kvmb Chapter 189 Demon Fox Statue
Chapter 189 Demon Fox Statue
Carrying the white lantern, Shen Xu began searching for potentially valuable items at the bottom of the sinkhole. Since sunlight barely reached the bottom, there were hardly any large plants in the vast area, only some unknown mosses and ferns.
What puzzled Shen Xu was that, given the enormous number of bloodthirsty bats living on both sides of the sinkhole, there should have been a large amount of bat droppings at the bottom of the cave.
But to his surprise, the entire bottom of the pit was spotless; he didn't even find a single bat dropping. Especially in the area covered by the Kunyuan Hall, the stone slabs were covered only with a thick layer of dust, nothing else.
However, like the other three Kunyuan Palaces, the Kunyuan Palace at the bottom of this sinkhole is surrounded by broken walls, dilapidated statues, and shattered stone slabs. Only the gray stone palace seems to have stood unchanged for thousands of years at the very bottom of the sinkhole.
"Hiss~" Shen Xu suddenly felt as if his left foot had been pierced by a sharp object. The intense pain instantly spread throughout his body, causing his expression under the mask to contort into a ferocious grimace.
Shen Xu quickly took off his boots and socks and examined the injury on the sole of his foot under the light. He found that there was only a bright red blood spot, which did not seem to be a serious injury. But why did it hurt so much?
He is now a cultivator at the tenth level of Qi Nourishment, and his body has been strengthened many times. Even if he stepped on a sharp steel needle barefoot, it might not hurt him. The only possibility is that the thing that pierced his skin is abnormal.
He immediately began to examine the area he had just walked on and, sure enough, found a tiny, sharp stone spike with blood from his foot on it.
He reached out and touched it, only to find that the stone spike seemed to be part of an object buried in the ground. After he dug away the hard soil around it, a small statue covered in black mud appeared before his eyes.
Shen Xu took the statue in his hand and began to condense clear water to wash every inch of the statue. When all the black mud on the statue disappeared, he realized that the statue in front of him was a lifelike six-tailed fox demon. However, two of its tails had broken off and disappeared, and the stone spike that pierced his foot was the end of the fourth tail of the statue.
Shen Xu carefully admired the fox demon statue in front of him. Although the entire statue was not even as big as his palm, every detail was extremely exquisite. The angry expression, the sharp teeth, the slender and streamlined body, and the finely sculpted hairs, especially the tails, seemed to have a divine charm, as if they would dance at any moment.
"Exquisite craftsmanship! A fine piece." Shen Xu sent the statue into his storage ring without hesitation.
In the remaining time, Shen Xu found some other small statue fragments on the ground, but most of them were indistinguishable and too broken. He couldn't tell what the craftsman originally carved. However, the location of these statues gave him some clues.
The statue fragments appeared to form a large circle, and the fragments were only found in the area covered by the circle. After noticing this, he walked towards the center of the circle.
A moment later, Shen Xu looked down at his feet, at the center point he had measured with his footsteps. Although there seemed to be nothing there, he was not one to give up easily, so he drew his sword and began digging at the spot beneath his feet.
As it turned out, he actually dug something up. Although he only dug out a small section of it, he could tell that what he dug out was a white jade pillar that would take one person to hug.
The stone pillars must be buried very deep underground, and their shape somewhat resembles the two stone pillars in front of the Kunyuan Hall's stone gate. Thinking of this, Shen Xu felt a pang of discouragement; he had no interest in anything he couldn't take with him.
But he was reluctant to give up the stone pillar, after all, he had worked hard to dig it out, and he didn't want it to benefit someone else.
Suddenly, he remembered the fox spirit statue he had just picked up. With a try-it-out attitude, he placed the fox spirit statue on the stone pillar and then watched the changes between the two with great anticipation.
After some time, Shen Xu felt that he was a fool. Although he had high expectations for both, the statue and the stone pillar did not change at all in his eyes. He felt that the statue and the stone pillar had let him down.
But he was not prepared to give up. He wanted to give the statue and the stone pillar one last chance, so he took the white lantern and went to other places.
Shortly after Shen Xu left, the patterns on the stone pillar began to shimmer with an eerie crimson light, as if those exquisite patterns were the blood vessels hidden inside the stone pillar, and what was flowing through them was the blood of the stone pillar itself.
As time quietly passed, the blood-red light, as if alive, slowly climbed along the patterns on the white jade pillar. Finally, the blood-red light reached the top of the pillar and began to seep into the fox demon statue above it little by little.
Nourished by this blood-red light, the tip of the fourth tail of the fox spirit statue was first stained with a bright and dazzling blood-red color.
Immediately afterwards, the color spread rapidly, covering the entire tail in no time.
Then, the crimson color continued to spread and extend across the fox demon's stone body like a plague, until the entire fox demon statue was completely stained a chilling crimson.
After doing all this, the stone pillar seemed to have exhausted all its strength. A series of crisp "crackling" sounds rang out, and deep cracks gradually appeared on the stone pillar, crisscrossing and running through the entire pillar.
At the same time, the crimson color on the fox spirit statue gradually receded like a tide, eventually disappearing without a trace. In the blink of an eye, everything around returned to its former tranquility.
……
"Condensing Essence Fruit!!" Seeing the small fruit emitting a white fluorescence under the white light, Shen Xu could not hide his excitement.
Condensing Essence Fruits usually only grow in places with extremely abundant Yuan Qi concentration, so how come there are some here? With these questions in mind, Shen Xu used the mist to probe for dangers around the Condensing Essence Fruit, but found that there was no danger at all.
But thinking about it, it makes sense. The monsters that could be sealed off by the bloodthirsty bats in the secret realm have probably all been cleared out by the Four Directions Sword Alliance. And since there is no food at the bottom of this sinkhole, it is probably difficult for powerful monsters to appear.
With excitement, Shen Xu stepped forward and put the three white condensed essences on the vine into the jade box.
The Condensing Essence Fruit is essentially a collection of primordial fluids, and it is an extremely mild primordial fluid, so mild that it can directly enter the dantian through the meridians without harming them.
It has no distinction between young and mature, only between size, and it can grow on any plant.
If a cultivator in the Qi Nourishing Realm can consume the Condensing Essence Fruit before breaking through, they can store the essence liquid within the fruit in their dantian in advance, thereby increasing the limit of essence liquid that can be stored in the dantian when breaking through to the Qi Condensation Realm.
Although the Condensing Yuan Pool and Condensing Yuan Fruit in the Kunyuan Hall differ by only one character, their effects are completely different. The Condensing Yuan Fruit can increase the volume of Yuan liquid in a cultivator's dantian, while the Condensing Yuan Pool can increase the quality of the Yuan liquid condensed by the cultivator.