Chapter 182 – Zong Laogou’s Storage Bag, Abundant Treasures! (Third Update)

Seeing this, Su Xing couldn’t help but beam with joy.

“Finally, the Eight Trigrams Divination Art has reached Major Mastery!”

“Damn it, even counting the Wisdom in Foolishness talent bonus and a seven-day epiphany session… this secret art took me over a hundred years just to cultivate to Mastery-level!”

“The most crucial thing is, this is only the lower half of the Eight Trigrams Divination Art… the Human Fortune chapter, and it’s the less difficult lower volume at that!”

Su Xing sighed inwardly. If one wanted to cultivate both the upper and lower volumes simultaneously to Major Mastery, or even the Perfection realm, how much time would that take?

Five hundred years? Eight hundred years?

Su Xing didn’t dare imagine it anymore.

“Calculating it this way, the Mastery-level Eight Trigrams Divination Art should be enough to shield me from Zong Laogou’s sensing, right?”

Su Xing was somewhat hopeful about this. He estimated that Zong Laogou should still be inside the Immortal Martial Era instance.

“But before killing Zong Laogou, I still need to plan carefully…”

“I must achieve a one-hit kill and not give him the slightest chance to react!”

Su Xing thought this as his gaze turned to the simulation panel.

【You speculate that Zong Laogou should currently be hiding in the Immortal Martial Era instance.】

【But you didn’t rush to act. Instead, you first disguised your appearance and concealed your aura, then used the Eight Trigrams Divination Art to shield your own fortune.】

【Afterward, you entered the Immortal Martial Era instance.】

【You searched the Immortal Martial Era instance for several days and discovered that he was once again hiding in the Eternal Spring Gate, disguised as an outer disciple.】

【You followed suit, spending some money to join the Eternal Spring Gate and becoming an outer disciple yourself.】

【Sure enough, after shielding your own fortune, Zong Laogou didn’t detect the danger at all.】

【On the sect’s training grounds, you pretended to practice martial arts while slowly approaching Zong Laogou.】

【When you were still three meters away from Zong Laogou, you suddenly struck!】

【Elemental Force Entwinement coiled around both fists, and the terrifying power of a Void-Shattering Realm expert was displayed to its fullest in this moment.】

【A colossal force of up to a million tons!】

【As expected, Zong Laogou had no chance to react and was directly pummeled into a mist of blood that filled the sky.】

【His divine consciousness had attempted to escape by leaving his body, but you didn’t waste time and directly annihilated his divine soul.】

【At the spot where Zong Laogou died, you picked up his storage bag and swaggered away amid the shocked cries of the Eternal Spring Sect disciples.】

【You returned to the spirit field grotto-heaven and began inspecting Zong Laogou’s storage artifact.】

【Because Zong Laogou’s divine soul had been destroyed, the soul imprint on the storage bag dissolved on its own, and you could easily see all the treasures inside Zong Laogou’s storage bag.】

Seeing this, Su Xing’s heart stirred and he silently chanted:

“Activate immersive simulation mode, duration twenty-four hours!”

【Ding, you have successfully activated immersive simulation mode, consuming 2.4 million simulation energy points, remaining energy: 248.06 million points.】

As the simulator’s notification faded, the scenery before Su Xing’s eyes shifted.

The next second, a gray storage bag appeared in Su Xing’s hand.

“An undamaged storage bag… I’ve finally gotten my hands on one!”

Su Xing was overjoyed and couldn’t wait to open the storage bag for inspection.

When his divine consciousness probed into the storage bag, Su Xing was instantly stunned.

This was the largest storage item Su Xing had ever seen.

The space inside the storage bag was at least three thousand cubic meters by Su Xing’s estimate!

“Good heavens, three thousand cubic meters… a storage artifact of this caliber would be considered top-grade even in the cultivation world, wouldn’t it?”

Su Xing exclaimed in awe.

