After meeting with Yang Yunqi yesterday, Tiantian still had Leiji return to the Pocket World. He returned to the inn at a leisurely pace and casually set up a barrier. With a single thought, he was already inside the Pocket World.
Sensing Tiantian's arrival, the various Monster race spirits all appeared. After more than ten days of treatment with medicinal pills, daily uninterrupted nourishment from spirit fruits and spirit tea, and the rich spiritual Qi of the Pocket World, their complexions had improved visibly to the naked eye. Seeing this, Tiantian finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Except for Xue'er, who had been imprisoned for a relatively short time and had not yet suffered persecution by the Yang family, some of the Monster race had been imprisoned for as long as a century and had already perished. The horrifying scenes witnessed back then in the secret chamber of the Yang family Patriarch were still fresh in his mind. Taomujin and Water Qilin had rescued all the imprisoned Monster race from the cages, which included dozens of sets of remains...
Now, the remnants of the Yang family's evil deeds had all brought about their own destruction. As for Daoist Xuanqing, Tiantian believed there would be a day for a direct confrontation, but not right now.
His most urgent task was to quickly take the wounded to Pingyuan City in the Cultivation World. Relying on his medical skills and alchemy (not to mention array formations, illusions, talismans, swordsmanship, and so on), he would definitely settle them in properly and provide a continuous stream of cultivation resources.
Having already received the news from Taomujin, everyone expressed that following Tiantian to take the teleportation array would be no problem at all. Considering everyone's injuries, the existence of the Xuanqing Sect, and safety issues during spatial teleportation, Tiantian decided it would be safest for the monsters to remain in the Pocket World.
After visiting everyone, Tiantian instantly returned to his inn room. When checking out, Tiantian left an extra thirty taels of silver with the innkeeper, entrusting him to take care of the horse for a year. If he had not returned after a year, he asked the innkeeper to please treat the horse well and not overwork it.
The innkeeper was an honest man. While overjoyed, he immediately wrote a duplicate contract, keeping one copy for himself and giving the other to Tiantian as a voucher.
At the hour of Si in the morning, Tiantian invisibly left the inn and traveled swiftly all the way to a spot thirty li northeast of the outskirts of Shengjing. He saw that Yang Yunqi, dressed as a martial artist of the pugilistic world, was already waiting there in a square not far away. Catching sight of Tiantian, Yang Yunqi walked over briskly. The two of them nodded at each other.
Yang Yunqi said in a low voice, "Benefactor need not worry about spirit stones. Although the Yang family clan didn't have many spirit stones, I brought all of them with me. It will be enough for our expenses for a while. Once we get over there, I will work hard to earn spirit stones."
Tiantian smiled and nodded, saying, "We can talk about that after we get there." At the same time, he felt satisfied with this young man who knew how to earn a living to support a family.
For both of them, this was their first time taking a teleportation array. There were two teleportation arrays here, said to have been built by mighty figures of the Cultivation World for the convenience of their descendants traveling to the Cultivation World. Each array covered an area of about one mu.
At the entrance of each magical array sat two tables, with a scholar-like person sitting behind each table, looking like officials handling business in a yamen. Next to each table stood eight guards who looked like cultivators, each carefully observed to be at the Foundation Establishment mid-stage. The two scholars each had their own responsibilities: one registered identities and names, while the other was responsible for collecting spirit stones.
At this moment, at the entrance of each array, a sparse queue of people stood waiting. Tiantian led Yang Yunqi toward the queue on the right. When registering names, Tiantian reported his truthfully, and Yang Yunqi followed up by saying, "Yunqi, cultivator." Tiantian nodded inwardly; the young man was casting aside his past and starting everything anew. Splendid!
The fee at the entrance of the array was thirty low-grade spirit stones per person. After entering the grand array, each person also had to drop in three hundred low-grade spirit stones to ensure the array had enough energy to start. Moreover, if there were fewer than ten people, the array could not be activated. In other words, a full three thousand low-grade spirit stones were required to ensure the array safely transported these people to Pingyuan City in the Cultivation World.
The queue on the left had just gathered ten people. After the ten people paid their spirit stones in full, they entered the grand array.
