For a moment, Lin Xuan felt the urge to retreat.
After all, no matter how tempting a treasure was, one had to be alive to enjoy it.
Lin Xuan had always understood that truth.
Only fools would do something like choosing money over life.
If a person was dead—even had his soul extracted and spirit refined—then what use would any number of treasures be?
That principle was very simple.
Lin Xuan thought of backing down, but the thought merely flashed through his mind.
Then Lin Xuan shook his head and rejected it.
It was not that he could not bear to part with the treasure.
Rather, this matter was far too strange.
As the saying went, even if one had never eaten pork, one had at least seen a pig run. True, he had never crossed hands with a mid-stage Dongxuan cultivator before, but that did not mean Lin Xuan truly knew nothing about them.
If he had never faced one in person for practice, there were still books from which he could understand more than enough.
Lin Xuan asked himself whether he had read widely through countless books; he had even found time to browse one by one through many ancient texts he had collected. As for the strength of mid-stage cultivators, he had also made conjectures and assessments.
The conclusion he had drawn was that he could not defeat one, but he would absolutely not collapse at the first touch like this.
Lin Xuan was confident in this conclusion. After his complex calculations, it ought to be correct. For the conclusion to be wrong, unless those ancient texts were all scribbling nonsense—but that was clearly impossible.
Such strength completely suppressed him. Even a cultivator who had reached great success in the mid stage absolutely could not do this.