Immortal Spirit Ghost Market!

The alley was deep and pitch-black.

Although it was daytime, the sunlight stopped abruptly outside the alley... Some eerie force seemed to be keeping it out.

It was darker here than at dusk. Even at noon, it felt as though night had fallen.

Cold and damp.

That was what Yang Yu felt after entering the alley.

The unnatural change in his surroundings did not frighten him. With the formidable power he now possessed, how could he be scared off so easily? After sensing the eerie change in the alley, he merely frowned and walked deeper inside without looking back.

He kept moving forward.

The alley ran deep.

Yang Yu's gaze pierced the dark haze. Far away at the end of the straight passage, he could just make out a vermilion shadow.

"This really is creepy."

"From the outside, it looked like such a tiny alley. Behind the antiques section of Shangjing City's Bird-and-Flower Antique Market, there are major roads running in every direction... Something's strange about this alley. How can it go on this far?"

"Is this technology based on some kind of spatial theory?"

"I've never heard of Earth possessing cosmic technology this advanced..." Yang Yu pondered, his expression growing solemn.

He had encountered no danger along the way, but the farther he went, the more vigilant he became.

Things were moving beyond his earlier expectations!

And... the aura of the antique he had sensed earlier, the one that had made his fate soul fluctuate so intensely, had changed!

The most obvious change was that its aura no longer merely felt ancient. It now carried a trace of cosmic force!

An object imbued with cosmic force!

That was the sign of a Mortal Shedding Treasure!

The discovery immediately sent excitement surging through Yang Yu!

A Mortal Shedding Treasure!

Such an object might not amount to much in the universe's cultivation world, but to Yang Yu as he was now, it was a genuine treasure.

At the very least, it was countless times more useful and valuable than those antiques!

For convenience, the universe's cultivation world... had established a unified system of realms for all cultivating lifeforms and cultivating civilizations.

Cultivating lifeforms and civilizations were classified this way.

Naturally, the tools and treasures throughout the universe, with their varying strengths and powers, also had a standardized classification system!

Mortal Shedding Treasures were one category of treasures within the planetary realm, the first major realm of cosmic cultivation.

Within the planetary realm, cultivating lifeforms were divided into ordinary lifeforms, postnatal lifeforms, and innate beings.

Tools and treasures, meanwhile, were divided into three realms: Ordinary mortal objects, Mortal Shedding Treasures, and transcendent treasures!

The finest tools among mortal objects were equivalent to the divine weapons of ancient legends, such as treasured swords that could slice through iron like mud, or blades sharp enough to sever a hair blown against their edges.

Treasures that were not weapons, such as precious medicinal ingredients like thousand-year-old ginseng, could also qualify as top-tier mortal treasures!

All of these were merely mortal objects!

But once a treasure or weapon was imbued with cosmic force and could still retain its basic function without suffering damage... even if it possessed only a trace of cosmic force, it would instantly rise to the level of a Mortal Shedding Treasure!

Even the poorest Mortal Shedding Treasure, if it were a weapon, could easily shatter the legendary divine weapons that stood at the pinnacle of mortal arms!

Mortal Shedding Treasures were also divided by quality.

There were four grades: inferior, ordinary, superior, and supreme.

The weapons best suited to postnatal lifeforms were usually Mortal Shedding Treasures.

The better their quality, the more they amplified their users' strength.

And what about the transcendent treasures above them?

Those were treasures that only experts at the level of innate beings could use.

"If it really is a Mortal Shedding Treasure, then taking a little risk is acceptable. This isn't the resource-rich universe, after all. Finding something at the level of a Mortal Shedding Treasure on Earth is quite rare." Yang Yu considered his options. He stopped in the alley and hesitated briefly before finally making his decision.

He would keep going!

At the same time, life force surged within him, and his life-soul space opened in an instant!

Whoosh!

A dark rift suddenly appeared in the empty air before Yang Yu.

Then three enormous creatures dropped out!

Boom!!

They were the three Giant Mantis Beasts Yang Yu had first engineered and created!

"Hiss—" One Giant Mantis Beast, a size larger than the others and clearly their leader, looked toward Yang Yu. It raised its head and hissed, transmitting the thoughts in its simple brain to him with perfect accuracy through the life imprint engraved within its body.

Its meaning was simple.

"Master, what do you need us to do?"

"Move forward. Scout the way!" Yang Yu ordered coldly.

At Yang Yu's command, the Giant Mantis Beast leader hissed again in acknowledgment, then led its two subordinates into the darkness. They spread into a triangular formation and began scouting the passage more than a hundred meters ahead of him!

Ten minutes later.

The danger Yang Yu had anticipated never appeared.

With the three Giant Mantis Beasts scouting ahead, he moved much faster and finally reached the end of the alley.

Now, an enormous vermilion gate formed from a demonic head blocked Yang Yu's path. The massive demon-head gateway flickered indistinctly, as though suspended between reality and nothingness.

It did not look like anything made in the mortal world!

A line of large characters also shimmered into view at the center of the gate!

—Yinwood Gate, Immortal Spirit Ghost Market!

"A relic of the Immortal Civilization!" Yang Yu was shaken. With the information from the insect civilization inheritance, he easily identified the origins of the thing before him!

The Yinwood Gate's Immortal Spirit Ghost Market had been founded thirty-nine hundred years ago.

Fifteen hundred years ago, it had been completely destroyed, becoming an abandoned ruin...

Half an hour later, Yang Yu had managed to open the vermilion demon gate. He entered the Immortal Spirit Ghost Market, where a wasteland spread before his eyes.

This small, self-contained world was not large, only about the size of an antiques street outside.

Beyond the street lay nothing but emptiness shrouded in gray mist.

Within the street, the places that should once have housed shops selling all kinds of Immortal Civilization goods bore only the scars of time and history. Most of the shops had collapsed, leaving nothing but broken walls and rubble.

After searching the area, Yang Yu stood atop the remains of a building at the center of the ruins.

He now held a memory jade slip unique to the Immortal Civilization.

The jade slip had passively recorded the rise, decline, and end of this Immortal Spirit Ghost Market.

That was how Yang Yu learned that this place had been destroyed more than fifteen hundred years ago.

"The Yinwood Gate."

"A small cultivation sect of Immortal Civilization descendants active more than three thousand years ago. They lived in seclusion on Earth, and even their strongest member was only a burrowing-level innate being."

Yang Yu murmured to himself as he digested the sparse information recorded in the jade slip. His expression had grown troubled.

"This makes things a little troublesome."

"The ancient legends were actually true. Based on those old tales of immortals and wandering heroes, I'd already suspected Earth had some connection to the Immortal Civilization... Now it seems that possibility has become reality."

"With so little time having passed, only a few thousand years, forces belonging to the people of the Immortal Civilization must still be lying dormant somewhere on Earth."

P.S. Thanks to "Beyond the Empty Heart" and "Watching the World's Love and Hatred with a Smile" for the tips! And once again, please send recommendation votes and add this novel to your favorites.