After the demons dispersed, the hotel owner Jin Xiaoye had not left yet, and the spider demon Zhu Zhiyang was waiting downstairs. Kong Qi and the Demon Sect Cheng Tianle had important matters in private. It may be all important plans that will have a vital impact on the development of the demon cultivator world in the future, and it is not easy for the two of them to go upstairs to disturb them.

I don’t know how long it took, Cheng Tianle went downstairs first. Er Yao hurriedly stepped forward and said hello, “Mr. Cheng, have you finished talking? Fellow Taoist Kong Qi is very esteemed to me. We are very careful when talking to him, for fear of being displeased. I didn’t expect that he would get along with Mr. Cheng today and chatted alone for so long.”

Cheng Tian smiled happily: "I have said a lot of things, and Cheng has gained a lot... Fellow Daoist Jin, I'll ask, it's very rare for so many fellow demon cultivators who are hiding in the market to get together like you. And today everyone has known each other for many years. How did you know each other?"

Jin Xiaoye and Zhu Zhiyang looked at each other awkwardly and replied with apologetically: "We demon cultivators have indeed known each other for many years. They are not met by chance in the market, but have other fates. Mr. Cheng asked him about everything he should have known, but we have made a vow to not mention the reasons to others, so it is a bit inconvenient to say. But I think Mr. Cheng will know the reason in the future. I wonder where Mr. Cheng will go after he passed by this place?"

Cheng Tianle replied: "I want to go to the Hundred Thousand Mountains to see."

Jin Xiaoye and Zhu Zhiyang were both slightly stunned, and then quickly said, "You should walk around the mountains and rivers all over the world. This is also a witness to practice. I wish Cheng Zheng's trip all the best!... Cheng Zheng came here and wanted to ask you to stay for a few more days. We can also entertain you carefully, but since you have other itinerary arrangements, I dare not delay you."

Cheng Tianle said goodbye and left. Not long after, Kong Qi also walked downstairs with a treasure bag in his face. The second demon stepped forward and said hello, "Fellow Daoist Kong Qi. What have you talked with President Cheng? After using it for so long, why is this still the same face?"

Kong Qi looked outside the door and said to himself, "The Demon Sect is born in heaven and liar, and he is a human being or not a demon after all!... One day, he will regret it today." After saying that, he left without saying hello and left the two demons in place.

Jin Xiaoye and Zhu Zhiyang looked at each other, and Jin Xiaoye said, "It's a bit wrong. Judging from this, why did President Cheng offend Kong Qi?"

Zhu Zhiyang whispered: "Maybe it hurts self-esteem and is not valued. Mr. Cheng shouldn't have praised him much."

Jin Xiaoye: "Looking at how Kong Qi looked when he left, it seemed like we had offended him too."

...

It was an accident to meet Jin Xiaoye during the tour, and it was even more accidental to know Kong Qi. Cheng Tianle didn't know that he had offended Kong Qi for no reason, and he didn't think much about this. In Cheng Tianle's opinion, Yun Duanwu and Kong Qi were people he had never met before, but their situation was very different.

He continued to move forward and left the city. The village he was going to is now within the jurisdiction of this prefecture-level city, but the place was very remote. If you walk along the road, you have to pass through a county town and then enter the deep mountains. When Cheng Tianle came, he checked various detailed maps, and then compared the divine information left to him by Yu Daoyang. He found that the place is now marked on the map, named "Wuling Township".

This name should be taken from Tao Yuanming's "The Book of Peach Blossoms" and it also seems to mean that it is like a paradise that people don't know. Cheng Tianle didn't know that the village five hundred years ago has now become an administrative town. He even marked it so clearly on the map. He guessed that the place he was looking for might be near Wuling Township, so he went to the town where the township government was located to take a look.

From the map, this township is a bit far from the surrounding villages and towns. There is only a lonely road to reach. Walking on this road, Cheng Tianle found that few people pass by here. This is not a formal highway. To be precise, it is only equivalent to a mechanized farming road in the countryside. The rammed loess road is covered with very fine gravel, which can barely allow two tractors to travel in the wrong way.

If you drive on such a road, if one car comes opposite, the other car has to park on the side of the roadside, and half of the wheels hit the grass outside the roadbed to barely get through. But in fact, there are almost no cars on this road, and it is even more deserted than the road that Cheng Tianle saw on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Usually, there are few tractors running, but there are occasionally cars passing here, and various cars.

Cheng Tianle used his divine consciousness to observe the imprints left by the road, such as horse-drawn carriages, donkey carriages, ox carriages, hand-pushed wheelbarrows, bicycles, motorcycles, agricultural tricycles, and cars, but the recent traces were left at least half a month ago. Although this road is deserted, it is not as desolate as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. When Cheng Tianle set out from the nearest village, there were rolling hills on both sides, and fields could be seen from time to time, with wild flowers blooming beside the road and various wild fruits in the forest.

