PtM 16 - Chapter 23: The Motherload

4/4 this week!

Preparing for the interim move to another part of China. It's happening soon. 

Good thing I got rid of most of my stuff when I moved here in the first place...

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It took three days for everyone to fully heal. Huxian was relatively uninjured, and Cha Ming recovered quickly, so they used their time to replenish paintings and consumables.

Xing Tianlong’s body was mostly fine, but he’d suffered serious spiritual damage when the hydra had attacked him at his lowest point. As for Wei Longshen, his spiritual army had been severely depleted, but he was able to recover it back to ninety percent thanks to the straw-like mechanism Huxian installed for him to suck in souls from the yin river.

“Just to confirm one last time,” said Xing Tianlong, “We can safely retreat and re-enter the Tribulant Yin Demiplane from another location, but we are choosing to proceed through the tunnels at the border of this high danger zone. We’re doing this knowing full well that whatever we encounter, we may not be able to retreat via teleportation.

“We’re not children, Tianlong,” Petros said. “We came here for points, and this is a good opportunity.”

“I’m not opposed, I just want to clarify,” Xing Tianlong said. “We’re not children, and if we proceed knowing the risks, then we’ll have no regrets. Longshen, did your yin spirits find out anything over the past few days.”

“Nothing,” Wei Longshen said. “But they can only go so far, because something deep within the earth inhibits them.”

“Then let’s proceed with care,” Xing Tianlong said. “Clear Sky, how many lightning sparrows did you manage to fix?”

“All six of them,” Cha Ming said. He summoned the birds and sent them down the tunnels. Whenever they reached a fork, one of them split up, and using his link to them, Cha Ming was able to populate a map using Petro’s unlocked skill.

Each of the tunnels in the network was ten meters in diameter and made of smooth, rivetted glass. At first, they guessed acid had been used to bore them, but after discovering un-melted stone behind the walls, they decided that liquid lightning was the likely culprit.

A day passed, and in that time, they encountered one fork after another. Aside from the initial lighting beasts that had been nesting in the tunnel, they found no other living creatures.

What they did find was the occasional remnants of a small battle, which they only noticed from the damage to the tunnel walls. Occasionally, they found blood and pieces of flesh, but no corpses were ever found.

“I’m starting to suspect that someone already found this cave before we did,” Cha Ming said. “How else can we explain those places where the energies were just right for natural treasures, but nothing was growing there?”

Xing Tianlong’s expression was ugly. He too had come to the same conclusion. “This tunnel network is vast, so it’s possible that they didn’t get everything.” Yet one day became three, and three became seven, and still they hadn’t found anything.

It was on the eighth day that they finally discovered a battlefield that had not been cleaned up. That same tunnel opened up into a massive cavern several kilometers wide.

The darkness within was omnipresent. There was no illumination, and the light sources that they introduced were muted and subdued.

Cha Ming sent the six lightning sparrows into the cavern – or at least he tried to, but discovered that his domain couldn’t pierce very deeply. He was forced to pull them back after anly few hundred meters or risk losing his connection with them.

“What have we here?” Xing Tianlong said, sending a ball of light over to what appeared to be small stack of boulders.

“Eggs?” Petros said. He walked over to what appeared to be a pile of broken slate. “One of them hatched. The others…”

“Are they alive?” Cha Ming asked.

Huxian appeared beside one of them, then shook his head. “Dead. Which isn’t super uncommon. Powerful demons might lay a clutch, but then only one in ten will hatch.”

“I sense heavy yin energy in each of these eggs,” Wei Longshen said. “Which makes sense, given that this is the Tribulant Yin Demiplane, I suppose.”

“I’m going to figure out what kind of eggs these are,” Petros said, pulling out a dagger. “You guys keep exploring the cave. I’m blind in here, and I don’t like it.”

They split up, but kept in contact with Petros’s ability, which was somehow able to pierce the omnipresent darkness when even normal mental communications couldn’t.

Since the range on Cha Ming’s lightning sparrows was limited, he kept all six of them, but even while using them, he was reminded of summer nights as a mortal, when the moon and stars were absent.

