You're an Immortal Cultivator, Aren't You?

"Huh, come look! What do these words say?" Pan Zi suddenly spoke up, looking at Wu Xie, then at Chen Pi A Si.

Wu Xie turned to look. The words weren't carved into the walls of the fissure, but into a loose rock lying crosswise at the bottom. The unfamiliar characters looked a little like Chinese and a little like Korean, and had been carved in a messy scrawl.

Monk Hua leaned over to examine them and said with certainty, "It's Jurchen Script."

"What does it say?" Fatty asked.

Monk Hua said, "Hold on, I'm not that good. I'll have to study it first. Let me copy it down."

Cao Ya paid no attention to the writing on the rock wall. Not bothering to wait, he headed straight into the depths.

The others had no choice but to follow.

Chen Pi A Si told Lang Feng to stay with Monk Hua and catch up once they had copied the writing.

"Aren't you curious?" Chen Pi A Si asked Cao Ya. The warmth inside the fissure had helped him recover somewhat.

Tomb robbers attached great importance to writing and murals like these, since they could help identify the tomb's owner.

Burial goods with a known date were easier to sell for a good price.

Even tomb robbers who cared less about such things wouldn't ignore them completely the way Cao Ya did.

They no longer bothered hiding anything from Shunzi, either. At this point, claiming he still couldn't guess who they were would have been nonsense.

Shunzi had been groggy, but the hot air rising from the depths of the fissure had actually cleared his head considerably. He listened to their conversation without saying a word.

He knew he only needed to do his job as a guide. Now that they had reached this place, though, even that role was useless. If he wanted to survive rather than be silenced for good, he had to behave himself and pretend he understood nothing.

Cao Ya curled his lip. "What tricks could the Eastern Xia King possibly have? If he dares jump out, I'll slap him dead. Reading that stuff is pointless. Who would record anything truly important here?"

"Holy shit, now that's confidence!" Fatty, Wu Xie, and Pan Zi gave him thumbs-ups in perfect unison.

Chen Pi A Si snorted softly. He was an old hand in the tomb-robbing business and had entered countless tombs over nearly a century, yet this was still his first time meeting someone as reckless as Cao Ya.

The trouble was, Cao Ya really did have the fucking ability to back up his recklessness.

That ability to pulverize rock walls alone had told Chen Pi A Si enough. Whether Cao Ya was a martial arts master was uncertain, but if it came to a fight, all the rest of them together wouldn't be enough to take him on.

Fine. You're the badass. We'll do it your way.

Chen Pi A Si said nothing and followed quietly.

The deeper they went, the higher the temperature rose. It was much warmer than outside, and as they walked, everyone began sweating and had to undo their coats.

Only Cao Ya hadn't broken a sweat. He wasn't tired, and he wasn't even hot.

The others had grown used to it, but they still couldn't help feeling envious and jealous.

If they had that ability, what would they have to fear?

The passage was actually difficult to traverse. Without Cao Ya, they probably would have had to crawl.

With Cao Ya leading the way, however, stone dust fell all along their route as he widened the passage, leaving deep footprints behind. Everyone else only needed to follow in his steps.

"Hey, you know what? This really does feel like a sightseeing trip now," Fatty said without any restraint.

Shunzi walked silently in the middle of the group. Since he had been in poor shape earlier, they had worried something might happen to him and placed him there. If anything did happen, people ahead and behind could look after him.

As they continued downward, the smell of sulfur grew stronger, and the rocks grew darker. They even began to take on a glassy sheen, traces left by mica melting under intense heat.

Wu Xie cried out, and Fatty asked what was wrong.

Wu Xie answered, "This should be a volcanic lava vent. Changbai Mountain is a potentially active volcano. If it suddenly erupts and magma bursts out from inside the mountain, won't we be doomed?"

Pan Zi chuckled. "Third Young Master, you're worrying too much. How could we be that unlucky? It doesn't erupt before or after, but just happens to erupt when we arrive? What are the odds of a coincidence like that?"

"Exactly.

"You're like the man who feared the sky would fall, Innocent," Fatty said with a hearty laugh. "Besides, if something like that really happens, then it's a calamity written into our fate. Not many people in the world have the luck to die in a volcanic eruption." "Damn it, you can keep that luck for yourself. We don't want it," Ye Cheng cursed.

"I was only joking," Fatty said.

Cao Ya spoke as casually as if they were chatting about nothing in particular. "Don't worry. The volcano won't erupt."

"What, Cao Ya, can you control volcanoes now?" Fatty burst out laughing as he spoke, finding the idea utterly absurd.

A volcanic eruption was a natural disaster. If someone could control that through human strength, wouldn't that make him a god?

The others laughed too.

Cao Ya remained calm and didn't argue. There was no need.

He couldn't claim he could force every volcanic eruption back down, but if he went all out, he could deal with at least half of them.

As they chatted, Cao Ya suddenly stopped.

"What happened?" the people behind him asked, all growing tense.

"It's blocked," Cao Ya answered, waving for them to step farther back.

They retreated and shone their flashlights ahead. The fissure abruptly narrowed there, with loose rocks piled over one another, leaving only a tiny gap leading downward.

Cats and dogs could have squeezed through, but humans clearly couldn't.

That was why Cao Ya had said it was blocked.

It looked as though a collapse in the fissure had caused it, leaving very little space inside.

Having already seen him break a stone sculpture with a single slap, everyone looked at Cao Ya expectantly.

Was he about to show off his extraordinary martial arts again?

Without turning around, Cao Ya knew the others had retreated to a safe distance. He loosened his limbs, and a layer of golden light shimmered over him, making the people behind him shout, "Holy shit!"

Cao Ya pushed his palm straight forward. Without a sound, the pile of loose rocks shattered into fine powder, which heaped up on either side, leaving a narrow path through the middle wide enough for a person to pass.

"Let's go." Cao Ya took the lead once again.

The others exchanged looks. Damn, were our eyes playing tricks on us? What was that just now-golden light? How could a human body give off golden light?

Cao Ya really had practiced martial arts until he became an immortal!

Swallowing hard, they saw Cao Ya was about to disappear into the distance and hurried after him.

The farther they went, the more shocked they became. The passage Cao Ya had blasted open was simply too long. They walked for quite some time and still hadn't reached its end.

"You call this fucking martial arts?" Pan Zi's eyes were filled with shock. That guy Cao Ya was an immortal cultivator, wasn't he?

Cao Ya seemed to have heard Pan Zi's words. His calm voice drifted back from the depths. "Of course it's martial arts. I've just attained a little success, that's all."

Everyone was speechless. You call this a little success?

Have some shame, will you?

If this counts as a little success, doesn't that make us useless trash?

Show-off!

They really had misjudged Cao Ya.

In the world of [The Grave Robbers' Chronicles], Cao Ya's power was indeed invincible. But in the greater world of [The Masters of This World], the power of Outer Scenery Seventh Heaven honestly didn't amount to much.

Against a Dharmakaya, no matter how many came, they would all die.

And that was without even mentioning how the plot would spiral wildly out of control a few decades later, with Dharmakayas everywhere and a whole host of mighty figures at the Legendary and Creation realms appearing as well.

He even felt that calling it a little success was an exaggeration. At most, he had barely glimpsed the threshold; he couldn't even be said to have entered the hall.

Only upon attaining Dharmakaya could he claim to have entered the hall.