Beneath the splintered wooden floor, tucked inside a shallow recess, lay a white bead. Its material looked half like jade, half like glass, resting there in utter silence.
After staring at it for a few moments, Xu Yuan quickly matched both its appearance and its function to one of the many heavenly treasures listed in Azure Point, a Source Crystal.
It was something like a spirit stone from the usual cultivation worlds. That said, compared to a spirit stone, a Source Crystal was closer to a condensed spiritual spring, the kind of thing entire sects would fight over. It was an even higher-grade treasure than the whole pool of spirit liquid currently sitting inside Xu Yuan's Sumeru Ring.
But that was not the real issue here. The real issue was why a treasure of this level would be sitting inside Xu Changge's flying pavilion.
Source Crystals were every bit as rare as the Snakeheart Lotus produced by the Seven Life Python. Unlike the Snakeheart Lotus, whose value came from its unique effect, a Source Crystal was pure, hard currency in treasure form, a genuine miracle item that could steadily accelerate cultivation. The sort of thing everyone wanted and nobody could buy.
At that thought, Xu Yuan suddenly remembered the purple-black ring Xu Changge had worn on his left hand earlier.
So Xu Changge clearly had a Sumeru Ring of his own. If that was the case, why leave something this precious behind instead of taking it with him?
Xu Yuan rose in silence and began circulating his cultivation art again, gathering back the energy that had been shaken loose by the rebound. Then he walked toward the broken floorboards. When he got close, he stared at the Source Crystal for a long while before bending down to pick it up.
But the moment his hand came within about a foot of it, an invisible force, something like the repulsion of a magnet from his previous life, gently but firmly pushed his hand away.
Xu Yuan frowned. He poured source qi into his Sumeru Ring and sent out his soul sense, intending to snatch the thing from a distance and store it directly inside the ring.
The result was exactly the same. That invisible repulsive force shoved his soul sense away as well.
Xu Yuan fell silent. So that’s why I was thrown back just now. But what exactly was that force? A protective formation around the Source Crystal?
The thought flashed through his mind, and his frown deepened. Xu Yuan pushed his cultivation art to its limit, funneled every last strand of source qi in his body into his left hand, braced himself against that formless resistance, and forced his hand downward again.
His palm pressed lower and lower, but after managing only another two centimeters or so, the meager amount of source qi in his body was already running dry.
BUZZ! His left hand was flung back. The force was so strong that Xu Yuan, half-crouched on the floor, lost his balance and dropped onto his backside.
He sat there in silence, staring at the Source Crystal in the recess for several breaths. Then he got up, dusted off his robe, and with a faint laugh went back to sit on the bed.
Xu Changge had known perfectly well that he possessed an Innate Dao Physique and would be able to sense this thing, yet he had still left the treasure right under his nose.
And the formation protecting it was so crude that, with Xu Yuan's current innate constitution, as long as he cultivated diligently, he would absolutely have a chance to break it and walk away with the prize. It appeared his eldest brother was taking the scenic route to give him a treasure.
During the trip to Stillwater aboard the black eagle, Xu Yuan spent every hour cultivating except for the two or three hours of sleep he absolutely needed each day.
Running the same cultivation art day and night was mind-numbingly dull, but every time he watched the source qi inside his body pile up at a visible rate, that little burst of positive feedback washed the boredom right away.
All the usual limits that plagued beginner cultivators simply did not exist for him under the overwhelming blessings of throwing money at the problem.
The knowledge of the ancients really did hold true. When a person was not strong enough, the reason was often very simple. They simply didn’t spend enough.
Rare pills went down one after another. Their various medicinal effects not only sped up Xu Yuan’s cultivation, but also let him train for long stretches without damaging his meridians.
Time meant nothing in cultivation.
The Great Flame Empire was vast beyond reason. A single province could stretch for tens of thousands of miles. But the black eagle flew with terrifying speed and barely needed rest.
After who knew how many days, a majestic giant city finally appeared on the horizon within the eagle's sight.
With a long cry from the black eagle, Xu Yuan slowly opened his eyes from where he sat cross-legged by the bed. He lowered his gaze to his hand, a trace of confusion in his eyes.