Tiantian's side was still two people short. The scholar behind the desk said leisurely, "The number of people is not enough; everyone, please wait patiently for a moment."
The cultivator at the front asked, "How long do we have to wait?"
The scholar answered patiently, "At the shortest one or two days, at the longest three to five days, or perhaps half a month."
The queuing cultivators were dumbfounded—when would they ever get to go? Having finally scraped together enough spirit stones by exhausting all their family resources, they actually had to wait ten days to half a month? Alas! What bad luck! Why hadn't they chosen the queue on the left?
Tiantian patiently asked the first few cultivators, "Do you gentlemen have urgent matters?"
One of them said, "Little brother, you don't know this, but half a month from now, the major sects of the Cultivation World will be recruiting new disciples in Pingyuan City. Everyone here is probably heading there for that goal." The other few people nodded in agreement.
Tiantian pondered bitterly for a while, then made up his mind and said, "Brother travelers, since everyone is in a hurry to travel, this younger brother has a suggestion. I wonder if I should share it?"
Seeing that this little brother was sincere, everyone chimed in, "Little brother, if you have something to say, please speak."
Tiantian cautiously said, "Since everyone has urgent matters, why not pool our resources to cover the fees for these two missing people? Waiting ten days to half a month would probably ruin our plans!"
The cultivators all furrowed their brows. After a quarter of an hour, they glanced at each other and nodded one after another. Surrounded by the others, the cultivator at the very front asked the money-collecting scholar to help calculate how much each of the eight people needed to contribute when splitting the three thousand spirit stones required to start the array.
Without panicking, the scholar clicked the abacus and quickly figured it out: for eight people to ride the grand array, each needed to bear three hundred and seventy-five spirit stones. Hearing this, the cultivators all wore expressions of heartache. But since they had already decided, they had no choice but to nod.
After paying thirty spirit stones each and receiving their vouchers (which recorded their identities, names, departure and arrival points of teleportation, and bore a stamped seal), they finally entered the grand array.
Upon entering the grand array, two Nascent Soul cultivators stood at the entrance inside, one on the left and one on the right, responsible for activating it. Every single one of these eight people obediently offered up three hundred and seventy-five spirit stones. A total of three thousand spirit stones were successively placed into the array disks at the four corners.
The ground of the magical array was a single piece of dark golden giant stone. In the center of the array stood a waist-high, pillar-shaped controller made of the same material, with ten square grooves on it. At this moment, the array gates closed.
One Nascent Soul cultivator spoke up, "Everyone, place your boundary stones into the grooves of the central controller." The eight people took out their boundary stones one after another and carefully embedded them into the grooves.
At this moment, a buzzing sound rang out, and intricate patterns lit up on the dark golden giant stone ground, flickering on and off while continuously shifting. A beam of white light shot out from each of the four corner array disks, heading straight for the top of the array, and the entire grand array was activated. Except for the two Nascent Soul cultivators, Tiantian and the other seven people slightly bent their knees, planting their stances firmly on the stone ground without moving an inch, looking as if they had entered deep meditation.
It seemed like a long time had passed, or perhaps only a moment, when two loud, rumbling booms echoed, followed immediately by two heavy thuds of objects hitting the ground. A steady and composed voice sounded beside their ears: "Pingyuan City has arrived."
Tiantian and the others abruptly opened their eyes. What met their gaze was a wide plaza measuring a full eight mu square. The flow of people on the plaza automatically divided into two directions.
Tiantian and the others took a deep breath and lifted their feet to step out of the grand array. After walking a dozen steps and stopping to stand still, they looked around the plaza: there were a total of eight grand arrays, four of which were for entering Pingyuan City, while the other four in the opposite direction must have been for leaving Pingyuan City to go to other cities.
Without any particular order, the eight of them followed the flow of people to the edge of the plaza. It was precisely noon. Tiantian released his divine sense, and in the distance, a city gate stood proudly, with a city-protecting array deployed across the sky and outer perimeter of the entire city.
More than a dozen cultivators who had just walked out of the teleportation array were already walking ahead of them in twos and threes toward the city gate. The other six people who had traveled along with them also stepped forward toward the city gate.
