Luo Qingchen stood where she was, her face going green with annoyance.
‘So, I used one Millennium Blood Soul Flower on you, took a claw for you, and even split my hand open, yet I’m still a “little thief”?’
‘Fine, let her be.’
Ling Xiyue walked into the stone room and sat down cross-legged.
Placing the Green Scale Sword across her knees, she closed her eyes, and the spiritual energy around her began to flow slowly.
Luo Qingchen stood at the entrance of the stone room for a moment.
Once she confirmed that Ling Xiyue had entered a state of seclusion, she turned and walked back to the main hall.
Xiao Bai was crouching in a corner of the hall, licking his paws.
His scruffy fur wasn’t completely dry yet, making him look multicolored and messy — the perfect image of a stray dog.
“Alright, she’s in seclusion. Let’s explore this cave.”
Xiao Bai pricked up his ears.
“Is there treasure?”
“I don’t know. Let’s look and see.”
The cave wasn’t large.
Luo Qingchen took a walk around and got a general sense of the layout — three rooms and a main hall.
The hall was the primary living area.
In the center sat an alchemy furnace, mottled with green copper rust.
Its lid was skewed, and dry, cracked pill residue remained inside.
The first room on the left was a study.
Luo Qingchen pushed open the stone door, and three rows of stone shelves filled with bamboo scrolls and jade texts appeared before her eyes.
Her heart began to race.
She rushed forward in three quick steps.
The moment her hand touched the first bamboo scroll —
*Crumble.*
The entire scroll disintegrated into powder at her fingertips, drifting into the air.
Luo Qingchen froze.
She reached out for another scroll nearby.
It crumbled.
She tried another.
It crumbled again.
After trying seven or eight scrolls in a row, all of them turned to ash at the slightest touch.
Having been exposed to the air for 3,000 years, the spiritual energy had long since dissipated, and the bamboo itself had oxidized to its limit.
Luo Qingchen crouched on the ground, watching the debris littering the floor as her heart bled.
If these had been perfectly preserved, any single book taken outside would be a priceless treasure.
Auction houses across the entire Xuanzhou Continent would have gone wild for cultivation techniques from 3,000 years ago.
Now, they were all gone.
“What a waste,” Luo Qingchen sighed, standing up and patting the dust off her knees.
The first room on the right was the pill storage room, the same one she had passed through when she took the Blood Soul Flower.
The jade bottles in the stone niches were actually in decent condition; after all, jade was more durable than bamboo.
Luo Qingchen pulled the stoppers and smelled them one by one.
The spiritual energy in the vast majority of the pills had mostly dissipated.
The colors were dull, and their medicinal properties had drastically diminished.
They were barely usable, but the effects would likely be a fraction of what they once were.
Still, Luo Qingchen swept them all into her storage bag.
Small as a mosquito’s leg may be, it was still meat.
If she ever became so poor she had to eat dirt, these expired pills could at least serve as an emergency resource.
Finally, she returned to the main hall.
Luo Qingchen circled the alchemy furnace twice but didn’t find anything special.
However, in a corner of the hall, she noticed some miscellaneous items piled on the ground.
She rummaged through them and pulled a palm-sized storage treasure from the bottom.
It was a cloth bag, dusty and gray, embroidered with a faint beast pattern.
Luo Qingchen poured a trace of spiritual energy into it, and the mouth of the bag lit up.
She reached inside and felt two objects.
She pulled them out.
They were a short blade and a small shield.
The short blade was about 1 foot long with a narrow, thin blade suitable for one-handed use.
The small shield was circular, less than 1 foot in diameter, with serrated protrusions along its edge.
The grade of these two spiritual artifacts wasn’t high — likely around the peak Yellow Grade — and their spiritual energy fluctuations were very weak.
Compared to the Five Elements Blade and the Green Scale Sword, they weren’t even in the same league.
However, for a small-statured spiritual beast, the size was perfect.
Luo Qingchen turned her head to look at Xiao Bai in the corner.
Xiao Bai was lying on the ground, boredom-induced sleepiness taking over now that the most valuable things in the cave were gone.
One of his ears drooped while the other stood upright, twitching occasionally.