It was the kind of darkness that stoked one’s imagination and brought out one’s worst nightmares. It was the kind darkness that scared small children and made them afraid to crawl out of bed. It was also the kind of darkness that made Cha Ming remember things he’d rather not, prompting him to summon the Clear Sky Brush and paint a sunlight in the room, chasing away the shadows for two hundred meters in every direction but not much further.

It didn’t take Cha Ming very long to stumble upon an irregularity. His portable sun reflected on something metallic. He ran over and found five corpses arranged in a neat line with a crystal stabbed in their hearts and veins of yin energy running through their bodies.

Their armor, cloaks, and weapons were not uniform, but they all had one thing in common: a badge had appeared atop their corpses. These were not normal residents of the Heartforge Realm but Invited who’d come in the same batch as they.

“You guys are going to want to take a look at this,” Cha Ming called out. Xing Tianlong and Huxian quickly appeared beside him.

“Whoah, what happened to them?” Huxian said.

Xing Tianlong knelt down next to one of the corpses and pressed his hand against surprisingly hard skin. “This is yin poisoning. But what’s with those crystals…”

“It looks like whoever did this is feeding those crystals with their corpses,” Huxian said.

“All their storage creatures are still there,” Cha Ming said.

Huxian zipped over and retrieved three such treasures. “We’re missing two.” Then his eyes brightened. “Give me a second, I thought of something!” His Demon-Dao domain spread out and began to feel at their surrounding space much like a surgeon who’d lost his scalpel in a cadaver. “Thought so!” He made a grabbing motion and attracted two specks of unstable gray light, which he then covered in a layer of spatial seals to delay their disintegration.

“What are those?” Cha Ming asked.

“You ever wonder what happens when someone with a soul bound treasure space dies? Or when someone crushes a storage ring?” Huxian asked. “Most people think they get lost in the void, but this is what happens.

“Storage spaces are hard to find, but for me, it’s a piece of cake. The only problem is that they’re damaged, so I’ll need a few hours to figure how to pry them open.”

“Five Heartforge Tokens,” Xing Tianlong said, kicking one of the corpses. “Three iron, one bronze, one silver. What a waste.” He tentatively tapped his own invitation medallion to one of them. Then his eyes widened as it disintegrated then combined with his own.

Cha Ming’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Me neither,” Xing Tianlong said. “But I just obtained two hundred thousand points just now. You try it.”

Cha Ming placed his clear medallion to one of the iron-ranked ones. The same phenomenon repeated itself. The invitation medallion scattered like the one before. “Eighty thousand here.”

“Fifty thousand,” Huxian said, pulling his own medallion back. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m thinking this so-called second phase might not be so peaceful.”

“I believe the rules specifically state that fighting outside the simulation arena is not permitted on the Twin Mountains,” Xing Tianlong said.

“Which this clearly isn’t,” Cha Ming pointed out. “Moreover, have you noticed a distinct difference between their tokens and ours?”

Xing Tianlong picked up the last one. “They’re dull. Lifeless. I remember us trying to steal points form each other just to test it out. Never worked.”

“No one was evil enough to try killing someone to force the issue, it seems,” Cha Ming said. “It makes one wonder. Will this next phase be in another environment where fighting to the death is allowed? Does that mean that things like extortion and coercion might happen as well? It really puts the Heartforge Realm in a terrible spotlight.”

Their conversation was cut short as Petros and Wei Longshen arrived. “Gentlemen, we have a problem. I identified what was in those eggs.”

“And?” Xing Tianlong asked.

“Hydras,” Wei Longshen whispered. “Spirit devouring lightning hydras, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Then what we fought…” Was probably a baby.

Cha Ming shivered as the chill in the room deepened, and they realized that they were not alone in the darkness. It shivered again when a poisonous mist began to cover their feet and leech away their energy. “I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t fight like this. I could use my battlefield painting, but it’s not in good shape.”

