Actually, the main reason was that Li Zhi and Ye Fan had no magic power, so they could not resolve the karma they had somehow incurred with the dead.
If they had been strong enough, they would not have needed all these elaborate rituals.
Ultimately, they were simply too weak now, which was why they had so many scruples.
This was not only a rule Li Zhi had brought from his previous life, but also an insight he had gained after studying "Stealing Heavenly Secrets."
Inside the Main Outer Coffin Chamber, Li Zhi lined up the bags of Horseshoe Gold and the Bronze Ritual Vessels in front of the bones.
Then, he somehow produced a dark-red candle as thick as a pair of chopsticks.
Under Ye Fan's curious gaze, Li Zhi handed him the candle and said, "We don't have any magic power, so we can only use this clumsy method. Line them up, with one candle corresponding to each bag or Bronze Ritual Vessel."
Ye Fan did as instructed. Before long, he had lit the candles one by one and fixed them in front of the gold bags and Bronze Ritual Vessels.
After confirming that everything was in order, Li Zhi said to Ye Fan, "Step back first."
Then Ye Fan saw Li Zhi light three sticks of incense and bow toward the skeleton as he muttered, "Lingbao Heavenly Lord once said: the paths of humans and ghosts differ, yin and yang are separated, matters have three parts, known as the Five Directions..."
The more Ye Fan listened, the more puzzled he became. He had studied quite a few Daoist scriptures, but he had never heard that Lingbao Heavenly Lord had left behind a spell like this.
Li Zhi recited scriptures that felt utterly unfamiliar to Ye Fan for a full five minutes.
Then Li Zhi asked, "Karmic Cycle, life and death without end, peace and no disturbance, debts and goods settled?"
The moment his voice fell, the twenty-three burning candles in a row began to go out one after another.
Thirteen candles went out before they finally stopped.
Seeing this, Li Zhi said to Ye Fan, "The master of this place has agreed to let us take the wealth. Little Leaf, move out the things corresponding to the extinguished candles."
There were six bags of Horseshoe Gold and seven Bronze artifacts in total.
The Horseshoe Gold was nothing special. Each piece seemed to weigh thirty or forty jin.
The seven Bronze artifacts, however, were all different: a Bronze Sword, a Bronze Horse, a Bronze Crane, a Bronze Qilin, a Bronze Tiger, a Bronze Tripod, and a Bronze Chariot.
Although the Bronze artifacts were exquisitely made, none of them were very large. Their length, width, and height were all under a meter.
Even the largest, the Bronze Chariot, was only about ninety centimeters wide, sixty centimeters tall, and one meter long.
The objects were not light, but moving them out posed no problem for Ye Fan, whose strength was immense.
Li Zhi and Ye Fan soon carried everything outside.
Afterward, Li Zhi handled the cleanup.
Before leaving the coffin chamber, he even removed the Memory Card from the Digital Camera on the body of the scholar surnamed Xu.
Then he used the excavated timber to seal the large hole in the wooden wall of the coffin chamber.
After returning to the surface, Li Zhi said to Ye Fan again, "I'm afraid we can't leave tonight."
Ye Fan asked, "Is there still something we need to do?"
Li Zhi pointed at the well and said, "We need to fill it in."
Ye Fan's mouth fell open in shock. He had no idea how to respond.
A well one meter in diameter and more than ten meters deep—could they really fill it in overnight?
From digging up the soil to filling the well, Ye Fan felt that one night definitely would not be enough.
He took out his phone and checked the time. It was already half past one in the morning, with less than five hours until dawn.
When he voiced his doubts, Li Zhi merely smiled and said, "Have you forgotten the truck blocking the road?"
"That truck is missing a wheel, isn't it?" Ye Fan said.
Li Zhi pointed toward the base gate and said, "I observed it earlier. The wheel is leaning behind the gate."
"Even if we have a vehicle, we don't have any soil," Ye Fan said.
Li Zhi said, "Do you remember those few construction sites that had halted work when we passed by during the day? If our guess is right, they should be doing earthwork there at night."
Under Ye Fan's dubious gaze, Li Zhi led him to the construction site in the repaired truck.
It took only two packs of cigarettes to trade for a truckload of soil.
By the time the sky began to lighten, the two of them had finally filled in the shaft and even transplanted several Tomato seedlings over the wellhead.
Afterward, they drove away in Li Zhi's Off-Road Vehicle with the gold and Bronze artifacts.
