The sky in Star-Fall Gorge was eternally a hazy grey.

  Chen Gensheng did not follow the paths on the jade slip. Instead, he flew aimlessly for about half a day. Not far ahead, he encountered a relatively vast expanse of open flatland. In the center of this clearing was a startling, bottomless abyss—a colossal pit.

  The crater was hundreds of yards wide, its edges as smooth as a mirror, plunging vertically into the depths of the earth, a darkness so profound it seemed capable of swallowing all light. Scattered around the rim of this pit stood dozens of cultivators. These individuals, the weakest being at the early stage of Foundation Establishment, all stared intently into the deep hole, their expressions a mix of focus and greed.

  "Damn it, we’ve been standing guard for three days, and not even a fart has floated up!" a black-robed cultivator cursed, spitting on the ground.

  "What’s the rush?" another short, stout man said calmly. "These things are a matter of fate. Last month, didn’t Cripple Liu wait here for half a month and pick up a fist-sized piece of Azure-Vanish Iron? He turned around and sold it for thirty mid-grade spirit stones!"

  Hearing this, the eyes of a tall, thin man nearby lit up. "You’re a newcomer, so you probably don’t know the origin of this pit, do you?"

  "Pray tell!"

  "Let me tell you, this information came from the direction of the Spirit-Ripple Kingdom; it’s absolutely true!" The stout man’s face was filled with admiration and yearning. "Seven or eight years ago, there was an insect cultivator named Jiang Guixian who fought a battle in Red Maple Valley. That fellow was truly ruthless; when his spirit-insects couldn't win, he actually tried to drag the entire Spirit-Ripple Kingdom to the underworld with him!"

  "Good heavens! Overturning an entire kingdom! What kind of heaven-reaching methods must that be!"

  Leaning against a rock wall, Chen Gensheng felt an indescribable sensation in his heart as he heard his mentor's name spoken by total strangers.

  "The one who fought him was no pushover either. Chen Qingyun, the Sect Leader of Red Maple Valley, had just stepped into the Nascent Soul stage at the time! That Chen Qingyun was also a hero; seeing he couldn't stop the attack in time, he simply unleashed a divine ability to forcibly move that world-destroying strike into this uninhabited Star-Fall Gorge!"

  The stout man pointed to the bottomless pit beneath their feet. "There. This was blasted out by that very strike years ago. This pit actually connects back to the Spirit-Ripple Kingdom! Although the spatial tunnel is unstable, from time to time, things from that side get sucked in by spatial turbulence and spat out here. It might be a fragment of a Dharma treasure, a natural wonder, or even the severed limb of a cultivator."

  The stout man concluded, "So, everyone is waiting here to pick up the scraps."

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  As Gensheng pondered this, a sudden commotion erupted in the crowd.

  "Look! Something’s coming up!"

  Every gaze was pinned to the center of that bottomless abyss. A speck of ghost-light rose from the profound darkness. The light was weak at first, like a candle in the wind, but in an instant, it flared brilliantly, transforming into a piercing pillar of light that shot toward the sky. The pillar halted in mid-air for a moment before the radiance faded, leaving a thin booklet to drift lightly downward.

  The closest cultivator, a burly man at the late stage of Foundation Establishment, reacted the fastest, snatching the booklet out of the air.

  "What is it?" "Is it a cultivation manual or an artifact blueprint?"

  The crowd swarmed forward, craning their necks to catch a glimpse. The burly man flipped open the cover, and after just one glance, his expression turned peculiar. He cleared his throat and held the booklet high so everyone could see the twisted, large characters written in blood on the cover:

  《Flesh and Blood Nest-Vestment》

  The surroundings fell silent instantly. The cultivators, who had been fervent moments ago, now instinctively took two steps back, distancing themselves from the book.

  "Ahem!" The burly man clearly felt the item was too hot to handle, but as the one with the highest cultivation here, he had to harden his heart and proceed. "Fellow Daoists, though the name is strange, anything that can pass through spatial turbulence intact is likely no ordinary item. Old rules: highest bidder wins. Starting price: twenty mid-grade spirit stones! Each raise must be at least five!"

  His words were met only with an awkward silence. Everyone looked at one another, but no one spoke.

  Are you joking? Twenty mid-grade spirit stones were enough to buy a decent Low-Grade artifact. Who would waste that kind of money on a book that sounded like a demonic text? If one practiced it and suffered a cultivation deviation, or was hunted down as an evil cultivator by some orthodox sect disciple, they’d have nowhere to cry.

  "Fifteen stones! Fifteen mid-grade spirit stones! I can't go any lower!"

  Still, no one responded.

  "Ten stones! Ten mid-grade spirit stones, let's just call it making a friend!" The veins on the burly man’s forehead were bulging.

  Gensheng had been leaning against the distant rock wall, watching coldly. This is it. This was the very method Jiang Guixian had used to fuse his insect body with a headless human corpse, refining a brand new skin for him.

  "Damn it! A bunch of gutless rats!" Seeing no one bidding, the burly man felt he had lost face completely. Cursing, he prepared to toss the booklet back into the abyss.

  "One mid-grade spirit stone."

  A flat voice rang out from the back of the crowd. Everyone turned to look. They saw the strange six-armed youth, who had been silent all this time, walking forward slowly.

  The burly man was stunned, then overjoyed. Fearing the youth might regret it, he rushed to Gensheng in three strides and shoved the booklet into his hands.

  "Deal!" Taking the spirit stone, he didn't even look back, turning and leaving as if he had just offloaded a massive burden.

  The gazes of the other cultivators toward Gensheng turned strange. There was disdain, wariness, and mostly alienation. In their eyes, anyone who would spend money on such a thing was certainly not of good character.

  Gensheng was indifferent to their reactions. The cover of the booklet felt bizarre—not like paper, but rather like a layer of wind-dried human skin. The three blood-red characters exuded a faint, lingering scent of sweetness and gore.

  He sought out an even more remote location and sat cross-legged, placing the booklet on his lap. He extended his bottom two arms, withdrawing a formation plate and several low-grade spirit stones from his storage ring to set up a simple Breath-Concealing Array around him.

  Only after doing all this did he finally refocus his attention on that copy of Flesh and Blood Nest-Vestment.