The Path of Immortality: Starts With Creating Water Bear Gu

Due to his long lifespan, Long Xuan is not afraid of wasting time. As a dedicated enthusiast, spending extensive time on a broken map is his greatest joy. He doesn’t mind investing a large amount of time on it.

For the next period, he dedicated all his time to completing the fragmented map. After countless sheets of white paper and three months, he finally completed the map and successfully guessed the treasure’s location based on the information.

Long Xuan, ecstatic, held the now complete treasure map and paced excitedly in his room. No one could understand the joy of finally succeeding after countless hours of effort.

He kissed the map, rolled it up, and stored it in his storage bag. He began to pack his bags, preparing for a journey to find the treasure.

Up until now, Long Xuan had never traveled far, not even to nearby places.

On one hand, his strength was too weak, making it unsafe to travel far.

On the other hand, he had to take care of Elder Long’s medicine garden, making it inconvenient to leave for long.

But now, he didn’t have to worry about that. He had five external clones; he could easily assign one to take care of the garden.

After leaving one of his Wood clone, he went to the market to buy supplies for the wilderness and stocked up on a large amount of food before heading north.

Interestingly, this world did not have Fasting Pills. To prepare enough food, he had to get an extra storage bag just for food, which was quite inconvenient.

He was determined to develop the Fasting Pill formula in the future, as it was essential for outdoor adventures.

Half a month later, Long Xuan arrived at a towering and continuous mountain range, with several peaks reaching the clouds.

From a distance, it looked like a giant beast entrenched here, majestic and imposing.

This place was deserted, with no vegetation or animals, and was eerily silent.

However, Long Xuan did not underestimate this place. The more unique and remote a place, the more likely it was to contain treasure.

Ownerless treasures always appeared in places rarely visited by humans; otherwise, they would have been found already.

Long Xuan looked at the map and found that the treasure location should be near this mountain range, so he grinned.

He put away the map and began a carpet search of the area.

Despite its vast size, Long Xuan’s eyes could see deep underground.

If there was treasure here, no matter how deeply buried, it wouldn’t escape his eyes.

Soon, Long Xuan stopped at a cave entrance buried under rubble.

This cave was well-hidden; blocked by rocks, it blended into the mountain wall. Ordinary people wouldn’t notice it even if they passed by.

Long Xuan immediately ordered four clones to move the rocks blocking the entrance while he rested nearby.

With the combined effort, a gap soon appeared at the entrance.

As long as one person could enter and exit, it was enough; there was no need to clear it completely.

Long Xuan then sent his fire clone in to explore the cave for any dangers. After confirming it was safe, he would enter himself.

Although external clone could be killed accidentally, Long Xuan could always create another one.

The only downside was that the new clone needed to be retrained, and only one clone of the same attribute could exist simultaneously.

In the early stages, Long Xuan’s spiritual power was thin, and clone could be quickly restored, so he didn’t mind using them for exploration.

But later, as his realm advanced, losing clone would become costly.

Creating external clone required a high price, and they couldn’t be easily lost. Long Xuan already had the least expensive process.

After the fire clone encountered no danger for half a day, Long Xuan, to be safe, sent the other avatars in one by one, entering last himself.

Suddenly feeling unsure, he called back the water clone at the end and ordered it to guard the rear while he positioned himself in the middle of the group.

Upon reconsideration, he felt that the middle position was the safest.

The cave was deep, and Long Xuan and each clone carried a torch, cautiously advancing.

Soon, they encountered three predecessors who had turned into skeletons, with nine well-filled storage bags on the ground.

Afraid of poison or traps, Long Xuan had his metal clone pick up the bags and check their contents.

He eagerly anticipated what might be inside.

The nine storage bags contained only ordinary items and a conspicuous diary, with the rest filled with fossils of various sizes and shapes.

To Long Xuan’s eyes, most fossils showed no progress, indicating they were dead bugs.

But some fossils showed varying progress, with the longest having four decimal point, representing top-grade spirit bugs that matured over a millennium. There were quite a few, enough for a small fortune.

Seeing the fossils, Long Xuan realized this cave was a fossil mine.

Before entering, he noticed dense numbers in the mountain’s center.

He couldn’t see through things in the true sense but could see the progress, though not what it represented.

Now, he could confirm that the progress indicated numerous bugs.

The marked treasure location turned out to be a rare fossil mine.

Seeing the heavily scarred skeletons, Long Xuan deduced through some amateur forensics that they died from internal conflict.

Reading the diary in one storage bag, he roughly understood what had happened.

Long ago, four rogue cultivators accidentally entered this desolate place and, while looking for a resting cave, discovered a valuable fossil mine.

They were overjoyed and, after preparing food and storage bags, began mining fossils.

But mining required immense labor and resources, needing thousands of miners.

Even if they kept mining until old, how much could they excavate?

They quickly realized that mining was physically taxing, wasting time they could use for cultivation. No matter how much money they made, it wouldn’t be worth the lost cultivation time.

Getting ordinary people to do such labor was the best choice, as a cultivator’s time was precious and shouldn’t be wasted on it.

The world’s rule was that ordinary people were the primary workforce, doing all the dirty and tiring work, while cultivators only focused on cultivation.

But all mortal villages were controlled by large families, and as rogue cultivators, they had no power to mobilize ordinary people.