On the third day of the third month of the second year.
Ye Qingxuan arrived at the pier in Dongbin City. A large tower ship flying the flag of the Tianyuan Trading Company was currently docked there.
From the outside, the tower ship didn’t look very big, and its entire hull was covered in dense array patterns.
After looking it over for a moment, Ye Qingxuan walked towards the Tianyuan Trading Company’s ship.
As he got close, he was stopped by two burly men whose cultivation levels he couldn’t see through. One of them said coldly:
“This is a Tianyuan Trading Company vessel. No unauthorized personnel are allowed near it!”
Upon hearing this, Ye Qingxuan calmly took out the golden token that Manager Lin had given him earlier and handed it to the two men, saying:
“I’m a client of Tianyuan Trading Company. I’m here to travel to the Extreme East Region.”
One of the two men who had stopped him took the golden token, examined it for a moment, and then nodded:
“The golden token is authentic.”
Then he looked towards a row of Golden Core Realm attendants standing not far behind him, randomly pointed at one, and instructed:
“You, take this client to the ship and arrange a private room for him.”
The attendant he pointed at immediately stepped forward upon hearing the order and replied respectfully:
“Yes, Chief Steward.”
Then he looked at Ye Qingxuan and said respectfully:
“Esteemed guest, please come in!”
Ye Qingxuan nodded slightly and followed the attendant onto the Tianyuan Trading Company’s tower ship.
The ship didn’t look large from the outside, but once inside, the space inside was as big as an entire city.
At that moment, a dozen or so people were scattered here and there on the deck, either chatting or watching the distant scenery.
When Ye Qingxuan came aboard, several people immediately turned their gazes towards him, curiosity showing in their eyes.
Ye Qingxuan wasn’t sure whether these people were employees of Tianyuan Trading Company or, like him, clients taking their ship to the Extreme East Region.
However, Ye Qingxuan had no intention of getting to know them or striking up conversations.
Led by the Tianyuan attendant, Ye Qingxuan crossed the deck and arrived at a private room.
Once they reached the private room, the attendant who had brought him in finally spoke again:
“Esteemed guest, this room will be yours for the duration of the trip. No outsiders will disturb you. If you need anything, just contact me.”
After saying that, he left his sound transmission talisman behind and turned to leave the room.
After he left, Ye Qingxuan looked around the room. Although it wasn’t big, it had everything one could need, and the decoration was particularly exquisite.
Moreover, the room was equipped with a fifth-grade spirit gathering array, and the spiritual energy concentrated there was comparable to a cultivation cave established on a fifth-grade spiritual vein.
Ye Qingxuan nodded in satisfaction and thought:
“It seems the 300,000 high-grade spirit stones weren’t wasted.”
After entering the room, Ye Qingxuan had no plans to go out for the time being. Instead, he sat cross-legged inside, rested his eyes, and quietly waited for the ship to set sail.
It wasn’t until a long, drawn-out horn sounded in the evening that Ye Qingxuan opened his eyes:
“Is it time to set sail?”
He stood up, pushed open the door to his room, walked out, and made his way to the deck.
Quite a few people had already gathered on the deck, all of them coming out to watch the spectacle of the ship’s departure.
Since the Extreme East Region is separated from the East Region by an endless ocean, traveling there naturally couldn’t be done by normal sailing.
After the sound of the horn stopped, the array patterns covering the Tianyuan ship began to activate, lighting up one by one.
Meanwhile, large amounts of spatial elemental energy gathered continuously in front of the ship, gradually forming a spatial vortex.
Once the spatial vortex was fully formed, the array patterns on the ship’s hull were completely connected, suddenly bursting out with a dazzling light.
In a flash, the ship had leaped into the spatial vortex and disappeared.
Back on the pier in Dongbin City, the spatial vortex that had formed began to slowly dissipate and return to calm after the Tianyuan ship left.
When the ship reappeared, it was already in the deep sea area of the Endless Ocean.
Ye Qingxuan walked to the edge of the deck and looked out at the endless deep blue sea, feeling the sea breeze on his face. It was truly refreshing and relaxing.
Just then, an ethereal voice rang out across the entire ship:
“We will rest for ten years. The ship will make its next leap in ten years.”
Ye Qingxuan wasn’t surprised by this at all.
This kind of spatial leap requires a massive amount of energy.
If they relied solely on spirit stones for recharging, Tianyuan Trading Company wouldn’t necessarily lose money on this trip, but they definitely wouldn’t make much profit.
