Chapter 7

Not mentioning Nangong Wentian's thoughts and troubles, let's talk about Dugu Feng bringing Wenlai to the hot springs.

Beiming Manor was built on a massive active volcano, naturally endowed with numerous high-quality hot springs. Dugu Feng, with the privileges of being the young mistress, had long claimed a large area as her private domain.

The hot springs were located in a snowy, icy world, with thick layers of snow and ice covering the trees and rocks. Only the hot springs, steaming with heat, flowed out from the spring holes as a stream. Green bamboo tubes were placed in the hot springs at regular intervals, drawing the gurgling spring water into a wooden, artificially constructed pool.

This spring was originally an open-air natural hot spring, favored not only by people but also by small animals. However, since Dugu Feng had taken over the place, no animals dared to come. Out of concern for her own purity and to prevent peeping by certain creatures that might be mistaken for protagonists, Dugu Feng never bathed in the open air. Therefore, a leisurely wooden house was built over the hot springs.

"Hehe! Sister Xue, come down quickly!" Wenlai happily splashed the water: "Let's play with the water!"

Dugu Feng smiled gently, took off her clothes, revealing her perfect, delicate body like white jade. She walked to Wenlai, leaned down, and gently sniffed Wenlai's neck, suddenly frowning slightly: "How smelly!"

"Ah!" Wenlai quickly rubbed her hands in the water, her face flushed from the steam, her watery eyes flickering as she looked at Dugu Feng uneasily: "I... I already washed very hard! It... It shouldn't smell anymore."

Dugu Feng looked at the frightened and shy Wenlai, like a wolf sizing up a frightened deer, and suddenly smiled: "No, you didn't wash thoroughly. Let Sister Xue help you! I'll make sure to wash the cute Alai inside and out."

"But... but..." Wenlai suddenly felt that Sister Xue was now very scary. Every time Sister Xue showed this expression, she would do some very strange things to her. Although those things were very comfortable and pleasurable, thinking about them always made her feel very shy and unwilling to repeat them.

"No!" Dugu Feng hugged Wenlai, holding her struggling, and said seriously in her ear: "You played with those little animals again, didn't you! You still have the stench of that little deer on you! You must wash thoroughly to get clean."

"Ah~" Faced with the domineering Sister Xue, Wenlai could only helplessly curl up, like a little rabbit facing a wolf, looking pitiful.

Wenlai's body was small and delicate. Although she was a year older than Beiming Xue, she looked only about ten years old. Dugu Feng held Wenlai like a large doll, their cheeks touching, looking like two sisters whispering secrets. However, Wenlai's red cheeks and barely audible light breathing added a hint of ambiguity to the scene.

"Sister Xue... don't touch there... it feels so strange..."

"No, that's the dirtiest place, it must be washed thoroughly..."

"But..."

"Good children should listen. If you don't wash thoroughly, Alai won't be able to get married in the future..."

...

Dugu Feng's life at Beiming Manor was very leisurely. Her daily routine consisted of three things: eating, practicing martial arts, and teasing Alai. When she had free time, she would also teach the future protagonist, Nangong Wentian. This was even more peaceful and leisurely than the first ten years she spent in the world of "Twin Dragons of the Tang Dynasty."

However, this peace was just a facade. The cycle space was not a place for leisure and retirement. Dugu Feng was not naive enough to think that the cycle space would kindly let her level up step by step in this world. Although she was unsure if other cycleers would appear after the plot began, improving her strength as soon as possible was always her top priority.

After fourteen years of cultivation, her martial arts skills had basically reached the level after breaking through the void. To advance further, besides spending a lot of time accumulating experience, she needed to learn a large amount of high-level martial arts from this world. She needed to use the martial arts system developed over thousands of years of civilization as her resources, quickly accumulating knowledge and power to further enhance her cultivation to the eighth or even ninth star level.

Although Beiming Manor was one of the four major families of the righteous path, it was essentially just a beginner's village in the story, with limited martial arts collections. The highest-level martial art, "Tianwai Xiaoyao," was only a seventh-star martial art. Now, to advance further, the resources of Beiming Manor were no longer sufficient. However, fortunately, Dugu Feng had read the original "Shenbing Xuanyi" and knew that there was a place in the world that housed a large number of martial arts secrets. That place was Wei Wuling's tomb.

Similar to historical legends, Wei Wuling, Cao Cao, to prevent his tomb from being robbed, set up seventy-two decoy tombs to mislead future tomb robbers. Unfortunately, human plans could not match the will of heaven. Cao Cao, who had driven tomb robbers to dig many royal tombs during his lifetime, suffered retribution after death. His tomb was discovered and used as a training ground by Xuantian Yedi and Mie Cangqiong. Later, it became a dungeon for demon-slaying heroes to team up and fight bosses, suffering severe destruction.

Wei Wuling's tomb housed countless profound secrets and elixirs collected by Cao Cao during his lifetime. Among them were many shocking martial arts from the Qin and Han dynasties that had been lost to later generations. Each one, if released, would cause a stir in the martial world and lead to countless battles.

In addition, the tomb contained two tombs, "Dagger Tomb" and "Sword Tomb," which housed thousands of weapons from famous martial artists throughout history, built using Daoist secret techniques. In these tombs, each weapon was sealed with the martial skills and memories of its owner. Whenever someone entered the Dagger Tomb or Sword Tomb, these weapons would manifest the skills of their owners and attack the intruder. Thus, entering these tombs was like personally fighting numerous famous martial artists, providing valuable practical and martial arts experience.