“I was trying to conserve energy, but I suppose I’ll have to give some up and be useful for once,” Xing Tianlong said. His eyes began to glow, one blue and one red, and his domain materialized around them. One half was made of blue yin lightning, and the other red yang flame. The blue lightning condensed into a sphere and became a moon, while the red flame formed a small sun. The domain spread out, and the two spheres shot into the air and illuminated the entire cave.

“Holy mother of…” A creature half as tall as the cave appeared as the darkness receded. “How did it even get in here?” Huxian said. His question was immediately answered when the massive spirit devouring lightning hydra, several times larger than the child they’d fought, broke apart into nine large lighting serpents. Its body melted into a pool of yin lightning that filled the entire floor.

“Longshen! Petros!” Cha Ming shouted. He immediately painted a cage of yang energy around them to chase away the lightning, as well as the poison that was trying to invade their bodies.

“I’m fine,” Petros said. The black veins of yin energy that had been invading his body previously retreated as his demigod-like body began to heal him using Jezeriah’s divinity. As for Wei Longshen, he seemed completely untouched by it.

“This is going to be difficult without my spectral army,” Wei Longshen said. Alas, all he could do was fight, so he raised his flute and began to play warm music. Memories of a better time filled their hearts and chased away the energy that sought to exterminate all things positive in their body, including their life force.

His music combined with Xing Tianlong’s Sun and Moon Domain Technique and reinforced it. The room was now fully lit, and their terrain disadvantage was effectively nullified. Wei Longshen then flew into the air to tangle with yin lightning serpent headed their way and blasted it with sonic and wind attacks.

“Clear Sky, could you give some platforms?” Petros asked. Thanks to the sun and moon, Cha Ming had already filled the entire cave with his Sky Canvas Domain and was easily able to paint a few dozen platforms several dozen meters up for Petros to hop around on and avoid the singular lightning serpent that had marked him as prey.

Two lightning serpents were currently chasing Huxian. He was trying very hard to set up a trap, but these lighting serpents were much faster and much wiser than the juvenile lightning hydra they’d fought before.

That left five lightning serpents. Xing Tianlong was able to hold out his own against no less than three of them. In fact, his Sun and Moon Domain seemed to be greatly damaging them. They wanted to flee, but unfortunately for them, he seemed to be wielding a spiritual attack that forced them to attack his heavily fortified position.

Unfortunately, his spear seemed to do little damage to them. Their defences and resistances were much higher than their previous opponent.

Cha Ming cursed his misfortune. Handling two lighting serpents was easy enough, but they wouldn’t win this just by surviving. The yin poison in the room and the sea of lightning on the ground would eventually wear away at their energy stores.

He could only sigh and use lightning form to pull away from the two lightning serpents and take out his damaged battlefield scroll. A mulberry tree with two phoenixes and a heartwarming sunset filled the cave, further reinforcing the sun portion of Xing Tianlong’s domain.

The moment he summoned the painting, it clashed with the yin lightning in the room and began fraying at the edges again. At this rate, they only had a few minutes before the structure in the painting collapsed, and Cha Ming lost his masterpiece. “Stupid danger zones. Stupid decisions.” The hydra was undoubtedly a rank 13 monstrous demon. That was the equivalent of the middle of the fusion realm.

We only have a few things that can pierce its defences…Cha Ming thought. He danced around the two lightning serpents as they caught up to him and shot down to the ground. He shifted to Sand Rune Form and began to generate Sand Runes, both passively and by attacking.

This did not immediately change the battle situation. It would buy him time and opportunities. Sand Rune Form had the best defence, and offensive Sand Runes were especially crippling when enough of them stacked up, not to mention Sand Rune Strike and Sand Rune Constriction.

“They’re about to do something!” Petros shouted. But too late.

Six blasts of lighting came Cha Ming’s way, and he had no time to dodge. His Sand Rune Defence was not up to snuff, since not enough time had passed from him to split away enough sand runes, but it was enough that he could resist.

