Chương 166: Bauhinia Mountains

Panlong World, Hell.

A strange purple crescent moon hangs here year-round, its pale purple light casting an ominous, cold glow over everything.

The clouds were mostly leaden gray and dark purple, with occasional dark red thunderclouds rolling by. The lightning was black or dark gold, silent yet carrying a pressure that could tear through space.

Richard's wind-elemental divine avatar had been traveling for decades, encountering countless bandits along the way.

They even encountered large and extra-large gangs led by five-star and six-star demons several times.

Of course, all of them became victims of his sword, contributing to his grand scheme of wealth.

I finally managed to get my hands on the soul defense artifact I'd been longing for after passing through a major city.

It cost nearly 100 billion inkstones to buy it, almost emptying most of his inkstone reserves at the time. Fortunately, a large group soon sent him money, which soothed his wounded wallet.

The soul defense artifact is now encased in the outer layer of his soul, providing it with a solid defense.

His soul was safe until this soul-defense artifact was destroyed.

The soul defense artifact acquired at such a high price is naturally no ordinary item. Even a Shura-level expert skilled in soul attacks would not be able to break through this soul defense artifact with a single blow.

That's enough. As long as he has some breathing room, even if he can't beat someone, he can still run away. All he wants is someone who can withstand a single blow from an expert specializing in soul attacks.

As for withstanding the soul attack of a Great Perfection Upper God, or multiple soul attacks from an Asura-level expert skilled in soul attacks, only a main artifact can do that.

They arrived at the outer area of the Purple Thorn Mountains. This area was jointly controlled by the eighteen families under the Purple Thorn God. Family outposts and Purple Crystal Beast patrols were set up around the mountain range to intercept unauthorized individuals.

These eighteen major families are powerful and influential, possessing numerous Asura-level experts.

Most importantly, families like theirs, which have close ties with the main god, possess a considerable amount of the main god's power. Even Ji Cha cannot afford to offend them, so he keeps a low profile and is unwilling to cause trouble easily.

There's no need to cause trouble, nor is there any need to venture into the mountains. The eighteen families do not completely forbid outsiders from entering the Zijing Mountains.

It's easy to get in; you can enter by paying 5, 000 inkstones, or you can enter without paying, but you'll have to pay 3 amethyst crystals to offset the cost when you leave.

Many mid-level gods and even high-level gods come here to try their luck, waiting for the amethyst to drift over from the sea of mist.

The Sea of Fog is a natural barrier for the Bauhinia Mountains. Ordinary god-level experts can easily get lost if they venture deep into it, and even high-ranking gods are no exception. Only the administrators know the safe routes.

Amethyst is a core strategic resource of the Bauhinia Continent, with its mining and distribution exclusively controlled by the eighteen families. It is a well-known specialty of Hell, and is widely known even in other divine planes.

This crystal functions similarly to the Soul Gold Bead, slowly nurturing the soul of a god-level expert, and is much cheaper than the Soul Gold Bead.

The downside is that it's not easy to absorb and refine. Even for high-level gods, the absorption efficiency isn't high, and the effect of one bead is not as good as that of a Soul Gold Bead. It takes multiple uses to catch up.

After paying 5, 000 inkstones, Richard followed the flow of people into the interior of the mountain range. Most of those who came here were mid-level gods, with fewer high-level gods.

There are relatively few lower-level gods, but they are not entirely absent.

Many mid-level gods choose to come here to try their luck. They don't enter the fog sea, but try their luck at the edge, or venture in a little bit without going deep. If they are lucky, they can get three or five ink stones and earn ten or twenty thousand ink stones.

This return is already quite good for an ordinary mid-level god.

Richard's wind-elemental god clones, which he revealed to the outside world, were like mid-level gods trying their luck.

As for the higher gods, their divine sense has a wider range of detection, and can even penetrate deep into the fog sea. As long as they are careful that their divine sense can cover the mountains behind them, they can return the way they came.

The Sea of Fog is special; it can confuse the five senses of even god-level experts. Even high-ranking gods will have their senses confused when they enter it and can only use their divine sense to find their location.

Once one's spiritual sense is completely covered by the sea of fog, one will be lost in it, unable to distinguish up from down from left from right, and whether one can get out depends entirely on luck.

Even now, many high-ranking and mid-ranking gods are still wandering in the Sea of Fog. These god-level powerhouses have long since lost their minds after countless years of being lost. Some attack anyone they see, while others are in a daze and have no reaction to the outside world.

Once inside, Richard headed straight for the foggy sea, unafraid of getting lost.

If we really can't get out, we can just return to the Tara dimension through the chat group and start over.

Thus, the surrounding group of god-level powerhouses saw a mid-level god rush straight into the sea of mist without slowing down.

This scene left even these god-level powerhouses completely stunned.

So reckless? Didn't you see how cautious they were?

Another person who's obsessed with money.

