Chương 42: Claiming the Treasures (Part 2)

The slightly plump Daoist knew all too well that the old woman was grieving the loss of the Ghost King's essence, which had dissipated into nothingness during the violent explosion. He, however, remained indifferent to her sentimentality.

"Let us both take a moment here to recover our spiritual energy," he suggested, his voice low and calculating.

"Only then shall we venture further into the depths of this place." The old woman nodded slowly, her movements stiff. Reaching this point had cost them dearly; they were both heavily injured and had exhausted a small fortune in treasures. To retreat now would be to suffer a total loss, a prospect neither could stomach. They sat cross-legged several meters apart, each clutching a mid-grade spirit stone.

They began to slowly draw the pure spiritual energy from the stones, circulating it through their damaged meridians. This environment was far too volatile to risk a deep meditative state for pill-refining or healing, so they relied on the raw crystals to suppress their injuries and replenish their reserves. Half an hour passed in tense silence before they opened their eyes simultaneously.

Their internal spiritual energy had recovered to roughly seventy or eighty percent of its peak, and the deathly pallor of their faces had been replaced by a faint, healthier glow.

"Let's move," they whispered in unison. After layering several protective spiritual shields around themselves, they summoned their escape lights and flew forward with agonizing caution.

"This... how... how can such a thing be here?" Even with Reyn's iron-clad composure, he found himself rooted to the spot, his jaw dropping as a crimson flush crept up his neck and flooded his face. After crossing the courtyard and harvesting several more rare spirit herbs, Reyn had arrived at a cluster of rooms. Finding no restrictions on the doors, he had pushed one open, only to be met with a sight that left him utterly stunned. Inside, the room was clearly a woman's private boudoir.

A faint, intoxicating fragrance lingered in the air, sweet and ethereal. Several pieces of intimate feminine attire hung from a nearby rack, the delicate, translucent silk swaying gently from the draft created by the opening door. Reyn was but a young man, raised under the strict and traditional discipline of his father; he had never encountered such a scene. His gaze was involuntarily drawn to a small, crimson silk dudou embroidered with blue thread and pink flowers depicting a pair of Mandarin ducks.

"Cough! Cough!" Reyn coughed violently, trying to clear the sudden tightness in his throat. His face burned with heat. In a place fraught with lethal traps and ancient mysteries, he had never expected to stumble upon something so... personal.

"Get out of my bedroom this instant, you filthy brat! Just you wait—I will kill you! I will tear you limb from limb!" The mysterious woman's voice, now stripped of its ethereal majesty and replaced by the shrill, hysterical rage of a maiden who felt violated, exploded in Reyn's ears through some unknown transmission technique. Reyn's heart skipped a beat, but once he realized it was merely a voice transmission, he regained his focus.

He swept the room with a sharp gaze, and after confirming there were no hidden treasures or cultivation manuals, he beat a hasty retreat. The woman fell silent after her outburst, and Reyn ignored her threats, heading straight for the other rooms. He knew the moment he broke the first herb garden restriction that she would be aware of his presence. Since she hadn't arrived to stop him yet, she was clearly occupied by something far more pressing.

He had to seize this window to loot everything of value before finding a way to escape this deathtrap.

"Damn him! Damn him to the deepest hell! I will never let him go!" Within the jade platter, the mysterious woman gnashed her teeth, her shifting temperaments replaced by a singular, burning shame and fury. BOOM! In the Path of Extinction, the final restriction was shattered by the brute force of the giant zombie. With a roar of primal rage, a thick, putrid corpse-qi erupted from its body and flowed into the teleportation array beneath its feet. The zombie's silhouette blurred and vanished into a warp of light.

"Found it!" The old woman's face lit up with a predatory joy. She exchanged a look with the plump Daoist. After a thorough inspection to ensure the teleportation array wasn't a hidden trap, they stepped inside. A brilliant flash of light consumed them, and they were gone. Chu Dian carefully slotted the final blood-red crystal into the array. The formation immediately pulsed with an eerie, sanguine glow before sinking deep into the earth, vanishing from all perception.

Even the Divine Sense of a Golden Core cultivator would find nothing but ordinary soil. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"The array is finally complete. Master, your servant is coming to meet you shortly," Chu Dian murmured, a strange light flickering in his eyes. He let out a low chuckle, stood up to orient himself, and vanished into a streak of light toward the horizon.

"A spirit beast egg!" Reyn's eyes widened with genuine excitement. This place was a gauntlet of death, and the mysterious woman's power was unfathomable. Anything she deemed worthy of such careful protection had to be extraordinary. Before him stood a strange spirit tree, barely the height of a man, but its branches were incredibly dense and twisted. They coiled around one another to form a natural, sturdy nest.