He smashed the lightning apart with an earthen staff, and Sand Rune Defence drank up a fraction of the residual damage while the rest of it struck him and blew apart his body. His inner world shook as he lost over half of his vitality in an instant. He was destroyed, regenerated, and destroyed again several times in quick succession, and he realized too late that this attack had a secondary target – his painting. The explosion of yin lighting tore a hole in his battlefield painting, causing it to rupture and degrade to the point that Cha Ming could no longer retrieve any ink from it. It hurt his heart to see it.

The phoenixes on the painting wept, and the mulberry tree and the sun began to bleed ink. “Damn it all!” Cha Ming said. “Accumulate!” What remained of the painting formed a small ball of compressed ink, which he shot towards one of the two lightning hydras near Huxian. “Erupt!” It was the equivalent of exploding a half functional middle rune gathering grand formation in someone’s face, an effective tactic if enough materials were involved. It was also the same as sacrificing a piece of his heart.

As expected, the explosion blew one of the lightning serpents backwards, and Huxian, who had been waiting for an opportunity for quite a while, executed a sneak attack.

“Eat void rift!” Huxian shouted as he tore open space. Tens of super-imposed fissures appeared in the lightning serpent’s trajectory, reducing its body to bloody blue paste.

Said paste tried to reconvene with its main body, but Cha Ming was ready for this. Already, he’d painted a few thousand strokes with what remained of his yang fire ink to obstruct it. Yin and Yang hissed and sizzled as they annihilated one another, and finally, the head was completely destroyed.

“Eight to go,” Cha Ming muttered. He didn’t have another battlefield painting to sacrifice. But on the bright side, Huxian was much freer. He was currently lobbing void blade grenades while kiting his second lightning dragon.

“We’re losing the stamina game,” Xing Tianlong warned. “It’s feigning weakness to win in the long run.”

“Yeah, but what can we do about it?” Huxian said.

“We need to use our limit breaking abilities,” Wei Longshen said. He released the seal on an accumulation of yin energy on his forehead, while Xing Tianlong began to burn his divinity. Petros used a two-fold angelic soul burn ability as well.

Huxian usually refrained form igniting his blood essence, but in this situation, he couldn’t help but do so.

As he ignited his blood essence, Huxian also summoned his manifestation. The phantom of an Eight Directions Fox Emperor appeared behind him. It wasn’t as large as the bagua fox in the past, but its six tails and the powers they represented twisted the energy in the room to attack all eight remaining lighting serpents from seven dimensions.

Realizing the threat he posed, one lightning serpent forced itself away for Xing Tianlong, and another from Petros. It was now three against one, a lethal attack considering his cultivation base – until he shed his human form. Glasslike armor appeared all over his fox body with six tails as he assumed a pseudo fusion transformation.

Cha Ming wished he could break his own limit, but his injuries prevented him. His soul was having a hard enough time defending against the yin lighting in the room. He thanked his lucky stars he hadn’t cheaped-out on a soul defence artifact.

Too weak, Cha Ming thought. My attacks are too weak. And their time was running out.

Soulburn and limit break techniques were great, but they put you on a timer. They seemed to have the upper hand, but the mother lightning hydra would win as long as it could last it out. And even if they did win, they’d be exhausted to the point that if another enemy stepped in, they were done for.

Petros also seemed to realize this issue. Sine he had one less lightning serpent to worry about, he decided to pus himself to the limit. Not just with his soul burn technique, but with his core. Cha Ming could see the internal battle raging, and not just the bleeding from his eyes, his mouth, and his ears.  But it was working, and his attacks were starting to cause serious damage. And that damage was increasing over time.

Cha Ming decided to change up his strategy in light of Petros’s breakthrough. “You attack, I’ll defend,” he said, appearing beside him.

Then Cha Ming’s body transformed. His Sand Rune Form didn’t vanish, but elements of his other forms appeared until he became an amalgamation of the five elements.

He began to passively burn through divinity as though he was using a limit break technique. His body became partially clear as the five elements reached some kind of balance. And the runes he was splitting off were no longer sand runes, but something known as Clear Runes. These runes were the core of Clear Rune Battle Art, and this was the battle art’s fifth technique: Clear Rune Transformation.

