Vessel of Worlds

The fire python—formed from over twenty fire serpents—mercilessly engulfed the fleeing white-robed youth and all his multicolored defensive barriers, devouring everything in a single pass.

When the last motes of red light scattered, only a bulging storage pouch remained on the ground.

The yellow knife, its master gone, reverted to a sheet of yellow talisman paper and drifted down from the air. Before it touched the ground, Andy snatched it up with delight.

He examined the talisman treasure. The image of the yellow knife on its surface was still vivid and lifelike, though the yellow radiance it gave off was considerably dimmer than before. The earlier battle had clearly consumed a good portion of its sealed power.

Andy had no time for a closer study. He scooped up the storage pouch with practiced efficiency, tidied the scene of battle, then slapped on an Earth Escape Talisman and burrowed dozens of zhang underground before heading into the distance.

This fight had cost him a mid-grade spirit tool and nearly a hundred talismans—no small loss. But measured against what he had gained, it was nothing.

The thought brought a faint smile to Andy's face as he sat meditating deep underground, restoring his spiritual power with the high-grade spirit stone.

Beyond the hard-won talisman treasure, the white-robed youth's storage pouch was remarkably well stocked.

Not only did it contain seven or eight serviceable high-grade artifacts, but also an egg-sized pebble—ordinary in appearance yet scorching hot to the touch. On closer inspection, golden flame-like patterns pulsed within the stone, flickering ceaselessly. It was deeply unusual.

This was a Golden Flame Stone—a superb material for crafting fire-attribute dharma treasures and a specialty unique to the Golden Flame Kingdom. Some cultivators even believed the kingdom itself took its name from this very material.

The current Foundation Establishment Pill reward tasks included one for a Golden Flame Stone.

With this, he could easily trade for three Foundation Establishment Pills.

One other oddity in the storage pouch caught Andy's attention.

It was a palm-sized pale blue jade disc. One face was etched with directional markings like a compass; the other bore the image of a five-clawed golden dragon soaring among clouds. It appeared to be some kind of specialized detection or directional artifact.

Though he couldn't determine its purpose, Andy stored it carefully in a square jade box.

Of course, all of these paled beside the mysterious cloak the white-robed cultivator had called a dharma treasure remnant.

Andy ran his fingers lovingly over the semi-transparent cloak with its faint yellow luminescence. It felt warm and smooth—not like ordinary silk, not like beast hide, but rather like a thin sheet of soft jade.

He tried probing it with his spiritual sense. The instant his spiritual sense touched the cloak, it was inexplicably diverted elsewhere. If he hadn't been staring right at the cloak in his hands and had instead closed his eyes and relied on spiritual sense alone, he would never have detected the treasure mere inches away.

It redirected spiritual sense—seamlessly and undetectably. No wonder the white-robed cultivator had been able to stand just seven or eight zhang away without Andy sensing a thing.

Andy was planning to hide for several days without encountering a single cultivator. This cloak was exactly what he needed.

After restoring his spiritual power with the high-grade spirit stone, Andy found a random cave, draped the mysterious cloak over himself, and set about organizing his storage pouches.

His spoils had grown too numerous for a single pouch. He sorted and categorized everything, placing useful items and important treasures in one pouch and setting aside artifacts and materials of lesser value in another.

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That done, he pressed the jade slip containing the Hundred Crafts Manual to his forehead and began reading its contents with his spiritual sense.

The peak-grade artifact was flexible and powerful, but the spiritual power it consumed was simply too great. Spirit tools were far better suited to Andy's circumstances. Over the past several days, he had been immersed in studying spirit tool crafting methods. He planned to forge a batch of spirit tools as soon as he returned to the Great Void Sect.

The battle with the white-robed cultivator had genuinely shaken him. If he had encountered two elite disciples of that caliber back to back, Andy was certain things would have gone very badly.

It was no wonder, he reflected, that the survival rate for Dragon Descent Valley expeditions was so dismal. Even someone carrying as many unusual treasures as he did had been pressed this hard. An ordinary cultivator meeting an elite disciple like the white-robed youth would have had no chance at all.

