Tattered Map in Hand

After walking through that eerie atmosphere for more than ten minutes, the two of them came upon a stone door.

"There should be some kind of mechanism nearby! Let me look for it!"

But before Lin Qing could finish speaking, Lin Qi had already struck the stone door with her palm.

Bang!

The stone door collapsed at once, kicking up a cloud of dust.

"Huh? Brother, what did you say?"

Lin Qi turned to look at Lin Qing, confusion showing in her watery eyes.

"Nothing. Don't be so reckless next time! Some tomb chambers have traps, remember, safety comes first! Losing things is no big deal, but if you get hurt, it won't be worth it."

Lin Qing rubbed his forehead. The road to educating her was long indeed!

"Mm-hmm! Okay!"

Lin Qi replied softly.

The two entered the stone chamber revealed after the stone door fell.

As they stepped through the stone door, the view before them suddenly widened.

Beyond the stone door was an enormous stone chamber. It looked rather plain and empty. Moonlight Stones used for illumination were embedded in the walls. At the center of the chamber stood a seat, upon which sat a dried skeleton. Its sunken skull had fallen onto its pale thigh bone. In the stillness of the chamber, the sight was particularly eerie.

In front of the seat stood a broad, long bluestone table. Three locked stone boxes were neatly arranged atop it.

In addition, quite a few glittering gold coins and other precious valuables were piled in the three corners of the chamber. There had to be at least several hundred thousand gold coins.

In the final corner, a small flower bed had been built from soil. All kinds of flowers and grasses grew within it, and an unusual fragrance lingered in the air.

At the sight of those plants, the two of them nearly hurried forward at the same time. Others might not recognize them, but they knew perfectly well that these seemingly ordinary flowers and grasses were far more valuable and precious than those piles of gold coins.

These items were not particularly valuable to Lin Qing, more like pocket money, but he would not leave them behind. He really liked looting.

"Xiao Qi, collect the Medicinal Herbs and valuables! They're yours."

With that, Lin Qing took out several Jade Boxes and a small jade shovel from his Storage Ring. Lin Qi happily accepted them. Having learned from Lin Qing before, she naturally knew how to gather and store Medicinal Herbs.

As a Magical Beast, she needed high-grade Medicinal Herbs more than ordinary humans did. Although Lin Qing refined some Medicinal Pellets for her every so often, she still wanted to save up money and Medicinal Herbs. That way, she could use the money to buy Medicinal Herbs, then trade them to Lin Qing for Medicinal Pellets and Medicinal Pills, stockpile them, and eat Medicinal Pellets and Medicinal Pills as meals every day.

She also wanted to become self-reliant and help her brother, especially by saving more Medicinal Herbs and money instead of relying on him to support her all the time.

Shifting his gaze away from Lin Qi, Lin Qing walked over to the stone table.

He paid no attention to the three boxes on the table. Instead, his gaze settled on the skeleton behind it. Looking downward, he saw three black keys hanging from the skeleton's right hand.

He casually took down the keys and placed them on the stone table. Then Lin Qing tore off the skeleton's arm.

Through the break at the top of the bone arm, he could see a small scroll hidden in the gaps between the bones.

"Hide a map inside your own arm bone, and judging by the looks of it, stuff it in there while you were still alive. The former owner of this stone chamber was one ruthless bastard."

After marveling at it, Lin Qing took out the small scroll. He casually put the bone arm back, then slowly unfolded the map.

As he opened the scroll and looked inside, Lin Qing raised an eyebrow.

What appeared before his eyes was a piece of parchment made from some unknown material. On the slightly yellowed parchment were lines that seemed to follow no pattern at all, along with a blurry object resembling a lotus in one corner.

Perhaps due to the passage of time, the lotus-shaped object had faintly yellowed and become somewhat blurred, though its general appearance could still be made out.

The lotus was black. A faint layer of black flame seemed to cling to its surface. Looking at it closely, the entire lotus gave off a vaguely demonic feeling.

"With this, one quarter is complete. All that remains are Hai Bodong, the Black-Corner Region, and the auction house!"

Under normal circumstances, an ordinary person would probably never be able to gather all four Tattered Maps in a lifetime. But since he knew the plot, his chances of collecting all four were high.

If all he wanted was to know where the Pure Lotus Demon Flame was, he did not actually need the map. The remaining seven clans of the Central Plains and the Pill Tower all knew that the Demon Flame Space appeared on schedule once every thousand years. Each appearance caused an enormous commotion, and every expert throughout the Central Plains could sense it.

As for why the map of the Pure Lotus Demon Flame had been divided into four pieces, whether it was because of the Pure Lotus Demon Saint or someone else, the original story had not explained it. He did not know either, but it was quite strange that two pieces had ended up in the Jia Ma Empire.

What made him curious, however, was that Hai Bodong had actually cut his own piece into two.

As for the Jia Ma Empire, there was another thing he was curious about: the Life-and-Death Gate of the Misty Cloud Sect. Unfortunately, he had no chance to enter the Life-and-Death Gate right now. He would find time to take a look around later.

The tiny Jia Ma Empire not only produced outstanding talents such as Xiao Yan, Little Fairy Doctor, Qing Lin, and Medusa, but also Fa Ma, who had learned a few things from Yao Chen in his youth.

It even had Heavenly Flames. Was this the homeland of a Child of Fortune?

"Brother, what is this?"

By then, Lin Qi had already collected the Medicinal Herbs from the flower bed, as well as the gold coins and valuables nearby.

"One quarter of a map," Lin Qing answered, then stored the map in the System Space.

"Oh!" Seeing that Lin Qing did not explain further, Lin Qi did not press him. She knew that if there was anything her brother should tell her, he definitely would.

Next, he opened the three stone boxes one by one. Each contained a scroll: Wings of the Eagle, Mad Lion Chant, and Seven-Colored Poison Scripture.

They could add a little to his collection. With that, he put away the three scrolls.

"Senior, please forgive us for disturbing your rest!"

With that, Lin Qing blasted a deep pit nearby, placed the skeleton inside, and buried it. He even used the stone table to make an unmarked gravestone.

Click!

A crisp sound came from where the skeleton had been sitting. A recess appeared before the two of them, and a Storage Ring lay quietly within it.

Lin Qing grabbed the Storage Ring and examined it with his divine sense. To his surprise, it still had a soul imprint.

He had not expected there to be a High-Tier Storage Ring beneath the skeleton. After breaking the imprint, he examined its contents and discovered that its former owner had actually been an Alchemist, roughly Sixth-Grade or Seventh-Grade.

Inside the Storage Ring were a Naling, a Medication Cauldron, and the Medication Cauldron was Tier 7, only a tiny bit worse than the Dragon-Phoenix Cauldron. There was also a Sixth-Grade Alchemist's handbook, some books on Medicinal Herbs and Magical Beasts, more than a hundred Medicinal Pill Formulas from First-Grade to Seventh-Grade, a Flight Dou Technique crafting manual, more than ten Cultivation Techniques and Dou Techniques, as well as some Jade Bottles containing Medicinal Pills. However, due to their age, the Medicinal Pills in the Jade Bottles had all expired.