Li Ban had obtained the power equipment he wanted and now planned to leave the Trash Realm.
The resources here were poorly suited to a Priest's development, and the realm itself would collapse in a few years anyway.
He just wasn't sure how long it would take to leave and reach a minor world where he could actually settle.
So he still needed to return to the Wizard World and ask around.
Before leaving the outer city, Li Ban entrusted someone to deliver a few things to the Northern Base.
Unable to take Nana and the others with him, he could only try to make their lives a little more comfortable.
Li Ban was currently just a Spirit Awakening Priest. Even his Cubic Heaven and Earth was only one cubic meter in size. Staying here was pointless; it was better to seek resources in other worlds.
Perhaps in a few years, he would have a way to help Nana and the others escape the impending disaster.
As for the Main Brain, Li Ban wasn't the real Director, nor was he certain its Flying Shuttle could pierce the world's barrier. Naturally, he wouldn't pin his hopes on it.
Delayed briefly at the Main Brain's location, he arrived to find the sky already dark.
He was in his own room. Outsiders assumed he was cultivating, so no one dared disturb him.
With no pressing duties and several higher-ranking Priests managing the overarching situation, all he needed to do was focus on his cultivation.
It felt a bit like being back in his school days.
However, after changing his clothes and stepping out of his bedroom, Li Ban found Deng Jun waiting in the courtyard.
The man moved fast—he had already changed into the distinctive uniform of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda.
Yanzhou was bitterly cold, so the clothing here was largely lined with fur.
Although Spirit Practitioners possessed stronger physiques than ordinary people, they still felt the heat and cold. Generally, only Level 4 Spirit Practitioners and above wore single-layer garments.
"My Lord!" Deng Jun stepped forward and cupped his fists.
"Has your identity been sorted out? Where is Shi Ming?"
"All handled. Young Master Shi boarded one of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda's outbound carriages; it seems he left on a mission."
'Starting so soon?'
"What do you need me for?"
Deng Jun lived here as well, acting as Li Ban's little lackey.
Although he had initially favored Shi Ming, arriving at the Unreturning Place made him realize that the Priests valued Li Ban far more. They essentially left Shi Ming to fend for himself, so Deng Jun naturally shifted his allegiance to Li Ban.
"There is a deputy layer master who calls himself Wang Ze here to pay his respects."
Li Ban hadn't met this deputy layer master yet today. The man had probably heard the news of his appointment and come to pay a formal visit.
"How long has he been waiting?" Li Ban didn't plan to socialize much with the other Spirit Practitioners, but an initial meeting was still necessary.
"A little under half a shichen. I told him you were cultivating and might not come out for a long while. He said he would wait for one shichen, and if you still hadn't emerged by then, he would return tomorrow."
Li Ban met with the deputy layer master named Wang Yang in the corner study of the small building.
As soon as he entered, he offered Li Ban a deep bow. "Greetings, Priest Ban."
Priest Jun's chosen title for Li Ban had already spread.
"You know of me?" Li Ban extended a hand, inviting him to sit.
Wang Yang perched just the edge of his rear on the long chair, his body leaning forward respectfully. "Yes, Lord Priest. The pagoda master specifically informed me of your true identity and instructed me to assist you with all matters within the pagoda."
Li Ban nodded. "You will continue to manage the affairs of the fifth layer on my behalf. I will double-check the elements and corpses, but you can make the decisions on everything else."
Wang Yang stood back up. "I wouldn't dare. This subordinate will definitely seek Your Lordship's final say."
"I don't have that much time." Li Ban didn't want to exchange bureaucratic pleasantries here, nor did he want to deal with a subordinate's cautious probing, so he spoke bluntly.
"Yes. In that case, this subordinate will only report major matters to Your Lordship and will not bother you with the rest."
As for what constituted a major matter and what counted as the rest, Wang Yang would just have to judge for himself.
He dreaded this kind of ambiguity the most, but there was nothing he could do about it.
The next day, Li Ban made another trip to the Myriad Ancient Pagoda.
He wasn't going for work, but to meet with Pagoda Master Qian Jing.
Pagoda Master Qian Jing was currently handling affairs on the eighth layer.
As the master of a pagoda, she rarely had a moment of leisure.
However, having served as a pagoda master at the Unreturning Place for over ten years, her spiritual rhinoceros was already full. Aside from occasionally replenishing it, she had no need to deliberately cultivate, so she naturally had the energy to manage the pagoda's affairs.
When Qian Jing saw Li Ban being led in by a subordinate, she dismissed her men and hurriedly stood up to salute him.
Beside Pagoda Master Qian stood a young girl with lively eyes, who followed suit and bowed alongside her.
"Priest Ban, this is my youngest daughter, Qian Lailai. Lailai is currently a Seventh Tier deputy layer master. She's actually not that young anymore; it's just that fusing with a certain element—"
"Mother!" Qian Lailai's expression changed, and she tugged at Pagoda Master Qian's sleeve. "There's no need to mention such irrelevant things to everyone you meet!"
After the introductions and pleasantries, Pagoda Master Qian revealed her true reason for summoning Li Ban.
"Although you are a layer master, Priest Ban, and don't need to personally handle corpses or dismantle elements, dismantling elements is a technique unique to the Myriad Ancient Pagoda. It's only proper that you learn the trick to it. Lailai is the most skilled at this, so I will have her demonstrate it for you in a moment."
