Chapter 517: Island in the Mist

First, I want to thank everyone for their opinions and thoughts on how we should overhaul completed novels. We've reviewed nearly 2000 comments across multiple platforms and forum, and while we haven't responded to everything I can promise I HAVE read it all. First, I'm going to briefly go into some of the things which were discussed which may or may not work, because I don't want people to think I ignored anything. I'm putting those in 'spoiler' tags so people who don't care can skip it. Then, we'll talk...

Chapter 517: Island in the Mist

By the time the white robed cultivator and the old man finished their discussion, Han Li had already entered a nearby miscellaneous goods store near the Golden Thumb Pavilion. He purchased a map of the local seas and information on the demon beasts that roamed around there before leaving. After finding a secluded area, Han Li started to look through the information.

After only a cursory glance, Han Li unconciously frown.

There were truly far too many dangerous areas in the vicinity of Profound Depths Island. Could it be that high grade demon beasts often roamed through these areas?”

As for the location of the famed depths, it wasn’t too far away from the island. Han Li would be able to reach it after only flying half a month south at full speed. However, the depths were truly vast, spanning over five million kilometers of jagged, uneven territory. This was without even mentioning the territory’s unfathomable depths, as no one had yet to truly explore its farthest reaches.

After Han Li skimmed once through the jade slip, he quickly put it away. Standing in place with a solemn expression, he lowered his head as began to think deeply.

After an unknown amount of time had past, Han Li raised his head, wearing an indifferent expression. He then directly flew out of Blackrock City without any further deliberation. Upon leaving the city, Han Li immediately turned into a streak of azure light and soared through the skies.

Profound Depths Island was a medium-sized island, but apart from Blackrock City, the island was completely barren. Not a single village or town could be seen.

For some unknown reason, it seemed that both cultivators and mortals weren’t setting up residence on the other parts of the island.

Han Li quickly flew away from Wondrous Depths Island. After raising his head to the skies and determining his direction, he headed north.

Currently, he wanted to find an island where cultivators scarcely appeared. He didn’t want to be in a crowded area and attract attention. As a result, he deliberately chose to fly far away from the Wondrous Depths.

There weren’t many cultivators in the seas around Wondrous Depths Island. In addition, all those islands had cultivators and mortals residing on them. Han Li didn’t bother to stop at any of them and shot past them without regard.

It was clear that the northern seas had far fewer cultivators as he had expected.

After flying for about twelve days, he sparsely saw any other cultivators. And when he did encounter them, the low grade cultivators would immediately veer out of his way, and high grade cultivators would watch him with vigilance. Like other demon beast islands, killing others for their treasures was a common occurrence.

Han Li was particularly vigilant as well.

After flying for another two days and finally seeing no trace of other cultivators, Han Li changed direction and started flying west.

According to the map, there would be a few islands with small spirit veins in that direction. As the spirit veins on these islands were low grade, and the distance from the Wondrous Depths was far, along with a complete lack of safety and other various reasons, very few cultivators resided there.

In the case of mortals, they all took residence on the islands nearby Wondrous Depths Island, ensuring some degree of safety.

Of course, Han Li didn’t care about these conditions. He merely wanted to take a look and see if any of the islands were to his liking.

...

About thirty kilometers ahead of him, Han Li spotted a small island. This would be the fourth uninhabited island with a spirit vein he had encountered so far.

The island wasn’t large, but its terrain was both uncommon and varied. There were barren landscapes, dense forests full of unknown trees, grasslands with beautiful flowers and even a small mountain range.

Han Li swept his spiritual sense over the island and found no traces of any other cultivators staying there.

The spirit vein on this island wasn’t low-grade. Despite its small size, it was actually a peak mid-grade spirit vein. While it couldn’t be considered a top-grade spirit vein, it still released an abundance of spiritual Qi.

It seemed the reason why other cultivators had left this island alone wasn’t due to the spirit vein, but rather the small island’s exceptionally strange environment.

