Chapter 68: Treasures
The doors of the Xu Clan’s grand treasure pavilion groaned as they were forcefully pushed open. For centuries, this vault had been the absolute heart of the clan’s wealth.
Lin Yuan stepped over the threshold, his Daoist robes brushing against the floor. The air inside was thick and heavy, saturated with the accumulated spiritual qi of countless artifacts hoarded over hundreds of years.
Without a moment of hesitation, Lin Yuan closed his eyes and released his divine sense. His consciousness expanded, sweeping through the pavilion like a tidal wave, tens of thousands of items in the span of a single breath.
While mountains of spirit stones and racks of standard magical treasures filled the outer halls, they were mere mortal trinkets to him. However, deep within the center of the pavilion, resting upon individual pedestals, three specific treasures immediately caught his attention.
With a single Thunder Step, Lin Yuan bypassed the sprawling labyrinth of the treasury and materialized directly in front of the three pedestals.
The first artifact was the River Dragon Blood Banner.
It was a striking, deep blue banner, its body radiating a chilling aura. But what truly made it a supreme treasure was the crimson painted across its center—a perfectly preserved strand of an ancient river dragon’s blood essence.
Lin Yuan reached out, his fingers wrapping around the pole of the banner. He looked at it, using his divine sense to scour it. With his comprehension, he immediately figured a lot out.
When unfurled and supplied with spiritual energy, this banner manifests the terrifying phantom of an ancient river dragon. The sheer force of the dragon’s roar possesses the power to immediately suppress all lower-tier spiritual beasts, forcing them into paralyzing submission. More importantly, the roar acts as a sonic shockwave that violently interferes with an enemy cultivator’s spiritual energy circulation.
Against a Nascent Soul cultivator, whose meridians were vast and resilient, it could not cripple them, but it possessed the rare ability to briefly disrupt their attacks, forcing their qi to momentarily scatter.
Intrigued by its tactical value, Lin Yuan decided to test it. He channeled his Qi into the banner and gave it a sharp wave.
ROOOAAR!
A massive phantom of a blue river dragon erupted from the it, coiling aggressively around the high ceiling of the pavilion. Its roar shook the very foundation of the room, and Lin Yuan felt the ambient spiritual qi in the air violently stagger and stall. He counted the seconds, observing the phantom.
Twenty-eight... twenty-nine... thirty.
On the thirtieth breath, the phantom dragon dissolved back into the banner. Lin Yuan nodded thoughtfully. The banner was incredibly potent, but its effect lasted for exactly thirty breaths. In a battle between supreme experts, thirty breaths was an eternity, easily enough time to turn the tide of a lethal encounter.
He seamlessly stored the banner into his spatial ring and turned his gaze to the second pedestal.
Resting upon a velvet cushion was the Five Elements Reversal Pearl.
It was a mesmerizing, perfectly spherical pearl that constantly shifted through a spectrum of vibrant, multicolored light—crimson for fire, azure for water, golden for metal, emerald for wood, and amber for earth. It hummed with the power of the five elements seamlessly fused into a single vessel.
Lin Yuan’s divine sense penetrated the pearl, immediately unraveling its complex runic structure.
When activated in combat, the pearl functions as a localized domain disruptor. It forcibly reverses the surrounding elemental energy within a designated radius. If an opponent attempts to cast a technique, the pearl violently corrupts their elemental alignment, completely disrupting their spells and causing their internal spiritual energy to become temporarily chaotic and incredibly dangerous.
Against a stronger cultivator, this sudden, violent reversal of the natural laws could force them to abruptly halt their offensive and spend a considerable amount of energy just stabilizing their own cultivation to prevent a backlash.
However, as Lin Yuan comprehended its effects, a faint, frown creased his forehead. He deduced its fatal flaw almost instantly.
"Ingenious, but narrow," Lin Yuan murmured, shaking his head. "It relies entirely on manipulating the imbalance of an opponent’s elemental foundation. Therefore, it becomes entirely useless against cultivators whose Dao perfectly aligns with the Five Elements, or those who have achieved true origin harmony. Their energy cannot be reversed because it is already absolute."
Still, it was a priceless artifact for crowd control against orthodox cultivators. He swept it into his spatial ring.
