In the dark passage, Li Yan was "crawl" forward little by little in a strange posture, with one hand raised above his head and the other hand hanging down to his leg.
Li Yan didn't dare to retreat, nor could he do it, as the entrance he had just entered seemed to be blocked.
Li Yan kicked backwards a few times, and the feeling from behind was just like the wall beside him, not moving at all.
He could still move forward and backward while crawling forward in the passage, but he certainly wouldn't do that.
In the dark and extremely hot passage, it seems like there is no end forward. A person is crawling slowly. The space around him where he cannot move freely brings him psychological depression and eternal loneliness.
It’s not that Li Yan doesn’t want to circulate his spiritual power and move forward quickly. Moving forward a little distance here requires a huge amount of physical strength. He can’t waste his spiritual power when he can’t be sure of the specific situation ahead.
In a dark and narrow space, a person will slowly lose the sense of time. You don’t know how much time has passed. Maybe it’s just one day, but you think it’s many days and nights.
In the end, even if it is just a moment, it will seem as long as decades in your heart, and you will feel so helpless and tormented.
In this environment, the best thing to do is to calm yourself down and then slowly seek a way out.
Unfortunately, the narrow dark passage where Li Yan is located will not let you calm down at all, because the temperature here can melt a mortal in an instant.
There is a suffocating heat coming from the passage. Even if a cultivator is resisting, the constant consumption of spiritual and physical energy will make you more and more anxious and oppressed.
Here, you can’t see a ray of light, nor hear a single sound from the outside world. There is only your own heavy breathing, and the fiery air that accompanies every breath you exhale.
Li Yan had been counting his heartbeats silently. He needed to roughly calculate how long he had been here.
Two hours had passed, and they had crawled forward less than twenty feet, which was not much faster than a snail.
The black robe on his body was wet and dry, dry and wet again. Li Yan had to stop occasionally and perform the "Cloud and Rain Technique" so that he could catch some water drops into his mouth. However, this would cause his spiritual energy to be consumed even faster.
Although the body was firmly imprisoned in the pitch-black passage, fortunately the spiritual energy was not blocked, so the magic could still be performed.
Li Yan also wanted to try to use the "Earth Spike Technique" on the wall of the passage, and then use his spiritual power to transform into a long rope to wrap around the protruding earth spikes in front of him, using the force to pull himself forward quickly.
But unfortunately, even with his current level of cultivation, after casting the spell, apart from a series of rumbling sounds, not even a small hole could be left on the wall of the passage.
… …
The Bright Fire Kirin looked at the black passage in front of it in disbelief. This was its fifteenth attempt to enter in the past three days, but each time it was pushed away by an irresistible repulsive force.
"It's been three days, how come that kid hasn't died yet? This doesn't make sense!" Bright Fire Kirin was a little anxious and crazy.
There are two passages behind the red gate. Although the pitch-black passage will not cause any attack after entering it.
But anyone who can come out of the black channel alive would rather enter the golden channel and continue to fight than enter the dark channel a second time. The most terrifying thing is that it will leave an experience of eternal fear for the living.
The black channel leaves you with no hope of survival. You lose the energy and calmness you have gained through decades or even hundreds of years of practice. This will only lead you to despair in helplessness and lead you to lose your life in despair.
Although the constant fighting in the Golden Channel will make people feel extremely tired and weak, there will always be intermittent rest. The most important thing is that there is a large space, which allows the monks to know in their hearts that they are still alive, their bodies are free, and their senses are free.
The Bright Fire Kirin is guarding the gate here. It can easily enter both passages. There is no special reason. It was just that the original refiner allowed it to enter.
But there are still special circumstances. Only one living being can enter the channel at a time. As long as he is not dead, even the Light Fire Kirin cannot enter.
Therefore, there are countless "fire eyes" on the mountain of "Huoyan Palace" so that many people can enter at the same time.
"Damn human boy, I want to see how long you can hold on. When all the medicine in your body is used up, I'll see if you can still survive." The Bright Fire Qilin looked at the dark passage, thinking hatefully in his heart.
In its opinion, Li Yan who entered the passage must be a core disciple of that big sect, otherwise how could he come here with such a low level of cultivation.
Of course, he has a protective magic weapon like the pale yellow folding fan. Any magic weapon consumes spiritual power, not to mention that the passage is not suitable for cultivation and recovery, so he can only use pills to replenish his spiritual power.
If you want to make a breakthrough here, the price is your life. After all, a cultivator's storage bag is limited, and it cannot be filled with only pills.
… …
Li Yan felt extremely uncomfortable. He had been maintaining this strange posture for five days. His two arms, one above and one below, had a limited bending range. He could only rely on slightly bending his legs and pushing and moving forward a little bit at a time.
The speed was extremely slow, and he had to stop to rest frequently. This seemingly easy movement of pushing off the ground to move forward was actually extremely exhausting.
In the past five days, he estimated that he could not crawl more than 500 feet. At first, Li Yan was still thinking about his mistakes and how to get out. Various thoughts came to him. He did not regret his choice, nor did he hate the Bright Fire Kirin too much. He was able to survive until today because he was careful.
Although he is sometimes too cautious, Li Yan does not think of himself as a god. After all, he is a human being and everyone makes mistakes. It is impossible that he is the only smart person in the world and everyone else is stupid.