After all, the storage ring he currently used had a storage space of merely one hundred cubic meters.

And the storage items used by the major top-tier merchant guilds to transport goods were generally only around fifty cubic meters.

Because the larger the space of a storage artifact, the more expensive it was!

Of course, Su Xing had his personal spirit field, whose internal space could no longer be measured in cubic meters.

So the storage artifact was secondary…

What mattered most were the treasures stored inside!

After probing with his divine consciousness, Su Xing discovered a large stack of paper books.

These were all Zong Laogou’s diaries. Two thousand years’ worth of diary entries — the sheer volume of content was comparable to a novel of hundreds of millions of words.

The diary entries mostly recorded Zong Laogou’s personal experiences over the past one to two thousand years, comparable to an extraordinarily detailed autobiography.

For Su Xing, these diaries were absolutely a valuable treasure for understanding the cultivation world.

Of course, Su Xing’s divine consciousness merely swept over them in passing. He wouldn’t waste precious time reading these diaries now.

Next to the diaries was a small pile of jade slips.

After carefully examining them, Su Xing discovered that the jade slips numbered over a hundred!

The jade slips mostly contained various low-level cultivation secret techniques, arts, and introductory methods for different disciplines.

From introductory pill refining, Formation Dao (Introductory), Talismans, introductory artifact refining — everything was covered…

Beyond those, several jade slips contained relatively precious divine abilities and techniques.

“Blood Soul Art, Black Fiend Palm… Soul Search Art, Blood Ignition Secret Technique… Divine Soul Methods, Blood Sacrifice Compendium…”

Su Xing shook his head slightly and murmured:

“Unfortunately, most of the arts in these jade slips are extremely evil. Though cultivation progress is fast… they’re far too vicious with severe side effects, and aren’t suitable for me…”

Su Xing sighed, but some of the jade slips did contain good things he could use.

The Puppet Formation Art!

The minor divine ability Shrink the Earth to an Inch!

The complete version of the Eight Trigrams Divination Art!

“Tsk tsk, these few techniques alone would be enough to keep me cultivating for quite a while, wouldn’t they?”

“Especially this minor divine ability Shrink the Earth to an Inch — it’s tremendously useful to me!”

“The Sword-Controlling Technique is a movement technique, but it also functions as a cultivation art and excels at long-distance flight… yet it lacks short-range teleportation methods… and Shrink the Earth to an Inch perfectly compensates for this!”

Su Xing was thrilled. Many of the jade slips contained exactly what could make up for his deficiencies in technique cultivation.

Besides the jade slips, Su Xing also spotted eight puppets.

Seven of the puppets were each at the Nascent Soul Great Perfection level!

“Good heavens, these seven puppets are nearly equivalent to seven Heavenly King-stage experts!”

“Zong Laogou used his puppet combination technique before. If these seven puppets coordinate properly, they’d rival a Spirit Transformation stage cultivator!”

Su Xing attempted to control the puppets but failed.

The puppets had restriction seals placed on them, and breaking them would likely require considerable effort.

Especially since Su Xing hadn’t yet mastered the puppet arts, controlling these puppets would be difficult for the time being.

“But this eighth puppet… I don’t think I’ve seen it before…”

Su Xing was somewhat puzzled. It was a female puppet with an extremely beautiful face, seemingly refined directly from a living person.

Moreover, the female puppet wore a rather exquisite dress and appeared quite beautiful.

Most crucially, this puppet only had Foundation Establishment stage cultivation — it shouldn’t logically have a place in Zong Laogou’s collection.

“Strange, what use could a Foundation Establishment stage puppet have? Other than being somewhat good-looking…”

At this point, Su Xing’s expression grew somewhat odd as he recalled content he had once seen in Zong Laogou’s diary.

“This female puppet… couldn’t it be that Fairy Flower who cuckolded Zong Laogou, could it?”

At this thought, a chill ran down Su Xing’s spine.

