Yu Mi gave a wry smile. How was she supposed to know why a primordial ruin would show up in the Desolate Ancient Mountain Range?
Wang Ding and Si Ruo did not know much about primordial ruins either. As far as they knew, such an item was a treasure that contained an entire world within it. Calling it a supreme treasure was no exaggeration; calling it priceless was no exaggeration; calling it exceedingly rare was also no exaggeration.
But for them, its practical value lay somewhere between a blessed cave-heaven and the “super-large storage bag” Bao Gu had once mentioned. They were not like the fallen sects or factions that needed to stuff their entire clan into a “super-large storage bag” to escape, like the Xuantian Sect back then.
To Si Ruo, if the Yue Kingdom ever fell so low that it had to flee into a world-containing artifact just to survive, that would already mean the kingdom was finished, beyond saving. Unlike the Xuantian Sect, the Yue Kingdom had no inheritance in the Upper Realm, and no living ancestor like the Xuantian Patriarch’s wife to rely on. A force that had already declined, with no patron behind it, dreaming of rising again… that was nothing but wishful thinking.
Even someone like Bao Gu—if she had not had that person from the Demon Domain shielding her—would have been slapped to death outside Wangxian City long ago.
To Wang Ding, his current cultivation was only at mid Nascent Soul. In terms of combat strength, he could not even beat a Nascent Soul–stage battle general at the early stage. As for brains, he had some, but compared to the think tanks of the great powers, he was not particularly outstanding. Background? He was just a lone cultivator whom Bao Gu had taken a liking to and personally supported up to his present position.
A world-containing primordial ruin of this level, if it fell into his hands, would be more calamity than blessing.
Even now, though he held identity and status, at the end of the day he was just the Kan Gang’s chief steward. The one who truly controlled the Kan Gang was Bao Gu. Even if Bao Gu disappeared and it looked on the surface like he held the power of the Kan Gang, in reality he could not move the army-commanding Mad Fiend, could not order the treasurer Sun Dilong, and even the province of Qingzhou where the Kan Gang was based was firmly in Yu Mi’s hands. With the pitiful strength and influence he had, he was far from qualified to own such a treasure.
So Wang Ding and Si Ruo’s reactions were extremely calm—so calm they were almost indifferent, even faintly disappointed.
What could be inside a treasure that contained its own world? At the very best, it would be like Bao Gu’s Void Treasure Realm—a self-contained heaven and earth filled with spiritual delicacies and rare medicines. But now that heaven and earth spiritual energy was abundant, this was no longer the harsh end-of-law era before the seal over the Desolate Ancient Mountains had shattered. For them to fight over the primordial ruin’s spiritual treasures would be lowering themselves.
Not that they were utterly disappointed. Si Ruo’s goal was not to dig up treasures, but to completely resolve the Ba scourge in the Desolate Ancient Mountain Range and restore the Yue Kingdom’s lost territory. Wang Ding’s thoughts were even simpler: if not for the Arrow Envoy insisting on digging into the Desolate Ancient Mountains, he would not have wanted to touch that place at all.
Compared to Wang Ding and Si Ruo’s composure, Zi Tianjun, Qu Yirou, Jade Shura, and the others who had personally seen the primordial ruin before could not remain nearly as calm.
What was inside a primordial ruin? Large amounts of spiritual delicacies and rare medicines, of course—that went without saying. A single primordial ruin had allowed Xuan Yue Ancient City to stand for tens of thousands of years in that barren monster-race snowfield. Its disappearance had directly caused the city’s decline, and if not for Bao Gu later reappearing, fighting her way back in, and reopening Xuan Yue Ancient City’s connection to the cultivation world, the city would inevitably have withered away along with the primordial ruin.
Most importantly, there was “City of Corpses” inside the primordial ruin.
Before, they had suspected it was the treasure of the Flood Dragon Corpse Demon. Now it was clear that was not the case at all. “City of Corpses”—that was a method used during the last Ba catastrophe. Now this primordial ruin had reappeared in the Ba’s lair. To say the primordial ruin had nothing to do with the Ba… they would not believe that even if you beat them to death.
A treasure like this was something the Soul Chasing Pavilion would never let slip through their fingers.
Even more so for the Xuantian Sect.
Zi Tianjun stood where he was, practically itching to charge in right then and snatch the primordial ruin. Even Zi Yunshu could not help murmuring under her breath,
“No wonder A-Sheng said there was a chance for me to undergo dragon transformation in the Desolate Ancient Mountains.”
Everyone present had sharp ears—sharp enough to hear an ant crawling by, much less Zi Yunshu’s soft mutter.