Several days later, as Andy sat in the cave studying the Hundred Crafts Manual, he felt a faint ripple pass through the mysterious cloak. He smiled slightly. That meant a cultivator nearby was scanning the area with spiritual sense.

By his count, this had happened over twenty times in the past few days. Most of the probes were wild and aggressive—clearly searching for prey. Only a handful were cautious and measured, most likely cultivators checking for danger rather than hunting.

These final days were Dragon Descent Valley's last frenzy.

The ordinary thirteenth-layer disciples and cannon-fodder cultivators could be described in two words: nearly extinct. Even the peak thirteenth-layer cultivators who styled themselves as elites had suffered devastating losses.

Some elites who had yet to collect enough treasure no longer observed the unspoken rule of walking away from equally matched opponents. Instead, they chose to gamble everything in fights to the death.

With the mysterious cloak, Andy didn't even need to use his Concealment Technique. He sat out the crisis in perfect quiet.

Cultivators who lacked effective concealment and whose escape techniques were mediocre could rarely evade the elite disciples' hunts, no matter how carefully they tried to hide.

Andy calculated the time—exactly one month since entering the valley. On this day, the Foundation Establishment cultivators waiting outside would use the Seven Scales Grand Formation to open an exit at Peaceful Valley. Once he reached that exit, his Dragon Descent Valley expedition would be complete.

In good spirits, Andy was about to rise when another wave of spiritual sense rippled through the cloak. Another cultivator nearby.

But this time, something was strange. The probe was neither aggressive nor particularly powerful, yet after sweeping over the cloak, it did not redirect away as all the others had. Instead, it seemed to lock onto the cloak and plunged straight in. Andy immediately pushed his Concealment Technique to its absolute limit, suppressing every trace of his presence. After several breaths, the ripples on the cloak finally ceased. The mysterious spiritual sense had withdrawn.

Andy carefully extended his own spiritual sense outward, sweeping the area repeatedly. Within the two hundred-odd zhang his sense could cover, he detected no other cultivator.

Thoroughly rattled, Andy forced himself to wait another two hours inside the cave. Then, using an Earth Escape Talisman, he slipped underground and burrowed his way directly into Peaceful Valley.

Only when he was nearly at the exit did he emerge from the ground, wrapped in seven or eight defensive barriers of various colors. He could sense two cultivators a hundred or two hundred zhang away, apparently locked in combat, but he couldn't afford to worry about that. He sprinted straight for the dark, gaping exit—seven or eight zhang across.

The pitch-black tunnel revealed nothing inside, which set Andy's nerves on edge, but it proved mercifully short—only three or four zhang. At his speed, he burst through in an instant and emerged from Dragon Descent Valley. Dozens of cultivators in varied dress stood arrayed in seven groups near the exit, turning toward him with expressions ranging from surprise to derision, contempt, indifference, and delight.

"Junior Brother Zhao—you made it out safely! Well done!" A pleasant young woman's voice rang out. It was Golden Leaf Fairy, visibly pleased to see Andy emerge from the valley. Beside her stood a twelfth-layer Great Void Sect cultivator—the same junior brother who had fought alongside Andy and Golden Leaf Fairy against the Bitter Cold Flood Dragon.

"Thank you for your concern, Senior Sister!" Andy said, then took his place in the Great Void Sect's ranks.

"Your esteemed sect truly lives up to its reputation as the foremost in the Golden Flame Kingdom—three twelfth-layer cultivators survived Dragon Descent Valley's trials! One wonders what life-saving abilities these junior cultivators might possess." A thin, pale-faced mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator from the Hundred Spirits Sect directed the remark at the Great Void Sect group, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

The insinuation was clear: he assumed Andy and the others had been too cowardly to venture out, hiding in some remote corner the entire time and surviving through sheer timidity.

Andy let a flush of embarrassment color his face on cue—a tacit admission that the man's mockery was well-founded. As for the truth, he couldn't be bothered to explain. The more people underestimated him, the better it was for him.