Chapter 80: Gains Beyond Imagination

Dan Shop, second floor.

A storage ring and two storage bracelets were laid out before Shen Lian. He sent his divine sense into one of the storage bracelets marked with an imprint, and was immediately stunned by the glimmering bounty piled within.

Spirit stones.

So many spirit stones.

During his three years in Black Whale City, he had only managed to save up around forty thousand lower-grade spirit stones. Yet, just this one storage bracelet contained more than thirty thousand.

Thirty-seven thousand, six hundred and seventy, to be exact.

Three years of honest work couldn’t compare to one act of murder and arson.

No wonder so many cultivators in the Myriad Star Sea turned to robbery, forming all manner of gangs and crews.

Looting brought quick wealth, that much was true.

But the King of Hell claimed souls just as swiftly.

Besides the thirty-seven thousand or so spirit stones, the bracelet also held a collection of spirit herbs, seeds for spiritual rice, tools for plant cultivation, and some nutrient potions—all clearly spoils robbed by Pei Huoyu.

Shen Lian picked up the other bracelet. The moment his divine sense entered it, he was struck by a wave of bloodthirsty energy.

A metallic tang of blood.

He quickly withdrew his divine sense and pinched his nose.

Inside that bracelet… four corpses were stored, each exuding a heavy stench of blood and marked with wounds from attacks of the five elemental spiritual energies. Judging by their lingering auras, all four had been Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Apart from the four corpses, there were broken magical artifacts, formation disks, pills, spirit boats, ores, jade slips, scrolls—all manner of items, most of them stained with blood. Some of the blood had dried to a pitch-black crust, while some was still fresh and crimson.

Next, Shen Lian turned his attention to the storage ring, sending his divine sense inside.

A pile of ordinary storage pouches, two to three hundred in total.

Dozens of medicine bottles and jade boxes.

Thirty-six formation disks—likely a complete set.

Over four thousand spirit stones.

He pulled out a jade box and opened it, and a violent, blood-soaked odor poured forth: blood pills, each suffused with a sinister energy. Shen Lian bared his teeth, tempted to try one for taste.

Upon inspection, he found they were all second-tier blood pills refined from the flesh of demonic beasts—perfect for practicing his own secret blood and soul-refining techniques.

Closing the jade box, he brought out the medicine bottles. Most were empty, but two remained filled with the Qi-Replenishing Three Treasures Pills—a second-tier elixir for restoring essence, energy, and spirit. Rare and valuable, each pill was worth over a thousand spirit stones.

In addition to these, the storage ring contained many jade slips, which held Pei Huoyu’s cultivation methods and associated spells. Shen Lian checked each one.

Pei Huoyu’s main manual was the Five Elements Path Nurturing Formula, and the spells included Five Elements Severance, Five Elements Fire Palm, and Five Elements Serpent Spirit Art. There was also the Spirit-Quelling and Soul-Masking Art, a secret method for concealing aura; the Bone-Shifting and Face-Changing Technique, a disguise art; and the Thousand-Seeking Spirit Shepherding Method, a special spirit-seeking technique.

The Five Elements Path Nurturing Formula did indeed reach the Golden Core level, but Ancestor Ziyang had only passed the first two layers to Pei Huoyu, allowing cultivation up to the ninth layer of Foundation Establishment.

It was by refining the “Five Elemental Dao Seeds” from this manual, heedless of the damage to his own foundation, that Pei Huoyu managed to track him across tens of thousands of miles.

Reviewing the fragments of Pei Huoyu’s memory, Shen Lian couldn’t help but marvel at the man’s determination and ruthlessness—to find him by such a self-destructive and clumsy method.

What was even more terrifying was that Pei Huoyu had arrived in Black Whale City long ago.

Shen Lian felt fortunate that he had not often brought out the Five Elements Mountain; had he been caught by Pei Huoyu during his Qi Refining days, his chances of survival would have been even slimmer.

Pei was stubborn to the core. Even after searching Black Whale City for so long without finding anything, he never left to look elsewhere; he just fixated on the city.

The memories were fragmented and chaotic, disordered by the soul-capturing imprint. Shen Lian sifted through the shards, verifying his finds against what he recalled.

Some items matched, some could not be accounted for due to missing memories.

“So, Brother Pei pulled off a heist before finding Blackrock Island, and happened to be refining the Five Elements Mountain at the time,” Shen Lian muttered.

From a memory fragment, he learned the origin of the spirit stones—they were plundered from the Xu Family’s treasure ship.