Just now, while circulating his cultivation art and drawing in source qi, he had felt as though something inside his body had been punctured. It broke with a crisp little pop. After a brief moment of thought, he guessed that he had probably broken through some kind of bottleneck.
Well, that was suspiciously easy… So where does that put me now? Xu Yuan mused to himself. Unfortunately, Ran Qingmo had only taught him the basics of cultivation, so for the time being he had no way of knowing what level he had reached after breaking through.
After all, the cultivation system in this world could hardly be measured by the numeric levels from Azure Point, could it?
He reined in his thoughts. None of that was a real problem. He could just grab someone later and ask. No point wasting time trying to puzzle it out on his own.
With that in mind, Xu Yuan looked again at the large hole in the floor. Now that he had broken through, he could try once more to take out that Source Crystal.
Thinking this, he got off the bed, walked to the recess, and crouched down. Staring at the Source Crystal, that thing which looked half like jade and half like glass, Xu Yuan took a deep breath and began circulating his cultivation art.
Knock! Knock! Knock! At that exact moment, someone was at the door. Ying'er's slightly muffled voice came through from outside.
“Third Young Master…”
“Get lost.” Xu Yuan did not even think before firing back with vitriol.
Ever since Ying'er had shown killing intent toward him, this had been his attitude with her. Bringing him medicinal food? Not eating it. Get lost. Passing on a message from Xu Changge? Not listening. Get lost.
The more Xu Yuan sifted through the Third Young Master's memories, the more thoroughly he understood the way that man had behaved. He had been an absurdly arrogant, overbearing young master, but underneath it all, he had also been insecure to the bone. He could beat a man half to death in the street just because a passerby had jokingly said to a friend, Look, that’s the Third Young Master of the Chancellor's Manor. Heh.
In those memories, Xu Changtian had not always wanted to be like this. But after living for years in the shadow cast by his two older brothers, his personality had long since twisted out of shape. The things he could never achieve no matter how desperately he tried were, to those two brothers of his, little more than casual gestures.
Compared with his brothers, both dragons among men, Xu Changtian was just ordinary. Not even outstandingly ordinary either, more like painfully average. Everyone's expectations, everyone's disappointment, and everyone's mockery… if that had been all, then years of inferiority might have produced nothing worse than a withdrawn child who shut himself off from the world.
But Xu Changtian had tasted power early. It came from his father's position as the Chancellor. And it all started with one conflict at the academy when he was ten. At the academy, the other boys loved to mock him by comparing him to his two brothers. After enduring it day after day, year after year, Xu Changtian had finally snapped and argued back.
That morning, after class ended, he got into a physical fight with them. There were too many of them. They had all started martial training early. Xu Changtian, only ten years old, was pinned to the ground, his head stomped underfoot, beaten senseless while they laughed and mocked him the whole time.
Curled up in the middle of that crowd with his head in his arms, he felt pain crashing in from all sides, along with a kind of blank, helpless despair. When they were done, those boys still swaggered off only after shouting, If you dare mouth off again, we will beat you every time we see you.
After returning to the Chancellor's Manor, Xu Changtian hid himself in his room. He was afraid… afraid that if he went back to the academy, those people would drag him back into that same nightmare. Toward dusk, while he drifted in and out of a hazy sleep, the old steward suddenly knocked on his door and told him that people from the academy had come to see him outside the manor.
That one sentence blasted away every trace of drowsiness. Panic and unease swallowed him whole. No matter what anyone said, he refused to go out. But the old steward did not give up. He kept patiently coaxing him until Xu Changtian finally followed him, trembling all the way to the front gate.
There, beneath the evening sun shining over the street, what Xu Changtian saw was not the bullies who had beaten him during the day. What he saw was a row of quails on their knees, shaking with fear.
Those boys who had looked so vicious before, who had jeered at him and sworn they would beat him again, were now kneeling outside the Chancellor's Manor together with their parents, all of them shrinking in terror like a flock of quails waiting for the knife.
At that moment, as the setting sun over the Imperial Capital slowly sank below the horizon, the evil in Xu Changtian's heart began to sprout and spread.
SMACK! By the time his thoughts reached that point, Xu Yuan had already pushed through that enormous repulsive force and seized the Source Crystal in the recess. In his narrow eyes flickered… something complicated.