So, after one spatial leap, the Tianyuan ship rests for ten years, allowing it to automatically absorb external energy to recharge.
A ten-year recharge for the ship is equivalent to saving the consumption of 1,000,000 high-grade spirit stones.
For the Tianyuan Trading Company, taking the time to let the ship recharge automatically is definitely a sure-win business.
To reach the Extreme East Region, a total of seven such spatial leaps are needed to get to the near-sea area of the Extreme East Region.
Although letting the ship recharge automatically wastes several decades of everyone’s time, it allows Tianyuan Trading Company to save seven million high-grade spirit stones.
And that’s just one way; round trip would save a full fourteen million high-grade spirit stones.
Even for a large and wealthy company like Tianyuan, this is a considerable expense in spirit stones, so it makes sense to save wherever they can.
After the announcement of the rest period, some of the people who had come out went straight back to their rooms to begin secluded cultivation.
Others brought out fishing rods they had prepared in advance, ready to pass the time fishing in the deep sea area of the Endless Ocean.
There are countless types of spirit fish and even sea beasts in the deep parts of the Endless Ocean, and their taste is absolutely delicious.
Moreover, the meat of these spirit fish and sea beasts contains immense spiritual power, and consuming it can be as beneficial as taking some types of cultivation-assisting pills.
Ye Qingxuan didn’t intend to get involved with the people on the ship, so after admiring the scenery of the deep sea for a while, he returned to his own room.
Then, his main consciousness left this external incarnation and returned to his original body within the Xuantian Sect.
Inside the Qingxuan Blessed Land, Ye Qingxuan had a thoughtful look in his eyes.
His external incarnation now had its destination and was starting to follow the previously planned course.
However, he could still create two ordinary clones. He could make some plans for those two clones as well.
These two ordinary clones would only have 30% of his original body’s cultivation, which would put them at about the late-stage Zifu (Purple Mansion) Realm after being separated.
Although this level of cultivation wouldn’t be very significant across the five regions of the Dizuan Realm, these two ordinary clones have an advantage that his external incarnation doesn’t: they don’t fear death.
If an ordinary clone falls, he can simply spend some spirit stones to recondense it at any time.
Based on this characteristic, Ye Qingxuan planned to send one ordinary clone to roam the Demon Domain of the Qingmo Realm and the battlefields of the two realms, to scout out the situation.
Although the Dizuan Realm and the Qingmo Realm are both peak-level mid-thousand realms, and their overall strength is not vastly different, it would take at least tens of thousands of years for a complete victory to be decided.
That amount of time is enough for Ye Qingxuan himself to rise completely and no longer fear the dangers of the Qingmo Realm.
However, as the saying goes, one must think ahead to avoid future troubles. If he could get real-time updates on the progress of the war between the two realms, it would allow Ye Qingxuan to operate more calmly from behind the scenes.
Therefore, in his opinion, it is absolutely necessary to have one of his clones travel through the various battlefields between the two worlds to observe the war’s progress.
As for the other clone, Ye Qingxuan planned to have it take another spatial gate from the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land to the outside world and open a shop there.
He did not intend for this shop to acquire other materials; only the corpses and cultivation origins of the Qingmo tribe would be collected. These would be used to enhance his own cultivation or accelerate the growth of the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land.
Only by sacrificing Qingmo tribe corpses and cultivation origins that are of the same rank or higher than his own cultivation can they significantly aid his personal progress.
Therefore, when some squads hunt low-rank Qingmo corpses and cultivation origins that their own members don’t need, they would choose to sell them for spirit stones.
Several decades into the war between the Dizuan Realm and the Qingmo Realm, some low-rank Qingmo corpses and cultivation origins have already started circulating in the markets of the Dizuan Realm.
Occasionally, even one or two high-rank Qingmo corpses and cultivation origins appear for auction in the high-end auction houses of the Dizuan Realm.
So, the main goal of Ye Qingxuan’s other clone was to acquire these Qingmo corpses and cultivation origins from the outside world.
After all, as the master of the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land, he could remotely retrieve its world gate at any time, so he wasn’t afraid of losing it.
Ye Qingxuan’s grand ambition was that, after his cultivation and the level of the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land had increased enough, he would use the blessed land’s world gate to connect to all nine regions of the Dizuan Realm. He would establish a city within the cave heaven, creating a common trading hub for cultivators from all nine regions.
Through this, he could gather resources from all nine regions to supply the growth of the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land and himself.
And what he was doing now was just the first step.
