Chương 33: The Puppets

"What in the heavens is this place? It reeks of a malevolence I can't quite put into words!" Di Yun spat, his voice a ragged whisper. His face was a mask of sickly pallor as he stared at the floor, where the carpet of bleached white bones grew thicker with every step. It was clear that his internal fortitude was fraying at the edges, pushed to the brink by the oppressive atmosphere. Reyn's own complexion had turned a shade of ashen grey, his eyes narrowed into slits of wary calculation.

His hand remained buried in his robes, white-knuckled as he gripped a stack of dozens of low-grade talismans. At the slightest hint of an anomaly, he was prepared to unleash a storm of elemental fury without a moment's hesitation. Chu Dian, though also somewhat pale, betrayed no hint of cowardice. His gaze remained steady, his expression an inscrutable mask of calm. Reyn watched him from the corner of his eye, subtly increasing the distance between them.

In this charnel house, his wariness of the living far outweighed his fear of the dead. They advanced another hundred meters, and the density of the skeletal remains finally began to thin, with a body appearing only every ten meters or so. However, the pressure in the air only intensified. The walls of the tunnel were scarred with the violent history of past battles—scorched earth from incinerating flames and deep, jagged gouges left by razor-sharp sword qi. Each mark was a testament to a desperate struggle.

"Junior Brother Chu Dian, this place is far too uncanny," Di Yun stammered, his eyes darting between the craters in the walls.

"Do you truly believe that with our meager cultivation, we can actually claim whatever treasure lies within? I say we retreat for now. We can return when we are better prepared, perhaps with a more calculated plan." The allure of riches was fading fast, replaced by the primal urge to survive. Treasures were useless to a dead man. Di Meng's face lit up with a flicker of hope as he quickly chimed in, "My brother is right. Chu, let us withdraw first. We can regroup and strategize.

There is no need to throw our lives away today."

"To catch the tiger's cub, one must enter the tiger's den," Chu Dian replied, his voice as cold as the stone surrounding them. He didn't even turn to look at them, his lips curling into a frigid, mocking sneer.

"Our path of cultivation is one that defies the very heavens. Without great willpower and the courage to face mortal peril, what hope do you have of any true achievement?" He paused, his aura sharpening like a whetted blade.

"Furthermore, you now know the exact location of this grotto-heaven. If I let you leave, what is to stop you from returning in secret with others to snatch the prize? Today, there is only the path forward. If you wish to turn back, I shall not stop you—but you had better pray you have the strength to leave this tunnel alive."

"You…" The Di brothers' expressions shifted instantly from fear to a dark, simmering resentment. The air between the group grew thick with unspoken threats. Reyn remained a silent observer, realizing they were now riding a tiger with no way to dismount. He had no choice but to proceed, his every sense heightened to its absolute limit.

"Look! There's another skeleton ahead!" Wu Shengli's voice broke the tension, ringing out with a sudden, sharp excitement. He had spotted something different. Chu Dian and the others ceased their bickering and hurried forward. This skeleton was unlike the others; it remained perfectly intact, its bones possessing a translucent, crystalline luster that shimmered like fine jade unearthed from the deep. Even in death, a faint, regal pressure radiated from the remains.

Though weak, it was enough to make the five cultivators feel as though a mountain were pressing down on their chests. Even the stoic Chu Dian felt a tremor of genuine terror.

"A Golden Core… a Golden Core stage cultivator!" he stammered, his voice cracking. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. They exchanged looks of sheer horror. What manner of catastrophe could be hidden in these depths to cause the fall of a Golden Core master, a being who could command the elements and live for centuries? Reyn forced his heart to slow, his eyes scanning the jade-like remains with clinical intensity.

The skeleton sat upright, its back against the tunnel wall, hands crossed. However, its thumbs were raised in a bizarre, deliberate fashion, pointing toward a specific, nondescript point further down the passage. Reyn withdrew his gaze as quickly as he had cast it, a flicker of realization crossing his mind before he smoothed his expression back into a mask of indifference.

