Chapter 2. The Canyon of Powerlessness

The lands of the Southeastern Wasteland...

In the west of the Fiery Cloud Empire.

Surroundings of the Heavenly Dragon Mountain Range…

Here is the bizarre Canyon of Powerlessness, which for several centuries since its discovery has been shrouded in a veil of mystery.

Its internal area was tens of miles of space surrounded by majestic sheer cliffs several hundred yards high. Neither trees nor even grass grew in the canyon, there was no form of vegetation, and its entire territory was covered with a thickness of gray lifeless soil.

In a remote part of this canyon, in one of the many caves, under the dim light of the illuminating jade, a gray-haired elder with a long white beard sat cross-legged in the lotus position. The old man's eyes were closed as if he was sleeping, and his pale face was dotted with thick wrinkles resembling scars. His seemingly feeble body was dressed in gray rags, which made him seem like an old impoverished merchant who had never done manual labor in his life.

However, the picture in the cave changed dramatically at the moment when the eyelids of the supposedly helpless elder rose up, revealing bloodshot and murderous eyes to the world. In his gaze, suffering and pain, anger and hatred, despair and helplessness seemed to merge together.

The old man turned out to be Mo Canghai, who escaped from the White Tree City.

"Damn Wang Ming, two years have passed, and my hatred for you is only accumulating and accumulating, probably in proportion to the fears you are experiencing. You must not be able to sleep peacefully, because the knowledge that I am still alive and wandering around the world torments you. If you only knew what destiny had in store for me, it is unknown at who you would laugh more, at me or at yourself, who has lived these two years under the oppression of own cowardice." the old man said in a hoarse voice, almost breaking into hopeless and hysterical laughter. His devastated gaze was directed at the wall towards to side where his house had once been many miles away from here, in the direction where the MInes Country was located on the world map.

Two years ago, Mo Canghai managed to successfully escape from the clutches of death chasing him. He left behind not only the White Tree City, but even the Mines Country. All in order to get out of the zone of influence of his enemies. He crossed the border and arrived in the Hills Country, adjacent to the Mines Country. It cost him a lot of effort, he fled for several days, despite his condition. The risks of being caught up on the trails if he suddenly stopped were too great to ignore.

Once in the Hills Country, Mo Canghai was finally able to calmly exhale and relax. Although this did not guarantee absolute security for him, it would be much more difficult for enemies to find him in a foreign for them country. Therefore, he was going to take some time to restore his health and strength.

The fact was that the Spiritual Filling Pill he used earlier caused severe damage to his body, even his dantian was damaged, which caused his cultivation base to roll back. He couldn't use even a hundredth part of his peak power now, his cultivation level had returned to the Peak of the Body Tempering Realm.

For many, a damaged dantian could be a critical injury, but for him, as a Rank 3 Alchemist, it was not impossible to recover to his peak state, although it would take quite a long time. But he had nowhere to hurry, because revenge is a dish that should be served cold.

However, he thought so exactly until a few weeks passed and masked characters came to visit him. And the most absurd thing for him was that the newcomers were not his old enemies, but the Great Masters in ghost masks who accidentally found him. At that time, he was still healing his wounds, so there was no way he could be an opponent for the two Great Masters, he was defeated and tied up, after which even his storage ring was taken away.

Fortunately, before sending Yuantian to escape from city, he secretly gave him his main storage ring, which contained a significant part of the wealth acquired by the Mo clan for years. He did it because he had no confidence that he would be able to avoid this catastrophe.

If he had the resources from his main storage ring, in these few weeks, although he would not be able to return to peak form, but it would not be difficult to recover to the level to smash these two Great Masters. However, everything happened as it happened, and he did not regret at all that he gave the ring back then, because there was really little chance that he would survive after all.

Later, masked men brought him to this godforsaken place and made him a slave, forcing him to extract spiritual stones for them day after day. His story here was not unique, the whole Canyon of Powerlessness was filled with hundreds of the same people who, like him, were caught like animals and dragged here by force.

Taking a deep breath, he calmed the emotions bubbling in him, burying them deep inside himself, just as he had done every day for two long years.

Then he let go of his gaze to his right hand where there was a red diamond-shaped mark in the center of his palm.

"You have accompanied me for more than half of my life, and I still have not been able to find out exactly what you are, nevertheless, I am grateful to you for allowing me to become who I once was. It's a pity that I probably didn't live up to your expectations having reached the life that I have now. And even now, you are still my only hope for salvation."