Many elderly people who had lived here for a long time shook their heads and stopped paying attention. Although such reckless people were rare, and they didn't know how they had lived to be so old, they could still encounter one or two every tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

The world is so big, there are all sorts of wonders.

Richard didn't care what the people outside thought. Once inside, he switched to using his Death God clone as the dominant being.

After all, the Death God's avatar is at the level of a high-ranking god, and its divine sense can probe further.

Of course, it wasn't to find a way. Not long after he rushed in, he had already crossed the limit of the distance he could go back, and now he couldn't tell which way was which, so he couldn't go back.

He did this so that he could find out the whereabouts of the amethyst in advance, making it easier to avoid and intercept it.

When the amethyst gushed out from the depths of the misty sea, it carried enormous kinetic energy, so great that it could easily penetrate the defenses of a mid-level god, and even high-level material defense artifacts might not be able to withstand it.

Every year, quite a few unlucky people don't get any amethyst; instead, they get killed by it.

The deeper one goes into the Sea of Fog, the greater the kinetic energy of the amethyst becomes; in fact, many lost high-ranking gods have been killed by the amethyst.

Upon arriving here, Richard became cautious.

He sensed a flash of purple light that passed by in an instant, and in the next moment it was about to pass him and be thrown in another direction. He reacted quickly and immediately used his divine power to pick it up.

A purple crystal the size of a date pit appeared before his eyes; this was the famous amethyst.

Richard tried having his wind-elemental god clone absorb it, and it was indeed very inefficient, with too many impurities that could not be refined.

This tiny piece of amethyst would probably take several years to refine slowly.

In the original story, Lin Lei was able to refine this thing quickly because he had a cheat code.

Since it comes with a damaged soul defense artifact, it can naturally refine it quickly.

However, he also has cheat codes.

Let's try sending it to the original body. The original body, with its primordial world, should be able to easily refine this thing, right?

So, the main body of the being, who was wandering in a certain world, received a red envelope from the wind god's clone.

I tried it, and it can indeed be easily refined.

After receiving feedback from the main body, the wind-elemental god clone knew that it was possible to try collecting a large quantity of this item.

Anyway, any extras can be sold for money, so there's no loss.

This stuff is everywhere in the core area where the Zijing God resides in seclusion; you can collect as much as you want.

However, he did not give up collecting the amethysts that flew past him on the way.

These things don't always appear one by one; sometimes they appear in a string, with several, ten, or even dozens of them stuck together.

Richard had encountered many such cases while staying in the Sea of Fog, including several unlucky souls killed by Amethyst. He casually obliterated their corpses and collected their divine essence and spatial rings.

They've already performed the rituals for their souls. Taking their divine essence and spatial rings along the way isn't unreasonable.

After checking the contents of the spatial ring, I found that everyone was fairly evenly poor. Those who could come to the Purple Thorn Mountains to make money were not experts. Even if they were high-level gods, they were just ordinary high-level gods and didn't have much money.

But these guys had been lost in the foggy sea for so long that they managed to get quite a lot of amethyst before they died—some had a few thousand, some had tens of thousands, and some even had hundreds of thousands.

Richard was fairly satisfied with this windfall; he'd just picked it up casually, so what was there to be unhappy about?

He also encountered god-level powerhouses who had suffered mental breakdowns, and Richard helped them escape their suffering.

After wandering in the sea of fog for decades, the amethyst reaped a great harvest. Finally, during one of its aimless wanderings, it reached a secluded place. Judging from the way the amethyst spewed out from there, this should be the secluded place of the Purple Thorn God.

There are also many god-level powerhouses who have come here by chance in the sea of fog.

"Another one."

"It's almost here. The day those amethyst beasts come out is fast approaching. I wonder if I can make it through this time."

"I don't want to die yet. I'll go back into the Sea of Fog and give it my all. Maybe I'll get lucky and make it back to the outer reaches."

"Then I might as well stay here and endure it. I've already survived two major amethyst beast riots."

These people were discussing Resjing leading his amethyst beasts out hunting. Resjing usually cultivated in the core area, but every now and then he would go out hunting and catch some unlucky creatures to take back and play with.

There is no fixed interval between these events; they may occur once every few thousand years, or they may occur every tens of thousands of years.

It may also appear during fog sea turmoil or when amethyst erupts.

Of course, if a powerful figure visits, Lei Sijing will also take the initiative to show himself and spar with him.

Richard was naturally not going to wait for him to come out next time; who knew how long he would have to wait?

He switched to a wind-elemental divine clone and proactively displayed his strength.

When I went to retrieve the amethyst, I used most of my strength. My strength as a seven-star demon should be enough to attract that guy's attention, right?

In fact, it quickly caught Lei Sijing's attention, but he didn't rush to show himself and secretly observed Richard for a while.

He found it particularly amusing that Richard, who was already so strong, was personally retrieving the amethyst. He waited a while before showing himself, watching Richard busy retrieving the amethyst.