However, the most valuable thing in the tomb was not the martial arts secrets or elixirs, nor the Dagger Tomb and Sword Tomb, but the hidden Nüwa artifact, "Xingcuo." This vehicle, used by Nüwa to tour the sky, contained vast Nüwa energy. Its scattered energy field could make those inside it mentally clear and inspired, increasing their cultivation speed by dozens of times.

With the secrets as a reference, the Dagger Tomb and Sword Tomb as training partners, and the Nüwa artifact as a cheat, this tomb was almost a cultivation ground specially prepared by heaven for Dugu Feng. Previously, Dugu Feng did not go there because she was too young to travel and her martial arts were not yet complete. Now that her martial arts had recovered to the level before her reincarnation, she naturally listed this place as her first target.

It was not easy for Dugu Feng to leave Beiming Manor because she was too young (only fourteen years old). Although she had proven her martial arts skills to be superior to her father, Beiming Zheng, as a responsible father, still did not agree to her traveling in the martial world. Unable to persuade her father or brainwash him, Dugu Feng had to act like a bad girl and secretly leave a note before running away from home.

The "Shenbing Xuanyi" world, as a high-martial world, not only had abundant elemental energy, which was beneficial for martial artists to cultivate and refine their qi, but also had a high oxygen content in the air. In the wilderness, trees over a hundred feet tall and thick enough for ten people to encircle were common. The vast wilderness not only had common trees and shrubs but also ferns that could only grow in large quantities during the dinosaur era.

The abundant elemental energy and rich oxygen content made both humans and beasts in this world physically strong and robust. In particular, in deep mountains and remote valleys far from human settlements, many primitive giant beasts similar to those from the dinosaur era lived. Dugu Feng, traveling in a straight line through the wild mountains and forests, encountered giant boars the size of elephants, birds with wingspans over ten feet, and herbivorous dinosaurs the size of small hills, almost making her feel like she had returned to the Jurassic era.

According to the original "Shenbing Xuanyi," the true tomb of Wei Wuling was at the bottom of the Zhang River bed near the seventy-two decoy tombs. There were two ways to enter: a cave left by Xuantian Yedi at the bottom of the Zhang River and a cave dug by Mie Cangqiong on the ground. Although the manga described it in detail, it did not include a map. If someone else came, they would find it impossible to locate the tomb in the vast area. However, for Dugu Feng, it was very simple. She only needed to release her divine consciousness to scan the area, and she quickly found the entrance to the tomb.

Before breaking through the void, Dugu Feng's mental power was already sufficient to sense life activities within a hundred miles. After breaking through the void, her mental power was refined and transformed into divine consciousness, which not only had various abilities such as telekinesis and materialization but could also scan hundreds of miles in a single thought, encompassing everything within a hundred miles.

She stepped on the ground and could clearly feel the Earth's rotation, even sensing the eruption and flow of magma tens of miles deep. If not for the feng shui and Daoist techniques protecting the tomb, which made it blend with the Earth's energy, Dugu Feng could have directly visualized the tomb.

In Dugu Feng's divine consciousness, everything in the world was reduced to its most fundamental state. Endless energy currents clashed and transformed in the void, creating a bizarre and diverse world. Beneath the Earth, countless streams collided and circulated, eventually converging into a red river that stretched for a thousand miles, the earth's qi dragon vein. In the world, countless points of spiritual light filled the air, some as small as dust, flickering and disappearing, others as large as torches, brilliant and intense, representing the imprints of all life. The world presented itself in its most fundamental form to Dugu Feng's divine consciousness, reassembling into a real picture in her mind.

"Found it!" Dugu Feng opened her eyes, her gaze piercing through the layers of river water to a specific spot. In her divine consciousness, the demonic energy used by Xuantian Yedi to seal the passage was as conspicuous as a torch in the dark night. The cold and eerie energy, which seemed to gather all negative human emotions, was very unique, similar to the Evil Emperor's relic she had seen in the "Twin Dragons of the Tang Dynasty" world, but a hundred times more evil and powerful.

"Boom!"

Dugu Feng split the river with a sword, and in a flash, she arrived at the entrance sealed by demonic energy.

"Clang!"

Dugu Feng struck again, aiming her sword at the demonic energy sealing the entrance.

The sword energy clashed, and the originally calm demonic energy suddenly began to spin rapidly, as if it had a life of its own, forming terrifying ghost faces.

"Hisss!"

Dugu Feng's sword energy slightly extended, and the demonic energy shattered. However, in the instant of the clash, a cold and vast mental will broke through the air, trying to invade Dugu Feng's mind but was instantly shattered by her sharp and unparalleled sword intent. The remaining sword intent followed the mental connection and cut back through the air.

"Boom!"

Thousands of miles away, a huge black heart buried underground suddenly beat violently, the intense vibration spreading like ripples, causing the hills to rumble and explode, and countless small animals to flee in panic as if facing a natural disaster.

"Excellent sword intent!" In the vast heart chamber, the lonely Xuantian Yedi suddenly opened his eyes. The heart chamber was dark, but his gaze flashed like lightning, piercing through the layers of obstacles to clearly reflect a figure in his pupils.