It was as though they had never come there at all.
As for the seven dead men who would remain buried underground forever, there was nothing worth remembering about them.
In this regard, Li Zhi and Ye Fan were very much alike.
Once they decided that someone deserved to die, not a trace of pity remained in their hearts.
Just as Ye Fan had personally watched Li Zhi smash Jia Xiaowu's head with a hammer yet felt no discomfort whatsoever.
When Li Zhi faced the dead, his heart was equally unmoved.
What Ye Fan cared about more was the scripture Li Zhi had recited inside the Main Outer Coffin Chamber.
It seemed to be capable of communicating with the dead. It was simply too mysterious.
On the way back to the city, Ye Fan asked Li Zhi several times about the scripture's origins, but Li Zhi only smiled without answering.
In reality, Li Zhi had fabricated the scripture based on the sacrificial chapter of "Stealing Heavenly Secrets."
He had not expected it to work so well either.
Two days later, the two of them returned to the city with their rich spoils.
Next came the much-anticipated division of the loot.
Li Zhi had originally thought that Ye Fan would take the initiative to propose terms for dividing it.
But, to his great surprise, as soon as they returned to the city, Ye Fan brought over a laptop.
Then, with an eager look on his face, he said to Li Zhi, "Brother Li, hurry and take out that Memory Card. Let's see if they captured even a word or two about ancient cultivators."
Only then did Li Zhi realize that Ye Fan, like him, did not care much about the wealth they had brought back.
Instead, he was even more interested in the contents of the Memory Card.
Ye Fan had not mentioned it at all on the way back, so Li Zhi had assumed that Ye Fan did not know he had taken the Memory Card.
Now it seemed that was not the case.
Li Zhi could not help thinking, With such a deep mind, it's no wonder Ye Fan would be able to trick those Forbidden Zone Supreme Beings in the future.
In theory, the Forbidden Zone Supreme Beings were figures who had fought their way through the Corpse Mountain Blood Sea. Ordinary tricks like pretending to be injured should never have been enough to fool them.
Yet Ye Fan had accomplished exactly that.
The depth of his schemes was enough to make even those Forbidden Zone Supreme Beings curse him.
Sure enough, anyone who associated Ye Fan with nothing more than a brawny idiot who only knew how to throw punches was the true fool.
Without changing expression, Li Zhi took the Memory Card from his pocket and handed it to Ye Fan.
The contents did not disappoint them.
They quickly found photographs of the Jade Scroll taken by Xu the Scholar while he was alive.
The writing on the Jade Scroll was in Clerical Script, so neither of them had any trouble reading it.
It was a Cultivation Method called "Longevity Art."
Once mastered, it could grant a person a long life and eternal youth.
Ye Fan said excitedly, "The people of ancient times lived to be over a hundred without their movements declining. Could that have been because they cultivated similar methods?"
Li Zhi was also studying the Cultivation Method carefully.
The more he studied it, the more he felt that this "Longevity Art" was not quite right.
It did not seem to be a true cultivation scripture, but rather the beginning chapter of a Cultivation Method.
It was like the Dao Scripture Beginning Chapter that Ye Fan and the others learned after arriving at Beidou and entering Spirit Void Grotto-Heaven. It did not truly involve cultivating the Human Body Secret Realm, serving only as a foundation-building method.
After opening the Bitter Sea, one still had to choose another complete Cultivation Method to continue advancing.
Although this "Longevity Art" did not explain how to sense one's Wheel of Life or guide essence into striking the Bitter Sea, its method for preserving eternal youth was irresistible.
The value of this Cultivation Method far surpassed that of the wealth they had brought back.
Fortunately, a Cultivation Method could be copied, so there was no need to divide it in a way that left anyone shortchanged.
Otherwise, they would have had trouble dividing the spoils.
However, after studying it several times, Li Zhi suddenly realized that although this Longevity Art was mysterious, it was very likely like the Breathing Method recorded in "Stealing Heavenly Secrets"—impossible to truly master.
The Earth of today was in the Era of Dharma Decline. The Heaven and Earth Essence was simply too thin, and there was not enough spiritual energy for them to consume.
After Li Zhi told Ye Fan his guess, the excited Ye Fan finally calmed down as well.
He stared at the computer screen with a regretful expression.
Afterward, he copied the contents of the Memory Card.
The two of them then agreed on how to handle the other items.
According to Li Zhi's estimate,
Before you continue