Spoils from the Corpse! The Secret of the Parchment Scroll!

Lan Tian had walked about a hundred steps out of the valley path when his footsteps suddenly halted.

He stood there blankly for a moment, then abruptly smacked his forehead and muttered a curse. "I almost forgot!"

Looting the body.

The previous battle had been so clean and decisive, and after the successful debut of the Rasengan, his mind had been filled with reviewing and marveling at the move's power. He had not thought about the corpse at all.

Only after walking so far away did it suddenly occur to him: that was the body of a level thirty-five Soul Elder, an experienced highwayman who had been at it for over three years. How could he possibly have nothing valuable on him?

He immediately turned around and hurried back.

The burly man's corpse still lay sprawled across the rocky ground in the same position. The spiraling wound through his chest had stopped bleeding, the blood having formed a dark red scab. His face was deathly pale, his eyes half-open, his pupils dilated.

Lan Tian crouched down and reached out to close the man's eyelids before beginning his search.

He found a pouch of loose change in a hidden pocket inside the leather armor, containing several dozen Silver Soul Coins and copper soul coins that clinked together.

A small leather flask hung from the man's waist. Lan Tian opened it and sniffed; it contained strong liquor.

Tucked against his chest was a smoothly polished beast-bone pendant, apparently some sort of protective charm. It was not worth much.

A dagger had been stuffed into the bindings around his trouser leg. Its workmanship was fairly refined, and a poor-quality gemstone the size of a mung bean was set into its sheath.

But none of those were the main haul.

When Lan Tian searched the man's left hand, he found a dull gray ring.

It was two sizes larger than the one on his own hand, with crude patterns carved into its face. When he infused it with Soul Power to inspect it, it proved to be a storage ring as well.

Its space was somewhat larger than his own, a little over ten cubic meters, and it was crammed full of miscellaneous items.

He took out the contents one by one, spreading them over the open ground beside him and carefully taking stock.

There was a pile of odds and ends: half a roll of bandages, several pieces of hardened dry rations, an empty wineskin, two or three heavily worn daggers, a bundle of spare clothes whose original color could no longer be discerned, and several whetstones for sharpening blades.

None of it was worth anything. Lan Tian kept the bandages and put them into his own ring, not sparing the rest a second glance.

There were also several medicinal herbs. They looked like they had been casually picked from Sunset Forest, of mediocre quality and not much age—several grades below those in his own ring.

He sorted through them, picked out a thousand-year spiritual ganoderma of slightly better quality, and put it away. He tossed the rest aside.

Then he found the money.

A small pile of copper soul coins and Silver Soul Coins was mixed together in a little cloth pouch. He counted them: more than a hundred copper coins and around thirty silver ones.

Those were not important. What mattered was the item right beside that loose change, wrapped tightly in a thick piece of oilcloth.

Lan Tian unwrapped the oilcloth. Inside were nearly a thousand Gold Soul Coins, stacked neatly in rows. They were heavy and substantial in his hand.

Every ten coins were bundled together with a thin string, making nearly a hundred bundles in total.

Lan Tian weighed the packet of Gold Soul Coins in his hand and could not help clicking his tongue.

One thousand Gold Soul Coins.

For a lone level thirty-five Soul Elder, that was absolutely not a sum he could have amassed through highway robbery.

By Nuoding City's prices, an ordinary family spent only a few dozen Gold Soul Coins a year. A thousand Gold Soul Coins were enough to buy a decent storefront on the city's busiest street and support an entire family for years.

Either this guy had pulled off a major job and had not yet had the chance to spend the stolen money, or he had acquired this wealth elsewhere and come to Sunset Forest in search of treasure.

But what truly made Lan Tian's eyes light up was not the thousand Gold Soul Coins.

He continued searching through the remaining contents of the ring and finally found a stiff parchment scroll tucked into the corner of a hidden compartment.

The bone rods at both ends of the scroll had been worn smooth and glossy, clearly having been examined countless times. Its surface bore grease stains and brownish spots, traces left from being carried and handled for a long time.

Lan Tian carefully unrolled the parchment and laid it flat on the ground.

It contained a hand-drawn map, with fairly neat handwriting and numerous notes and symbols.

It depicted the terrain of a forested region: valleys, rivers, steep cliffs, and several conspicuous markers.

Though the drawing style was crude, the details were comprehensive. Directions, scale, and landmarks were all clearly marked.

Near the left side of the map's center was a conspicuous red circle. At its exact center, a line of numbers had been written in fine strokes.

Longitude and latitude coordinates.

Lan Tian stared at that string of numbers for a long while, his mind racing.

The coordinate system of this world was not too different from that of his previous life. Though the units of measurement differed, the principles were the same.

He took out the map of Sunset Forest that he had drawn over six years from his storage ring and compared the two, matching terrain features and landmarks.

The longer he looked, the faster his heart beat.

The location marked by the red circle lay deep within a region of Sunset Forest that he had never set foot in.

That area was still blank on his own map, because he had never managed to venture that deep in the past six years.

And judging from the terrain depicted on the parchment, the area was surrounded by obvious valleys, with a sunken basin in the middle and a river bending along the basin's edge.

That description of the terrain highly overlapped with the location of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well as he remembered it.

"This guy..." Lan Tian murmured, raising his head to glance at the corpse on the ground, now already cold. "You really did have something good."

He had more or less figured out most of it.

This man had somehow gotten his hands on this treasure map. The coordinates marked on it pointed to a secret location deep within Sunset Forest.

He had come searching with the map in hand, while also returning to his old trade of highway robbery along the way to earn some extra money. Unfortunately, he ran into Lan Tian, was knocked flat by a single Rasengan, and all his belongings ended up benefiting the one who came after him.

Lan Tian rolled up the parchment map again and carefully stored it in his storage ring.

He lowered his head and glanced at the corpse once more. After some thought, he used Blue Silver Grass vines to drag the body into the depths of the bushes beside the valley path and cover it up, doing the last small kindness he could.

Then he stood up, dusted off his hands, and turned his gaze once more toward the darker sea of forest at the end of the valley path.

The location marked on the parchment map lay roughly two days' journey southeast of his current position, with a stretch of steep, uneven mountain terrain in between.

The distance was not too far. At his pace, if he hurried and cut down on rest, he should be able to reach the area marked by the red circle on the map in about a day and a half.

Whether it was the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well or some other treasure, now that the map was in his hands, he had to go take a look no matter what.

He adjusted his direction and strode southeast along the valley path.

The depths of Sunset Forest spread out before him. Layer upon layer of canopy blocked out most of the sky, with only the occasional ray of sunlight slipping through gaps in the leaves and casting shifting patches of light across the ground.

The coordinates on the parchment scroll drew closer and closer, and his sense of anticipation grew stronger.

This time, he might truly find that place.