Nine Evolutions of the True Spirit
Chapter 431: Twenty Four Corals

After arriving at the hall, they saw that it was empty. The items had been taken away by Zeng Wu and his companions before being handed over to Lu Ping and the others.

After forcing himself to calm down, Zeng Wu scanned the hall. From the conversations he heard, Zeng Wu realized that the hall contained secrets that he and his companions did not discover. With a curious gaze, he stared at the other cultivators, eager to find out how they would unearth the secrets within the hall.

However, his curiosity was shut down when Qiao Wei-Jie turned toward Lu Ping. Immediately, an unknown power emerged and knocked out Zeng Wu as Lu Ping calmly said, “He’ll be out cold for at least five days.”

Qiao Wei-Jie smirked smugly while Shui Xiu smiled. “Senior Brother Lu’s divine revelation is astounding! If he says five days, this young man will fall asleep for five days.”

Han Fei stomped the ground and unleashed a force so strong that the mountain started trembling. A few seconds later, the ground collapsed, revealing a massive hole where condensed spiritual energy gushed out.

Pleased, the group walked toward the hole and entered it, except for Lu Ping. He cast a spell and formed a blue halo. Under his control, the blue halo engulfed Zeng Wu, and when it disappeared, so did Zeng Wu.

Lu Ping scanned the area beneath him with his divine revelation before entering the hole.

Upon doing so, Lu Ping discovered a stairway leading deep underground. The walls on either side of the path were decorated with Star Runes. The light provided by these rocks was not particularly bright, but it gave enough visibility.

Lu Ping descended the stairs and came across a massive complex of multiple palaces. The building complex was the core of the cave and was where its secrets lay. The group had concluded that there was still a lot left to be discovered in the cave after noticing seal remnants in the items found by Zeng Wu and his companions.

Shrouded by a massive formation, colorful seals protected the building complex well. Clearly, Lu Ping and the rest would be tested if they wished to enter the building complex to obtain rewards. Not only would they have to dismiss the formation, they would also have to barge through the seals. The formation acted like the walls of a castle, while the seals were like traps hidden within the castle.

After breaching the formation, they would have to deal with a more difficult situation; overcome complicated seals consisting of minor seals that were connected with each other.

Lu Ping noticed three breaches in the formation that had been opened up by Qiao Wei-Jie and the others. Over time, the formation was slowly closing the breaches.

Lu Ping wasn’t about to enter through the paths they had opened, for he was no fool. These paths were bound to be filled with traps they had set up to prevent being followed. If he traveled along these paths recklessly, he would be treated as a hostile target. Furthermore, in addition to the original traps laid down by the previous owner, his pace would be too slow.

Lu Ping reached his hand into the Golden House and pulled out Da Bao. After touching the ground, Da Bao started clawing it, and after several attempts at burrowing, Da Bao turned around and gestured to Lu Ping with a few screeches.

Da Bao told Lu Ping that the seals anchored the ground, preventing them from entering the formation through burrowing, which Lu Ping had already expected.

Lu Ping pointed his finger toward a corner of the formation, unleashing a Glacial Bolt. The location in question immediately froze and started shattering. After two more Glacial Bolts, the corner was leveled by Lu Ping, allowing him to enter the formation with a fat mouse following behind him.

A few seconds after they entered the formation, the glacial ice preventing the hole from being repaired was quickly melted by the formation. When the breach was patched, the spot started glowing brightly again.

Inside the formation, the density of the spiritual energy in the air increased tremendously. The building complex was not massive, unable to match the Zhong Xuan Cave of the past. From what he learned from Da Bao, the density of the spiritual energy in the air was equivalent to several minor spiritual veins.

Da Bao clawed the ground repeatedly before giving up and following behind Lu Ping. The formation protecting the ground rendered Da Bao - the vanguard of Lu Ping’s treasure-seeking adventures - helpless, making him feel uneasy.

Lu Ping found that his divine revelation could not scan the area due to the interception of the surrounding seals. The rumbling sounds he heard from all directions suggested that the others were also eager to lift these seals.

Just as Lu Ping was about to explore further, Da Bao halted him and signaled him to move aside. Lu Ping gave in and looked in the direction Da Bao pointed, finding a cobweb-like seal ahead of him.

With his divine revelation, Lu Ping carefully examined the seal blocking his path. Then, he made a few hand signs, casting several spells and lifting the first layer of the cobweb-like seal.

Lu Ping then continued casting several spells, but the second layer proved even sturdier than the first. He had to cast another spell to finally destroy it.

However, the third layer was very tough. Despite using different hand signs and spells, Lu Ping found himself unable to remove the third layer. Some of the hand signs and spells he used to try and lift this seal were taught to him by Liang Xuan-Feng, with a majority of them from the violet jade scroll he found on Fei Ling Island.

The knowledge he learned from the trip to Zhong Xuan Cave had proved to be very beneficial, but despite being helpful here, it was not as useful as it was in the Zhong Xuan Cave.

Left with no choice, Lu Ping stretched his hand out and unleashed five lethal energy attacks, disrupting the third layer’s energy flow and shattering it.

