Being alone inside the chamber, Tianlong started to inspect its every nook and cranny.
Covering an area of about four hundred metres, the room was completely unremarkable save for the circular pond in the middle of it which glowed with the characteristic soft white light of the Luminescence Spirit Water.
"They must have some sort of defence against people who try to take away the spirit water from here."
Instead of directly diving inside the pond, he scanned its vicinity.
After a careful inspection, he found a formation inscribed in its perimeter. He recognised the runic symbols.
"Hmm? A low-grade Spirit entrapping array? Didn't know they would be so considerate." He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Spiritual objects like pills, talismans, and spirit stones gradually lost their spirituality over time. Thus they needed special sealing formations to retain their spiritual energy. The spirit gathering arrays were one such formation.
In simple terms, they could be described as a 'cage' for spiritual energy.
However, the array present here was of very poor quality and couldn't keep hold of all the spiritual energy inside the pond.
After some more checking, he found that the array in front didn't have the exact same structure as described in the books. It was as if it was a mixture of two different arrays. However, it was nothing dangerous to him.
Tianlong was a cautious person. It was only after he noticed that everything was alright did he finally stepped towards the pool.
"In the alliance sect, they warned others against taking spiritual liquid from the pond. However, the bandits mentioned no such thing. I don't think they are so generous…"
"Most likely, this array acts can detect if someone is taking the spiritual liquid from the pond. So, taking the spirit water from here will only give the bandits an excuse to rob that person!" He coldly sneered in his mind.
He took out the three interspatial rings in his possession. One of them was from Qingxue who gave it to him for safekeeping, one from Su Fei and the last one was his own.
"I'm not sure if this array can detect spirit liquid even it is put inside an interspatial ring, but I don't want to take any chances."
He took out the jade bottles containing the spirit liquid and put them outside the formation before keeping the rings back again.
Now that he couldn't think of anything else, Tianlong went inside the formation.
The room was already filled with dense spiritual energy. But it couldn't be compared to the inside the array where the spiritual energy had been gathering for a long time.
From the bank of the pond, a stone platform extended to the middle of the pond where one could sit and submerge themselves in the spirit water. After all, Qi Condensation cultivators were still not capable of floating in the water.
As he sat in the glowing pond, he felt as if all the pores in his body had opened up and were greedily sucking the spiritual energy of the liquid.
A feeling that was similar to when he was practising his Roc Transmogrification art.
Already having cultivated using the Qi condensation technique of the Long Clan, Tianlong was familiar with the cultivation process.
With his knowledge about meridians and acupoints, his cultivation was very smooth. He could easily direct the energy through his Qi passageways and feel himself grow stronger with passing time.
Time passed by.
One hour… Two hours… Four hours… Six hours…
Being rapidly refined by him, the spiritual liquid on the surface of the pond was quickly turning into a white fog.
The Facial Transformation Art had already been undone by him.
There was no need to keep another cultivation art active while he was cultivating. His original handsome face and tanned skin glowed like a piece of gem while absorbing the spiritual liquid.
Yet, there was a trace of darkness coming from both the fog and the quasi-demon which added an evil charm to the otherwise holy scene.
After another hour passed by, Tianlong exhaled a white gas from his mouth and opened his eyes.
In just a few hours of cultivation, he had condensed two additional vortexes in his acupoints. If not for the consideration regarding his foundation, he could've gone even further.
It was a speed that would term him as a monster no matter where he goes.
However, there he didn't felt any satisfaction from this speed.
Instead, there was a serious look on his face. His eyes were fixed at the bottom of the pond.
While cultivating, he came to notice that the vine surrounding his heart was absorbing a different kind of energy from the pond.
And no matter what he did, he wasn't able to stop the process.
So instead, he further accelerated the absorption and even helped in guiding the strange energy towards the vine.
Soon, he noticed that the energy was similar to Corpse Qi that permeated in the corpses of strong individuals.
Unless one had methods to handle this Qi, even a trace of it could become a lethal poison.