He hadn’t expected Zong Laogou to have such a fetish. This puppet was probably not meant for combat, but for… other purposes.

With that thought, Su Xing’s gaze moved past the puppets and toward the other treasures.

More than a dozen large jade chests, each half a person’s height, were stacked in a corner.

Su Xing opened one of the chests and his face immediately lit up with wild joy.

These chests were filled entirely with precious spirit herbs!

The youngest were several decades old, while the oldest had been aged for over a thousand years!

Counting carefully, the spirit herbs were of numerous varieties and numbered no fewer than three thousand specimens!

“Good heavens… with this batch of spirit herbs, I can attempt to refine new pills!”

Su Xing was elated. Many of these herbs were ones that hadn’t been in the Advent Cult’s treasury.

In addition, the jade chests also contained various bottles and jars that appeared to be pills.

But since Su Xing didn’t know what effects these pills had, he didn’t dare try them rashly.

When he had time later, Su Xing could use his pill-refining expertise to identify them one by one.

Su Xing continued searching through the storage artifact.

He quickly found the bone sword Zong Laogou had used — a mid-grade treasure weapon, truly extraordinary.

But with just a single glance, Su Xing could feel the deep resentment and karmic sin that clung to the bone sword…

One could only imagine how many innocent lives had been sacrificed when this treasure weapon was forged.

Besides that, there was also the Soul-Summoning Banner, along with more than ten other magical treasures whose names Su Xing couldn’t even identify.

Among the treasures were the hidden weapons once used by Zong Laogou — Five Thunder Pellets, numbering in the hundreds.

These Five Thunder Pellets were extremely precious, capable of even injuring Spirit Transformation stage cultivators.

Each and every Five Thunder Pellet was comparable in value to a top-grade magical artifact!

“Tsk tsk… Zong Laogou’s collection accumulated over a thousand years — he’s truly as wealthy as a nation!”

Su Xing exclaimed in admiration, then turned his gaze toward the final corner.

In that last corner, a small pile of spirit stones sat quietly.

Su Xing swept his divine sense over them, then furrowed his brows slightly.

“Zong Laogou is a Spirit Transformation cultivator… how does he only have a mere eight thousand or so spirit stones?”

Su Xing was somewhat surprised. Eight thousand spirit stones was certainly more than what Su Xing himself had.

But this amount of spirit stones — forget about cultivation — wouldn’t even be enough to replenish Zong Laogou’s daily spiritual energy expenditure for more than a few years.

And since Zong Laogou had awakened from his slumber, at least a hundred years or more had passed.

How could he have only this many spirit stones?

Although the current age was the Dharma-Ending Era with depleted spiritual energy, Spirit Transformation cultivators were essentially first-rate powerhouses of the cultivation world.

Apart from top-tier cultivation sects like the Myriad Wood Sect, the sect masters and grand elders of ordinary sects were typically Spirit Transformation cultivators at best.

For a powerhouse of this level, having two or three hundred thousand spirit stones during an era of abundant spiritual energy would be perfectly normal.

Even in the Dharma-Ending Era, a Spirit Transformation cultivator should have accumulated considerable wealth over time.

Especially someone like Zong Laogou — a demonic cultivator who loved killing and plundering — his wealth should have been even greater than that of an ordinary cultivator at Spirit Transformation Perfection.

“Something’s not right… there are far too few spirit stones!”

“Given Zong Laogou’s cautious nature, having laid low for thousands of years, there’s no way he’d only have this many spirit stones…”

“Could it be… that Zong Laogou hid his spirit stones somewhere else?”

Su Xing was puzzled. He began searching but couldn’t find any trace of the remaining spirit stones.

Suddenly, a flash of inspiration struck him, and he murmured:

“That bastard Zong Laogou loved writing in his diary so much… could he have recorded the hiding spot in his diary?”

Su Xing began flipping through Zong Laogou’s diary, starting from the most recent entries and working backward.

