Autumn Cicada Talisman

Not a single person from Ten Thousand Eternity Commerce remained; only two servants guarded the main entrance, with no one watching over these Corpse Collectors at all...

So naturally, everyone felt that the Tricky Ring around their necks was purely a safety measure on their part, and that their lives were not in danger...

Before long, the corpses they had painstakingly arranged were once again scattered in disarray.

A few Corpse Collectors who had earlier shown disdain for the dirty work now pulled out their own tools and began searching the bodies for tattoos, peeling off the skin from the selected tattooed areas...

These bastards might not look like much, but once they got serious at what they were good at, they gave off a feeling that made one scrape the eyes and look. Peeling, drying, shaping, and then tanning with medicinal liquid—after a whole chain of steps, those pieces of tattooed human skin became like Human Skin Maps passed down for hundreds or thousands of years, even looking a bit clearer than when they were on the corpses...

But Qin Yang glanced a few times and stopped paying much attention. The clarity of these Human Skin Maps was really too poor; aside from the general outline being fine, the details, at best, barely scraped the threshold of high definition, while the map in his mind was at least starting from Blu-ray...

The gap was not small at all...

But right now, Qin Yang had no mood to care about that. After these bastards peeled off the skin, the already messy corpses looked even more chaotic.

Pockmarked Face gave a shout, and a group of people went into the house to start piecing together the map, leaving Qin Yang alone to continue the corpse-collecting work.

Qin Yang said nothing. As he collected the bodies, he searched for a while before barely finding a relatively intact corpse with a build about eighty percent similar to his own. He grabbed it casually and stuffed it into a Storage Bag he carried on him...

Time passed quickly. After nightfall, the group of excited fellows looked at the map they had only half-assembled and had to set it aside for now. They all rested in the Three Mountains Gang compound, since it was spacious and empty...

Once everyone had chosen their rooms, Qin Yang conveniently picked a side room at the edge of the group's quarters and settled in.

He placed a specially made Mind-Calming Incense stick on an incense burner and set it before the door. For mortals, this incense was as potent as a knockout drug, but for Qi-nourishing cultivators, it only served to calm the mind.

However, the formula was slightly different from ordinary Mind-Calming Incense...

After the incense burned, the curling blue smoke condensed without dispersing, lingering there, slowly spreading along the walls like a faint, unclear mist covering the room's surface.

Qin Yang closed the door. When snoring rose all around and everyone had fallen into deep sleep, he lifted his robe. On the inner side, dozens of Storage Bags hung densely packed—most of them looted from those ghostly creatures earlier, with a few being his own.

He took out four talismans and stuck them on the four walls of the room. Instantly, a faint ripple of power stirred, and the sounds from outside weakened by more than half, becoming faint and indistinct. If someone were listening from outside now, they would hear nothing from inside the room at all.

This talisman was called Autumn Cicada, the Autumn Cicada Talisman, named after the mournful chirping of autumn cicadas that had no strength left—a type of silencing talisman.

If used directly on a person, the sounds they made would dissipate. This was a high-grade item that those Running Three Mountains could use, but ordinary people couldn't afford it, as one talisman cost three to four hundred First Grade Spirit Stones.

Qin Yang hadn't known that the Autumn Cicada Talisman had other uses before. He only learned this after studying that Introduction to Talismans. Since the Autumn Cicada Talisman was a low-grade talisman, it naturally had flaws—when used, it inevitably produced spiritual power fluctuations, which to many things were as bright as a lantern...

But if activated in reverse along the talisman's path, the talisman's power wouldn't burst out all at once. Sticking it directly on the wall would trap the sound inside the room. The biggest advantage was concealment, with no residual spiritual power fluctuations afterward...

After confirming everything was fine, Qin Yang placed a hand on his Storage Bag. With a thought, a small cloth bundle fell into his hand. Opening it revealed a scattered collection of a dozen or so slender little tools.

These were all things he had prepared after learning that lock-picking skill back then. Unfortunately, he had never had a chance to use them. Now, his first use was on himself...

Reaching out to touch the Tricky Ring on his neck, Qin Yang slowly closed his eyes, feeling carefully. Then he took a thin needle from the cloth bundle and gently tapped it against the silver ring around his neck.

A faint ding ding ding sound rang out continuously. Qin Yang kept his eyes closed, sensing quietly. After a moment, he opened his eyes and took out three silver mirrors, placing them in front of him. Through the mirrors, he began to observe the silver ring on his neck with his eyes.

The silver ring looked like interlocking iron rings stacked together, each ring resembling chainmail, woven from countless tiny, dense pieces. The whole thing was very delicate—definitely a high-precision item.

After a moment, Qin Yang took out a small, fine needle and gently pried at one point on the silver ring...

Instantly, a small hole appeared on the otherwise flawless silver ring, like a keyhole...

Seeing this, Qin Yang finally showed a hint of a smile and wiped the fine sweat from his forehead.

Since this Tricky Ring was extremely sensitive to True Essence, it had to be a purely mechanical structure—something those cultivators skilled in mechanisms used to show off.

In essence, it was thirty-six small interlocking locks connected together, with tiny mechanisms inside, so the distance between each ring would shrink daily...

Setting aside the explosion part, this thing was just a lock.

Out of the thirty-six small locks, you didn't need to open all of them—just one was enough. In fact, among these thirty-six locks, only one had a keyhole.

The hard part now was that this thing was too small. One wrong move and everything would be lost, drastically shortening the time between the locks. Even if it didn't explode, it would slowly strangle his neck...

By identifying the structure through sound, deducing by sight, and finding the keyhole, Qin Yang had basically confirmed it.

The reason this silver ring was called Tricky was that the most critical part was a miniature seven-piece puzzle lock the size of a fingernail. To open it, you had to find seven key points simultaneously and apply force at the same time.

Looking in the mirror, he took a thin needle, a curved spoon, platinum sheets, and iron wire, and slowly inserted them into the keyhole bit by bit. His fingers moved gently, constantly adjusting the angle.

After the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, fine sweat dripped from Qin Yang's forehead, but his body was as stiff as stone, unmoving. His chest even stopped rising and falling...

He held his breath, and with another gentle movement of his fingers...

A soft click was heard.

The silver ring on his neck split open from the middle, hanging around his neck like a dead silver snake.

Taking off the Tricky Ring, Qin Yang sat there, breathing heavily, but a faint smile tugged at his lips.

"Who would have thought that what saved me this time was the lock-picking skill I looked down on the most. I'll have to burn two sticks of Spirit Incense for that master thief later..."