Wang Ding was the first to speak up. He implicitly stated that everything the Kan Gang possessed belonged to its Lord. Now that the Lord was absent, everything the Kan Gang obtained in the Desolate Ancient Mountains would naturally be handed over to Yu Mi.
And if it all went to Yu Mi, Yu Mi certainly would not block Zi Yunshu’s opportunity for dragon transformation.
If Bao Gu were here, Si Ruo would absolutely have to stick a hand in and carve herself off a share. Any move Bao Gu made would be extraordinary. Anything from Bao Gu’s hands, even just a single promise, was priceless—and Bao Gu herself was a worthy opponent, worthy of her going all-out to compete against.
As for Yu Mi? Si Ruo’s face did not show it, but in her heart she looked down on Yu Mi.
Si Ruo immediately declared that once the Kan Gang and the Xuantian Sect helped the Yue Kingdom completely clear away the lingering threat of the Ba scourge in the Desolate Ancient Mountains, she would wholeheartedly assist the Kan Gang and the Xuantian Sect in obtaining the great treasure.
Qu Yirou and Jade Shura were also tempted by the primordial ruin. Their first instinct, when they suddenly heard of it, was that it was something they absolutely had to get.
But once they heard Zi Yunshu’s murmur and then took a proper look at the people Xuantian Sect had brought, they understood that the Xuantian Sect was just as determined to obtain the primordial ruin.
If the primordial ruin really held Zi Yunshu’s opportunity for dragon transformation, then given their relationship with Zi Yunshu and the Monster Saint—and given how Bao Gu and the Monster Saint had casually produced ninth-rank saint medicines for Qu Yirou to refine into pills to heal her dao injuries—they had to consider stepping back a little.
And considering the present situation, in this matter of excavating the Desolate Ancient Mountains, the Soul Chasing Pavilion was only here to lend a hand. To dig out the great treasure and then swoop in to snatch it would be far too unkind.
Qu Yirou also understood perfectly well that Zi Yunshu’s seemingly unintentional murmur had not been unintentional at all.
She looked at Zi Yunshu with amused eyes and said,
“Since this place holds your opportunity to transform into a dragon, I will naturally do my utmost to help you.”
Zi Yunshu’s face reddened in slight embarrassment.
“I’ll only take the opportunity related to my dragon transformation,” she added. “I don’t want anything else.”
Yu Mi was speechless.
She had thought they would fight each other bloody over the primordial ruin, but unexpectedly, not a single one of them wanted it.
She had never imagined the primordial ruin would be here, and even less that it would end up being dumped on her in the end. She might have clawed her way up through “hard work,” but she was not the sort to take advantage of others for nothing—much less seize such an enormous advantage.
“Uh, that… this doesn’t seem appropriate,” she said.
The Duobao Spirit Monkey let out a sharp “ji”—rolled its eyes at Yu Mi, leaped onto her shoulder, and lifted a furry little paw, clearly wanting to clamp it over her mouth.
This action made everyone in the hall who was discussing matters burst into laughter.
Jade Shura scolded it with a laugh.
“Little monkey, you’re way too biased.”
The Duobao Spirit Monkey squeaked again. Its big, bright eyes looked at Jade Shura, full of innocent bewilderment, and also seemed to say: What do you know?
Seeing that the most headache-inducing part—the division of spoils—had been settled, Yu Mi let out a long breath of relief. After thanking everyone with open composure, she said,
“There’s no time to lose. We should set out as soon as possible. In the past half month, the little monkey has more or less finished mapping out the Desolate Ancient Mountain Range. There are three urgent matters we need to deal with now.
“First, we have to break the Desolate Ancient Mountains’ fengshui formation and clear away the blood river.
“Second, as the little monkey said, the deep interior of the Desolate Ancient Mountains—what was once the Heaven-Sealing Forbidden Zone—has been overrun by an uncountable number of blood-fiend monsters. Many of those monsters have strength at the Void-Tearing stage; we must purge them.
“And third… is the primordial ruin itself.”
Si Ruo pondered briefly, then said,
“The Yue Kingdom will take responsibility for breaking the Desolate Ancient Mountains’ fengshui and cleansing the blood river.”
Wang Ding said,
“We can have the Right Envoy, Mad Fiend, lead the army to sweep the blood-fiend monsters in the Heaven-Sealing Forbidden Zone.”
Then he turned to Yu Mi.
“I’ll stay in the rear to provide support,” he added. “And also to guard against other powers trying to stick their hands in.”
Yu Mi thought it over.