Sure enough, after flipping through just a few volumes, Su Xing found it — ten years ago, Zong Laogou had hidden the bulk of his spirit stones inside a great mountain called Five Elements Mountain.

“This Five Elements Mountain… where exactly is it?”

With this question in mind, Su Xing continued searching through Zong Laogou’s diary.

Over the next several hours, Su Xing went through the diaries one by one.

Finally, Su Xing found records pertaining to Five Elements Mountain, and there was even a map tucked between the pages of that particular diary entry.

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2817. While fleeing, I happened upon a treasure map and decided to investigate…”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2818. Found Five Elements Mountain. This mountain is the sleeping place of the Five Elements Sect’s sect master from several hundred years ago. He consumed a Yellow Springs Pill, and his tomb may contain endless treasures…”

“Immortal Martial Calendar, Year 2818. Intended to enter Five Elements Mountain, but my instincts kept screaming warnings — Danger! Danger! Extreme danger! Thus I refrained, deciding to wait until my cultivation has advanced further before exploring…”

Su Xing skimmed through the entries. This Five Elements Mountain appeared to be the sleeping place of a powerful elder from a mighty sect in the Immortal Martial world, dating back thousands of years.

“Could it be… that thousands of years ago, it wasn’t only Perfected One Myriad Wood who fell into slumber? People from other sects also fell into slumber?”

Su Xing stroked his chin.

He hadn’t fully explored the Immortal Martial Era instance, and there were still secrets hidden within that he didn’t know about.

“Thousands of years ago, there were probably more than just one powerful sect… there should have been others, like this Five Elements Sect…”

Su Xing decided that when he had time in the future, he would search for more historical records within the Immortal Martial Era instance.

After all, those cultivators who fell into slumber thousands of years ago must have left behind quite a few treasures…

Su Xing looked at the map in his hands and murmured:

“In any case, Five Elements Mountain is worth a visit. Even if I don’t explore the tomb, I can at least retrieve the spirit stones Zong Laogou left there!”

Afterward, Su Xing searched through Zong Laogou’s diary and storage bag once more, but found no further information of value.

Soon, the immersive simulation time ended, and Su Xing returned to the real world.

Back in reality, Su Xing sighed with emotion.

“Zong Laogou really had quite a collection of treasures!”

“Unfortunately, killing him in the simulation means that even though I obtained his storage artifact, it still costs energy to bring it out…”

“However, if I could kill Zong Laogou in the real world… now that would be a fortune!”

At this thought, Su Xing wished he could rush to Zong Laogou right now and kill him instantly!

Su Xing’s eyes gleamed as he stroked his chin and said:

“But in the real world, I only get one chance… so before killing him, to be safe, I should run a few more simulations first… that would be the most secure approach!”

After some deliberation, Su Xing turned his gaze to the simulation panel.

【After reading through Zong Laogou’s diary, you quickly located Five Elements Mountain…】

【After a month of searching, you finally found the place where Zong Laogou had hidden his spirit stones.】

【After breaking through the formation, you retrieved the more than seventy thousand spirit stones Zong Laogou had stashed away.】

【At the same time, you also discovered the sleeping site of the great cultivator within Five Elements Mountain.】

【As you approached the perimeter of the slumber formation, you felt a faint stinging sensation between your brows.】

【Knowing that this place was likely fraught with danger, you prudently chose not to explore further.】

【Leaving the Immortal Martial Era instance, you returned to the real world and continued diligently cultivating the Sword-Controlling Technique, hoping to reach Minor Mastery as soon as possible!】

【Year Nineteen: After a year of arduous cultivation of the Sword-Controlling Technique, you could feel yourself drawing ever closer to Minor Mastery. Perhaps a breakthrough could come any day now.】

【Year Twenty: One day, while practicing the Sword-Controlling Technique, your heart suddenly stirred with new insight and comprehension.】

