He could feel the lake's chill.
He kept sinking.
Bubbles gurgled upward.
His hair and clothes floated around him.
Yet the illusion array still held. Even with his eyes closed, images flashed before him, overlaid on the real sensation of sinking into the lake. It all felt unreal, like someone knocking on his game pod while he was playing a spirit-realm game. He could no longer tell what was real.
As he sank, the real grew more real, and the false grew more false.
The images flashed faster and faster until everything went black. Chen Shu had nearly reached the lakebed, drawing ever closer to the Cube.
He did not need to do this.
The treasures of the Secret Realm might be worth a fortune, but he was already the Spirit Sect Saint Son. Most things meant little to him now.
Gold and silver? He had plenty.
Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures? He had enough.
Top-tier Spell Artifacts? Most were obsolete.
Rare treasures extinct in this age? Wouldn't he have to hand them over to the sect or the nation anyway? Was he supposed to clutch them until they grew mold?
What interested Chen Shu most were Cultural Relics connected to the Sacred Ancestor, especially written records. But he had no need to take them home and claim them as his own. Letting them gather dust on a shelf would be far less meaningful than putting them in a museum, where the whole world could admire that glorious age.
Besides, Yi Nation had already reached an agreement with Xixiao. It would take home most of what lay inside, so those things would not end up scattered abroad.
Chen Shu only needed to enter with the historians when the Cube opened.
With those experts helping, his research would go more smoothly.