Chapter 49: Seizing Fortune to Nourish Oneself

Ye Chen employed the Art of Reading Fortune and saw that the destiny corresponding to that spirit vein surged vast and mighty, golden in hue, boundless as an endless ocean.

As for that skeletal frame, black vapors streamed from its entire body, making it a ghastly sight.

Ordinarily, such golden destiny should have spread outward, nourishing the surrounding land through the spirit vein and elevating it into what might be called a blessed realm.

This place should have gathered the essence of heaven and earth and undergone an extraordinary transformation.

Yet some kind of restriction had locked all those changes in place.

Lowering his gaze, Ye Chen stared at the dry well and could not help sighing inwardly. This dry well served to seal the spirit, fastening the spirit vein shut completely. He had no idea who possessed such astonishing attainments.

The well looked utterly unremarkable, yet it had already reached the state of simplicity returning to truth.

As time passed, Ye Chen noticed that the scene within the dry well had changed drastically.

Originally, dead leaves had lain scattered across the bottom, piled together and steeped in a decaying aura.

But now the shaman stood within the well, and at the bottom, spirit fluid had begun to gather and mist into being, rippling as it rose to soak his ankles.

The spirit fluid billowed with vitality, filled with a keen spiritual essence.

A few withered leaves drifted upon its surface.

The shaman made no unnecessary movement, and then, with a sharp crack, a thunderous noise suddenly burst from the bottom of the well.

A fissure appeared at once. As the spirit fluid churned, it formed a whirlpool.

Large amounts of spirit fluid surged and shimmered, seeping into that crack.

Yet on the whole the spirit fluid was still rising, not diminishing in the slightest.

Shaken by the force, the fissure continued to widen, forming at the bottom of the well a narrow passage just large enough for one person to pass through.

“This can hardly be a coincidence.”

Ye Chen’s heart stirred. The fissure had expanded into a narrow passage exactly wide enough for a single person—how could that be explained away as mere chance?

The shaman drew a deep breath. For a moment his mind was in turmoil, and he too sensed that something was wrong.

He had never before seen such a phenomenon. It was hard to say whether these changes had only appeared recently.

After all, the fact that no one had noticed them before did not necessarily mean they had overlooked them; more likely, such changes truly had not existed then. That alone made sense. Otherwise, for no one in the entire Bamboo Tribe to have detected the slightest sign of it over several decades would be absurd.

“Could it be that because the tribe’s vitality has been severely wounded, some of the restrictions have begun to loosen?”

The shaman was puzzled. If there was any difference from before, it was probably that the tribe had grown weaker.

In the past, though the tribe could not be called powerful, it at least had no shortage of capable people. It had never been reduced to such a state of decline.

But now? Most of them were old or frail. The sight was a miserable one.

The shaman only instinctively felt that the two were linked by some subtle mystery, yet he could not peel back the layers and see through the fog behind it.

Ye Chen did not merely stand by and watch. As divine power revolved within him, it transformed into light and lightning, like a sword cleaving the air, and slashed outward, directly cutting away the collapsed earth that blocked the narrow passage.

At once the scene before them opened up considerably.

Passing through that narrow corridor, the shaman discovered scattered pieces of spirit stone.

“There are actually spirit stones here?”

His emotions surged with excitement. Yes—breaking through was no easy matter, but with spirit stones, things would be different.

In truth, there was nothing strange about a spirit vein producing spirit stones.

But one had to remember that in the present age, all who cultivated were abhorred by heaven and earth. Perhaps in that glorious era of cultivation, spirit stones had been commonplace.

Now, however, one could only glean a little about them from ancient texts.

To encounter spirit stones in reality—this was the first time.

Of course, it was also possible that the shaman was simply ignorant and poorly informed.

He gathered the spirit stones with all his might, but Ye Chen cared little for them.

Ye Chen’s cultivation had never depended on spirit stones. A spirit butterfly danced gracefully, bathed in radiant flames, and continued deeper along the fissure.

With a great rumble, as though all obstacles had been pierced through, the space before Ye Chen suddenly opened. Divine power surged fiercely, carrying him at once into a vast underground world.

“There is a smell of blood!”

Ye Chen’s heart stirred. Following the direction from which the bloody scent came, he flew onward once more.

“There are bloodstains on the ground.”

His face changed slightly. In this place, dazzling golden blood had been scattered everywhere.

Yet the blood had congealed, like immortal gold or divine iron, and would not dissolve.

There also lingered here a terrifying aura that refused to disperse. It made Ye Chen feel as though he had fallen into a bottomless ice vault.

A chill spread through the air, and a trace of gravity entered his heart.

“This is actually an ancient battlefield.”

Ye Chen exhaled a foul breath. “For the scent of blood to endure this long, it must have been left behind by some great figure.”

Of course, that so-called great figure was only measured against Ye Chen’s current strength.

That person might not truly have been a great figure, though perhaps they were. Standing at the foot of a mountain, whether he looked up at someone on the mountainside or at the summit, there was little difference to Ye Chen.

The gap between them was simply too great; he was unable to fathom their depth.

“So the Bamboo Tribe was built atop an ancient battlefield. Did the ancestors who founded the tribe know this from the beginning?”

At this thought, a certain conjecture arose in Ye Chen’s mind.

“If the ancestors of the Bamboo Tribe knew nothing of it, that would be hard to justify.”

Thinking of the tribe’s peculiarities, Ye Chen found it difficult to believe that all this had been chosen in sheer ignorance. But if the tribe’s forebears had done it intentionally, then things became interesting. To settle the Bamboo Tribe here was, of course, dangerous.

Yet within danger there was naturally also good fortune. If there had been no benefits to be gained at all, obviously no one would have willingly come to such a place.

“The waters here run deep, I fear.”

Using the Art of Reading Fortune, Ye Chen saw that over the ancient battlefield there hung rolling masses of black qi, surging endlessly, almost thick enough to condense into liquid.

It looked like a River of the Ninefold Nether flowing there.

It was profoundly terrifying, steeped in ominousness.

“In a place like this, there ought to have been strange horrors born.”

Ye Chen’s heart tightened, and a trace of astonishment rose within him.

“Those masses of black qi, though vast as an ocean, have been cut off by human hands.”

“What audacity. Is this a case of seizing destiny to enrich oneself?”

The thought startled Ye Chen, leaving him inwardly uneasy.

“Were the ancestors of the Bamboo Tribe really this bold?”

Though Ye Chen now had some understanding of destiny, what he knew was only the barest surface.

Through the Art of Reading Fortune, he could indeed observe destiny at close range.

But there were limits to that, and in truth he was still deeply ignorant.

“The destiny that was intercepted has instead been guided to nourish the life patterns of the Bamboo Tribe.”

“Good heavens, truly good heavens. If that is the case, then the fate of every tribesman of the Bamboo Tribe ought to be extraordinary.”

“Though this destiny comes from the ancient battlefield and takes the form of black qi, full of ill omen, after being transformed through the dry well, with yin and yang reversing one another, it undergoes a contrary metamorphosis.”

“To nourish life patterns with the black qi produced by an entire ancient battlefield—could it be they are trying to raise a chosen child of fate?”

Ye Chen did not believe that the world truly had some absolute protagonist, but those favored for a time by destiny, beloved of heaven and earth—such people were by no means rare.