Finally, Lin Yuan turned to the third pedestal.
The moment his eyes landed on it, the aura radiating from this pedestal was vastly different from the other two.
It was the Ancestor’s Golden Feather.
This was undeniably the most precious treasure among the entire clan’s collection. It was a single feather that seemed to be forged from pure sunlight, hovering gently above the pedestal.
This was the ultimate legacy left behind by the commonly talked about Fifth Ancestor of the Xu Clan—the very man who had conquered a five-hundred-year drought and single-handedly elevated his bloodline to absolute supremacy. The feather contained a heavily condensed strand of that Nascent Soul Ancestor’s peak cultivation.
Lin Yuan approached it carefully, his eyes narrowing as he read the inscriptions floating around the relic.
When burned, the feather releases a full, sentient projection of the Fifth Ancestor himself. This projection is capable of unleashing exactly one full-power attack. The sheer might contained within this single strike was so profound that it could severely injure, or at the very least completely repel, an enemy who had already stepped into the Spirit Severing realm!
But the cost was absolute. Once used, the feather is completely consumed, erasing the last tangible trace of the Ancestor from the mortal world.
Lin Yuan stared at the radiant golden feather, a deep question forming in his mind.
Why didn’t they use it?
When he had hovered above their estate, the Xu Clan had been pushed to the absolute brink. Elder Xu Gan and the others had sacrificed half their cultivation to summon the Five Thunder Splitting Sword. If they possessed a treasure capable of repelling a Spirit Severing expert, why had they not burned it to instantly annihilate him?
Curious, Lin Yuan reached out his hand to take the feather.
The very moment his fingertips grazed the golden light, a terrifying, repulsive force violently exploded outward. It was an instinctive rejection so incredibly heavy that it actually forced Lin Yuan’s physical body to take half a step back, the floorboards cracking beneath his boots.
Realization instantly dawned on him.
"I see," Lin Yuan whispered, a mixture of awe and profound respect coloring his voice. "One needs to be at the Nascent Soul realm to hold the feather."
The sheer intent stored within the artifact were so overwhelmingly dense that a Core formation cultivator attempting to grasp it would have their meridians instantly crushed by the pressure alone. Patriarch Xu Canghai and the remaining elders were completely incapable of wielding their own ultimate trump card. They had been sitting on a weapon that they lacked the strength to lift.
Such absolute might! Lin Yuan thought. The Ancestor of the Xu Clan was truly fearsome. Lin Yuan freely admitted to himself that if this Fifth Ancestor were still alive and guarding this clan, he absolutely would not have done anything to the Xu Clan. He would have taken Bai Qingyue and fled the province entirely.
But as Lin Yuan store the golden feather in his spatial ring, a new thought crossed his mind.
For someone with such heaven-defying talent, possessing a foundation heavy enough to threaten a Spirit Severing expert from beyond the grave... why did the Fifth Ancestor never actually reach the Spirit Severing realm himself?
Does it have anything to do with the fact that he suffered the Heavenly Tribulation when he tried to ascend, forcing him to create the Five Thunder Arts just to survive? Lin Yuan theorized, his eyes gleaming with clarity.
To enter the Spirit Severing realm, one must sever their mortal attachments and align their soul with the Greater Dao. But the Fifth Ancestor had fought the Heavens. He had violently resisted the tribulation, using the destruction of thunder to forcibly carve out his survival. He didn’t align himself with the Heavens while trying to reach the Spirit Severing realm; he had rebelled against them. And the Heavenly Dao, which is not impartial, had likely cursed his advancement, trapping him forever at the peak of Nascent Soul until his lifespan withered away.
It was a lesson in the absolute necessity of a flawless Dao Heart.
Having taken the three treasures, Lin Yuan turned away from the pedestals. He walked past rows, venturing deeper into the corner of the hidden vault.
There, resting completely alone on a simple stone table, completely devoid of any flashy aura, was a simple Jade Slip.
Lin Yuan stepped forward. He had finally found the key to the Barrier Realm, the very item that would allow him to seek for a solution for his wife’s cultivation.
Lin Yuan locked his gaze on the Barrier Token.