studiobondurri Chapter 87: Worth the trip
Chapter 87: Worth the trip
Chapter 87: Worth the trip
Yuan Ming carefully examined the stone wall in front of him, occasionally reaching out to touch and tap it.
After his investigation, he quickly discovered something unusual. When he tapped on a certain spot on the mountain wall, it produced a clear echo, indicating that there was something hollow inside.
"Could it be that someone has hidden some treasures here?" Yuan Ming’s heart stirred, and he took out the Green Fish Sword from his hand and stabbed it in.
With a light sound, the Green Fish Sword easily pierced through, almost without any resistance. It was indeed hollow inside, with the stone wall only three inches thick.
Yuan Ming pulled out the Green Fish Sword and stabbed a few more times. The stone wall completely shattered, revealing a semi-circular hole five feet high. Inside was a stone room-like space.
Huo Chan’er cheered and flew into it.
Yuan Ming was worried that there might be a trap inside that could harm Huo Chan’er, so he hurriedly followed.
Inside the entrance of the cave was indeed a stone room, about seven or eight zhang in size. It looked like someone’s dwelling, with stone beds, stone tables, stone stools, and everything one would need. There was even a bookshelf against the wall, with more than a dozen green-covered books on it.
These things were covered in thick dust, indicating that no one had lived here for a long time.
Yuan Ming looked around and didn’t find any dangerous mechanisms. He relaxed and walked to the bookshelf, taking the rightmost book. The cover read "Records of Strange Stones," with the words "Volume One" in the lower right corner.
He flipped through it briefly, and the content inside was exactly as the title suggested, introducing various minerals in great detail, far surpassing the mineral books he had seen in the Guicang Pavilion.
Because he worked in the Fire Workshop, Yuan Ming thought he was quite familiar with various minerals, but the content in the book was several times more detailed than what he knew, and many of the contents were unheard of to him.
He took the other books, all of them were "Records of Strange Stones," from Volume One to Volume Sixteen, collecting detailed information about thousands of minerals in the world, including their properties, origins, and uses. It was a comprehensive encyclopedia of minerals.
Compared to that, the "Hundred Herbs Collection" he had obtained before, as well as the "Essentials of Qi Refinement" from the Fire Workshop, were embarrassingly crude.
"Good, this is great." Yuan Ming tightly held the book in his hand.
As a newcomer to the cultivation world, he needed this kind of specialized book to enrich his knowledge.
However, there was too much content in these dozen or so volumes of "Records of Strange Stones," and he couldn’t finish reading them in a short time. So he immediately put all the books into his storage bag.
"I wonder who used to live here? To actually have such a set of mineral books hidden." Yuan Ming looked around and felt curious about the person who used to live here.
From the situation here, it seemed that the other party had been gone for a long time. Yuan Ming didn’t know if they had temporarily left or completely abandoned this place, but in any case, they didn’t take away these precious books, which was a lucky break for him.
Just at this moment, a sound of "chirp chirp" came from the side, accompanied by Huo Chan’er’s urgent cries.
Yuan Ming looked over and saw Huo Chan’er clinging and scratching at a stone wall in the deepest part of the stone room.
"Oh, is this part also hollow?" He walked over, tapped the stone wall, and indeed heard an echo.
However, this time the echo was very weak, indicating that the stone wall in front of him was quite thick and not as easily broken as before.
"It seems that there is a secret room inside. Generally, the entrance to secret rooms is opened by mechanisms." He searched nearby and soon found an inconspicuous protruding stone in a corner of the stone wall not far away.
Yuan Ming held onto the stone and moved it left and right. With a light sound of "crack," the stone actually turned half a circle.
This seemingly sturdy stone room was almost smashed by his hammer.
Yuan Ming was both shocked and delighted. He didn’t expect the attack power of this hammer to be so amazing. Even if it wasn’t a magical tool, it was not far off.
The only regret was that the hammer was too heavy. Even with the strength of the white ape transformation, it was not very agile to swing. It would be inconvenient to use it in battle.
He shook his head regretfully and put the dark red hammer into his storage bag before examining the corpse in front of him.
The corpse was quite tall and seemed to be from the Southern Region. The clothing on the body was also in the style of the Southern Region. It hadn’t decayed much, so it could be inferred that this person had died within the past year or two.
Yuan Ming carefully turned over the corpse, and with a light sound, a small black bag fell down, emitting a faint aura of prohibition.
He was not unfamiliar with this aura because he also had something similar. This small bag was a storage bag.
"There’s a storage bag. It seems that this person is also a cultivator, and his cultivation level is not low!" Yuan Ming’s eyebrows raised, and he carefully took the bag, infused his mana into it, and operated it according to the alchemy technique taught by the Third Cave Master.
The black bag was quickly refined, revealing its internal space.
He was surprised to find that the space inside the black bag was extremely large. The storage bag given to him by the Third Cave Master had a space of only five or six feet square, similar to the size of a wardrobe, but this black bag was as big as half a room.
Based on the information he had learned, in the Southern Region’s cultivation world, storage-type magical tools were precious, and the larger the internal space, the higher the value. This black bag’s internal space was so large that it could probably be exchanged for several attack magical tools.
Yuan Ming’s heart pounded, he tightly held the bag, turned around and looked around, as if afraid of being seen by someone.
But the next moment, he realized that this was a deserted island. Besides him, there was probably no one else on the island, so he couldn’t help but laugh.
The black bag was not empty. There was a thick white book and more than a dozen pigeon egg-sized red stones placed in the corner.
Yuan Ming took out one of the red stones, and a faint red light appeared inside it, emitting a spiritual energy fluctuation. Although it was not very strong, it was very pure.
"This... could it be a spirit stone!" he murmured to himself.
As the name suggests, a spirit stone is a stone that contains the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. It is the most common and important resource in the cultivation world.
The basic principle of cultivation for countless cultivators in the world is to absorb the scattered spiritual energy between heaven and earth and transform it into mana that they can control through various cultivation methods.
However, the spiritual energy between heaven and earth is scattered and mixed with each other, making it time-consuming and laborious to extract and refine a specific type of spiritual energy. This is also the biggest obstacle that hinders cultivators from advancing quickly.
In some blessed lands and immortal realms, the spiritual energy is naturally abundant, forming spiritual veins. Over the years, it is possible for spirit stones to be born near the spiritual veins.
Spirit stones contain the spiritual energy of the spiritual veins, which is extremely pure. They can be directly absorbed into mana without the need for refining through cultivation methods. This greatly accelerates the speed of cultivation.
With this effect, spirit stones can be called the number one treasure in the cultivation world, and they are even used as hard currency in transactions.
However, the function of spirit stones is not limited to assisting in cultivation. Through the research of generations of cultivators, they have been used in refining tools, refining pills, and setting up formations, etc. They can exert even more amazing effects. It can be said that as long as it requires spiritual energy, spirit stones can play a huge role.Such a multitude of uses made spirit stones highly sought after, with every sect and faction vying for this rare resource. Yuan Ming didn’t know about other places, but it was said that the only spirit stone mine in the Bi Luo Cave was treated as a sect’s important area, with a large number of cultivators dispatched to protect it. One of the most popular tasks in the Execution Hall was the duty of overseeing the spirit stone mine.
(Today we continue with four more chapters, please vote ^^)
(End of this chapter)