Having now obtained a Soil Lotus inside his Middle Dantian, all Jian Shen had to do now was keep on collecting Soul Essence inside his Middle Dantian until he was finally ready to stop and create his Nascent Soul with all the accumulated Soul Essence inside him.
Luckily, he didn't need to do this in a single go and could take his time to do it while taking as many breaks as he felt like.
Thus, Jian Shen planned on spending as much time every day as possible to absorb Soul Essence from around him until Qingyu and Juewang who had more experience than him were satisfied with the quantity of it.
Unfortunately, Jian Shen couldn't stay true to this idea due to what happened the very next day.
...
"Ruins? Why would I bother going there?"
"Huh? What are you talking about? Ancient ruins like this one contain various cultivation resources and techniques! For someone like you who just ascended, this is the best thing that could happen."
"Really?"
Speaking in an uncertain tone, Jian Shen let his eyes lustfully trail from the top to the bottom of Xifeng's body before finally saying, "I really think there's something even better than this ruins for me."
Smiling and forcing herself to not blush, Xifeng said, "I really think you should go and explore these ruins before the other forces obtain wind of this news."
Turns out the ancient unexplored ruins which were discovered were inside the boundaries of the Winter Jade Empire. Due to this, even though Xifeng couldn't completely reject the others from entering it, she could have only those she wanted to explore the ruins first and make the others wait.
Thus, along with those from the younger generation she planned to send depending on the results of the competition she was going to hold, Xifeng wanted Jian Shen to go and test his luck out.
As for his safety, Xifeng doubted anything would happen to someone like Jian Shen while he was doing something like exploring ruins.
Still, she was also sending someone to keep an eye on Jian Shen in secret and keep him safe at all costs.
In the end, even though Jian Shen just wanted to cultivate as long as possible, he was also curious about how it would be to explore an ancient ruins.
...
With Jian Shen having been selected, what was next was to find out about the talented young geniuses inside the Winter Jade Empire and rank them based on their strength.
It wasn't that Xifeng was unwilling to send too many of them, but travelling in a small group was sometimes better than sending a large group of people who'd attract attention very easily.
After all, the more time she managed to keep the information regarding these ruins a secret, the longer time Jian Shen and the others would have in freely exploring the ruins.
So, Xifeng very quickly announced a tournament and had it finished just as quickly with a total of nine winners.
These nine were given the choice to explore the ruins and without any doubt all of them took the opportunity with excited faces.
This was because even though they all came from rich families, there was never anything such as enough cultivation resources.
Once all the preparations were finished, Xifeng didn't have them waste any time and directly arranged for a flying carriage to take all of them along with Jian Shen to the location of the ruins.
...
Sitting inside the flying carriage with used Qi and the Intents of Heaven and Earth to not even tremble or wobble despite moving at a huge speed through the air, Jian Shen who was sitting in a corner with his eyes closed could feel the curious eyes of everyone else on him.
This was understandable because he neither took part in the tournament and Xifeng didn't tell the nine of them that he would be joining them.
Even with his eyes closed, Jian Shen who bad started absorbing Soul Essence could take a rough guess of how strong the nine people with him inside the carriage were.
There were six of them in Fate Weapon Realm, and three of them in Soul Splitting Realm.
Still, to Jian Shen all of this didn't matter much because as long as he got close enough to them, he was confident in defeating all of them.
His soul shouldn't be so weak that he couldn't even take an attack or two, right?
"Hey... Do you know who he is?"
"I've never seen him before."
"Me either. His strength is just so low that... "
"I know. But for some reason, the Empress sounded very confident in him. Is there some kind of a secret?"
"I don't know. I just think he looks very handsome to sit all alone in the corner. I'm going to go over and say welcome him. He's going to be a part of the group anyway."
"Tsk! I think he's just going to end up as a leach so he should be the one who comes and greets us."
Ignoring the negative comments from all the male members of her group, the girl who was very curious to find out about Jian Shen stood up to walk near him when he himself stood up.
But, he didn't walk in their direction and rather walked towards the woman who was sitting opposite to him in another corner all alone.
"Can I sit here?"
Opening her eyes since just like Jian Shen she had her eyes closed, the woman only nodded her head before closing them once again as if she didn't care about what he did.