"We're here. We've reached the Ancient Sect Ruins."
After walking to the end of the cavern and passing through layer upon layer of rock, they arrived at another enormous cave. Following Qiu Fangzheng's chilly voice, Li Hai slowly raised his eyes to look ahead.
There, barely a hundred yards away, an enormous, lifeless cluster of ancient buildings sat crookedly, intertwined and fused with countless stalactites.
No, "ancient ruins" or "deserted ruins" might be a more fitting description.
At a glance, Li Hai couldn't see a single intact building in the ruins. Whether towering pavilions or spacious halls, all had collapsed into heaps of broken walls and rubble.
"It's fallen into such disrepair. Could there really be any treasures left?" Li Hai asked, a little disappointed.
"There are, my lord. There are."
Qiu Fangzheng spoke up beside him. "I've explored these ruins many times over the past few decades. I know exactly where the treasures are. I'll take you there."
With that, he flashed forward into the ruins.
Seeing that Qiu Fangzheng had already entered, Li Hai naturally couldn't stay behind. He flew after him at an unhurried pace.
The moment he officially stepped into the ruins, he suddenly felt as though he had stumbled into a world forgotten by time.
Broken paths, collapsed stone walls, warped eaves, shattered window lattices... Every brick and tile that made them up seemed to tell of time's fading echoes.
More than a thousand years ago, a great earthquake had mercilessly dragged this martial sect into the dark depths of the earth. It had crushed and buried countless people, while reducing building after building to shattered tiles and crumbling walls, which sprawled across the slanted, broken ground like corpses.
Now, everywhere Li Hai looked was covered in thick dust and tiny stone fragments.
Apart from those, there was nothing else.
But after following Qiu Fangzheng along a winding route and flying over numerous collapsed buildings, a dazzling golden glow suddenly appeared before Li Hai.
"Gold?!"
Li Hai stared blankly ahead, at the collapsed building where Qiu Fangzheng hovered.
There... was a massive pile of gold.
It was a golden mountain, taller than a man, built from one gold bar upon another. Beside it stood more than a dozen golden sculptures of various shapes.
Supporting the mountain and sculptures was a golden "foundation," piled up from gold ingots the size of dinner plates, gold nuggets no bigger than fingernails, and gold chains of varying thicknesses.
Li Hai wasn't particularly interested in money, but seeing so much gold appear before him all at once still made his heart race.
As the saying went, a little wealth could ease your worries, great wealth could change your fate, and immense wealth could reach the heavens.
If they could, who wouldn't want a little more money in their pocket?
"I've been spending pretty freely lately, and I'm almost running short."
Li Hai walked over and stroked the golden mountain before him, laughing heartily. "With this gold, I can spend as extravagantly as I like for a long time."
Then he asked in puzzlement, "But... it's just a martial sect. How could it have so much gold?"
"My lord," Qiu Fangzheng said, "the inscriptions on the stele left behind by this sect say that they discovered a treasure trove. This gold came from that treasure."
"Is that so?" Li Hai grinned. "They were unbelievably lucky. Could it be that Heaven buried them because their luck was just too outrageous?"
"My lord, you make a good point," Qiu Fangzheng agreed. "That must be it."
Then Li Hai said, "Fangzheng, I'm guessing you've been piling up these mountains of gold bit by bit over the past few decades."
"Yes, my lord."
Qiu Fangzheng admitted, "I gathered all the gold in the ruins and stacked it up piece by piece. Now it all belongs to you."
He showed no reluctance as he said this, as if he were merely giving away a pile of useless stones.
"I'm just a homeless, wandering soul."
Qiu Fangzheng picked up a gold bar, looked it over, then casually put it back. "No matter how much gold there is, it means nothing to me."
"Good."
Li Hai didn't bother with any of that hypocritical talk of refusing and insisting. He nodded, raised his hand, and let the two characters "Naihe" shine in his palm, sweeping up every bit of gold before him.
The four people waiting inside his pocket dimension would naturally stack the gold neatly, bar by bar.
"My lord, there are other things too."
After watching Li Hai use some immortal art he couldn't understand to take away all the gold, Qiu Fangzheng didn't ask a single question. He simply said again, "Please follow me."
Then he took the lead, turning into a wisp of black smoke and flying into a tangled crevice in the ruins far away.
Li Hai followed close behind, also turning into black smoke and spiraling into the gap.
Before long, Qiu Fangzheng led him to another hidden spot deep in the ruins.
There, dozens of secret magical artifacts of all shapes and sizes were piled up.
Most of the artifacts had cracked or broken apart, but a few good ones still gave off faint fluctuations of Dharma Power, and Li Hai gladly accepted them.
After that, Qiu Fangzheng led Li Hai from place to place, allowing him to acquire numerous weapons and pieces of armor, along with two ancient manuals.
The first was called the Jade Toad Pill Canon and described how to refine all kinds of pills.
Unfortunately, after being worn down by the passage of time, most of the book had been damaged. Only five pill recipes remained intact: the Thoroughfare, Tranquil Spirit, Fierce Qi, Crane Longevity, and Rebirth pills.
Even so, those five recipes were still extremely valuable.
The Crane Longevity Pill inside, for example, was a pill that could extend a person's life.
According to the text, a person could take three of these pills over the course of their life. The first extended their life by fifty-six years, the second had half the potency and added twenty-eight years, and the third was halved again, adding fourteen years.
Taking all three pills would extend one's lifespan by a total of ninety-eight years, nearly a century.
What's more, the Crane Longevity Pill worked on anyone. Even a Thousand-Army Rank martial artist approaching two hundred years of age could take one on the brink of death and immediately gain another ninety-eight years of life, returning to youth.
If a medicine like this appeared on Earth, who knew how many billions it would sell for?
The second manual was called the Art of Beast Servitude.
It contained a great deal of information on using ordinary ferocious beasts as raw material, then breeding, training, and transforming them into so-called demon beasts.
Unfortunately, this book had also become damaged after a thousand years.
Only the breeding methods for six demon beasts remained: the Six-Eyed Crystal-Winged Moth, Black Roar Tapir, Phantom-Scaled Demon Dog, Soul-Mimic Ape, Iron-Scaled Fungus Ox, and Five-Tailed Blue-Winged Snow Fox.
Yet even with only six species left, the abilities of each one left Li Hai deeply astonished.
He couldn't help muttering to himself, "Is this supposed to make me... change classes and become a Pokémon trainer?"
Before you continue