Chapter 80: The Red Box
Inside the secret room beneath the palace...
Rios sat before more than twenty boxes.
These boxes contained the techniques Rios had purchased from the Red Lotus Palace.
And now, it was finally time to examine them.
Rios pushed all the boxes aside, leaving only two in front of him.
He looked at the first box and pulled it closer.
It was a rectangular red box, decorated with countless Red Lotus flowers. It was about one meter long, half a meter wide, and no more than thirty centimeters thick.
Rios opened the box and found two scrolls inside, along with numerous small white tiles.
The tiles resembled domino pieces, though they were noticeably larger, and were made from a white material similar to marble.
Each piece was roughly the size of an adult man’s palm and was engraved with strange symbols, every tile bearing a different one. There were nearly a hundred of them.
Rios picked up the first scroll, opened it, and began examining it.
But the moment he unfolded it, he found nothing written inside.
He was puzzled for a moment and thought he had been tricked, but then something suddenly occurred to him.
He released his spiritual sense and focused entirely on the scroll.
Instantly, an endless torrent of words flooded into his mind.
Rios immediately cut off his spiritual sense, and with it, the torrent of information stopped.
Huff! Huff! Huff!
Rios breathed heavily for a while, feeling a headache forming, but after resting for a few minutes, he recovered completely.
This time, Rios frowned and sent out his spiritual sense much more cautiously.
The moment it touched the scroll again, the information began flowing into his mind once more—but at a far slower pace.
Rios remained completely motionless for a long time.
Time passed without him even noticing.
Five hours later, he finally opened his eyes, beads of sweat dripping down his forehead.
"Hmm..."
Rios frowned as he thought about what he had found inside the scroll.
It was the Nine Lotus Leaves technique... a cultivation technique designed to multiply the rate at which one absorbs and refines the surrounding energy.
"Should I try it?"
Rios smiled, already deciding to do so.
"That female employee said the greater one’s talent, the more Lotus Leaves can be opened from the very beginning. And the more Lotus Leaves I can open, the faster my absorption speed becomes."
Rios rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
After several moments of consideration, he smiled and sat down cross-legged.
He remained perfectly still for several seconds.
Then crimson energy began gathering around him, taking the shape of a lotus base.
The crimson energy gradually increased, forming the first Lotus Leaf.
It didn’t stop there.
Soon, the second leaf appeared.
Then the third.
The fourth.
The fifth.
The sixth.
The seventh.
The eighth.
And finally...
The ninth Lotus Leaf formed.
The moment the final leaf appeared, the lotus beneath Rios began spinning faster and faster.
The surrounding air turned violent, rushing toward Rios at an astonishing speed!
Outside...
The wind around the palace suddenly accelerated, immediately drawing everyone’s attention.
"What’s happening? The weather has been fine all day."
All the servants and palace attendants stared in shock at the sudden change.
"What’s going on?!"
Both Elena and Thandria were startled as powerful winds suddenly began swirling around the royal palace without warning.
Following the flow of the wind, Elena traced where it was heading.
She discovered that it was converging above the royal garden...
The place where the sacred Tree of Life had once stood.
A thought instantly flashed through her mind, and her eyes widened.
"Could it be...?!"
But before she could finish speaking...
The winds dispersed just as quickly as they had gathered.
The weather instantly returned to normal, as though nothing had ever happened.
"Are... are we imagining things?!"
Some servants rubbed their eyes in disbelief.
A massive whirlwind had formed within seconds, lasted only a few moments...
Then vanished without a trace.
They couldn’t help but wonder...
Was that even normal?
Inside the secret chamber beneath the royal garden...
Rios sat cross-legged as the crimson lotus beneath him finally stabilized.
"This absorption speed... It’s almost comparable to directly absorbing cores!"
Rios opened his eyes in astonishment.
If Lord Anz and Director Lance had been here at this very moment, their eyes would have widened in utter disbelief.
The ancestor of the Red Lotus Cosmic Empire who had created the Nine Lotus Leaves technique had originally designed it for geniuses below the Calamity (7) level.
While he himself had already reached the Immortal level.
That was precisely why the technique was so difficult.