Cha Ming’s goal was not to attack, however, but to be the best meat shield that he could be. His goal was to defend Petros until he broke the shackles in his core. So to that end, he grew until he was fifty meters tall. In this form, he would be easier to hit and slower, but he would strike with much greater power.

Most importantly, however, he would attract the hydra’s attention.

The Clear Sky Brush was working overtime painting layer after layer of runic defence around Petros and shielding his presence. There were now multiple lightning dragons focusing on them, and it was only thanks to the clear runes that appeared beside him, allowing him to channel great strength into each staff strike and to diffuse some of their attacks that kept him going.

The clear runes also had a passive effect – they were, in reality, superimposed a lesser version of Flame Rune, Grass Rune, Sand Rune, Lake Rune, and Steel Rune, and therefore imposed all these crippling effects on his enemies.

The lightning serpents were a single entity, and as such weren’t stupid. They saw that the threat Cha Ming posed would keep increasing the more runes he generated. But at the same time, they also recognized the threat that Petros posed. Now that he could relax as he shot each arrow, he could divert even more of his attention towards his true goal: using danger to force open more seals on his core!

“Don’t worry about anything Petros, I’ve got you covered,” Cha Ming said. A lightning filled tail swung towards Petros, but Cha Ming used Clear Rune Step to block the way, but was knocked backwards several metres. Another lightning serpent used the gap to attack Petros with its lightning breath but found Cha Ming had returned to his original location, and the Clear Sky Brush had already painted him a shield.

Cha Ming’s painted defences were finally completed. The last thing Cha Ming could do was paste five poetic talismans on Petros before diverting the Clear Sky Brush’s free-form painting to obstruct the lighting serpents more directly.

“To me!” Cha Ming said, pulling back his lighting sparrows. They hovered around Petros to serve as extra sacrificial lives. Arrows came flying out from behind them, and now, they were powerful enough to blow away chunks from the lighting serpents. Combined with his painted void arrows, they were now causing even more damage than Xing Tianlong was capable of.

The yin lightning serpents tried again. Two lighting sparrows exploded to slow them, buying Cha Ming just enough time to place himself in front of Petros yet again.

They became incensed. This was too much from a single combatant, and Petros’s arrows were getting increasingly frightened. So they breathed in to unleash a blast of liquid lightning.

“Clear Rune Defense!” Cha Ming suddenly shouted, and a dozen of clear runes he’d accumulated tightened to form a barrier of destructive energy around him. Activating them in this way meant sacrificing the clear runes he’d produced thus far, starting him back at square one, but to buy Petros more time, it was worth it.

Petros did not disappoint. Cha Ming’s tenacious defence had brought him the time he needed. There was a pulse in the room as suddenly, something cracked, and an aura gushed out from Petros. An arrow unlike anything he’d ever unleashed shot out at one of the lightning serpents, striking it in the head and blowing it backwards.

It was a skill. Or… was it? Cha Ming couldn’t tell, because that skill wasn’t using mana. It did not have that feeling of Jezeriah’s divinity. Instead, it felt like… “Qi?” Yes, qi. Petros was now using qi, and his attacks were now several times stronger.

The serpents immediately realized the threat Petros posed and began evasive maneuvers. But Cha Ming wouldn’t make it so easy for them. He didn’t have clear rune anymore, but he had his Wrappings of Runic binding. He sent one out to each of them and also summoned the Nine Sky Seals and pressed it down upon them. Nine-colored light joined with the sun and the moon and concentrated their essence on the two lightning serpents.

It didn’t hold them long. Cha Ming did not have a sealing technique, and his Wrappings of Runic binding were not a good divine ability to use against a creature this much more powerful than him. But they were enough to buy a third of a second before the seal shattered and the wrappings broke.

