Having rested for a few seconds, Adviser Chu began to speak again.
"After falling in, I barely managed to pull myself out of the water. Only after coming out of it did I realize that it was a deep lake. I laid on the ground, tired and in pain, as I stared up at the sky.
It was then that I realized another thing… It didn't look like the top of the sinkhole anymore. Rather, it looked just like a normal sky to me with no borders.
I was naïve and didn't have any cultivation base back then and didn't know how all this happened. Terrified and confused, I laid there until eventually, the pain became too much for me to do nothing.
I crawled around to find something that may help me. I knew of some herbs and plants that could help with pain in the Hong Lin forest and I wondered if I could find one of them here.
Since my Body tempering realm cultivation was only at the fifth stage of the Body tempering realm, I couldn't heal my bones faster either. I ended up spending two days in a helpless state.
In the end, I was far too exhausted and fell unconscious. When I woke up after an unknown amount of time, I found my body to be completely fine. My broken bones in my legs and ribs were fully recovered.
But that was not all as I also discovered far more strength in my body than before and along with it a different kind of an energy in my body other than the vital energy. I later realized that this was spirit Qi!" The old man spoke.
"Huh? You directly broke through to the Qi refining realm? How is that possible?" Hua San asked.
"Back then, I didn't know either. But after spending about a month there, I started to learn more about the place. The large lake I had fallen into actually had mysterious properties that healed my body and even increased my cultivation base.
I started to explore and wander around the area and learned more about it. The lake was just one part of the sinkhole and there were many more unique areas in it. There was the forest that was filled with dangerous beasts who could easily kill me at that time and poisonous plants that would kill me if I got too close to them.
The dangers were many and, knowing that I was in the blind about that place, I just observed from a distance. For food, all I could eat were some tubers I found growing near the lake.
Making fire was easy enough, and water was easy to procure as well. What I didn't know was that everything around that lake was beneficial for one's cultivation. The water contained medicinal properties while the tubers contained spirit Qi.
I spent about a year in that area, unable to proceed any farther because of the danger. The beasts would kill me the moment I would step out of a certain radius." Adviser Chu explained.
"Wait, then why did the beasts not attack you near the lake?" Lin Mu questioned.
"It was due to the water of the lake as well. Apparently, it was good to repel beasts though, for plants and humans. I guess it was very beneficial. Though in that one year I had a lot of gains.
My cultivation base reached the late stage of the Qi refining realm in that span. I of course, took full advantage of the lake water and the tubers around it, but I realized the lake water started to lose its effects after a few months.
While the tubers still provided me with spirit Qi, they started to run out of numbers. By the end of the first year, I had no tubers to eat. At that point, I realized that I had to leave the place or I would starve.
I had no cultivation technique and thus all I could do was to use my raw strength while strengthening my limbs with spirit Qi. My first battle was with a small beast that looked like a mix between a dog and a raccoon.
It was the most difficult battle I had gone through, and I was quite injured by the time I managed to kill the beast. It was a bit strange since the beast was actually at a far lower cultivation base than me.
I realize that unless I gained better control over my spirit Qi, I would probably not be able to fight many more beasts. I did my best to learn about spirit Qi while also hunting more and more beasts.
Another two years passed like this before I was able to continue onwards. It was also during this time that I broke through to the Core Condensation realm. After that, things became a bit easier for me and I could see the rest of the sinkhole.
The area was rather large and even after ten more years; I had barely covered half of the area. There were many different areas in the sinkhole, from lakes to swamps to forests and even some tombs.
I had not given up my search for an escape route but was unable to find anything. Even now I didn't have any cultivation technique and had to depend on external resources to increase my spirit Qi.
If I depleted my spirit Qi, I would not even be able to recover it actively. I would just have to wait for the spirit Qi to passively regenerate. This often led to some rather dangerous situations in the sinkhole.
The beasts, along with the dangerous areas, made for a bad combination and could make you stuck in one area for a long time.
It wasn't until a hundred years passed that I actually found a cultivation technique in one of the tombs. It was made by another cultivator who had perhaps fallen in an unknown amount of time ago." The old man spoke in detail.
