Maria looked around and noticed she was in some sort of cavern, but surprisingly it wasn’t dark inside the cave. While that in itself was already a bit odd, another thing Maria immediately took note of was the dense amount of Qi present in the cavern. It far surpassed the density of Qi above ground. Normally, this would cause Maria to get excited thinking she just found a place full of treasures or Spirit Stones, but she honestly couldn’t tell whether all of this was real or not.

Even if it was real, the chances of it being a trap are exceedingly high.

She didn’t want to believe that a formation can simulate a higher density of Qi with just illusions, but after thinking it over, she felt like she might’ve been too naive. All it has to do is make one feel like the density of Qi is higher and it’s not like such a feeling is unique. Every cultivator can feel a difference in Qi density and it feels the same for everyone regardless of their strength.

All the illusions have to do is make it feel like the Qi density is higher, that doesn’t actually mean it really is.

So Maria, who can’t see through the illusions of this Natural Formation, wouldn’t be able to tell the difference no matter how hard she tries.

Still, it’s not like something would happen by just standing there. Who knows, maybe this place really is full of treasures and resources? Or maybe, if she’s extremely lucky, she was teleported to the Core of this Natural Formation!

Shaking her head at such an impossible thought, Maria started moving deeper into the cavern. However, it didn’t take her long to find the source of light in this cavern.

A Spirit Stone Mine!

Maria could thousands of fist-sized rocks releasing a subtle yet resplendent glow. She could even see at least a few dozen rocks releasing a brighter glow and although Maria had never seen or experienced one, she knew that those brighter stones were Mid-Grade Spirit Stones!

She was shocked speechless for a few seconds before she finally realized she struck it rich!

Maybe…

She still didn’t know if this was an illusion or not, but at the same time… who cares??

Mira might be less inclined to mine out these Spirit Stones as she would definitely view it as a waste of time as her ultimate goal here is not to gather treasures but to leave this place. Mining Spirit Stones where the chances of them being fake are around 50%? Mira would never bet on them being real unless she really had to.

But Maria was different. She also wanted to leave this place within the 2-week time limit to get that recipe, but she also understood how important resources are and Mid-Grade Spirit Stones could be considered high-level resources at her current strength.

So, without thinking too much, Maria began mining these Spirit Stones. It isn’t a difficult process and instead of ‘mining’, it’s more like she’s plucking the Spirit Stones like one would berries in a bush or apples on a tree.

After ‘mining’ the first Spirit Stone, she placed it in her Spatial Ring and was happy to see that it entered without any problems, but then she remembered the conversation between Mira and Elenei.

They said that the Natural Formation can even keep its illusions active inside a Spatial Ring thanks to the Spatial elements of this Formation. While they weren’t 100% certain of this possibility, it is still possible.

Maria’s mood soured at that thought, but that didn’t stop her from collecting more Spirit Stones.

***

Celaine, on the other hand, was having an equally bad time as Mira or perhaps worse depending on how one looks at it.

She started off just fine, just like everyone else, but after a few hours of setting down tracking markers with Rhydian’s blood, all of a sudden a giant Low-Rank 6 Black Tiger appeared in front of her!

That had truly caught her off guard as she didn’t feel or sense anything around her and could only curse this Formation and its illusory and spatial elements!

Luckily, she is a bit too strong for an ordinary Low-Rank 6 beast to kill her and after the initial surprise, she was able to take it down with relative ease.

However, that was only the beginning of her nightmares!

Sometimes the beasts that came after her were small, about the size of a palm, while others were exceedingly large. Some attacked from underground, some attacked from the sky, and some appeared out of thin air!

All of these beasts ranged from Low to Late Rank 6. Not only that, but she also had to protect her blood markers which generally meant getting further away from them when fighting. There is also another reason for her distancing herself from those tracking markers. She doesn’t want the blood of the fallen beasts to distort the aura that Rhydian’s blood releases. She didn’t know that such a thing is basically impossible, but one can’t blame her for her ignorance. Although she knew that Rhydian was strange and abnormally strong, she didn’t know the extent of Rhydian’s peculiarity.

Regardless, Celaine was having a tough time dealing with the onslaught of beasts while also trying to place and protect her tracking markers.

***

Lastly, Elenei was peacefully soaring through the skies while using her Soul Sense to place her blood trackers on the ground every ten meters. She didn’t have much to worry about now that she knew exactly what she was dealing with. She might not be able to sense any traps or anything like that, but how can she still call herself a Frost-Fire Phoenix if she can’t even prevent herself from getting teleported or fooled by this mortal formation?

Part of the reason she got stuck in this place, to begin with, was that she wasn’t paying too much attention to anything other than flying. And why would she? Truthfully, Elenei wasn’t that worried about finding the center of this place. Even if she was teleported around against her will or shown illusions that look no different from reality, she would never mistake the feeling of Rhydian’s blood. Plus, she can fly almost as fast as this place can teleport if need be. So even if she keeps getting teleported, she can find her previous location in just a few minutes.

It would be quite annoying if that happened over and over again, but that’s all it would be… annoying.

She also knew that Mira was secretly betting on her to help them find the center of this place as quickly as possible because she knew that it would definitely take a while if the three of them tried to do it by themselves.