Petros’s rain of arrows intensified, and soon, he had the two lightning serpents completely occupied. So Cha Ming decided a little retaliation was in order. He summoned the Clear Sky Brush in large form and began to paint, executing Raging Waves of the Inky Sea, Searing Sands of the Sacred Desert, and Dazzling Light of the Weeping Flame. Hidden Might of the Verdant Crossroads and Dissonant Sound of the Sacred Symphony followed. “Descent of the Five Sovereigns!” The five painted techniques fused into one and blasted one of the two paralyzed yin lighting serpents.

Half its demonic flesh was immediately blasted away, and Petros, not one to miss an opportunity, fired three arrows into its wounded body and disintegrated most of its power. The other lightning dragon tried to flee, but Cha Ming’s Descent of the Five Sovereigns wasn’t over, as the Sky Canvas Domain had given them persistence, so they still had enough energy for a half-powered attack.

“Just a little more…” Petros said. His aura surged and fired out a golden arrow that shattered all obstacles. A pulse of power far greater than before filled the room. A projection of Petro’s golden core appeared in that moment. His qi’s quality changed and took on properties of runes and laws.

A carving appeared in the core, then another, and another. This continued until the core had five carvings that gave it a feeling of unprecedented sharpness. Then a law rune descended, and it was followed by four others!

These laws runes purged away the last of Jezeriah’s influence before combining with his core’s carvings and establishing a domain. The arrow he unleashed in those few moments destroyed the second lightning dragon, forcing the remaining six to pull back together and assume full yin hydra form.

“I think it’s mad,” Huxian said, popping up beside Cha Ming. “You look terrible, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Cha Ming said. He didn’t have a lot left in him. “I think you’re in the wrong place though.”

“No, I think I’m in the right place,” Huxian said.

The room trembled as the hydra roared, unleashing a dual lightning and sonic attack. The sonic component found itself instantly countered by Wei Longshen, tough the backlash sent the soul piper flying backwards, unconscious.

“It burnt its bloodline,” Huxian said solemnly. “As expected. Tianlong!”

“On it!” Xing Tianlong replied. The hydra was brimming with explosive energy, but Xing Tianlong still chose to jump out and meet it. His aura surged with the indomitability of an emperor. It came bearing down on the yin lightning hydra as he channeled ever ounce of strength in his body and core and soul into the second form of his Dragon Phoenix Combination.

Ultimately, he too was sent flying, but he managed to create a hole in the hydra’s defences. “Wish me luck,” Huxian said. He appeared in front of the staggering hydra’s torso. His six tails struck out like daggers and pierced into its body, locking it in space.

The lightning hydra was clearly angered by this turn of events, but it wasn’t as silly as its dead child. It knew exactly who the greater threat in this situation was – Petros! Now that it was locked in space, it was like a fish trapped in a barrel!

All six remaining heads joined together to execute a terrible breath attack towards the archer. Huxian was too far out, and Xing Tianlong and Wei Longshen had already been push away.

That left only Cha Ming. He knew he’d regret it, but he split off an incarnation. A searing pain wracked his soul as he ripped himself in half and sent that half to execute a suicide attack against the blast of lighting. Half his divinity, half his qi, both of which didn’t have much remaining, vanished. More importantly, half his spiritual energy vanished as well, and the sudden loss made his vision go black.

“I’ve got this,” Petros said. He knocked three arrows and pulled them back, and a thick qi filled him. Cha Ming felt something like sword intent coming from him as his domain changed shape and focused on a single point, Petros channeled all five of his runes into this single attack.

He released the three arrows and send them crashing into the hydras. They were the same painted void arrows as before, and as such pierced straight through the void and appeared directly in front of the immobile hydra’s torso. They blasted open a hole, exposing its core, and Huxian, already in position, lobbed a void blade bomb in the hole and took cover.

The hydras was blasted apart. Body parts flew all over the room. The hydra, tenacious as it was, tried to reassemble, but Petros did not allow it. Arrow after arrow came raining down on the hydra’s remnants. Each arrow was filled with deadly piercing power and precision. Chan Ming’s eyes narrowed when he realized that these arrows weren’t just striking random points – they were seeking and destroying the fragments of the creature’s core, which was apparently able to pull itself back together!