Qian Lailai gave a deep curtsy, then led Li Ban into an adjacent side room.
Inside the room sat a coffin that had been prepared well in advance.
The entire coffin was carved from white jade. When the lid was removed, there wasn't the slightest stench of decay from within.
Qian Lailai stepped forward and slipped a carved jade thumb ring onto her thumb.
"Priest Ban, when the Myriad Ancient Pagoda inspects corpses or other unfused elements, we always use jade to assist our probing. The purer the jade, the more accurate the results."
She lifted the corpse's arm with her left hand and lightly glided the thumb wearing the jade ring over it, her fingertip never actually touching the body.
When her fingertip slid down to the deceased's fingers, Li Ban noticed a trace of black tinting Qian Lailai's jade thumb ring.
"We don't inject spiritual rhinoceros directly into the corpse, because doing so would cause it to be affected by the corpse's own residual spiritual rhinoceros, making it difficult to detect the element black holes hidden beneath."
"Element black holes?"
'That term sounds a bit modern.'
"Yes. After an element's master dies, the element will absorb as much spiritual rhinoceros from the master's body as possible to maintain its own vitality. Because of this, when we probe, we can normally find spiritual rhinoceros in other parts of the deceased's body, but the spiritual rhinoceros near the element itself is much sparser, or even completely absent."
"However, since the spiritual rhinoceros within the dead body has lost its controlling force, it flows like water, attempting to distribute itself evenly throughout the body. Because of this surging flow, there will actually be a slightly higher concentration of spiritual rhinoceros right near the element black hole."
"By injecting our own spiritual rhinoceros into this ring, which releases faint pulses of spiritual rhinoceros, we can probe the spiritual rhinoceros inside the corpse to determine if there is an element black hole underneath."
After locating the element in the corpse's hand, Qian Lailai took a small knife, cleanly sliced off the entire finger, and placed it into a nearby jade box.
"Living-type and creation-type elements are relatively easy to extract, but they are also easily damaged during combat or when their master dies, turning into waste elements. So, for the Myriad Ancient Pagoda, there are pros and cons to both."
"We soak and wash the dismantled elements in a spiritual rhinoceros pool until they reappear in a materialized form."
As Qian Lailai explained everything to Li Ban, she acted very mature, completely shedding the bashful demeanor she had shown earlier.
She was fully in work mode.
"Energy-type and mental-type elements are much harder to damage. However, if the element's spiritual rhinoceros is completely depleted at the moment of the master's death, it could still turn into a waste element."
"But energy and mental-type elements are harder to locate. Sometimes, even this common spiritual rhinoceros probing method can't detect them. And there's a risk that when we try to extract them using full spiritual rhinoceros coverage, it fails completely, reducing them to waste elements."
Qian Lailai furrowed her brow, seemingly troubled by this issue.
Listening to her explanation, Li Ban felt that his own method of extracting elements was far more convenient than the Myriad Ancient Pagoda's, with a much higher success rate to boot.
His wizard embryo fragment, which manifested as a system, clearly had a superior method for extracting elements—even if the success rate still wasn't a hundred percent.
"Aside from this method, are there any better ways to extract elements right now?"
Qian Lailai set down the box and shook her head at Li Ban. "This is it for now. Being able to do even this much is the result of the combined research of several Lord Priests."
She took off the jade thumb ring. "This is also a tool crafted by Priest Qian Que. Through it, we Spirit Practitioners can better control our spiritual rhinoceros. Otherwise, if we used the old traditional methods, the failure rate for finding and dismantling elements would be even higher."
"Is it the same for the Priests?"
Qian Lailai didn't know why Li Ban would ask her, a non-Priest Spirit Practitioner, such a thing. But considering Li Ban had probably only become a Priest recently, she figured he might not fully understand a Priest's abilities yet.
"It's roughly the same for the Lord Priests. However, the Lord Priests' fragments seem to be a bit more sensitive."
Li Ban crossed his arms, his fingertips drumming rhythmically against his bicep.
He was certain that when his system located and dismantled elements, the spiritual rhinoceros within his own body wasn't being used at all.
Looking at it this way, his method of extracting elements seemed completely different from both the Myriad Ancient Pagoda's and the other Priests'.
'My system seems to be more than just a wizard embryo fragment; it might also be connected to that miraculous Star River.'
Li Ban nodded. He could tell that Qian Lailai had been a little out of her depth when answering his last question, so he stopped pressing about success rates and went back to learning from her.
Over a full shichen, Li Ban watched Qian Lailai complete the entire process of handling the elements inside the corpse and extracting them from the severed limb. At the end, he even stepped up and tested it out himself.
After doing it himself, Li Ban became even more certain that his system's method differed completely from the Myriad Ancient Pagoda's.
Once the lesson was over, Qian Lailai presented Li Ban with a new jade thumb ring of even better quality.
Li Ban stored it away in his Cubic Space and quietly thanked her.
After seeing Li Ban out, Qian Lailai returned to her mother, Pagoda Master Qian Jing.
"Well? Did Priest Ban take an interest in you?"
Qian Lailai shook her head in disappointment. "If you hadn't brought up my age, I might have actually had a chance."
Pagoda Master Qian brushed it off. "When dealing with a Lord Priest, such things must naturally be made clear up front. Alas, judging by Priest Ban's demeanor, I'm afraid he's solely focused on cultivation. Finding a hopeless romantic among the Priests like your great-grandfather was is simply too difficult."