After settling matters within the Xuantian Sect,
Ye Qingxuan began using his Minor Divine Ability · Seed of the Doppelgänger Art, spending spirit stones to recondense his avatar, the Explorer.
By employing the Seed of the Transformation Art, his avatar Explorer once again took the form of a young man of seventeen or eighteen.
This avatar Explorer now wore a dark-gold patterned mask that Ye Qingxuan had specially modified, giving off an air of mystery and nobility.
And, just as Ye Qingxuan had expected, after his main cultivation broke through to the late stage of the Golden Core realm,
the ordinary avatar he condensed directly reached the early Golden Core stage.
Once the Explorer avatar was recondensed, Ye Qingxuan had him, now already at Golden Core level, refine a Towning Boundary Tower.
After that, Ye Qingxuan opened a Realm Gate within the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven.
Through the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven’s blessed land, he teleported the Explorer avatar to the mysterious shop outside Star Battle City.
Since the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven had advanced, it could now manifest three additional Realm Gates.
So this time, the Explorer avatar also carried a Realm Gate with him.
After all, Ye Qingxuan could remotely collapse the Gate through the Grotto-Heaven and then reconstitute it within the same blessed land,
so he didn’t have to worry about losing a Realm Gate should the avatar fall.
Once the Explorer avatar arrived at the mysterious shop, he didn’t leave right away.
Instead, he stood in for Ye Qingxuan’s other avatar, the Mysterious Merchant, to guard the shop, allowing the Mysterious Merchant to teleport back to the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven.
After the Mysterious Merchant returned, Ye Qingxuan used the Seed of the Doppelgänger Art to remake this avatar as well,
raising the Mysterious Merchant’s cultivation to early Golden Core too.
However, Ye Qingxuan’s plan for the Mysterious Merchant was simply to run a shop outside Star Battle City and look for opportunities to open up a channel for acquiring Green Demon corpses—basically, there was no chance of combat.
So Ye Qingxuan didn’t prepare a Towning Boundary Tower for this avatar.
Over the years, the mysterious shop that Ye Qingxuan’s Mysterious Merchant avatar had set up outside Star Battle City did attract quite a few cultivators,
but actual customers were few and far between.
Because of the contract Ye Qingxuan had signed, the prices in his mysterious shop couldn’t go below the market rate in Star Battle City, so there was basically no room for bargaining.
All things being equal, cultivators still felt more at ease with shops inside Star Battle City.
Moreover, shops within the city had no such price restrictions.
As long as they didn’t drop their prices too drastically, Star Battle City wouldn’t interfere with their operations.
After all, the owners of those shops had paid a considerable sum—either renting or buying—to secure those premises.
This meant that cultivators shopping at stores inside Star Battle City might even have some room to haggle.
As a result, temporary shops outside the city—some of them—hadn’t made a single sale since opening.
Most operators of these temporary shops never expected to make big profits anyway.
They were all waiting, waiting for the moment when Star Battle City would expand again.
That said, Ye Qingxuan’s mysterious shop wasn’t doing quite that badly.
Since the shop itself was at the spirit artifact level, it drew in a good number of visitors, and among them, some would eventually make purchases.
And these customers tended to be people who weren’t short on spirit stones, usually buying spirit artifacts, or pills, talismans, and array disks of the fourth tier or above.
Plus, since all the products in the mysterious shop were high-quality items refined by Ye Qingxuan himself, they were generally a cut above most of what was available on the market.
So Ye Qingxuan’s shop had already started to see repeat customers coming back.
Though the number of buyers was small, it averaged three or four transactions a year—far better than most other temporary shops.
Still, to Ye Qingxuan, this was just small potatoes.
His real goal was to acquire Green Demon corpses and cultivation origins, but for now, he hadn’t made much headway there.
Star Battle City was indeed a war city, so a lot of Green Demon corpses and cultivation origins flowed out from it—but there were even more cultivators scrambling to buy them up.
And right now, the mysterious shop was just a temporary establishment outside the city, making it far too difficult to secure those Green Demon corpses and cultivation origins.
So, faced with the current situation, Ye Qingxuan decided to send his Explorer avatar back into the Demon Domain once more,
looking for a chance to hunt Green Demons himself.
After his Mysterious Merchant avatar returned to the shop,
Ye Qingxuan’s Explorer avatar secretly left the shop and made hisa way toward Star Battle City.
His destination this time was still the No. 3 Demon Domain under the Green Demon Realm’s jurisdiction.
Now that his avatar’s cultivation had reached Golden Core, his spiritual energy was further condensed, and its purity had risen another notch.
Facing first-tier demonic qi now, as long as he wasn’t flying too fast, Ye Qingxuan could rapidly repel the first-tier demonic qi from outside his body.
This meant that—so long as his Explorer avatar didn’t enter a demonic vein and come into contact with higher-tier demonic qi—his stealth capabilities would be greatly enhanced.
This time, Ye Qingxuan had come fully prepared.
He had stocked his Explorer avatar with a large supply of fifth-tier peak-grade talismans, fifth-tier nuclear explosion pills, fifth-tier spirit-cleansing · nuclear explosion pills, and even ten sixth-tier lower-grade talismans.
The fifth-tier nuclear explosion pills could also unleash power equivalent to a sixth-tier lower-grade talisman, but they lacked the suppressing effect of a true sixth-tier talisman.
So Ye Qingxuan planned to use the fifth-tier nuclear explosion pills and fifth-tier spirit-cleansing nuclear explosion pills mainly for creating chaos and covering his avatar’s escape.
The ten sixth-tier lower-grade talismans, which did have a suppressing effect, were his real ace in the hole.
His avatar’s target for this trip was Green Demons at the Nascent Soul level and below, as well as demonic vein sources of all ranks.
Even with sixth-tier talismans in hand, Ye Qingxuan knew he couldn’t take on a Nascent Soul Green Demon head-on—he’d have to find an opportunity to strike by surprise.
Fortunately, his avatar was now at Golden Core cultivation, so he no longer had to worry about interference from the first-tier demonic qi in the Demon Domain.
With the Seed of the Minor Divine Ability · Deceive Heaven, Ye Qingxuan was fully confident he could conceal both his aura and his form before a Nascent Soul opponent, biding his time for a sneak attack.
For Green Demons below Golden Core, and for demonic vein sources of all levels, Ye Qingxuan planned to use them to upgrade the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven.
For Green Demons at Golden Core and above, he intended to offer them as sacrifices to boost his main body’s cultivation.
Having already experienced the Demon Domain firsthand, this time Ye Qingxuan didn’t project his main consciousness directly into his Explorer avatar.
Instead, he took the position of an outsider, rising to another dimension altogether. His main consciousness guided three streams of sub-consciousness, controlling his three main avatars while observing their perspectives simultaneously.
With experience from his first outing, and without the distraction of the pervasive first-tier demonic qi, his Explorer avatar’s reconnaissance moved much faster.
Finally, after about an hour, Ye Qingxuan’s Explorer avatar encountered another Green Demon tribe.
Through his perception, this was a tribe guarded by three Green Demons at the Foundation Establishment stage.