As we drifted farther and farther away, the hills were getting bigger and bigger, steeper, and turned into ridges. The farmland disappeared, and the eyes were full of lush forests. You could hear all kinds of birds singing in the ears. From time to time, you could detect the traces of wild animals moving in the forest, and there were all beasts, insects and snakes. This road circled around the mountains, like a tangerine, and the scenery you saw was like a constantly changing landscape painting.

Cheng Tianle was slightly surprised when walking on the road. The climate in this area is warm and precipitated. If no one takes care of it, weeds will grow quickly even in the rubble. This seemingly desolate mountain road is actually very careful. Weeds are rarely seen on the road surface. The gravel is paved very finely and evenly, and the rammed earth on the roadbed is also pure soil without humus impurities. This is the ancient method of building post roads a long time ago. Under the corresponding engineering and technical conditions, the manpower and material resources are not less than that of building a modern regular road.

This path may not have been cultivated by one generation. It may have been paved over long years or even hundreds of years, and has been maintained by people throughout the ages. It is most likely related to the demon cultivator village. Under ordinary circumstances, it is impossible to imagine who can invest such huge but invisible labor in such remote mountainous areas, unless it uses magical powers.

The further he walked, Cheng Tianle confirmed his judgment more. Because the mountains became more and more dangerous, the absolute altitude of 100,000 mountains was not high, no more than 1,500 meters. It was a zone where hills and faults intersected, which was different from the Hengduan Mountains where Cheng Tianle had just walked through not long ago, and the terrain was not so dangerous and majestic.

However, the terrain of this road leads to is more and more like the Hengduan Mountains. The absolute altitude of the surrounding mountains has reached more than 1,000 meters. The more important feature is that the drop is very large, with many collapses and fault zones distributed. Cheng Tianle saw several naturally formed sinkholes in the mountains along the way, some of which have a radius of hundreds of meters and a depth of more than 100 meters at the bottom.

Continue to move towards the deep mountains, the water flow becomes more and more strange. Sometimes you can hear the sound of water, but you can't see the stream. It is the underground river rushing. Gradually, there are more rivers that reveal the surface, cutting out many deep valleys between the mountains. The width and narrowness of this road remain unchanged, but it is no longer walking in the valley between the two mountains. It is often hanging between the cliffs, just like the plank road excavated in ancient times.

Above is a cliff, a half-loose structure is carved out, and below is a deep valley of hundreds of meters. Cheng Tianle also noticed that the rock formations here are very complex, including hard granite and loose sand and conglomerate, and some places are very easy to collapse. The road is extremely round and ingenious, and they are the most difficult to dig. The hardest and densest rock formations pass through, avoiding all the loose geological areas in the mountains that are easy to collapse.

Cheng Tianle also noticed a phenomenon that Wuling Township should have electricity and telephone numbers. Because when you start from a nearest village, you can still see the old black wooden telephone poles on the roadside, with wires and communication cables installed. However, after walking for more than ten miles, the telephone poles disappeared and the lines were buried underground.

No matter how difficult the mountain road is to be repaired or the terrain is dangerous, it is always wide and narrow. A hidden trench was dug on the side of the road and buried all the cables. This cable project should be a modern new construction, with manpower and great material resources. It may not be anything in the plains, but it is really shocking here, but ordinary people don’t pay much attention to it.

Cheng Tianle thought about it. If Wanbian Sect was also in this deep mountain, gathering the power of all the demons in the current temple, and using the magical powers to dig a ditch on the side of the road before building it up, it would be possible.

How to describe the tortuous and dangerous roads? Sometimes you can clearly see the road on the opposite mountain, but it takes more than ten miles to walk. Along the way, you can not only see large and small sky pits, faults, cliffs and light and dark streams, but also see a landform that is often seen on the plateau - Liushitan.

Liushi Beach is generally distributed above the alpine vegetation zone and below the permanent ice and snow zone. Due to various weathering effects, large rocks continue to crack, and the rocks and gravels slowly slide along the steep slopes, forming a fan-shaped debris slope. There are many such gravel slopes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which seem to be no grass growing, but in summer, sparse and low vegetation will grow between the gravels under the nourishment of the melting snow of the mountains.

However, the altitude of the 100,000 mountains is not too high, and the climate is warm and humid all year round, so it has not reached the snow line at all. So the Liushitan is purely caused by geological reasons. It does not look desolate, covered with vegetation and blooms with various wild flowers, and the steep hillside is actually a very unstable layer of gravel. It is impossible to build roads in such a place, and the road that Cheng Tianle takes is bypassed.

This road has another characteristic. There is a cable buried by the side of the road, but there is no street light along the way. Cheng Tianle walked for nearly fifty miles and was winding around the mountains, but he didn't even see a sign indicating the sign! Cheng Tianle thought carefully and saw a sign pointing to Wuling Township at the entrance of the nearest village where he came. Then there was no sign.

(To be continued)
Chapter completed!