Mo Jinghong’s pitch-black eyes were like an abyss—dark, deep, and churning with some kind of emotion, but they quickly returned to calm.
Yuan Bao, holding his little shovel, stood frozen, not daring to move.
Wow!
Mo Jinghong is so terrifying!
Does he want to steal his master’s things?
Mo Jinghong pressed his thin lips together, shifting his gaze away from Yuan Bao, and said indifferently, “It’s just something to trick people with.”
“Trick people? Trick who?” Baili Wenyue asked curiously.
It seemed like those pits were dug by those sect leaders and family heads, right?
Who were they planning to trick?
“Seventh Junior Brother, you tell me—how did our little junior sister convince those sect leaders to dig the pits?” Baili Wenyue’s fox-like eyes gleamed with curiosity.
Ning Shiyue noticed that neither of them was paying attention to her. Her eyes, bright as spring blossoms, flickered with hesitation. Then, with a leap, she jumped straight into the pit.
“Our fifth senior sister came with little junior sister. We can ask her what exactly happened earlier,” Baili Wenyue said as he turned around to look for Ning Shiyue.
But then he realized—Ning Shiyue was gone!
Baili Wenyue ran to the edge of the dark pit and looked down.
He wanted to call out, but then he remembered the people who had gone down before. He was afraid that if he shouted, he might expose Ning Shiyue’s whereabouts.
“Seventh Senior Brother, what should we do? Should we go down?” Baili Wenyue asked anxiously.
“There’s only one exit here,” Mo Jinghong said in a deep voice.
Baili Wenyue rubbed his forehead helplessly. “Then we’ll wait here and leave once they come back up!”
———
Ning Shiyue jumped into the pit. All she could see was darkness, and all she could hear was the sound of rushing water beside her ears.
She took out a luminous pearl, but there was still no light at all around her.
It seemed the problem wasn’t a lack of light—it was that this place didn’t allow light to exist.
Ning Shiyue pricked up her ears and listened carefully to the sound of the water.
The water sounded about three zhang away from her.
She took a sword out of her space and used it to probe the path ahead. It seemed there were some small broken stones.
Then she probed the path behind her. The path behind her was dirt—and damp dirt at that.
It seemed the way behind her was closer to the water source.
Normally, people would choose to take the path with the stones.
But her intuition told Ning Shiyue to take the dirt path.
Her intuition had never failed her since she was little.
Ning Shiyue held her sword and walked for about the time it takes to burn an incense stick. Then, a faint glimmer of light began to appear before her.
She continued forward until a pool of water blocked her way. On the open ground beside the pool sat a person.
“Hello? Excuse me, is this your territory?” Ning Shiyue’s voice was as clear as a bell, its echo lingering.
The person sitting there didn’t move at all.
Ning Shiyue took a few steps closer and spoke again, “Hello?”
Still no response.
She tried walking a few more steps, not noticing that deep within the cold pool, a flash of red streaked by.
Suddenly, a burst of white light flashed before Ning Shiyue’s eyes, and the area around her became as bright as day.
Only then did Ning Shiyue see clearly—sitting there was actually a skeleton!
“Oh, forgive me, forgive me! Fellow cultivator, this junior didn’t mean to disturb your peace. I’m just passing through. How about I light three sticks of incense for you and bury you so you can rest in peace…”
Ning Shiyue pulled out a bunch of things and muttered under her breath, “As they say, you need to be buried to rest in peace. If you just lie out here, what if someone comes along and you can’t even keep your bones…”
Her eyes were full of respect. She took a talisman and stuck it right onto the skeleton’s skull.
Immediately, the skeleton, along with the clothes on it, shrank down to the size of a palm.
“Fellow cultivator, the conditions are pretty simple. Don’t mind it, okay?” Ning Shiyue carefully picked up the skeleton with both hands and gently placed it into an exquisite box, closing the lid.
Her eyes sparkled like brilliant stars as she took out another talisman and stuck it onto the box.
After that, she set the box aside, picked up a hoe, and started digging.
“I’m so jealous of little junior sister—she even has someone digging pits for her.” Ning Shiyue dug for the time it takes to burn an incense stick, then placed the box inside and covered it with dirt.
Once everything was done,
Ning Shiyue went back and mixed the dirt around a bit, making sure no one would ever find out something had been buried there.
She looked around—everywhere she looked, there were stone walls. There was no way forward.
Just as Ning Shiyue was hesitating about whether to go back the way she came—
Crack! —
A door suddenly opened in the stone wall beside her.
Ning Shiyue didn’t walk in recklessly. Instead, she first observed what was inside.
The layout inside was actually identical to where she was standing right now!
———
At the same time.
In another direction, there was an identical scene.
The group of people had reached the end of the path and saw a skeleton.
“This is actually the remains of a Mahayana-stage powerhouse!” an elderly man over fifty exclaimed.
“How is that possible? The Records of Azure Cloud Aspirations says that in our province, there hasn’t been a Mahayana Celestial Venerable in over ten thousand years…” Clan Head Chen was even more shocked.
“How can you tell he was a Mahayana-stage powerhouse?” Xiao Hongyu’s eyes were majestic and imposing.
Even he couldn’t quite grasp the aura emanating from these remains.
The elderly man explained, “You judge a person by their bones. The strength and luster of this skeleton’s bones completely match the description of a Mahayana Celestial Venerable’s skeleton in the medical texts.”
Xiao Qingfeng continued, “There are indeed rumors saying that a Mahayana Celestial Venerable’s bones are as hard as black iron…”
The elderly man went on, “A Mahayana Celestial Venerable’s entire body is a treasure. Whether you use their bones in medicine or in alchemy, consuming them will bring you great rewards…”
Clan Head Sheng’s eagle-like eyes were sharp. “And the clothes he’s wearing—they look like a saint-grade defensive magic tool…”
The crowd stared at the skeleton with greedy eyes.
The bones of a Mahayana Celestial Venerable!
A saint-grade magic tool!
No matter which one they got, it would boost their own strength several times over!
And who knows—maybe this skeleton even holds the inheritance of the Celestial Venerable!
And that’s an inheritance from ten thousand years ago!
How many cultivators dream of something like that?