“I’ll go with Little Martial Aunt, the little monkey, and Senior Nanshan,” she said. “We’ll bring some people and enter the Heaven-Sealing Forbidden Zone to retrieve the primordial ruin.”
She then turned to Qu Yirou and Jade Shura, inviting them to come along as well.
As the sect master of the Xuantian Sect, Zi Tianjun naturally could not run off with Yu Mi’s group into danger. Entering the Heaven-Sealing Forbidden Zone was already extremely risky. If he went with them and anything happened, the Xuantian Sect would be finished.
He admonished them,
“Be cautious in everything. Your safety comes first.”
The underlying meaning was: if anything looks wrong, get out immediately.
Once everything was decided, the group split up to carry out their tasks.
While they had been discussing, nearly five hundred thousand troops had already ringed the Desolate Ancient Mountain Range like an iron barrel. Among the one million itinerant cultivators who had been hired to dig into the mountains, many were spies and scouts from various powers, so news that a blood river had been unearthed had already leaked out. Yet not a single power showed up to interfere.
There were two reasons.
First, they had been thoroughly scared by the Ba scourge. Get involved with that, and not only would you gain nothing, you were very likely to lose everything you already had. It simply was not worth it.
Second, even if the Desolate Ancient Mountains held some great opportunity, with the Kan Gang and the Yue Kingdom deploying such a massive lineup, inserting themselves into this mess would mean offending both the number one and number two powers in today’s cultivation world at the same time. Anyone who was not afraid of being completely uprooted was welcome to give it a try.
With the Duobao Spirit Monkey leading them into the Heaven-Sealing Forbidden Zone, they could forget about marching upright down the main path and cutting their way through that uncountable sea of blood-fiend monsters.
Yu Mi, Zi Yunshu, Nanshan Yijian, Qu Yirou, and Jade Shura boarded the Soul Chasing Pavilion Master’s flying chariot. Under the Duobao Spirit Monkey’s control, the chariot repeatedly leapt between the void and the great world as it advanced.
To most of the cultivation world, the Duobao Spirit Monkey was just a treasure-hunting pet that followed Bao Gu, Yu Mi, and Ling’er around and knew some formations. Even Qu Yirou, Jade Shura, and Nanshan Yijian, when they thought of the Duobao Spirit Monkey, their first impression was: that thieving monkey.
Helpless, exasperating, and just a little bit envy-inducing.
Yet when they saw the Duobao Spirit Monkey controlling the Soul Chasing Pavilion Master’s chariot, slipping through the countless blood-fiend monsters’ encirclement as if no “people” were there at all, they could not help but look at it with new respect.
The deeper they went into the Desolate Ancient Mountains, the more blood-fiend monsters there were.
By the time they got close to the Heaven-Sealing Forbidden Zone, the mountains and valleys ahead were packed with so many blood-fiend monsters that just one look made their scalps go numb.
It was no exaggeration to say that if you closed your eyes and tossed a brick from the sky, during its fall to the ground that brick would casually hit dozens of blood-fiend monsters. The ground was packed solid, each monster pressed against the next. The cracks in the earth, the caves underground, were all crammed full of them. Even the skies were so choked with swarms of blood-fiend monsters that it looked like a net cast over heaven and earth.
Every time the Soul Chasing Pavilion Master’s chariot emerged from the void, it would inevitably bump into some blood-fiend monsters, and then before the surrounding ones could react, the chariot would dive back into the void.
Even the void itself held traces of blood-fiend monsters—and not a single one of those void-dwelling monsters was weak. Just from the aura they leaked, everyone instinctively wanted to avoid them—these were not existences they could afford to provoke.
The farther inward they travelled, the more their unease grew.
After all, the Ba had gone to the trouble of dragging the primordial ruin here for a reason. When they went to retrieve the primordial ruin, they were certain to be besieged by these blood-fiend monsters without restraint. The monsters were so powerful that even a single one suddenly popping out would be a major problem, never mind such a terrifying number.
Just looking at this sea of blood-fiend monsters was enough to prove that the cultivation world had still underestimated the Ba scourge before.
Everyone’s expression was extremely grim.
What they saw made them absolutely certain that if Bao Gu had not tricked the Ba and exiled it into the void, it would not have taken many years before this entire world turned into a world of blood-fiend monsters—a world belonging to the Ba. The so-called cultivation world, the mortal realm… likely all would have ceased to exist.
Fortunately, Bao Gu had taken the Ba away?
Bao Gu’s removal of the Ba had saved this world from an apocalyptic calamity—yet her departure left everyone present with a deep, aching sense of loss.
