Lin Yun could not help but give a wry smile. Did he really look like a bad person?
“Fellow female cultivator, it is perfectly normal for you to be wary of a stranger like me, but I truly harbour no ill intent,” Lin Yun said.
“Friend Beichen, this is my elder sister, Gong Jiangxue. That is simply her personality. She is not bad at heart, so I hope you will not take offence,” Gong Zhan explained.
“It is fine. I do not mind.”
Lin Yun looked at Gong Jiangxue with a smile. “You have a rather pleasant name.”
A girl’s name containing the character “snow” gave Lin Yun a faint sense of familiarity.
Gong Jiangxue shot him a threatening glare. “You had better behave yourself and stop trying to get friendly. Otherwise, do not blame me for being rude. I have seen plenty of smelly men like you with ulterior motives!”
Lin Yun smiled awkwardly and said nothing more to her.
If he truly wanted to force them to guide him by strength, he could simply reveal his realm.
After all, they were merely a family from a small city. Their strength could not possibly be very high. The strongest member of the Gong family, at most, would not reach the Dominion realm.
Lin Yun was now in the Void Dao realm. They had probably never seen anyone of such a high realm in their entire lives.
It was just like when Lin Yun had first reincarnated into White Heron Continent. That continent had certainly been larger in scale, yet the the strongest person in the entire city had only been at the Sacred realm.
Lin Yun chose not to reveal his strength for two reasons. First, he wanted to keep a low profile while scouting the situation in the Divine Relic Ancient City. Second, there was no need to oppress them pointlessly with his realm.
On the way to the Divine Relic Ancient City, Lin Yun continued asking Gong Zhan about the place.
Gong Zhan told him that cultivators from several nearby cities treated the Divine Relic Ancient City as a training ground.
Their purpose this time was also to temper themselves. After all, for a cultivator to mature, real combat and trials were essential.
If one always feared battle and never gained actual fighting experience, one would achieve nothing.
The Divine Relic Ancient City was an excellent venue. The danger level was not too high, yet it still provided meaningful training.
Lin Yun also asked what the strongest cultivators one might normally encounter inside the city were.
Gong Zhan replied that most groups inside were like theirs. Experts above the Eternal Life realm rarely appeared.
In other words, truly powerful beings generally did not bother with the Divine Relic Ancient City. It served as a training ground for lower-realm cultivators.
The reason was simple. The city had existed for far too long. Even if it once held treasures, powerful experts would have swept everything clean long ago.
To those with real strength, the Divine Relic Ancient City had long lost any exploratory value.
Only lower-realm cultivators used it as a place to train.
Neither Gong Zhan nor the others knew who had owned the city before its destruction, or why it had been destroyed.
Of course, ruined cities like this were common among the human territories in the Ancestral Land, so people did not think much about it. It was simply commonplace.
Lin Yun then asked Gong Zhan whether, in recent years, the Divine Relic Ancient City had shown any unusual activity.
Gong Zhan said no. Everything had been as usual. Their trip this time was merely routine training.
“Friend Beichen, I am really looking forward to this training journey in the Divine Relic Ancient City. I have only left the city to train a handful of times before,” Gong Zhan said with clear excitement.
“Then I wish you a fruitful trip,” Lin Yun replied with a smile.
Gong Zhan was quite talkative. He answered everything Lin Yun asked in detail.
Even after the questions ended, he took the initiative to chat, asking Lin Yun which places he had visited and whether he had been to other domains.
As they talked along the way, the group finally reached the outskirts of the Divine Relic Ancient City.
The city walls were in extreme disrepair, full of breaches everywhere. Yet from the remnants, one could tell the walls had once stood at least a hundred metres high.
“We are about to enter the Divine Relic Ancient City. Everyone, stay alert. Although our Gong family has some reputation in Pingtan City, many training groups from the nearby cities gather here, along with all sorts of wandering cultivators from every walk of life,” the white-haired elder warned.
Half the members of their group were young Gong family juniors who had little training experience, so they all grew visibly tense.
Soon after, the group passed through one of the gaps in the wall and entered the Divine Relic Ancient City.
Ruin and desolation defined the sight of this ancient city.