This, Cha Ming realized, was a bow cultivator. One who’d broken his limit and was spending everything he had in an all-out attack. Cha Ming was a Dao God, so he held a lot in reserve for safety and close combat and endurance, but Petros did not.

Petros only had two specialities: perception and pure, single-targeted offense. He used both to the extreme, and this might was something that was difficult to oppose.

But everything had a price. After unleashing only twenty arrows, Petros was spent. Every ounce of power within him had been wringed out. His work was done, however – the core was completely annihilated, leaving only the corpse for Huxian to collect in stasis.

The cave was no longer as dark now. A blue glow filled the room. The looked up and saw hundreds of thousands of tribulant yin crystals, which often grew in these caves. Yet just looking at them, Cha Ming could tell that none of them had what he was seeking. How unlucky could he possibly be?

The first thing they did was spend several ours under time acceleration to recover their energies. As they were, a single rank 12 monster would be able to wipe out their entire party.

“Unlucky,” Cha Ming muttered. “These caves were basically a net loss. Unless those storage rings had anything useful?”

“I’m afraid not,” Petros said. “I looked them over. There’s maybe two hundred thousand points across all three of them? That being said, I wouldn’t say the trip wasn’t worth it.” He nodded towards the ceiling where the hundreds of thousands of crystals were hanging.

“They’re just tribulant yin crystals. Worthless,” Cha Ming said.

“Not this kind, actually,” Xing Tianlong said. He’d made a trip up to the ceiling and retrieved one of them. It was lighting blue and currently disintegrating.

Cha Ming frowned. “Is that yin lightning?” He sighed and shook his head. “Of course it’s yin lightning. That’s why none of them have a life extinguishing spirit needle.”

“I’d imagine yin lightning crystals are quite valuable,” Wei Longshen said, walking over. “The concentration of yin lightning energy inside those crystals is quite high.” Then he sighed. “If only they were stable.”

“Paydirt!” Huxian suddenly shouted. He appeared beside the four of them.

“Did you find anything?” Cha Ming asked.

Huxian grinned. “I managed to stabilize those storage spaces. Remember all those places that should have had treasures and didn’t?” Their jaws dropped as he pulled out box after box after box. Some of them were destroyed, but many were still intact. “Stupid collapsing storage spaces.”

Then his eyes widened when he saw the disintegrating crystal in Wei Longshen’s hand. “Hey, is that a huge yin lighting crystal?”

“Apparently,” Cha Ming said. “There’s a ton of them up on the cave ceiling, but stability is an issue.”

“For you guys,” Huxian said, rubbing his hands together. “But with me? Not a problem. Stasis, remember? And you’ve even got a realm treasure to transport the stuff. Alchemists and craftsmen will be all over us for these things.”

“Still… no life extinguishing spirit needles,” Cha Ming grumbled.

“Who cares?” Huxian said. “With the stuff we found in those two storage spaces, and these tribulant yin crystals we’re rich!”

“You mean…”

“I never paid much attention before, but I do recall there being a hefty bounty on yin lightning crystals,” Petros said. “I also recognize a lot of what’s in these boxes. How many points did you say you needed?”

“Two million,” Cha Ming said. “I’m halfway there.”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Petros said. “If I’m guessing correctly, we should be able to walk out of here with an extra two million points each, counting the personal items Longshen and Tianlong took.”

Cha Ming could barely believe his ears. At this point, he’d gotten so used to hearing bad news that he could barely process good news any longer. “Finally, some good luck,” he said. That was when the earth started shaking, and four pairs of angry eyes trained their gazes on him.

“Cha Ming, you just had to say something,” Huxian said. “Quick! It’s not too late to harvest!” He pulled all the loot inside his own storage space and flew up to the ceiling and began pulling out the yin crystals. This only worsened the situation, and large, glassy boulders began to fall. “Get up here, all of you. We’re going to harvest for three minutes, no matter what, and when we’re done, we’ll activate those stupid talismans.”