Hearing footsteps again on the grand staircase, Henry Clark quickly walked to the small door in the corner, opened it, and slipped inside.

Behind the small door, it was extremely dark, with only a narrow staircase passage, looking just like an emergency exit in a tall building on Earth.

He walked all the way down the stairwell, and when he came out, Henry Clark realized he was now behind the cultivation tower. The area behind the tower was still within the academy, but there were very few people around, with only a slender, winding path. On both sides of the path stood towering trees, and through the gaps in the shadows, he could still see many students coming and going throughout the academy. Some students even deliberately entered this path, hurrying along it.

Henry Clark also followed this path, and after walking for about fifteen minutes, he saw a narrow door, with a stone hut beside it. Inside the stone hut sat a middle-aged man, who paid no attention to the students coming and going through the small door, apparently just a gatekeeper.

After Henry Clark walked out of this small door, he was immediately stunned by the bustling scene before him—it was practically a marketplace with everything imaginable, noisy and lively.

There were all kinds of shops, snack stalls, and street vendors. However, the overall quality was quite low, far inferior to the main streets in the center of Cangle City. The place was so busy and crowded that Henry Clark even suspected that Julia Foster had no idea it existed; at least, he himself had no memory of this place before.

A huge sign stood in the most prominent spot, with arrows pointing to various locations.

The first one was surprisingly not a commercial building or a magic tool or pill shop, but something called the Dòuguō. Henry Clark had never heard of this name before, and his curiosity was piqued. He simply followed the arrow pointing to the Dòuguō, and after more than ten minutes, a huge circular building appeared before him.

Henry Clark stopped. He saw two people blocking the entrance to the circular building, clearly there to collect an entrance fee. He still had some silver coins on him, which were meant for his living expenses. He didn’t want to waste them on this unknown Dòuguō.

Just as Henry Clark was about to turn and leave, a few people came out of a side door of the circular building, and their conversation caught his attention.

“Watching those barbarians fight with magic is really boring. I lost some silver coins today and didn’t even see anything exciting—just lost money.”

“The last time the ugly girl Foster fought William Carter, now that was exciting. I didn’t expect William Carter to actually lose to the ugly girl Foster.”

“Julia Foster may be ugly, but at least she knows the importance of cultivation. After defeating William Carter, she got a Spirit Gathering Stone. A Spirit Gathering Stone! Just thinking about it makes me jealous. But it seems she was also seriously injured. Once William Carter’s older brother James Carter comes back, she’ll probably have to cough it up. Even if James Carter doesn’t return, William Carter won’t let this go.”

“Ugly girl? Not necessarily. She’s just disfigured. Otherwise, who in the academy has a better figure than her? Even Emily Bennett can’t compare…”

“Shut up! Do you have a death wish, daring to talk about Senior Sister Bennett?”

……

The group gradually walked away, and Henry Clark’s fists clenched so tightly that the veins bulged. He hadn’t gone into the Dòuguō, but he could already imagine it was a bloody fighting arena, basically an underground black market for brawls. He hadn’t realized that Julia Foster had earned that Spirit Gathering Stone through such hardship, and had suffered serious aftereffects.

So that was William Carter’s older brother, James Carter, and from what these people said, even William Carter himself wasn’t willing to let Julia Foster off.

Henry Clark was in no mood to continue wandering. He quickly sold some dry rations and hurried back to the seventh floor of the cultivation tower. He needed to speed up his cultivation and reach the fourth level of Spirit Gathering as soon as possible. In this place, strength meant dignity.

There were fewer students cultivating on the seventh floor of the tower. After cleaning out a few cultivation rooms, Henry Clark locked himself in a small stone hut and began to cultivate.

For students cultivating in the rooms, once the door was closed, the spiritual energy inside would multiply. Henry Clark didn’t have this privilege; his small stone hut was the same as always, whether the door was closed or not.

When Henry Clark began gathering spiritual energy, a new route for true energy circulation appeared in his mind. With the experience of the Concealment Technique, this time Henry Clark didn’t hesitate at all, immediately abandoning the Ning family’s thin cultivation manual and following the method that appeared in his mind.

The outside spiritual energy was thin, but this didn’t affect Henry Clark at all. As soon as he started cultivating, his dantian, just like before, provided a source of spiritual energy even purer and denser than the outside, allowing Henry Clark to continuously cleanse and open up all the meridians throughout his body.

With his previous experience, Henry Clark was not flustered this time. He found that using the cultivation method from his consciousness was much more effective than the Ning family’s manual. Whether it was the speed of true energy flowing through his meridians or anything else, everything was more than ten times smoother.

When Henry Clark regained consciousness again, he had already reached the second level of Spirit Gathering, and his body was once again covered in a layer of filth.

Feeling the much stronger flow of true energy compared to the first level, Henry Clark knew he had advanced to the second level of Spirit Gathering without a doubt. Calculating the time, he realized he had actually cultivated for two days and two nights straight.