Harvest

Seeing the great array begin operating again, Chen Mobai could finally let out a breath.

He wanted to sit down and rest, but the moment he saw the two corpses inside the Water Mansion, he truly had no heart for it.

Whenever he closed his eyes, all he seemed to see were the expressions on their faces as they died with eyes unclosed.

But Chen Mobai had no experience dealing with corpses. He paced back and forth through the great hall, saw that fish that had kicked the bucket, and wondered whether he should throw them into the water outside the array and let the fish gnaw them clean.

However, after thinking it over carefully, Chen Mobai still shook his head.

Although he did not know where this Eastern Wasteland was, he had been obsessed with all kinds of criminal investigation dramas since childhood, and felt the fish here probably were not so fierce that they could completely destroy the bodies and wipe out all traces.

To avoid the corpses floating up to the surface, being discovered by cultivators of this Eastern Wasteland, and leading them here, Chen Mobai felt that the safest method was still to thoroughly erase the traces of the two people's existence inside this Water Mansion.

But how should he erase them? Chen Mobai, his brows knitted and face bitter, paced another circle back and forth, then thought of burning them with fire. Leaving aside the fact that he had not cultivated the Fire Starting Technique, even if the temperature was truly high enough, in this sealed space, asking him, an ordinary senior-year high school student, to burn corpses was something he really could not do.

In the end, he walked back to the old man's dismembered corpse. Forcing down his body's instinctive reaction, he was just about to turn and leave when he suddenly saw the sealed stone doors of the Side Hall.

"Right, I can use the Restrictions here."

Remembering the scene when he had first tested it with a coin and it had been vaporized by the ghostly blue electric light, Chen Mobai felt that his idea should work.

There was no time to lose. Act at once.

The main reason was that Chen Mobai really did not want to stay with corpses any longer.

He used the Levitation Technique, the spell he had cultivated most proficiently, to lift one of the old man's arms, then flung it toward the stone doors of the middle Side Hall.

There was a "hiss"! Sure enough, this time, without the protection of spiritual power and a shield, the bloodstained arm was directly turned into a great plume of blood mist under the impact of the ghostly blue electric light. It slightly dyed the Floor Tiles red, and the blood that splattered onto the stone doors triggered the power of the Restrictions again.

Bzzzt, bzzzt, bzzzt...

Next, the entire Water Mansion was immersed in the constant flashing and flickering of electric light.

After five trips back and forth, the old man's corpse was finally dealt with cleanly.

And Chen Mobai discovered in surprise that the power of the Restrictions on the Side Hall's stone doors seemed to have weakened somewhat.

"Looks like the Side Hall's Restrictions aren't connected to the Spirit Vein of the entire Water Mansion. In that case, breaking the Restrictions will be much simpler."

An outstanding Formation Master, when laying out a protective great array, would link several of the more important buildings within it to the entire Spirit Vein array. That way, as long as the great array was not broken and the Spirit Vein did not disperse, even if the Restriction power on the buildings was worn down, it would immediately recover.

Although this Azure Water Array was also not bad, clearly the one who had laid it out had merely bought a Formation Disk and Formation Flags, then "painted a gourd by copying the ladle," arranging it by imitation.

After Chen Mobai finished dealing with the old man's corpse pieces, he discovered a bloodstained cloth pouch on the Floor Tiles. Out of caution, he used the Levitation Technique to raise the cloth pouch into the air, then emptied everything inside from a distance.

A pile of things clattered out.

Aside from a dozen or so neatly cut gold bars, there were two booklets, three bottles of pills, a Short Blade, and a set of spare robes.

Chen Mobai's breathing quickened when he saw the gold. The value of this thing, although not as high as in the previous era of civilization, was still that of a cultivation material in the Immortal Sect. Whether it was Gold Powder made through special processing and blending for writing and drawing talismans, or gold essence refined through purification, both had a large market.

These dozen or so gold bars, by a rough estimate, were probably worth more than eight hundred Merit Points. If handled well, he could gain nearly a thousand Merit Points.

Chen Mobai, who had never had so much money since he was little, felt a little unsettled.

He picked up the two booklets and flipped through them. One should have been the old man's cultivation method, called the "Black Water Technique." Chen Mobai glanced at it, then put it down. Now was not the time to study this.

After he read the title of the other one, he could not help his breathing from quickening.

"Azure Water Array Detailed Explanation"

This was actually the instruction manual for the protective great array of the entire Water Mansion. Chen Mobai had originally thought the old man was lying when he said he was the disciple of the owner of this Water Mansion, but now that he saw this book, he felt it might be true.

However, this Formation book was a little thick. Chen Mobai checked his phone. There was only one hour left until class, so he did not study it carefully.

And at this moment, he thought of another question. Could he take these things with him when he returned to the city?

With this question in mind, he began dealing with the brown-clothed youth's corpse.

This time, he had experience. First, he used the Levitation Technique to flip it up and down, and as expected, he found six hidden pouch openings inside the cuffs of the brown-clothed youth.

One bottle of pills, two jade-white stones, a foldable Hand Crossbow, and a Flying Needle Sect Disciple Manual.

Then he opened the palm-sized Needle Box in the brown-clothed youth's hand and gathered up the Earth Yellow Flying Needles that he had shot all over the place. Chen Mobai, fully satisfied, brought over the things from the old man's cloth pouch and piled them together.

After that, Chen Mobai once again used the stone door Restrictions to vaporize and finish dealing with the corpse, then used the old man's spare robes as a rag and wiped every bloodstained spot in the entire Water Mansion.

The Floor Tiles in front of the Side Hall door were all wiped clean of bloodstains through fine remote manipulation of the robe with the Levitation Technique. He even collected that fish.

Everything returned to neatness, and Chen Mobai felt the same sense of accomplishment as after tidying his own home until it was bright and clean.

He plopped down in the middle of the great hall, in front of the pile of spoils he had worked so hard to recover.

The old man's cloth pouch was also stained with some blood. Chen Mobai found it unlucky and did not use it. He took off his own upper garment, spread it over the Floor Tiles, then placed the items on it one by one.

Finally, he touched those two jade-white stones. A mild, pure spiritual energy rushed in along the meridians in the center of his palm, like a warm current, making Chen Mobai unable to hold back a shiver. He nearly cried out from the comfort of it.

"This... could it be... Spirit Stones!"

If the previous items had merely excited Chen Mobai, then these two jade-white stones made him completely lose his composure.

One had to know that in the Immortal Sect, this thing was like gold in the previous civilization on Earth Origin Star: a priceless treasure.

At the same time, however, because Earth Origin Star's resources were barren, all Spirit Stone Mines had long since been surveyed and explored. Aside from during the World Opening War, no Spirit Stone Mines were permitted to be mined.

Yet even so, according to the Immortal Sect's latest financial report, the total stored quantity of Spirit Stones on Earth Origin Star was already in imminent peril.

If the Immortal Sect had not produced a genius two thousand years ago who invented a wondrous art that could inject spiritual energy into dried-up Spirit Stones, making them once again transform back to eighty percent of their freshly mined, unused state, the Immortal Sect's Merit Points system would probably have long since completely collapsed due to there being insufficient Spirit Stones to exchange.

But even so, only during the World Opening War did the Immortal Sect allow cultivators to exchange Merit Points for Spirit Stones at the bank.

Ten thousand Merit Points were equivalent to one Low-grade Spirit Stone.