Resting within this cradle was an egg nearly half a meter tall, its shell covered in profound, swirling runes that hummed with ancient power. Reyn cautiously extended his Divine Sense, but as it neared the egg, it was rebuffed by a strange, invisible force. However, he could clearly feel a faint, rhythmic pulse of life emanating from within. Instead of being deterred, Reyn was overjoyed.

His Divine Sense was already comparable to a mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator; for an unhatched egg to repel him meant the creature inside was of a high grade. If he could hatch it and establish a soul-bond, it would become an invaluable ally. In the cultivation world, a cultivator's strength wasn't just about their scriptures, techniques, or magic treasures—a contracted spirit beast was a force of nature in its own right.

Many scions of great sects were bonded to powerful beasts from birth, allowing them to defeat opponents far above their own cultivation level. Reyn licked his lips. After a moment of thought, he reached into his storage bag and pulled out a mid-grade spirit tool—a shovel-shaped artifact he had looted from Wu Shengli. It was the perfect tool for this task. He infused it with spiritual energy, and even without fully refining it, the tool glowed with a sharp, metallic luster.

He sent his Divine Sense into the earth to map out the tree's root system, then struck with the shovel.

"Collect!" Reyn shouted, performing a hand seal. He lifted the giant egg along with the natural tree-nest and stowed them into a separate storage bag. Though he didn't know the exact nature of the spirit tree, his instincts told him it was vital for the egg's development. After securing the bag, he conducted a final, meticulous sweep of the room. Finding nothing else, he turned and left.

"What is this place? This doesn't look like an ancient cultivator's abode... it looks like a prison!" The old woman's face was grim. After surviving the Path of Life and teleporting here, they found no luxurious chambers or meditation halls. Instead, they stood in a vast, empty hall filled with overlapping killing arrays and restrictions that made their skin crawl.

"Explore carefully," the plump Daoist said, his eyes burning with greed.

"Even if this is a prison, there will be treasures left behind. If we are lucky, we might find something beyond our wildest dreams." The old woman hesitated, then remembered the rumors currently sweeping through the North Yue State. Three months ago, several Foundation Establishment cultivators had entered an ancient ruin. Only one survived, reaching the end to find not a treasury, but the seal of a legendary demon from the ancient era.

No one knew what happened inside, but the survivor emerged as a Golden Core late-stage demon cultivator. With a 'Ten-Thousand Soul Banner' in hand, he had fought a Nascent Soul old monster to a standstill. The story had rocked the entire cultivation world. If this place held a similar legacy... The two exchanged a look, their caution momentarily eclipsed by avarice. They stood at the edge of the hall, layering themselves in protective barriers.

The plump Daoist summoned a golden alms-bowl magic treasure that cast a protective golden radiance around him.

"A Buddhist treasure!" the old woman noted, her eyes narrowing with wariness. She stepped back, her body shrouded in a sinister black mist. Both were now on high alert, not just for the traps, but for each other. As they ventured further, their faces grew increasingly pale.

"The Extreme Yin Array!"

"The Soul-Breaking Array!"

"The Demon-Slaying Array!" They had only moved a dozen meters, and the arrays they recognized were enough to terrify them. There were countless others they didn't even know, but the complexity of the runes suggested a power that could obliterate even a Golden Core master in an instant.

"What kind of monster is locked in here?" they whispered, keeping their Divine Sense pulled tight within ten meters of their bodies to avoid triggering a catastrophe.

"Ah! No! Fellow Daoist, help me!" The old woman's foot landed on a hidden trigger. A subtle ripple of spiritual energy fluctuated, and before she could even scream, she vanished into thin air, swallowed by a restriction. The plump Daoist froze. He made no move to help. Instead, he retreated several steps, his face pale with dread. The old woman's ghost-path techniques were equal to his own, and she was at the peak of early Golden Core, yet she had been taken without a fight.

Now alone, the Daoist moved with agonizing slowness, stopping to dismantle every minor restriction he encountered.

"Wait, what is this?" After breaking a hidden killing trap, he saw an object fall from the void.

"A jade slip!" His eyes blazed. He snatched it and pressed it to his forehead. Moments later, he snapped his eyes open, a look of wild, ecstatic joy on his face.

"The Alchemy Room." Reyn looked at the sign with high expectations. The mysterious woman was capable of growing Ten-Thousand-Year spirit herbs; her alchemy lab was bound to hold treasures that could change his destiny.