"A storage bag! There's a storage bag here!" Di Yun's jubilant shout shattered the silence. Lying beside the skeleton was a nondescript, dusty grey pouch. In an instant, the fear in their eyes was replaced by a burning, avaricious heat. This was the hoard of a Golden Core master. The mere thought of the treasures inside was enough to make their blood boil.

"Fellow Daoists," Chu Dian said, his voice thick with suppressed greed. He fought down the urge to kill them all and take it for himself.

"The contents of this bag shall be divided equally among the five of us. If we find items that cannot be split, we shall compensate the others with spirit stones. Does everyone agree?"

"Agreed," the others replied after a brief, tense silence, nodding slowly. Chu Dian swallowed hard. He carefully cast a testing incantation to ensure no lingering traps remained before reaching out and snatching the bag. As his Divine Sense swept inside, his face went slack with shock, followed quickly by a look of manic ecstasy. Clatter! Clatter! Chu Dian upended the bag, and a literal mountain of treasure spilled out, filling more than half the width of the tunnel.

Spirit stones, medicinal pills, spiritual artifacts, jade slips, and talismans cascaded onto the floor in a dazzling display of opulence. Reyn stood frozen, his breath catching in his throat. There had to be at least ten thousand low-grade spirit stones, and among them glittered over a hundred mid-grade stones. There were nearly a hundred different spiritual artifacts, along with countless vials of pills and stacks of high-quality talismans. The total value was easily tens of thousands of spirit stones.

Such wealth was significant even for a Golden Core master; for a group of Qi Condensation disciples, it was a world-shaking fortune.

"We're rich… we're finally rich…" the Di brothers muttered, their eyes glazed over as they stared at the pile. Half an hour later, the loot had been meticulously divided. Despite the lingering danger, a look of profound satisfaction graced Reyn's face. The Di brothers were practically vibrating with excitement, their fear entirely replaced by a reckless bravado. They looked ready to charge into the depths of hell if it meant finding another such hoard.

"This is merely the beginning," Chu Dian said, his voice trembling with excitement.

"As long as we work together, there will be even greater treasures waiting for us." But just as the words left his lips, the entire tunnel gave a violent, rhythmic shudder. The color drained from Chu Dian's face, his excitement vanishing like a snuffed candle. Reyn and the others felt their hearts drop. They turned slowly, their gazes locking onto two pairs of glowing, crimson orbs staring back at them from the shadows. The eyes belonged to the gilded stone statues built into the very walls of the tunnel.

"Damnation! We've awakened the puppets!" Chu Dian cried, his composure shattering as he scrambled backward.

"These things should have been dormant for millennia! Their energy cores should have been depleted!" Reyn and the others didn't wait for an explanation, retreating several paces as the crimson glow in the puppets' eyes intensified, burning with a murderous, bloodthirsty light.

"ROAR!"

"ROAR!" Two low, guttural roars erupted from the stone maws of the constructs. A crushing wave of spiritual pressure surged forth, locking onto the five intruders with predatory precision. Chu Dian felt the intensity of the aura and let out a shaky breath of relief.

"Early Foundation Establishment… they are only at the early Foundation Establishment stage." He wiped sweat from his brow.

"These are the guardian puppets of an ancient cultivator's abode. By my estimates, they should have been powerless, but somehow they've regained enough energy to reactivate. We are lucky—their power has degraded. If these were at their original Golden Core strength, we would already be nothing more than red mist on the walls."

"Golden Core puppets!" Even Reyn felt a chill run down his spine. To craft a construct capable of matching a Golden Core master… the sheer power and artifice of the primordial cultivators were beyond comprehension. It also explained the jade-like skeleton they had just looted; that master had undoubtedly met his end at the hands of these very guardians when they were at the peak of their power.