The only reason others weren't affected was that it was thinly spread out among the Luminescence spirit water.
Tianlong didn't possess any Corpse Qi cultivation technique, but strangely he was able to easily assimilate it. He understood it was something that the vine desired.
"Should I dive inside or not? This Corpse Qi should be related to the source of the spring. Maybe I can even hunt a few aquatic beasts too!"
Tianlong stared at the pond for a long time. In the end, he calculated the risks involved and chose not to.
Although his parents had given him sufficient treasures to protect himself, he wasn't sure if they could withstand the continuous assault of a horde of demons.
"I can certainly suppress their lot by using my bloodline pressure but my cultivation base is too low and I won't be able to kill a lot of them in a short period of time…" He paused and thought that it was a bit of shame. So many living creatures, which meant so many test subjects to study on.
"However, just because I can't go in their territory, doesn't mean they can't!"
Retrieving the corpse of a demonic beast that he had hunted, Tianlong cut off a small chunk of flesh from it.
After draining most of its blood, he attached some empty water bottles to it and threw them in the middle of the pond.
The pond's surface turned a light shade of red as the leftover blood from the flesh seeped out.
Time went by, the blood continued to dilute and the surface regained its original glow.
…
Deep inside the pond, at about three-thousand metres beneath Tianlong's current position.
Unlike what others would've thought, this place was shrouded in a swirling mass of darkness.
The only source of light was the blood-red glow from the eyes of the aquatic beasts.
In a blood-crazed frenzy, the beasts continued to fight each other trying to get close to the source of darkness.
Like many other weaker beasts, a rank one Tigerfish floating far away from the scene. It could only spectate the stronger ones in envy.
Suddenly, it smelled something and twitched its nasal cavity. It was the delicious smell of blood.
After a slight hesitation, it silently left the chaotic scene and swam towards the source of the blood.
Soon a piece of flesh caught its vision.
Although the beast was confused about why a lump of meat was floating on water, its intelligence was almost non-existent to bother about it.
Sploosh!
It hungrily took a bite of it and immediately dived back.
Seeing that nothing happened, it felt that there was no more danger involved. It went upwards again and started to eat it.
However, no matter how much it tried, the meat just wouldn't come down. It was as if there was something that was tightly holding the lump of meat on the surface.
Finally, the fish poked his head out of the pond and decided to coil its body around the flesh to drag it down.
However, just as it poked its head outwards, it heard a sharp swishing sound and in the next moment, an arrow pierced its skull.
Skree!
Letting out a sharp cry, the fish tried to escape from its assailant.
But how could Tianlong let it escape?
With a calm look on his face, Tianlong quickly shot two more arrows at two different locations on the water surface.
Even though he couldn't see the beast anymore, he could predict its movement. Each of them correctly pierced the target.
Although he couldn't utilise the Bow techniques of the Yun clan before grasping the element of lightning, it didn't stop him from using his Greatbow.
The Silver Spruce Ash was a unique tree as it possessed the power of both Metal and Wood. His Greatbow being crafted from a ten thousand years old Silver Spruce Ash enhanced the arrow's sharpness and gave it a paralysing property.
Tianlong went inside the pond and dragged the body of the paralysed beast using the end of the arrows.
After retrieving the arrows from its body, he observed the beast with rapt attention.
The creature was about three metres long with a flat circular face, low sunken eyes, thin lips, and a single nasal cavity. Its loose orange skin had stripes of yellow and brown from which the beast derived its namesake.
Being on its deathbed and out of water, its mouth kept opening and closing exposing the razor-sharp canines.
If one judged it by the aesthetic standards of humans, it was truly an exemplar of ugliness.
However, outer appearances didn't matter anything to him. His mind was more focused on uncovering the fact of how the Corpse Qi had changed the biology of the beasts.
However, if he wanted to collect more data, he needed even more subjects.
Thus, for the remaining time that he was present here, Tianlong spent it entirely on baiting and catching more unfortunate beasts.