Starting My Cultivation With Time Management

Chapter 718: Chapter 52: Long Long’s Escape Plan
 

Ordinary earthquakes generally only have a single epicenter.

However, under Long Long’s scanning, the epicenters within range were densely packed, almost completely encircling the Dragon Clan’s team.

Who knew how many Horned Clan cultivators were lying in ambush around them!

The rapidly collapsing soil and rocks created a dam in the river, blocking the waterway escape route for the Dragon Clan’s team.

The Great Elder Qin Chaocang quickly revealed his Azure Dragon True Form, and then immediately began to churn his True Yuan throughout his body, rapidly spouting a pale aqua-colored water column that was dozens of feet thick from his mouth, shooting towards the dam of soil and rocks with the speed of a cannon.

The Azure Dragon differed from the Jiaolong. In addition to the Water System Spells that the Dragon Clan was naturally good at, it also possessed considerable accomplishments in the Wood System Spells. The rocks hit by the aqua-colored water streams seemed to be like boiling water hitting butter, quickly melting a passage through them.

The erosive effects of this Wood System Spell had clearly been cultivated by the Great Elder to an extremely high realm.

The other young dragons were immediately invigorated and rushed towards the gap opened by the Great Elder.

But Long Long’s expression remained stern, and he quickly grabbed Long Hu, Qin Zhou, and Qin Ye, saying,

“Follow me!”

He decisively turned his body and headed towards the deeper parts of the riverbed.

Long Hu followed without hesitation; the Qin siblings hesitated for a moment but, realizing that Long Long had predicted the current situation, instinctively followed in a panic.

The four of them quickly arrived at the deepest part of the riverbed, and then they heard Long Long say,

“Fan!”

Long Hu promptly took out the Golden Crow True Fire Fan and began to fan towards the riverbed, activating his True Yuan.

Any ordinary Fire System Magical Treasure would see its effectiveness greatly reduced if activated deep underwater.

But Golden Crow True Fire was not an ordinary fire and feared not the ordinary water; it was also particularly effective at melting soil and rocks. In the deep parts of the Three-legged Mountain Range, the two had used the Golden Crow True Fire Fan to burn and melt all the soil and stone burying the archway ruins.

Countless flames swept down, quickly burning out a huge deep cave at the bottom of the river.

The surging waters around them not only didn’t extinguish the Golden Crow True Fire, but they also helped to dissipate the sound and light aftermath of the spell.

The Horned Clan cultivators outside, even if they saw a large number of bubbles churning and rising through the surging waves, still could not detect anything amiss.

“Quick, get in!” Long Long, now in his Jiaolong form, measured the depth of the cave with his body and immediately urged everyone to enter.

Everyone quickly entered the cave, and Long Long immediately struck with a heavy and fierce swipe of his dragon tail, collapsing the entrance of the cave.

The narrow cave was then plunged into total darkness. The Qin siblings were feeling uneasy when suddenly a light flickered on—it was the little fox lighting up the Eastern Pure Light Glazed Lamp.

Long Long took the lamp from her hands and said,

“Continue digging downwards, don’t stop.”

“Alright,” Long Hu continued to activate the Golden Crow True Fire Fan, starting to melt the deeper soil and stone, excavating forward.

The group continued to follow Long Hu downward, and every time they went a certain distance, Long Long would blow up the passage behind them to eliminate any traces.

Seeing how cautious Long Long was, the Qin siblings thoughtfully began to understand their current predicament.

First of all, since the Horned Clan thought to use Earth Magic to create widespread earthquakes to encircle them, they certainly would not fail to anticipate someone forcibly breaking through the blockage.

Perhaps this was exactly the “encirclement with an outlet” tactic the military strategists spoke of, intended to lure them into the next trap!

It was probably for this reason that Qin Chaocang did not stop them… The Great Elder was near the bottom of the river, covering the escape of the Dragon Clan cultivators in the team. If he failed to notice the likes of Long Long sneaking away from the group and secretly digging tunnels at the riverbed, that would have truly been strange.

