"A spatial ring!" Andrew removed a black ring from the lord of Lefen City's hand, his eyes shining with excitement.
Before leaving, he had merely been curious about the black ring on the city lord's right hand. Deciding to give it a try, he had taken off the ring and dripped blood onto it. The result had delighted him: it really was a spatial ring!
Once a spatial ring acknowledged a master, no one else could open it. Only after its master voluntarily released the bond, or died, could someone else claim it with a drop of blood! Now that the lord of Lefen City was dead, the spatial ring's master had become Andrew.
Putting the black statue into the ring, Andrew led the others to find Golden Tiger and quickly left the city lord's manor. Still shaken by the lord of Lefen City's bizarre methods, they fled Lefen City in panic.
"I wonder if this city lord had any other forces behind him!"
On the road, Andrew could not help worrying. Under cover of darkness, the group raced three hundred li west before stopping.
They found a secluded valley and stopped. Bandeni caught his breath, his eyes still holding traces of fright. "Andrew, we really have to thank you this time. Otherwise, we probably would have all died there!"
Andrew was unsettled too. "Today was dangerous. No one expected the lord of Lefen City's methods to be so strange and unpredictable..."
"Mom! Mom..."
As the two spoke, Milly's cries suddenly came from beside them.
Andrew and Bandeni went over to Milly and looked at the woman on the ground. Janice also came over from nearby. When they had left Lefen City, Andrew had feared that Milly and her mother would be killed, so he had brought them both along.
"She's fine. She only fainted. It was probably too much mental exertion." Bandeni was very experienced and saw the cause at a glance.
Andrew offered Milly a few words of comfort and finally managed to calm her down. Janice crouched to one side, tending to Milly's mother.
The night breeze blew gently, and weariness washed over everyone. They had all been put through an entire day of turmoil and traveled all night. Exhausted both physically and mentally, they hastily settled in. Andrew and Golden Tiger kept watch while the others rested...
In the darkness, Andrew sat beside the campfire, gazing excitedly at the spatial ring in his palm. He had put all their earlier brushes with danger out of his mind. Now he was like a child who had received a long-desired toy, turning the spatial ring this way and that, never tiring of looking at it.
Beside him, Golden Tiger stared at him in puzzlement, gave a low growl, and lay down.
Andrew could not help laughing, thinking that he really had been obsessed just now.
"But spatial rings are so famous. Through two lifetimes, this has always been my dream." Andrew slowly lay down, the memories deep within him gradually becoming clearer. Back then, he had been someone who loved to daydream, often imagining having a spatial ring and using it to do this or that...
Now his wish had come true, but time and space were no longer the same.
After dwelling in melancholy for a while, Andrew sat up again. He threaded the spatial ring onto a sturdy black cord and hung it around his neck.
"I'm only a warrior of the seventh rank right now. If anyone discovers it, I'll be in serious trouble. A spatial ring is a treasure even Saint-level experts pursue."
Andrew muttered to himself. He understood well the principle of keeping one's wealth concealed and did not wear the ring on his hand.
"This ring actually holds ten thousand cubic meters? That's... that's far too big, isn't it?"
Andrew sent his spiritual energy into the ring and immediately learned its size. To his surprise, the space inside far exceeded his imagination.
Spatial rings were rare on Material Planes, and even those that existed mostly held only a dozen or so cubic meters. Yet the one in his hands was actually this large...
This ring's origins are anything but ordinary! Andrew thought.
Putting that question aside, Andrew began sorting through the ring's contents. He had to admit that the lord of Lefen City's collection was quite extensive. Gold coins were everywhere in the vast space, piled up into little hills.
"Nine million gold coins. This city lord really knew how to amass wealth."
Andrew took a handful of gold coins out of the spatial ring and sighed softly. In this era, five gold coins were enough for a family of four to live comfortably for a month, yet there were nine million here!
After all, Lefen City could hardly be considered a large city. It was merely comparable to White River City.
At that thought, he suddenly smiled. Now his living expenses in the imperial capital were taken care of.
Apart from gold coins, there were all sorts of miscellaneous objects in the spatial ring. One of them drew Andrew's particular attention...
"This seems to be..." Andrew turned his hand over, and a black stone the size of a fingertip appeared out of thin air. The black stone was a cube, its edges all precisely one centimeter long. It looked somewhat like ore, yet it radiated an aura that made his heart tremble...
