The Burial Ground of Holy Soul Village's Soul Saint

Seeing no response from inside, Zhou Qing kicked the door open.

Bang!

The instant the door opened, Zhou Qing immediately retreated and dropped flat to the ground.

The entire sequence was completed in one smooth motion.

Tang San said speechlessly, "What are you doing?"

"What if there were traps inside?"

Zhou Qing raised his head. All he could see was dust hanging in the air, so he immediately stood up, patted the dust off himself, and said solemnly, "I was being cautious."

Ignoring Zhou Qing's antics, Tang San walked straight inside.

Traps?

As a former disciple of the Tang Sect, how could he fail to recognize them?

The only danger here was probably the sheer amount of dust. If one breathed too quickly, it might trigger a violent coughing fit.

Zhou Qing was a little embarrassed, but he still followed Tang San inside and looked around.

The interior of this "little castle" was really only slightly larger than his own home. It could roughly be divided into four areas: a kitchen, a bedroom, a study, and the living room where they currently stood.

On the bed in the bedroom, Zhou Qing found a skeleton. Its clothes had long since fallen apart, leaving behind only a small gray pouch. The bed, wardrobe, and other furnishings had also rotted away.

"Is this Holy Soul Village's Soul Saint?" Tang San lightly touched the bedside table. With a creak, it collapsed to the floor and shattered into pieces.

No matter how he looked at it, this did not seem like a place where anything valuable had been left behind.

Zhou Qing picked up the fist-sized Gray Pouch resting around the skeleton's waist. He squeezed it and found it quite soft, but no matter how he pulled at its opening, he could not tear it open.

A Storage Soul Tool!

That was the first thought that sprang into his mind.

From the books at home, Zhou Qing had learned something about Soul Tools. Everyday Soul Tools were fairly common among nobles and Soul Master families, but Storage Soul Tools were rare.

On the market, Storage Soul Tools were called "antiques." Every one of them was extremely valuable. Even a Storage Soul Tool with only half a cubic meter of space was worth more than ten thousand Gold Soul Coins!

Among the Soul Masters of Nuoding City, not one from either the Spirit Hall Branch or the City Lord's Mansion possessed a Storage Soul Tool. But there was one Soul Master in Nuoding City who had one: Yu Xiaogang.

Zhou Qing then handed the pouch to Tang San and asked, "Take a look. Can you open it? What's inside?"

Tang San took it, rubbed and squeezed it, and found that it really was soft. He guessed, "It should contain something like spices."

In Tang San's view, this was probably a local scented sachet from Douluo Continent, used to mask odors. It would contain fragrant herbs and be stuffed with something like cotton.

At any rate, it did not feel like there were Soul Coins inside.

"Still, this pouch is a decent size for holding Soul Coins," Tang San said as he began tugging at it, only to discover that the thing was remarkably sturdy.

"Hm?"

Tang San became interested. He took out a Bamboo Leaf Dart and began cutting at the cord around the pouch's opening. After scraping away for quite some time, a row of chips appeared along the dart's edge, yet the cord remained completely undamaged.

"It won't open?"

Zhou Qing naturally knew how to open it, and Tang San was the only person present who could do so. After all, Tang San possessed Internal Energy cultivated through the Mysterious Heaven Skill.

It was simply that Tang San had yet to realize Internal Energy was needed to open it. He was still trying to tear apart the Gray Pouch through brute force.

"This is troublesome." Tang San was puzzled. He could not understand why the pouch would not open, nor could he figure out why such a small pouch was so durable. Even if the pouch and cord had been woven from specially drawn strands of an exceptionally ductile metal, what sort of mechanism could be fitted inside such a soft pouch?

It was truly strange!

"Then I'll hold on to it for now." Zhou Qing took the pouch back and mused, "This might be a Soul Tool. Once we get back, help me look into it."

This gave Tang San a hint: opening the pouch required Soul Power—in other words, Internal Energy.

"That's all we can do." Upon hearing the words "Soul Tool," Tang San, just as Zhou Qing had expected, immediately realized that Internal Energy might be needed to open it. But he had not even awakened his martial soul yet. Suddenly using Internal Energy would probably violate the common sense of this world.

He needed an excuse...

Glancing at the skeleton on the bed, Tang San suddenly felt he could make use of it...

Throughout this process, Zhou Qing, who had been keeping an eye on Tang San, noticed his gaze lingering on the skeleton for a while. He could not help feeling relieved. Good. At least Tang San isn't planning to steal this little pouch from me later...

Zhou Qing then casually tossed the pouch onto a writing desk near the bedroom window.

Crack!

Like the bedside table from before, the desk had already decayed beyond use. Unable to withstand even that little disturbance, it snapped in two under the pouch.

Helplessly, Zhou Qing picked up the pouch and placed it on the windowsill. Then he called Tang San over, wrapped up the skeleton with him, carried it into the forest outside, dug a hole, and buried it.

"Senior Soul Saint of Holy Soul Village, we've buried you and let you rest in peace. In that case, your secluded retreat now belongs to us. If you don't answer, we'll take that as your agreement." Zhou Qing spoke with complete righteousness.

Tang San's eye twitched. He realized that he had somehow never noticed Zhou Qing's "shameless" side before.

But now that he was already aboard this pirate ship, he could only go along with it.

So Tang San knelt and kowtowed.

Zhou Qing was stunned by the sight. Why had I never noticed that Tang San was so stubborn?

But then Zhou Qing noticed that Tang San had been prostrating himself on the ground for a little too long.

"I thought I was already dramatic enough." Zhou Qing pulled Tang San to his feet, his expression strange.

"For that instant just now, my head felt a little dizzy. That senior seemed to have passed something on to me." Tang San frowned, then quickly relaxed and regained his calm. "But it's nothing. Maybe I was just hearing things."

"That sounds pretty mystical." Zhou Qing seemed to realize why Tang San had suddenly "gone crazy"—he was resorting to tales of gods and ghosts!

This made Zhou Qing's heart beat a little faster, but he kept himself under control and led Tang San back to the little house. They began cleaning, hauling out all the broken furniture.

"What a pity!"

In the study, the books that had been placed there had dried and cracked from age. At the slightest touch, they crumbled apart, making them impossible to read.

Zhou Qing and Tang San could only clear away this "book dust."

But as they moved the bookshelf, a peculiar piece of beast hide fell out from within.

"What is this?"

Zhou Qing picked up the beast hide and discovered that a map had been drawn upon it. It encompassed the Heaven Dou Empire, the Star Luo Empire, the Star Dou Great Forest, the Sunset Forest, the Extreme North, the Extreme South, and more across the Douluo Continent.

Although it did not mark the precise locations of every region in full detail, and some Soul Beast Forests were not even labeled, it did indeed encompass the rough outline of the entire continent.

A red line had also been drawn across the map, tracing a route to a location on the southwestern coast of the Star Luo Empire, where a red "X" had been marked.

"What kind of map is this?" Tang San leaned over, studying it curiously.