Every failure makes you wiser. As long as you don't lose your life immediately, there is always a chance to make up for it.
In his consciousness, there was still no end in front of him. He could hear his own breathing clearly in his ears. In between his breaths, Li Yan could also hear the "booming" sound of his own heartbeat, which was so loud that it even felt a little deafening.
Of course, all of this is just a feeling. The heartbeat can be heard, but not loud enough to be this loud. It's just that there is no day or night here, and the high temperature and stuffiness never stops. Apart from listening to one's own heartbeat and breathing while inching forward a little bit, nothing else happens.
At this time, if someone could use great supernatural powers to cut open the passage, looking from above, Li Yan would be lying in a coffin, and trying to move out of the coffin bit by bit.
Li Yan felt that he was lucky to be practicing the Guishui Sutra. The circulation of the five elements could still provide him with such use, so that his spiritual power would not be exhausted too early.
Li Yan's forward movement had become mechanical and numb. In the darkness, repeating the simple and boring single action, it was easy for people's thinking to stagnate.
The stagnation of thinking means that one will slowly lose consciousness. Li Yan has had hallucinations several times. Sometimes he doesn't even know whether he is crawling or has stopped.
Only when he realizes this will his mind suddenly become clear and he will know what state he is in.
But then, during the boring crawl, you will slowly lose consciousness, and many confusing thoughts and strange ideas will flood into your mind, and even the thoughts of the previous moment and the thoughts of the next moment will have no connection at all.
Sometimes he would wonder how long the road ahead would be and whether something unexpected would happen here. Before he could imagine what would happen, the scene of his parents sitting at the dinner table, eating and chatting might appear in his mind the next moment.
When he wanted to take a closer look at what his parents were talking about, the scene in Qingshanai City appeared before his eyes again. Amid the swaying flags of the wine shop, why did Li Yu stick his head out of the building again...
Daqing Mountain, the Wuliang Sect, the eldest senior brother, the seventh senior brother, Zhao Min, Gong Chenying... and even Master Tianbei from the back mountain of Xiaozhu Peak... It's a mess and I don't know what they are thinking.
Suddenly, Li Yan shuddered, and his eyes returned to the endless darkness. This was a brief moment of regaining consciousness. He was still crawling slowly... Soon, he would fall into confusion again.
Just like this, Li Yan gradually lost the concept of time. He didn't know the days and months, nor the length of time. He kept going back and forth between confusion and clarity, and his mind began to fall into a fuzzy state. In the end, he even forgot where he was and why he came here for a part of the time.
I became more and more restless in my heart. My body felt extremely uncomfortable after maintaining the same posture for a long time. Sometimes I even had the terrible thought of cutting off my arms to make my body freer.
… …
The bright fire unicorn outside also gradually fell into a frenzy. It had been waiting outside for twenty days.
Now, every half hour it would crash into the black passage, then be thrown high backwards, falling to the ground outside the red gate, and then climb up again with red eyes.
After it refined the red flame, the Bright Fire Qilin was excited that its soul power had improved a little, which was comparable to the results of its hard training in the past few months.
The soul and consciousness are equally difficult to cultivate, and the natural treasures that can improve them are extremely rare. Even if they do exist, they are usually only possessed by cultivators with great supernatural powers.
This kind of stimulation was huge, and the Bright Fire Kirin was even more eager to kill Li Yan immediately. Now it had already regretted that it should have killed that kid at all costs, instead of suffering like this now.
… …
Li Yan didn't know that everything he had experienced was exactly the reason why many false elixir cultivators came here. To be able to advance to the false elixir realm, most of them had already condensed their spiritual power to the level required for forming an elixir. What they lacked was the realization of their state of mind and a breakthrough between life and death.
The two passages in the "Huoyan Palace" have exactly these two functions. The dark passages temper the cultivator's state of mind and allow him to be reborn in Nirvana amidst the demons in his heart. This has a similar effect to the "Dustless Pill".
However, this kind of tempering is more domineering and more thorough. You will not die after eating the "Dustless Pill", but it is extremely dangerous in the black passage of the "Huoyan Palace". The destruction of your Tao and the death of your body are the lightest consequences. Struggling in pain and trying hard to survive is a lifelong psychological shadow.
Monk Yiming finally chose to enter here after taking the "Dustless Pill" several times without any results.
There is endless fighting in the golden channel. You cannot stay where you are. Even if you kill all the evil spirits nearby, more evil spirits will regenerate soon. All the cultivator has to do is to keep moving forward and keep fighting until you have completed the golden channel.
… …
In the eternally silent world, Li Yan was always surrounded by depression and darkness. Finally, one day, Li Yan stopped moving forward, and his consciousness became extremely disordered. Anyone who stays in the darkness for who knows how many days will eventually lose mental balance completely. Li Yan is a human being, and he is no exception.
Listening to his own intermittent breathing in the darkness, and unable to feel whether his arms were still feeling anything, Li Yan's eyes were suddenly no longer dark.
Crystal snowflakes bloomed in the sky, making the world bright. Among the snowflakes, many familiar faces appeared near and far. They seemed to be saying something to him, with anxious and helpless expressions. However, Li Yan just couldn't hear them clearly. There was only a buzzing sound.
Suddenly, Li Yan became lucid for a moment. This was a dream, just like the many messy dreams he had during this period of time, but this dream was more real and very recent.