"An aura of destruction. Pure destruction, unbridled destruction. This aura definitely isn't something a Saint-level being could possess. It must have come from a deity!" Holding the black stone, Andrew could not stop cold sweat from pouring down his body. The stone's aura was like a sharp sword piercing his skin...
"I know! This is the Infernal Realm's currency, Inkstone!" Andrew sprang to his feet in excitement and could not help shouting. His movement startled Golden Tiger beside him.
"Inkstone. Yes, it must be Inkstone. Inkstone is created by a Sovereign of the Destruction Element, so of course it contains an aura of destruction. Although this aura is very faint and tiny in quantity, it's exceptionally pure."
Holding up the spatial ring, Andrew was ecstatic. He had just guessed that this spatial ring must have an unusual origin, and now it was finally confirmed: it had made its way here from a Higher Plane!
"Huff!"
"Huff!"
After taking two forceful breaths, Andrew finally calmed down.
"The master of this spatial ring must have been an extraordinary expert. Otherwise, he couldn't have come to the Yulan Continent. After all, the teleportation fee from a Higher Plane to a Material Plane is staggering!"
Andrew immediately thought of the great battle on the Yulan Plane over a decade ago, and of the Necropolis of the Gods that Beirut had established after becoming a Sovereign. Who knew how many experts had been lured to their deaths there? Even the Purple Blood Fiend, renowned throughout the Infernal Realm, had fallen there.
"Over a decade ago, many Deity-level experts from other planes descended here. This ring most likely reached the Yulan Continent then. It seems its master must have died in that great battle too."
Drawing on the original novel's plot, Andrew made his deductions. As for why the ring had ended up in the hands of the lord of Lefen City, he had no way to judge.
Putting the Inkstone back into the spatial ring, Andrew resumed his inspection. There were more than twenty million pieces of Inkstone like it inside. Even in the Infernal Realm, that was a considerable fortune. Unfortunately, Andrew had no use for it yet.
Apart from gold coins and Inkstone, the spatial ring contained quite a few magical beast corpses, and even human corpses. These corpses were rather unusual, however, and all seemed to have been modified. One corpse was an outright monstrosity, with human arms, a snake's body, a lion's head, and a bull's horns...
Among the many corpses, Andrew also discovered some that were different. There were over forty mummy-like dried corpses that were noticeably distinct from the previous bodies. The expressions on their faces were all clear and varied. Some showed fear, some joy, while other faces were too distorted to make sense of.
"This city lord must have been researching something."
After examining all this, Andrew discovered a book in a corner that seemed to contain some records. He immediately took it out of the spatial ring and began reading by the firelight.
After reading for two hours, Andrew understood many things.
As it turned out, this thick book contained the lord of Lefen City's notes. In them, he had recorded in detail how he had obtained the ring. At the time, the ring had contained only two things: Inkstone and an unidentified statue.
The lord of Lefen City had not recognized the Inkstone. Still a fourth-rank magus then, he had known that the Inkstone was extraordinary, but could only sit helplessly before a mountain of treasure. In fact, even for Deity-level beings, Inkstone was merely currency. Across countless planes, very few could truly make use of it, apart from certain supreme experts such as Aiken of the Infernal Realm. He was one of the rare experts capable of extracting Sovereign's Might from Inkstone.
The Inkstone had been useless to him, but the statue had brought him an enormous surprise. Because of this statue, he had embarked on his present path.
With a wave of Andrew's hand, the statue, half a person's height, appeared before him. He picked it up and turned it upside down. He did not know what material the statue was made of. It did not weigh much, yet it gave him a strange sensation, as though it were immensely heavy.
"Sacrifice unto me, and I shall grant you power!"
On the statue's base, eight large characters were clearly visible.
"What exactly is this thing? Why did the lord of Lefen City sacrifice people with pure souls to it?" Andrew examined it from every angle, his mind full of questions. At that thought, he went back to leafing through the man's notes.
The notes recorded that, after obtaining the statue, the lord of Lefen City had paid little attention to it at first, treating it as an ordinary statue. Later, an unexpected incident had driven him into desperate straits. The lover with whom he had shared life and death had been killed by Lefen City's previous lord, and he himself had been hunted down. Seeking greater strength to take revenge, he had thought of this statue. Skeptical, he had knelt before it and begun worshipping...
Then something unexpected had happened!