Yu Mi stood on the viewing platform outside the chariot, her face solemn, saying nothing.
Inside, the others were equally heavy-hearted.
Before long, the chariot stopped at the boundary between the void and the great world.
A vast, ancient, boundless aura pressed down upon them, so oppressive they felt like they could hardly breathe. It was as if they were facing a heaven and earth that had endured countless ages of change, or a mountain range so towering it could never be scaled.
Under that aura, they felt as small as ants. That presence stirred in them an almost irresistible urge to bow in worship—to submit.
Yu Mi and Zi Yunshu instinctively looked at each other. In the other’s eyes, they both saw the same shock—and the same answer they had each been hoping for.
Yu Mi turned and saw Zi Yunshu’s reaction was so great that everyone else had noticed something was off with her as well.
Jade Shura asked,
“What’s wrong?”
She could sense that this aura was very different from what she had felt from the primordial ruin back in Xuan Yue Ancient City. Back then, the primordial ruin had nothing like this overwhelming pressure and majesty.
Yu Mi took a deep breath, forced down the turmoil in her heart, and said,
“Little monkey, can we get a bit closer so I can see the primordial ruin clearly?”
The Duobao Spirit Monkey chirped in assent.
The chariot crept forward, moving so slowly and with so little energy fluctuation that it was almost imperceptible. Before long, it tore through the darkness ahead, and a faint red light poured down on them.
A world shrouded in thin red mist appeared in their view.
The first thing they saw was the sea of blood beneath the chariot, surging with waves like an ocean in storm. Strange birds with wingspans of several zhang wheeled above the blood sea, while titanic beasts several zhang, even several dozen zhang long, rolled and thrashed within it, occasionally bursting up from the surface only to crash back down in splashes of blood the size of small hills.
Blood aura like water vapor billowed up from the sea and streamed into the sky—toward an ancient, austere cauldron floating above. The cauldron seemed almost alive, exuding an indescribable pulse. The blood mist spiralling up from the sea wrapped around it and, in time with a rhythm like breathing, flowed into the cauldron’s depths.
The cauldron was covered in mottled cracks. From those cracks, they could even see traces like wounds seeping blood. Perhaps because the blood aura was too dense, or perhaps because the cauldron itself carried blood qi, this great cauldron gave them the impression of gleaming with thick, suffusing blood light.
Yet it did not feel eerie because of this. Instead, it gave off an impression of such weight that all the heavens and all the worlds combined seemed less heavy than this single cauldron.
In the mortal world, a cauldron was the emperor’s supreme regalia. In the cultivation world, it was the hardest type of artifact to forge—and the one closest to the Dao itself. In the Upper Realm, everyone present knew that that person from the Demon Domain possessed a cauldron-shaped supreme treasure.
And now here was another cauldron—and its aura was in no way inferior to the Demon Domain cauldron. Coupled with what they knew of the Ba’s origins, it was hard not to think of this as one of the Heavenly Emperor’s peerless treasures.
Back when the primordial ruin had vanished, many outside had caught a fleeting glimpse of its true form—a cauldron, a broken cauldron. Because the primordial ruin had been damaged, and they feared its inner world might collapse, entry had been restricted by number, by how often a person could enter, and by cultivation level.
In the past, everyone had assumed the primordial ruin was a vicious-path great cultivator’s treasure, at most an item belonging to someone at the Tribulation or Great Ascension stage.
But now, seeing with their own eyes this great cauldron being repaired by the Ba through countless streams of blood aura, not a single one of them dared to move. No one even dared to get close.
Everyone’s gaze fell on the Duobao Spirit Monkey, a flicker of understanding in their eyes.
Given how keen this monkey’s eyes were for treasure, if it had been at all possible to snatch the primordial ruin, it would have long since made a grab for it. The fact that it had not was proof enough that the cauldron could not be moved.
But a cauldron like this—who among them had the strength to move it anyway?
Zi Yunshu muttered,
“If only Bao Gu were here. She’d just charge in, scoop it up with that super-large storage bag, and that’d be that.”
She really wanted to ask her A-Sheng,
“So this is my dragon-transformation opportunity?”
A cauldron like this could help her transform into a dragon?
What, was it going to refine her like Princess Xueqing’s Myriad Living Spirits Cauldron, and she would come out a dragon at the end?
Princess Xueqing’s cauldron was under her control, so it was safe. But this cauldron—
Just one look told you that the moment she rushed over, it would refine her into blood and absorb her on the spot.
She refine this cauldron to achieve dragon transformation?
More like this cauldron would refine her into nourishment.