As if hearing Mo Canghai's words, the mark on his palm responded with a much brighter radiance than the glow from the illuminating jade, and a tiny diamond-shaped stone suddenly appeared and soared above his palm. The edges of the stone were unevenly chipped, as if it had once been chipped off from something.

Hovering over Mo Canghai's palm for a while, it continued to shimmer with a bright red color. After that, he suddenly trembled and then abruptly turned around and began pointing one of his pointed corners into the depths of the cave.

The old man smiled helplessly, following the direction of the red stone with his gaze.

"I understand perfectly well that there is something in this cave that attracts you. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth there is something that you desperately need. You haven't stopped reminding me of this since I found myself in the Canyon of Powerlessness. It was because of you that I chose this cave on the outskirts of the canyon, in a place where mining even a couple of spiritual stones per week can be considered as a success. And maybe exactly what you need will help me get out of here, but I've been digging this damn cave for two long years, and I still haven't found anything, and judging by your behavior, it seems that I haven't even gotten close. Retribution never comes late, it has no deadlines, and it is not shameful for a man to carry out his revenge for decades, but unfortunately I am no longer young and I do not know how much longer I can live in this damn place. Will my revenge ever be accomplished? Will my pledge be kept?"

Mo Canghai took a small stone lying next to him in his left hand, and began to examine it as if he imagined something else or maybe someone else in its place. And then he crushed it with a force that seemed unnatural for his flabby body. Scattering the remaining in his palm stone dust on the ground, he took a deep breath and exhaled again, relaxing his mind.

"In any case, since I have nothing else to do, then I will dig the earth in the cave until the very end, until my last breath, and if I do not get what I want, then so be it, then that was my fate."

With a wave of his hand, the red stone flashed and hid in his palm again.

When Mo Canghai was about to get up and go deeper into the cave in order to continue the excavations that had already become routine for him, the sound of a thud from outside the cave reached his ears. The rumble was so strong that it even deafened him for a moment.

"Thunderclaps?" Mo Canghai thought to himself, not intending to pay any attention to it, but a strange inexplicable feeling arose deep inside him.

After thinking for a while, he went to the entrance to the cave, which was closed by a huge stone boulder for safety. The old man had to make a lot of effort to push him away, after which he felt a bone-chilling cold wind gushing inside through the opening passage.

He took a few steps forward and from outside, under the sounds of raindrops crushing on limestone rock, he was greeted by a gloomy sky covered with countless black clouds.

After looking around several times, and not noticing anything special, the old man took his last look at the rainy sky, and grinning to himself, was about to return back to the cave.

Perhaps it was due to the fact that he had aged too much, but the instinct that helped him out many times during his life today actually let him down.

However, at the same moment, the sky suddenly changed its color under the deafening roar of thunder. Previously, the black clouds turned purple. The entire sky over the Canyon of Powerlessness was covered with purple thunderclouds.

Such a sight struck Mo Canghai to the depths of his soul, he had never seen anything like this in his entire long life. It was so beautiful and majestic that he almost forgot how to breathe. Among other things, the beauty of the sky was decorated like garlands with dozens if not hundreds of lightning bolts, simultaneously sparkling in the sky every second.

However, this phenomenon did not last long, disappearing as quickly as it appeared. The clouds regained their former black color, the lightning stopped flashing so often and the gloomy sky that he had seen before appeared before him.

He stood there for a while longer, as if trying to convince himself that what had just happened was real, or waiting for it to happen again. But the sky no longer wanted to change, and he had no choice but to return to the cave.

"Waaaaoui"

At that moment, a strange sound was heard in the middle of the canyon, barely audible due to the noise of the rain, but it was enough for Mo Canghai to hear it, and after taking just a step inside the cave, he abruptly stopped. Turning his head in the direction from which sound was coming, he narrowed his eyes as if trying to see something in the middle of a drizzling rain.

"Uaaiua"

When that sound rang out again, Mo Canghai turned around and moved towards him at a fast pace.

"What's going on? The sound resembles the crying of a baby, but where in this cursed place could a baby come from?" Thoughts were racing frantically in his head, he just couldn't believe his ears. As a man who has successfully raised three sons and one grandson, he could not confuse this sound with anything.

The farther away the old man went from the cave, the more clearly he heard the infant crying spreading through the Canyon of Powerlessness, and soon after reaching the source of the sound, he saw something that could not but plunge him into shock. On the ground charred by lightning discharges, a newborn baby lay and cried, while his naked body was mercilessly attacked by cold raindrops.