Two of the four Foundation Establishment corpses belonged to the Xu Family.

The Xu Family was a Foundation Establishment clan, boasting six Foundation cultivators, one of whom was at the eighth layer.

This time, two Foundation Elder from the Xu Family, along with their juniors, had come to Black Whale City to sell off several years’ harvest of spirit rice and ordinary spiritual plants collected from their subordinate Qi Refining clans.

The trouble began when a Xu clansman, at the harbor in Black Whale City, insulted Pei Huoyu, who was searching for Shen Lian’s trail.

Driven mad with frustration at failing to find the Five Elements Mountain, Pei Huoyu casually overturned the Xu Family’s treasure ship.

By coincidence, the ship was sunk in waters not far from Blackrock Island.

With these memories, Shen Lian sighed softly.

No matter how meticulously one plans, fate always finds a way.

He had fled the city to Blackrock Island, fearing that refining the Five Elements Mountain might attract the attention of a local Golden Core cultivator. Who could have guessed…

It was the foul-mouthed Xu clansman who unwittingly set everything in motion.

Shen Lian took out each storage pouch, sorting their contents.

These were all pouches of Qi Refining cultivators—low-grade, scattered goods.

The storage ring’s internal space was stable enough to bear the spatial pressure of ordinary storage pouches. After killing their owners, Pei Huoyu had simply stashed them all inside the ring.

After a thorough inventory—

The harvest this time was truly beyond expectation.

Four Foundation Establishment corpses, still well preserved; if sold to the right underground buyers, each could fetch over ten thousand spirit stones. Though selling them would be tricky.

During his inspection, Shen Lian also found a number of jade identity tags. Fortunately, they were all ordinary; he burned them to ash with his golden-red flames.

Ten second-tier lower-grade magical artifacts, some damaged, which could still sell for over ten thousand spirit stones at a discount.

Three second-tier middle-grade artifacts—again, worth over ten thousand even at a loss.

Three spirit boats, each worth at least ten thousand.

Three Foundation Establishment-level cultivation manuals, and eleven Foundation-level spells. Even discounting the four complete sets of Five Elements techniques, the rest would be worth at least seventeen or eighteen thousand lower-grade spirit stones.

Seven unique secret arts—six at the Foundation Establishment level, one at Qi Refining. These alone could fetch another ten thousand or so.

Over fifty pieces of second-tier ores.

Fifteen second-tier medicinal plants.

Not many second-tier pills—just seven bottles, eighteen pills in total.

Two boxes of blood pills refined from the flesh of second-tier demonic beasts—sixty-eight in all.

Four formation arrays of varying completeness at the second tier.

Two hundred and seventy-three storage pouches, which could be sold for a thousand or so spirit stones.

The remaining first-tier ores, pills, magical tools, spirit rice seeds, and Qi Refining-level spells piled up like a small mountain. Shen Lian didn’t bother to count in detail, but estimated them to be worth at least six or seven thousand lower-grade spirit stones.

Adding together all the spirit stones from every storage item, the grand total was fifty-four thousand, six hundred and seventy-three.

All told, the entire haul amounted to nearly four hundred thousand lower-grade spirit stones—almost comparable to the wealth of a Golden Core cultivator.

With such riches in hand, who cared about the talismans he’d discarded?

Exhaling deeply, Shen Lian sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion.

The harvest was immense, but the problem was moving black market goods.

Moreover, with incomplete memories, he could only verify the Xu Family’s items; the origins of the other two Foundation Establishment cultivators remained unclear.

With Pei Huoyu dead by his hand, if these goods were sold nearby and someone traced the provenance, the blame would surely fall on him.

Shaking his head to clear it, Shen Lian realized that even without the black market loot, he still had nearly a hundred thousand spirit stones at his disposal.

He could no longer stay in Black Whale City.

For the next stage of cultivation, one hundred thousand spirit stones should suffice…

He sighed.

Black Whale City was indeed stable, and the Sea Spirit Sect vigilant in its duties—he would grant them that.

But the real instability was within himself.

According to the memory fragments from the soul-borrowing parasite, Bian Qingyun, the Golden Core cultivator, was also being influenced by Ancestor Ziyang and lying low to avoid disaster.

Under such circumstances, pursuit was unlikely—but one could never be too careful.

Pei Huoyu had tracked him across tens of thousands of miles using nothing but brute persistence. The prospect of a Golden Core cultivator doing the same was even more frightening.

He could not remain in Black Whale City.

He had to flee.