【Congratulations — your understanding of the Sword-Controlling Technique has naturally and smoothly reached the Minor Mastery realm!】

【With the Sword-Controlling Technique at Minor Mastery, your movement speed has greatly increased. You can now travel thirty thousand li in a single day, and even after several consecutive days of travel, you feel no fatigue.】

【Your flying sword technique has also been refined to the point where, within the range of your divine sense — a distance of ten thousand zhang — you can take an enemy’s head in an instant!】

【Year Twenty-One: On the day of the Awakening of Insects, you attempted to collect Spring Dew Purified Water.】

【Sure enough, with your Subtle Realm divine sense combined with Minor Mastery-level Sword-Controlling Technique, you easily collected a complete set of ten drops of Spring Dew Purified Water.】

【You were quite satisfied with this result.】

【However, there were still several years remaining before the simulation’s end. Knowing that time shouldn’t be wasted, you decided to simply continue your diligent cultivation of the Sword-Controlling Technique.】

【In the monotony of your cultivation life, two years passed in the blink of an eye.】

【Year Twenty-Three: You decided to venture once more into the Immortal Martial Era instance to explore the sleeping ruins of Perfected One Myriad Wood.】

【You weren’t going on a suicide mission — according to your calculations:】

【If you could directly slay the living-dead puppet, you could breach straight into the core area of the ancient tomb ruins. And as long as you didn’t touch that bronze stone coffin, Perfected One Myriad Wood would likely not awaken easily.】

【After some hesitation, you set off for the Immortal Martial Era instance.】

【You first spent half a month collecting three jade fragments, then located the coordinates of that mountain.】

【Breaking through the formation boulder, you entered the ancient tomb ruins where Perfected One Myriad Wood slumbered.】

【Afterward, you passed through a long, narrow tunnel and soon encountered the living-dead puppet.】

【The living-dead puppet attacked you without a word.】

【The living-dead puppet’s assault was fierce and aggressive, but having already stepped into the Void-Shattering Realm, how could you possibly fear a mere puppet?】

【You raised your Protective Hardened Qi and engaged in a fierce battle with the living-dead puppet.】

【Although your Protective Hardened Qi had not yet been cultivated to Perfection, with the augmentation of the Void-Shattering Realm, the elemental force within your body was far more robust than before, making your Protective Hardened Qi sturdier and more resilient.】

【No matter how relentlessly the living-dead puppet pounded against your Protective Hardened Qi, the barrier merely trembled without showing any sign of cracking.】

【Seizing the opportunity, you channeled elemental force, entwining it around both fists, and threw a devastating punch!】

【This single punch, carrying the force of a million tons, caved in the living-dead puppet’s chest.】

【Black liquid seeped from the living-dead puppet’s seven orifices, indicating severe damage.】

【But the living-dead puppet had no consciousness and was merely a puppet after all.】

【Vast quantities of black liquid surged forth, continuously repairing the living-dead puppet’s injuries.】

【You were astonished to see that the living-dead puppet still had fight left in it.】

【A great battle erupted!】

【You fought for hundreds of rounds, the formations within the ancient tomb trembling incessantly, until you finally seized an opening and shattered the living-dead puppet’s chest with a single punch.】

【The living-dead puppet’s regeneration clearly had its limits. It struggled briefly but ultimately could not rise again.】

【You stored the living-dead puppet in your storage ring and continued deeper into the core area of the tomb ruins.】

Seeing this, Su Xing felt a jolt of surprise and remarked:

“This living-dead puppet’s strength is probably not just at early Void-Shattering Realm… it should be close to mid-stage Void-Shattering Realm, right?”

After his moment of surprise, Su Xing turned his gaze back to the simulation panel.

【You walked through the narrow corridors of the ancient tomb, traveling more than ten li further, sensing the surrounding spiritual energy gradually becoming more abundant.】

【Rounding a corner, you finally saw an invisible formation, separating the inner and outer regions of the tomb ruins…】