportunities in the future to compensate her instead.

“Yang Kai, we’re rich!” Yang Yan shouted, having returned to his side at some unknown point, standing cleverly in front of him as her eyes twinkled somewhat madly.

Yang Kai shook his head, “I’m rich.”

Yang Yan puckered her lips and tugged Yang Kai’s arm, saying coquettishly, “Don’t treat me like such an outsider, with so many Space Spirit Crystals here, can’t you assign me a little?”

“What use do you have for them? All these things are good for is making Space Rings, and if too many Space Rings suddenly flow from your hands into the market, any fool will realize you’ve found a rich deposit of Space Spirit Crystals. That will only cause trouble for us.”

“I don’t want to make Space Rings, what I want these Space Spirit Crystals for is to research Spirit Arrays. I never had sufficient materials before, but with all this here, it will be more than enough. Give me a part of them and I assure you that the Spirit Array I create will be extremely fierce.”

“What kind of Spirit Array are you trying to research?” Yang Kai was startled as he thought of a possibility.

“Have you heard of Space Arrays?” Yang Yan didn’t hide her intentions, stating proudly, “They’re profound Spirit Arrays that can be used to instantly move great distances across a Cultivation Star. En, from the looks of it, you’ve probably never heard of these things before, but you’ll understand in time how important they are as my research progresses.”

“You understand how to arrange Space Arrays?” Yang Kai’s eyes lit up, staring at Yang Yan with some disbelief, “How could you know that? Weren’t such methods lost to history?”

Last time, on Water Moon Star, Yang Kai had used the Space Array under Heng Luo Chamber of Commerce’s jurisdiction together with a Monster Race master named Xue Tong. At the time, Xue Tong had said that all the current Space Arrays were just leftover from ancient times and that currently, no one understood how to build one from scratch.

Gui Zu, with his astonishing strength and decent understanding of the Dao of Space, spent nearly a thousand years researching Space Arrays on the floating continent, but in the end he was only able to create a defective product that aside from killing people, really had no other use.

So Yang Yan saying she understood how to arrange Space Arrays greatly surprised Yang Kai.

He had never asked Yang Yan one very important question, why she was already an Original Grade Artifact Refiner despite being so young. Yang Kai himself was a Saint King Grade Alchemist, but Yang Yan was even younger than himself. At such an age, even if her aptitude was shocking, it should be impossible to reach such a level with just her own efforts.

Now that he knew she understood Space Arrays as well, Yang Kai became even more shocked.

Yang Yan muttered a few words but seemingly wasn’t willing to answer clearly.

“Forget it, there’s no need to explain,” Yang Kai didn’t force her. Who doesn’t have their own secrets? Secrets cannot be shared with others and Yang Kai didn’t have a habit of prying into other’s lives.

“Then… won’t give me some?” Yang Yan expression became pained, as if she was afraid Yang Kai was refusing her request, quickly adding, “I can tell you this, if my research into Space Arrays goes well, we’ll not only be able to teleport around Shadowed Star, there’s a chance we can reach other Cultivation Stars as well.”

“What?” This time Yang Kai was really shocked.

“You don’t want to be trapped on the Shadowed Star all your life, right?” Yang Yan was observing carefully and quickly struck while the iron was hot, “There are many wonderful things in the outside world we haven’t seen before, I’ve heard that there are Origin Kings and Origin King Grade materials out among the Star Field. With those materials, I can refine Origin King Grade artefacts! Once I help you refine such an artefact, even if you just stand there and let your enemies hit you, you won’t be injured!”

This little girl might be a bit simple-minded, but she knew how to negotiate!

However, this proposal was undeniably attractive to Yang Kai.

His heart wasn’t moved because of Yang Yan’s claims about artefacts, but rather because of his friends and family back on Tong Xuan Realm!

If Yang Yan could really create a Space Array capable of connecting different Cultivation Stars, after he established himself in the Star Field, he could bring all his family and friends out into this wider world and allow them to enjoy all its splendours.