"So this should be the place to rent cave abodes?" Yang Kai stood before a grand hall at the boundary between the outer city and the inner city, craning his neck to take it in before calling out to Liu Xianyun and stepping inside.
He had been able to find the place quickly thanks to the directions given by Ling Yiqin and the others. Jiao Yi had originally offered to escort him personally, but Yang Kai had politely declined. Jiao Yi and his group had only just returned after spending so long out at sea — they surely had their own matters to attend to. Besides, renting a cave abode was hardly a complicated affair. Yang Kai was confident he could handle it on his own.
Before parting ways, Jiao Yi had given Yang Kai a transmission bead, telling him to reach out anytime he needed help.
The number of warriors coming and going inside the hall was neither large nor small.
When Yang Kai arrived, a handful of people were already waiting in line ahead of him, all apparently here to rent cave abodes as well. He stood off to the side and quietly observed for a while, quickly grasping the full procedure.
Half an hour later, when it was his turn, he walked straight up, tossed a pouch of Source Crystals onto the table, and said to the warrior in charge, "I'd like to rent a mid-grade cave abode. One-year term."
"Outer city or inner city?" The warrior glanced up at Yang Kai and asked flatly.
Yang Kai let out a cold snort. "If it were an outer city cave abode, do you think I'd be giving you this many Source Crystals? Do you take me for an idiot?"
The man in charge wasn't offended. He simply grinned, picked up the pouch of Source Crystals, weighed it in his hand, and only then pocketed it. He pointed to a sand table nearby. "Pick one yourself."
The sand table looked like a model of the entirety of Heaven-reaching City, only shrunk countless times over, yet every single building was rendered in exquisite detail. Two large sections represented the cave abode districts — one in the outer city, where prices were considerably cheaper, and the other in the inner city, where the rental fees ran somewhat higher. Most of the cave abodes had small flags planted outside them, indicating they had already been leased. Only a minority of well-positioned ones remained vacant.
Yang Kai merely needed a place to lay his head. He had no particular requirements regarding the grade of the Spirit Purification Formation inside the cave abode, nor the density of spiritual energy. So his eyes swept once across the sand table, and he pointed at a somewhat remote cave abode. "This one."
The man in charge took a look, tossed an object, and a restriction token flew toward Yang Kai. Without raising his head, he said, "That's your restriction token. Keep it safe. No subleasing. No unauthorized modification of the Spirit Purification Formation. Violators will be killed without exception."
Yang Kai caught the token, gave it only a cursory inspection, and stowed it away before turning to leave with Liu Xianyun.
…
Another half hour later, Yang Kai and Liu Xianyun arrived at the cave abode. The inner city cave abode district was situated in a range of mountains within the island itself, with cave abodes of varying sizes carved directly into the rock faces. All in all, the environment was reasonably pleasant.
The ambient spiritual energy within the Silence Void Secret Realm had always been extraordinarily dense, but it was laced with an inexhaustible force of dissipation, meaning warriors could not absorb it freely. They could only cultivate after setting up a Spirit Purification Formation. Depending on the grade of the formation, a warrior's cultivation efficiency varied enormously.
That said, even with the highest-grade Spirit Purification Formation, warriors cultivating in this wretched place could barely maintain their cultivation without letting it deteriorate. Genuine advancement was simply out of the question.
The mid-grade cave abode Yang Kai had rented naturally came equipped with an intermediate-grade Spirit Purification Formation.
He and Liu Xianyun entered the cave abode to look around and found it to be of decent size — three bedchambers, an alchemy room, a crafting room, and even what amounted to a sitting hall.
Compared to the cave abode Yang Kai had rented back in Maplewood City, this one was unquestionably better, though the price was about the same. Within the Silence Void Secret Realm, Source Crystals were extremely precious, so the same amount carried a very different value here. Equivalent quantities of Source Crystals naturally held far greater worth inside the Silence Void Secret Realm.
"Junior Sister, go ahead and pick a room for yourself," Yang Kai told Liu Xianyun.
"What about you?" she asked.
"I'm going to familiarize myself with the area and track down that artifact crafting master to repair the Spirit Purification Formation on the Lingyin Qin."
Liu Xianyun said, "Senior Brother, please be careful."
"Don't worry. If you have nothing else to do, you can reinforce the cave abode's various restrictions. We'll probably be staying here for quite some time."
"Mm. Go and come back soon." Liu Xianyun said softly, and then flushed a little, because it suddenly struck her that the way she and Yang Kai were behaving felt remarkably like a married couple living together — the husband heading out the door while the wife fretted and reminded him to take care. And wasn't she precisely filling the wife's role?
The thought made her cheeks burn, and when she looked up again, Yang Kai had already vanished.
Navigating through the winding streets of Heaven-reaching City, asking for directions several times over, Yang Kai finally arrived before a narrow alley.
He turned his head and looked around, a peculiar expression crossing his face as he muttered to himself, "I didn't take a wrong turn, did I? An artifact crafting master lives in a place like this?"
When he had parted ways with Jiao Yi and the others earlier, Jiao Yi had given him a transmission bead and then secretly sent him a message, telling Yang Kai that if he truly wanted to have the high-grade Spirit Purification Formation on the Lingyin Qin restored, he should seek out Master Sander in the inner city.
Of all the craftsmen on Heaven-reaching Island, Master Sander was the finest artifact crafter. Rumor had it he had already glimpsed the mysteries of the Emperor Artifact Master level, and at least eighty percent of the high-grade Spirit Purification Formations that appeared on Heaven-reaching Island had been forged by his hand.
A man who could produce high-grade Spirit Purification Formations could surely handle a repair without any trouble.