Tiantian motioned for Yunqi to wait a moment. He used his divine sense to contact Taomujin and learned that everyone was safe and sound, completely unaffected by the spatial teleportation, which finally set his mind at ease. Hearing his benefactor say that his mother was well, Yunqi's tense face also broke into a smile.
When they drew closer, robust soldiers stood on both sides of the city gate. Tiantian saw cultivators arriving by riding spiritual beasts, cultivators arriving in canopied, fragrant carriages pulled by spiritual beasts, and even cultivators flying in directly on their swords.
Regardless of how they arrived, all cultivators lined up uniformly at the city gate to undergo inspection by the soldiers before entering the city gate in an orderly fashion. When it was their turn, Tiantian motioned for Yunqi to present the teleportation array voucher. After inspecting it, the soldiers nodded and let them pass through.
Passing through a gateway that could only accommodate four beast-drawn carriages at most, the aura of the mortal world rushed over them.
As soon as the two entered the city, they were met with surging crowds. The main avenue leading into the city was wide and commercially bustling, with shops lining the roadside. Food houses, inns, medical clinics, money shops, rouge shops, jewelry stores, pawnshops, gambling dens, and brokerages—these looked just like shops in the Mortal Realm.
There were also some signboards that did not exist in the Mortal Realm, such as elixir shops, magical clothing shops, talisman shops, armor shops, flying magic tool shops, array formation shops, cauldron towers, and so on.
If one ignored the signboards and only looked at the attendants at the shop doors, one might think they were still in the Mortal Realm. The attendants were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, leaving Tiantian and Yunqi practically unable to cope.
Tiantian ultimately chose an inn that looked spacious and booked two superior rooms. Yunqi actively offered to pay with spirit stones, but Tiantian stopped him.
Arriving at the doorways of the rooms, Tiantian said, "You go rest for a while; I'll call for you later." Yunqi acknowledged the order, first letting Tiantian enter, and then entering his own adjoining guest room next door. Both of them casually set up barriers.
Tiantian took note of the prices here: two superior rooms for two people, complete with preservation array formations (dust-removal and temperature-control arrays) and hot and cold water pipes (water-condensation and heating arrays). They temporarily booked them for half a month, with the deposit totaling thirty low-grade spirit stones.
He also noticed that the attendants here were all mortals. Having experience with mortal attendants, he felt quite at ease.
Tiantian first cast a Cleansing Spell, then drank a cup of Spirit Tea. With a thought, he entered the Pocket World. Sensing Tiantian's arrival, everyone walked out of their quarters and cupped their fists in greeting.
Seeing that everyone was in good condition, Tiantian smiled and said, "We have now arrived at Pingyuan City. I will take Yunqi to find a residence so everyone has a place to settle down. However, until your injuries heal, you should temporarily remain in the Pocket World, as it is more conducive to your recovery."
The Monster race nodded in agreement. Xue'er and Ginseng Baby had been cooped up for too long during this period and eagerly demanded to go outside. With no other choice, Tiantian had to give each of them a Divine Concealment Talisman to mask their spirit identities. Only then did he bid farewell to everyone and, taking the two of them along, mentally return to the inn room.
Considering that Xue'er was a young woman, Tiantian thought about calling the waiter to see if there were any other superior rooms nearby, but Xue'er stopped him. She also knew that spirit stones were needed in many places now, so every little bit saved counted. After she and Ginseng Baby played a little longer, they would still return to the Pocket World.
On second thought, Pingyuan City was a mixed bag of dragons and serpents, where mighty cultivators were as common as clouds. On the surface, he was fighting single-handedly, bringing along Ginseng Baby, Xue'er, and Yunqi—all Foundation Establishment cultivators—while a crowd of wounded individuals remained in the Pocket World. Indeed, he could neither take risks nor be extravagant. Thus, he abandoned the thought of renting another superior room.
Half an hour later, Xue'er and Ginseng Baby finished playing, and Tiantian sent them back into the Pocket World. After observing the hot and cold water pipes in the bathroom for a moment, he understood how they worked. Following that, he enjoyed a comfortable hot bath, finally washing away the fatigue of the entire journey.
He sent a voice transmission to Yunqi telling him that they would go out to look for a residence tomorrow morning and should rest well tonight. Yunqi respectfully acknowledged the command.
The night passed without incident.