Behind the seal were twenty-four corals that came in different sizes and colors.

These corals were the manifestation of the essence of various spiritual materials after thousands of years. The nature of these corals meant they were incapable of being turned into powerful equipment. However, smiths could extract the raw materials contained within them and forge powerful equipment with these extracted materials.

Additionally, these corals were all top-tier materials in their own right after having existed for thousands of years. When the essence they contained was extracted, the corals could also be turned into top-tier equipment.

One by one, Lu Ping stowed the corals into his interspatial ring. Just as he was about to keep the last two corals away, he stumbled on something precious. Unlike the others, the final two corals were smaller, but their essence was far more condensed.

Lu Ping picked them up and toyed with them happily before putting them into the Golden House. The spiritual materials that made these two corals contained many traces of mutations, boosting their value. Lu Ping couldn’t even identify the type of wonder items in these corals using the Tri-Pristine True Vision. It took him a moment to realize that these corals were all trophies belonging to the previous owner of the cave. If there were any wonder items, the owner had already taken them all.

Lu Ping continued venturing deeper into the cave while the rumbling sounds created by the other cultivators continued. Judging from the sounds, Qiao Wei-Jie and Han Fei had taken the most extreme measures to open up a path for themselves. As a result, their progress was much quicker than the others, with Shui Xiu being the next fastest after them. Shui Xiu would only cause an explosion from time to time, and judging by the gap between each explosion; she was already deep into the cave.

It turned out that Shui Xiu was an expert in lifting seals. She had been removing the seals through Seal Expulsion Techniques, only occasionally resorting to brute force when she couldn’t do so. As a result, her movements were minimal.

Qian Shu and Yang San-Yang were the slowest, but they were actually progressing at a steady pace. Unlike the barrage of attacks launched by Qiao Wei-Jie, both Qian Shu and Yang San-Yang were working in tandem to clear a path.

Growing wary of them, Lu Ping started picking up his pace and gave chase. The Golden House dangling on his chest glowed brightly as three little kids and a young girl in her early teens appeared behind him.

“Lu Qing, Lu Hai, and Lu Ling help me to lift these seals. Qin’er, I need you to repel the counter-attacks launched by the traps when we forcibly remove them.”

Whilst Qin’er’s attacks were actually the swiftest and most efficient way of demolishing the seals, her powerful attacks would only result in a stronger and never-ending retaliation from the seals, eventually wearing Lu Ping out. Hence, Lu Ping had the three little ones aid him in removing the seals. Together, the three little ones’ overall strength was above the Luan. So, while their attacks were not as violent and impactful as the Luan, they shouldn’t be underestimated.

Lu Ping could lift some seals immediately, and for those that he couldn’t, he would force his way in with the combined power of the snake trio and his own. Lu Qin’er then dealt with the counter-attack from the seals. Da Bao offered a helping hand by summoning a couple of stone walls from the ground, but they only lasted for a few seconds before they were shattered into pieces.

Together, the group advanced forward and quickly surpassed Qian Shu and Yang San-Yang, rapidly closing the gap with Shui Xiu. If it weren’t for Da Bao, who stalled their pace by requesting to break a couple of the seals, they would have progressed even further.

Da Bao found a couple of withered spiritual gardens behind the seals he wanted to break, allowing Lu Ping to scavenge several few thousand-year-old spiritual herbs. There were even a couple of three-thousand-year-old spiritual herbs that had escaped the fate of withering.

The building complex’s structure was very intricate. The central palace was surrounded by four other buildings. While Lu Ping closed in on one of them, Qiao Wei-Jie and Han Fei had already breached the other two buildings’ seals. They rained down a series of powerful attacks against the seals, flaring them up violently as if they wanted to level the buildings.

Lu Ping’s progress was now on par with Shui Xiu. A hint of happiness flashed across his eyes when he arrived at the building. With a rapid movement, he quickly formed forty-two hand signs, and after a massive explosion, the barrier in front of him shattered, revealing a colorful door hidden behind it.

Without saying a word, Da Bao immediately charged into the building.

Lu Ping stationed the snake trio at the door and entered the building with Lu Qin’er following behind him.

Inside, there were plenty of racks placed against the walls, filled with papers and various scrolls made from wood and jade. There was also an ordinary wooden table in the center of the building with a teapot and teacups on top. Three tea cups were positioned to the side, with one teacup placed right beside the table. The tea inside this teacup had long since dried out, leaving behind some stains and dust. Next to this teacup was an open book that was also covered in dust. Clearly, the owner of this place had been sipping on some tea while reading at some point in the past.

Noticing a protuberance in the dust, Lu Ping caught on to something, leading him to wipe the dust away. When the dust was cleared, a thin jade scroll was revealed. Surprised and pleased with his discovery, Lu Ping hurriedly focused his divine revelation into the jade scroll to check its contents.

Moments later, Lu Ping carefully picked up the jade scroll and stowed it inside his interspatial ring before continuing to explore the racks.

At this moment, Da Bao appeared out of nowhere and came rushing toward Lu Ping with a jar in his mouth.