Chapter 501 - 470: The Wondrous Generation and Overcoming of the Five Elements

Song Ciwan moved through the jungle-like flower field in fits and starts.

She tailed Master Chen from a safe distance.

Every time Master Chen encountered a giant insect, he would engage it in a fierce battle, leaving both sides with injuries, light or severe.

Master Chen would take the opportunity to flee while the giant insect was slow to react, leaving Song Ciwan to deal with the creatures he had left half-injured.

She wasn’t really taking advantage of Master Chen. After all, she could absorb the half-injured insects into her Heaven and Earth Scale with a mere wave of her hand. Even if Master Chen hadn’t wounded them first, it wouldn’t have taken much effort for her to deal with them.

On the contrary, by taking care of the giant insects, Song Ciwan was actually helping Master Chen, saving him from being pursued and potentially killed on the road.

Performing her "good deeds," Song Ciwan continued to tail Master Chen as he ventured deeper and deeper into the flower field.

By a rough calculation, their journey had already lasted a full hour!

Suddenly, the scenery ahead began to change subtly.

Before, the soil in the flower field had been mostly moist. It wasn’t wet enough to be muddy, but the damp earth gave off a soft, vibrant feeling.

But now, a faint dividing line had appeared on the ground ahead.

It seemed natural at first glance, but a closer look revealed that the soil beyond the line was gradually becoming hard and dry.

As the soil grew harder, more and more gravel began to appear.

Of course, in a world where everything was enormous—where a flower field was as vast as a jungle—the so-called "gravel" was anything but small.

When the stones first appeared, they were the size of a human head. As they continued, the stones grew to be half a person tall, and then, before long, they were even taller than a person!

Master Chen had to switch from walking to climbing. Though he was supposedly in a flower field, his movements were clearly those of someone scaling one rocky hill after another.

Various insects also appeared among the rocky hills. One of them was a black beetle, about half a person tall. When it leaped, its leg-blades were not only sharp enough to slice through stone, but it would also spew a green slime from its mouthparts.

This slime was extremely corrosive. The moment it touched Master Chen’s Steel Whip, the weapon sizzled and smoked, a clear sign of how difficult this insect was to deal with.

This time, Master Chen chose not to fight it head-on. Instead, he reached into his robes, suddenly pulled out a yellow Five Elements Crystal Pearl, and hurled it at the insect.

BANG!

The earthy-yellow Crystal Pearl landed on the black beetle’s back. Suddenly, the beetle’s entire body went soft.

Even more bizarrely, the grayish-white stone surface beneath the black beetle also softened.

The white stone liquified into a white sludge, trapping the black beetle’s body. It struggled to move, and even the green slime spewing from its mouthparts began to fade in color, its corrosive properties weakening.

Apparently, the yellow Five Elements Crystal Pearl was the black beetle’s bane!

Song Ciwan, tailing him from afar, used her Shadow Tracking Technique to conceal her presence while observing everything with a heightened perception.

’I never knew Five Elements Crystal Pearls could be used in combat.’

’In the Nine Provinces, Five Elements Crystal Pearls are normally used to refine Magical Artifacts and Magical Treasures, or as Puppet Cores. Because their energy is so pure, they can also be used to aid Cultivation, helping Cultivators rapidly absorb their unique Attribute Primordial Qi.’

’Five Elements Crystal Pearls can also be used for Array Formation. In that case, they are essentially upgraded Primordial Pearls that possess one of the Five Elements attributes.’

’To put it bluntly, Five Elements Crystal Pearls are just Energy Stones with specific attributes!’

Yellow is the Earth Attribute.

White is the Metal Attribute.

Black is the Water Attribute.

Green is the Wood Attribute.

Red is the Fire Attribute.

’But even though the energy in the Five Elements Crystal Pearls is pure, their dense and unique structure makes them difficult to use in combat.’

’So how can Master Chen use them for combat now? I wonder if his Five Elements Crystal Pearls are special, or if it’s the black beetles here that are unique?’

Song Ciwan felt more and more certain that this place held a great secret.

She suppressed the swirl of emotions in her heart and continued to follow Master Chen from a careful distance.

Master Chen climbed among the rocky hills for about another ten minutes. Besides the black beetles, he also encountered red slime-bugs and green aphids.

When he faced a red slime-bug, Master Chen would use a black Five Elements Crystal Pearl.

The red slime-bug would spit fire, but once the black, Water Attribute Five Elements Crystal Pearl was thrown, the flames would be extinguished. The bug would then collapse limply to the ground, turning into a piece of dark-red, scorched hide.

Master Chen walked over and picked up the scorched hide, a look of delight on his face.

He stored the scorched hide in a Storage Talisman—

’Yes, a Storage Talisman.’

It was only then that Song Ciwan noticed he wasn’t using a Storage Pouch, but a lower-level Storage Talisman.

’That doesn’t make sense. As an Innate Second Transformation Cultivator, Master Chen doesn’t seem poor. There’s no way he can’t afford a Storage Pouch.’

’Storage Talismans are known to be fragile. Not only is their internal space small—a cubic meter at most—but the number of times you can access them is also limited.’

’Usually no more than a hundred times. Any more than that, and the internal space will collapse.’

’The items inside might be violently expelled, or they could be torn to shreds in the resulting spatial turbulence.’

’Any Cultivator with even a little wealth would never be willing to use a Storage Talisman.’

’Who knows when an unstable item like that might fail? If it destroyed all your possessions, who could you even complain to?’

Yet here was Master Chen, using a Storage Talisman. Song Ciwan pondered this for a moment, then reached for the Storage Pouch at her waist. With a thought, she tried to retrieve a Talisman from inside—

But, just as she suspected, she failed!

’So Storage Pouches can’t be used in this realm. It’s probably because of the oppressive aura and dense space here.’

’The strange thing is, while Storage Pouches are unusable, these lower-level Storage Talismans work just fine.’

Song Ciwan silently mulled over the principle behind this, feeling that understanding it would be a great boon to her comprehension of the Path of Space.

She experimented again and discovered that while her Storage Pouch was useless, her Vast Sea Grotto Heaven was still accessible.

However, storing and retrieving items from the Vast Sea Grotto Heaven felt heavy and sluggish. It required much more mental effort than it did in the outside world to access it freely.

The only thing that remained completely unaffected was the Heaven and Earth Scale.

’Of course, it was only natural for the Heaven and Earth Scale to be unaffected.’

’The Heaven and Earth Scale was of such a high order that Song Ciwan still couldn’t fathom its limits. If even the Scale were affected by this realm, then she might as well give up on exploring and just leave immediately.’

As Song Ciwan watched Master Chen collect the red slime-bug’s scorched hide, she suddenly paused. Then, raising her hand, she pulled a grayish-green centipede from a crevice in the rocks.

The centipede was a fearsome sight, a full meter long. As it leaped with its thousand legs splayed, pairs of leg-blades emerged from its belly. Spinning like millstones with a grinding KKKK-RRRR sound, they came whirling straight for Song Ciwan’s head!