However, there was something about the island that Han Li fancied in particular: the vast white mist that surrounded it. The mist wasn’t natural; it was produced by a few nearby whirlpools. While the mist did cover the island’s sides, it didn’t surround it from above.

Han Li was quite amazed by the sight, but when he dived into the nearby waters and saw the island from underwater, the source of the mist was made clear.

At the bottom of the island, there were countless finger-sized holes along with thousands upon thousands of slender silver fish darting through them. While the fish appeared no different from common small fish, after catching one with his hands covered in spiritual power, Han Li discovered that it had no scales. Instead, it was covered in sharp spikes of silver bone. Had an ordinary person attempted to hold it, they would’ve been left with shredded hands.

As Han Li looked at it, a thought suddenly came to mind, “Sea Shredder Fish!”

This small fish is a low grade one demon beast that lives in large schools and spouts water out from the surface of the sea as a source of enjoyment. The source of its ridiculous name is likely due to the iron-like spikes protruding from its body.

With so many Sea Shredder Fish in the island’s vicinity, they were able to spout out enough sea water to completely cover the entire island in mist. It made for a rare sight indeed.

If Han Li hadn’t encountered a Silverwing Bird on his way and chased after it through the fog, he never would’ve found the island. He undoubtedly would’ve just brushed past the fog. Seeing a bit of sea mist in the distance was extremely common.

After circling around the island several times, he quickly came to the decision to establish his cave residence on this island.

What other island could possibly be more secretive and to his liking than this one?

The small spirit vein was located on the island’s five-kilometer-long mountain range with a few sparse peaks, the tallest peak reaching a hundred twenty meters high. Being so small, Han Li didn’t have the option for an expansive cave residence. Hence, he merely looked for a small valley at the bottom of the mountain range and started to tunnel through the stone.

With Han Li’s current cultivation, it was practically effortless for him to carve out a cave residence similar to his previous one. After a few short days, he managed to finish carving out the general outline of his new residence.

Han Li was disinterested in carving out the finer details of his cave residence. Instead, he first set down a few formation tools that he had personally refined, covering both his cave residence and the mountain range in a spell restriction.

At a distance, the mountain range could no longer be seen, and was instead replaced by a verdant forest. The illusory forest seamlessly bordered a nearby forest without the slightest flaw.

From above, Han Li carefully examined the mountain range with chin in hand and was left feeling somewhat uneasy. If a high grade cultivator happened to pass through the mist like he had, this restriction wouldn’t be enough to fool them.

After muttering to himself, an idea suddenly came to mind.

Han Li directly flew back to his new cave residence and quickly inspected the materials he had on hand before starting to refine some items in a secret room.

Seven days later, Han Li emerged once more from his cave residence with a dozen sets of similar formation tools.

These sets of formation flags and formation plates were extremely crude, and by no means impressive. But after Han Li placed them at various areas throughout the small island, streams of mist began to wildly emerge from each of the formations. Soon, the new expanse of mist merged together with the existing mist of sea water to completely envelop the island, hiding it entirely from view. In this manner, any cultivators passing by would find it difficult to spot the island unless they were flying at a low altitude.

After examining it from every angle, Han Li finally felt at ease. Although he had spent no small number of spirit stones to activate so many formations, he didn’t care in the least. He was more than willing to bankrupt himself to avoid any potential disasters.

Han Li then returned to his cave residence with the utmost speed before hammering out some of the finer details of his cave residence such as his insect room, herb garden, and so on.

Two days later, Han Li was sitting inside a stone room with a solemn expression. He was immersing his spiritual sense into the yellow jade slip that Gu Yu had given to him, carefully sifting through its content.

With a twitch of his face, he extracted his spiritual sense from the jade slip and entered a state of deep contemplation.

A moment later, he stood up and strolled around the stone room several times before wearing a heavier expression.

He then clutched his storage pouch and took out a white jade box. Han Li gazed at it for a moment before slowly opening the box to reveal a few small, rainbow-colored beads.

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