Secondly, the Horned Clan excels in the art of traversing thousands of miles instantaneously and is particularly sensitive to the fluctuations of Earth System spells.

But what Long Long had Long Hu use was a spell stimulated by a Fire System Magical Treasure, and it was also concealed by the river water. Moreover, the Horned Clan’s attention was surely on those from the Dragon Clan who were breaking through on the surface, so the likelihood of them noticing this activity here was greatly reduced.

Finally, there was the question of how to escape.

Neither in the air nor on the surface could one completely conceal their tracks. Originally, the group had chosen to escape by water, but almost everyone knows that the Dragon Clan is adept at Water Escape. As the Horned Clan pinpointed their location, continuing to flee via waterways became unsafe.

However, if one could dig an escape route beneath the ground without using the Earth Escape Technique, there was a good chance of evading the Horned Clan’s prediction, and the probability of survival would greatly increase.

Furthermore, recalling that Long Long had earlier raised this issue with the Great Elder Qin Chaocang during the journey and had received an answer regarding Earth Escape… admiration for Qin Chaocang filled the Qin siblings.

They estimated that at that time, he was already planning for the Earth Escape Technique they were using now, right?

Although the speed of tunneling through the earth using the power of the Golden Crow True Fire Fan wasn’t slow, it definitely wasn’t as fast as moving on the surface.

Additionally, it was hard to discern directions underground, which posed another significant challenge as there was no distinction between south, north, west, and east.

If they managed to escape the encirclement only to find they had tunneled into plains instead of waterways, they risked being discovered by patrolling Horned Clan cultivators.

Unless they directly tunneled out to the Two Rivers Plain… That of course was impossible, as they weren’t using the Earth Escape Technique and didn’t have that kind of speed.

Although the specifics of how to continue surviving were unclear, the mere thought that Long Long had probably already made preparations gave the Qin siblings a mysterious confidence.

As for Long Hu, this fox had no worries as long as she followed Long Long, brimming with confidence no matter where they went.

Thus, the heavy burden of the entire team’s escape squarely fell on Long Long’s shoulders.

He had to scan the surroundings to ensure no Horned Clan cultivators noticed anything unusual at the riverbed, while also keeping track of the little fox’s remaining True Yuan, and even take turns activating the Magical Treasure with her to vie for time to recover and replenish True Yuan. On occasion, he had to extensively apply psychological suggestions to ensure absolute safety—it was a frantic busyness indeed.

Fortunately, the Horned Clan cultivators on the ground were focused on hunting down the Dragon Clan members fleeing through the waterways.

The Great Elder Qin Chaocang was also using all kinds of spells to firmly draw the enemy’s attention away, leaving him no leisure to scan the depths of the riverbed with his Divine Sense.

After digging downward for about several hundred feet, a distance far beyond the range of the Horned Clan cultivator’s Divine Sense, Long Long finally let himself relax.

Next was to continue tunneling horizontally to get out of the encirclement and then vertically break into any waterway in South State…

“Six hundred and seventy feet to the southwest, continue to a depth of seven hundred feet, and there is a huge space,” the Kunlun Mirror suddenly said.

“A huge space?” The first thing that came to Long Long’s mind was the White Bone Divine Palace built underground in the past.

It is well-known that any ruins that have concealed entrances difficult to discover, or are built in places like underground, deep sea, and in the air where few people venture, often have valuable items inside… After all, ruins that are easy to discover have mostly been claimed by pioneers long ago.

So, should he explore it or not?

Long Long probably only hesitated for a split second before he made his decision.

Of course, he should!

The reason was simple: with so many Horned Clan cultivators outside searching for members of the Dragon Clan, going out now would be asking for trouble, wouldn’t it?

I’m thinking of everyone’s best interest here!