Chapter 145: Search
Liam finished smoking and secured the pipe in his belt. He did the sa with the pouch on his back, only retrieving the Rising Waterfall Sect’s green jade to confirm his location.
The jade went in Liam’s underwear once he was ready to climb out of the basent. He had no stairs at his disposal, but so of the piles of debris were tall enough for him to jump out despite his weakened state.
Truth be told, the healing pill was doing wonders. Only minutes had passed, but Liam’s cultivation had already recovered a great deal of vitality.
Still, for that exact reason, Liam didn’t want to stress out his roots more than necessary until they had fully healed, holding back on exerting too much Qi.
Luckily, the ti for superhuman jumps was over. Liam returned to the hall, only to exit the half-destroyed structure, returning to the lake of debris while following the incomplete map.
The last, bigger cross pointed at one end of the lake, where the water and debris t. As always, nothing looked suspicious there, but Liam knew better, and there was only one place to inspect, so he squatted down and started digging.
The already rotten wood turned into paste at Liam’s touch due to its prolonged imrsion in those red waters. He was being careful not to ss up his splints and bandages, even only using his left arm to let his right elbow rest, but everything still crumbled easily.
That was until Liam brushed against sothing solid when he had most of his arm in the debris. He did his best to grab the item without using his splinted thumb, eventually drawing out a small pouch.
That size initially put a frown on Liam’s face, which transford into wide-eyed shock once he peeked inside the pouch. He had been unable to sense it clearly due to the Qi in the area and the container’s cover, but the finding was unmistakable once he looked directly at it.
’Rank 3 cores?!’ Liam exclaid in his mind, not knowing how to react at the sight of those four dark-red spheres.
Sohow, across an unclear number of missions, the Rising Waterfall Sect had actually managed to pry open the skulls of four level three magical beasts.
That didn’t necessarily an that the past teams had killed such powerful creatures. So might have been lucky findings from corpses. It was unlikely, but it could happen, especially if those cultivators could orchestrate battles between major packs.
Still, all the explanations in the world didn’t make the finding any less incredible. Liam didn’t care for cores much since he didn’t know their value. He honestly only wanted things that could be useful imdiately, but even he accepted the imnse value of the items now resting in his hands.
After all, those were rank 3 cores, items two whole stages above Liam’s cultivation level. They were in the realm of the Elders, of branching experts, sothing that a foundation expert like Liam should never be able to possess.
’Will they let
keep them?’ Liam wondered, his imagination running wild at what those cores could afford him in the Sect. ’Will they count as mine?’
Sothing else also beca clear in Liam’s mind. Gambling was a ga he understood to a certain extent, allowing far-sighted calculations.
Three rooting experts could achieve more than two, but Maxwell wasn’t the standard. He was the exception caused by Liam’s presence, aning he had to adjust his calculations, taking Joel and Cecilia as average team mbers.
’Between rests and ti wasted finding packs,’ Liam thought, ’Fights between teams, and possible scarcity of magical beasts ... I’d say five level two creatures a day. Rounding up to six can partially cover the level one ones.’
Liam knew he was rounding up a lot, considering ideal conditions, but that still matched his hunch. According to his calculations, the average team could accumulate around four hundred points in seven days, but he had personally found over nine hundred hidden away.
On top of that, Liam hadn’t crossed every mark on the map. He had skipped so to keep his advance steady and dodge the lairs he encountered.
It seed the Rising Waterfall Sect wasn’t planning to rig one mission. It was ready to cheat on multiple ones, making that ploy far grander than what Mitchell had initially suggested.
Of course, Liam didn’t care for any of that. Hurting the Rising Waterfall Sect felt fair, but he couldn’t bother to add grander ploys to his brain. As soon as he bagged the four cores, his thoughts went elsewhere.
Finding the pouch told Liam another thing. The Rising Waterfall Sect had nothing to do with those abhorrent monsters, the intense sll of blood, and the kinship Liam felt.
Liam had yet to find the connection with the Ancestral Beasts, and his nose and instincts brought his gaze back to the half-destroyed structure, pointing at its exact center.
Truth be told, that would be Liam’s ti to rest. The auditory hallucination was gone, and sleeping would even aid the pill’s healing effects. His returning Qi gave him strength, but his exhaustion needed to be addressed.
However, with Mitchell’s way-too-serious stance, Liam didn’t know how long he had before reinforcents would co. That could very well be his last night alone, and he needed to make the most out of it.
Before Liam could realize it, he found himself inside the half-destroyed structure again. He was in another collapsed hall, larger than the previous, but featuring nothing special or unique whatsoever.
’Snake, do you know anything?’ Liam asked, receiving silence that he couldn’t help but find pleasant after the prolonged auditory hallucination the Primal Urge had caused.
’For the Rising Waterfall Sect to bury cores here,’ Liam considered, casually strolling over the debris, ’The teams must have explored this place already. They might have avoided deeper investigations due to the absence of magical beasts to hunt, but still ...’
The idea that sothing so intense and connected to the Ancestral Beasts might have gone unnoticed for multiple iterations of that mission felt simply unrealistic.
Sure, Liam probably was the only one sensing sothing odd due to his bloodline, but ti would have eventually uncovered any secret, even if no one was looking too hard to find it.
’Unless it’s really well-hidden,’ Liam concluded. ’Actually, more than that, and by cultivators’ standards.’
That conclusion almost made Liam lose hope. After all, the cultivation world was deep and full of mysterious thods, while he was only a partially ignorant foundation expert.
If rooting experts had been unable to find that hiding spot over the years, Liam had no chance to succeed. The matter might even be sothing at the Elders’ level as far as he knew.
Yet, a strange sensation spread from Liam’s right foot during his casual stroll. He stopped on his tracks, looking at the spot where he had stepped, which featured nothing at all.
But that nothing was the key. That spot featured no debris, allowing Liam to step directly onto the hall’s wooden floor, sensing a clear difference from the previous.
’A second basent?’ Liam wondered, frowning since pressing on that clear spot didn’t dig any hole.
That part was hard to believe. Everything was old, broken, and rotten there. That wooden floor even looked like it belonged to the sa category, but it still wouldn’t break.
’An Illusion?’ Liam considered. ’Is there a formation here?’
Liam began to kick the rubble away, lifting dense clouds of dust, clearing the floor. His legs did a poor job, but the ssy sweeping gave him the opportunity to see how that strangely resilient wood didn’t feature anything at all.
’Am I really the first one to notice this?’ Liam questioned. ’It’s impossible, right?’
Liam trusted his senses, but cultivators had perception techniques. That place wasn’t the mission’s focus, but soone had to have noticed sothing. Liam simply couldn’t believe to have been that lucky.
’If they found it,’ Liam delved deeper into the hypothesis, ’It ans they tried to open it, both with proper thods and through raw strength.’
Rooting experts could exert more power than Liam’s Seismic Palm could, so he excluded forcing his way down as an option. That theoretically left him with nothing, but he could think of a thod only he could perform.
Everything slled so much of blood that even soone as clueless as Liam would try to use his own.
Liam cut one of his healthy fingers with the knife, letting a single drop of blood fall on the floor he had cleared. He honestly felt a bit awkward and stupid doing so, not knowing what to expect, only for that surface to surprise him.
Red lines lit up on the floor, revealing Qi Liam had been unable to sense before. They curved, spreading under the debris, creating concentric circles that Liam could only make out completely from the light shining from the covered areas.
Intricate symbols also littered the circles’ edges until a cave-in happened. One of the piles of debris fell into a trapdoor that had just opened, leading to a steep, perfectly intact, stone staircase that dived deep underground.
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