That ancestor possessed Heaven-grade talent, and the technique had naturally been optimized to perform perfectly for those with Heaven-grade talent.
But not even he had ever imagined that one day...
Someone with Immortal-grade talent would cultivate his technique.
He had never accounted for such a possibility.
Not to mention...
The one cultivating it now possessed Mutated Immortal-grade talent.
And had learned it...
In only five hours!
It was like designing a cart meant to be pulled by a horse...
Only for a dragon to start pulling it instead.
Not to mention that Rios’s true origin was a tree.
The cart—the Nine Lotus Leaves technique—was now being pulled by a dragon—Rios’s Mutated Immortal bloodline.
Its speed increased to an unprecedented level.
But no matter how fast the dragon pulled...
The cart simply couldn’t withstand the dragon’s power. Sooner or later, it would either overturn... or be torn apart completely.
And indeed...
After Rios maintained the Nine Lotus Leaves technique for only a few seconds, under the overwhelming force generated by the spinning nine-petaled lotus...
The energy forming the lotus began fluctuating violently.
Then it gradually fell apart...
Before disappearing entirely, as though it had never existed.
"What happened?!"
Rios stared in surprise at the strange incident.
"Should I try again?"
He frowned for a while.
After thinking it over, he activated the technique once more.
Crimson energy gathered again.
The nine-petaled crimson lotus reappeared beneath him.
Outside...
The wind once again formed a small whirlwind.
The air around the royal palace began raging once more.
But only a few seconds later...
Everything disappeared again, as though nothing had happened.
"There’s definitely a problem."
Rios frowned.
After considering it, he decided to leave the matter until his next visit to The Eternal Night Heaven.
He rolled up the Nine Lotus Leaves scroll and carefully returned it to the red box.
Then he picked up the second scroll.
He slowly opened it and gradually sent his spiritual sense into it with great caution, making sure not to repeat what had happened with the first scroll.
New information began flowing into Rios’s mind.
He slowly digested it.
An hour later, he opened his eyes and frowned while looking at both the scroll and the white marble pieces engraved with mysterious symbols.
"The Nine Lotus Leaves Array... a sixth-level array!"
Rios looked at the white marble pieces, which were the components of the array, his emotions becoming incredibly complicated.
Excitement.
Anticipation.
Confusion.
Ambition.
Admiration.
Disbelief...
And countless others.
"With this array... training several thousand third-level soldiers within a single year won’t be a problem."
Rios laughed inwardly as countless possibilities flashed through his mind.
As its name suggested...
The Nine Lotus Leaves Array.
It was deeply connected to the Nine Lotus Leaves technique.
It served the exact same purpose.
However, instead of relying on talent and comprehension to manifest the Lotus Leaves...
The array relied on those white marble pieces.
Once assembled...
A gigantic nine-petaled lotus would appear, drawing enormous quantities of energy into itself.
Anyone cultivating within it would see their cultivation speed multiply several times over.
After studying the information contained within the Nine Lotus Leaves Array—which had also deepened his understanding of the original technique—
Rios carefully returned the scroll to the box and closed it.
Then he shifted his attention to the next box.
It was another red box.
Its design was identical to the first one, though it was much smaller.
Rios opened it.
Inside lay an exquisite crimson cloth.
Resting atop it...
Was a worn, ancient scroll.
The contrast was striking.
The luxurious cloth had clearly been preserved with the utmost care...
While the old scroll looked as though it had been neglected for centuries.
It looked like an ancient relic from a forgotten age, one that had been discovered and preserved in the world’s greatest museum.
Rios gently picked up the scroll and slowly unfolded it.
Inside...
Countless words were written in a strange language, their handwriting messy and irregular.
Yet even with the System’s ability to translate most known languages...
It failed to translate this one.
Nor could Rios understand a single word written within it.
He frowned and cautiously extended his spiritual sense toward the tattered scroll.
Moments later, he opened his eyes again, his frown deepening.
He had failed.
It felt as though his spiritual sense had collided with a solid wall.
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Mister XD:
If there’s anything you don’t understand or anything you’d like to know, feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll reply to everyone. ^_^