Luo Qingchen walked over and tossed the short blade and shield in front of him.
*Clang!*
Xiao Bai jolted awake, jumping back two steps.
“What the hell! Trying to scare a dog?”
“These are for you.”
Luo Qingchen knelt down and pushed the blade and shield forward.
Xiao Bai looked down at them, then back up at Luo Qingchen.
“For Lord Dog? What for?”
Luo Qingchen’s eyebrows curved as she gave him a particularly brilliant smile.
“You hold the blade in your right paw and the shield in your left.”
She stood up, holding her hands out in front of her to demonstrate with great emotion.
“Then you charge forward and shout, ‘My blade and shield! Slay the Nascent Soul! Annihilate the Spirit Severing!'”
Xiao Bai stared at her, unmoving.
Three breaths passed.
“Did your brain get scrambled by that Scaled Horned Beast during the fight?”
Luo Qingchen ignored his roasting and knelt back down, stuffing the short blade into Xiao Bai’s right front paw.
Xiao Bai looked down at the blade in his paw, his entire body going numb.
“I’m a utility-type spiritual beast! I’m not a battle pet!”
He shook the blade off and retreated two steps.
“Lord Dog’s professional positioning is support! Finding paths! Sniffing out scents! You want me to go up there and throw my life away?”
“What if you encounter danger? You can’t just rely on running every time.”
“What’s wrong with running? Running is Lord Dog’s core strength!”
Xiao Bai stiffened his neck, pointing a front paw at the short blade.
“You’re asking a Samoyed to charge with a blade and shield. Think about that image yourself. Doesn’t it feel ridiculous?”
“It’s called well-rounded development.”
“It’s called a lack of respect for dogs!”
Luo Qingchen pushed the small shield over as well.
Xiao Bai tried to block with the shield in his left paw while pressing the blade down with his right.
The poor dog couldn’t even stand steadily, wobbling from side to side.
He looked down at the blade, then at the shield, and finally at his two short front legs.
“Stop making Lord Dog laugh.”
Xiao Bai kicked the blade and shield away together, flopping onto the ground with all four legs and burying his head in his paws.
“Lord Dog followed the Ancestor for 300 years, and I always did respectable work.
Digging up spirit mines, finding spirit herbs, tracking prey.
Now you want me to take up a blade and shield as a thug? What’s the difference between that and sending a chef to the battlefield?”
Luo Qingchen thought about it.
It did seem like she was forcing the dog a bit.
“Alright, then just keep them as spare equipment. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll have a breakthrough.”
“Lord Dog will never have that kind of breakthrough in this lifetime.”
Luo Qingchen put the blade and shield back into the storage bag and hung it around his neck.
She then found a spot against the wall in the hall and sat down.
Leaning against the stone wall, she adjusted herself into a comfortable position and began circulating her technique to recover her spiritual energy.
There was very little spiritual energy left in her Dantian.
That fight just now had been too intense.
With the thin foundation of the early Foundation Establishment stage, it would take quite some time to recover once her spiritual energy was depleted.
Fortunately, the concentration of spiritual qi in this cave was very high.
Absorbing it here was more than twice as fast as it was outside.
Xiao Bai trotted over and lay down by her feet.
“Can that woman really break through?”
“She said she could.”
“What if she fails?”
“Then we do what we have to do. We keep a low profile.”
Xiao Bai snorted and rested his head on his front paws.
“You sure are thick-skinned. You threw the most valuable flower onto her, and now you’re acting as her protector. What are you after?”
Luo Qingchen kept her eyes closed.
“I’m after her ability to fight.”
Xiao Bai rolled his eyes.
“Lord Dog thinks you’re after more than just that.”
The corners of Luo Qingchen’s mouth quirked up, but she didn’t say a word.
The cave fell silent.
There was only the faint hum of spiritual energy circulating and the sound of Xiao Bai’s rhythmic snoring.
Luo Qingchen leaned against the stone wall, recovering her spiritual energy while keeping her ears pricked for any movement outside.
The restriction sealed the cave entrance, so there shouldn’t be any problems in the short term.
The Deception Jade Slip had also remained quiet for the time being.