Chapter 384: Buddies, Your Bro Is Here to Save You!
["Boom!!"]
[You kicked the Daoist temple's mountain gate flying, sending it straight up to heaven.]
["Old hag! Your grandpa is here!!"]
[You're the cleverest one, aren't you.]
[Before storming the temple, you first found an Exotic Beast lair nearby and stacked 「Heartsteel」 up to ten thousand layers.]
[It took a long time, but it was absolutely worth it.]
[You discovered that after breaking through to a new realm, the maximum stack count of 「Heartsteel」 remained at ten thousand layers, with no further increase.]
[The number of racial talents 「Calamity of Ten Thousand Races」 could carry simultaneously hadn't increased either—still ten.]
[You guessed that growth-type trait tags might have their limits, or perhaps they required other stimuli to grow again.]
[With 「Only the Essence Remains When Concentrated」, you didn't let your body grow to the size of ten thousand layers either.]
[After all, you had no idea if the Ten Thousand Souls Banner and the others were inside the temple. With such a massive form, you might accidentally injure your allies.]
[The moment you broke through the gate, you alarmed the temple's servants and the Old Hag's disciples.]
[The entire temple was instantly covered in a layer of red light.]
[Countless sharp blades and knives rained down from the sky, sweeping toward you.]
[「Reverse Engineering」 let you see that this was a high-quality third-grade killing formation—Thousand Blades!]
[Even you couldn't lay out a formation like this.]
[You naturally didn't dare to be overconfident.]
[But you still let out a cold snort, dismissing it with contempt.]
[Then you pulled out a divine artifact—the Celestial Empress's bellyband!]
[You spun the bellyband above your head like a handkerchief in a folk dance, opening it like an umbrella to deflect all the attacks from the killing formation.]
["Who are you?! Why are you forcing your way into my 'Myriad Treasures Temple'!"]
[Someone was loudly interrogating you.]
[You gave the crowd a sidelong glance and said coldly.]
["I've come to take back what's mine! You'll live if you don't resist."]
[These people still didn't realize the gravity of the situation.]
["How arrogant! Fellow disciples, join me in defending the temple!"]
[You weren't a murderous person.]
[But you gave them a chance, and if they insisted on seeking death, you couldn't be blamed.]
[Just as Chen Two had discovered during his long-term surveillance, every single person in this temple had at least one Spiritual Treasure.]
[Spiritual Treasures were good things in the Real Realm.]
[Ordinary cultivators could only use magical artifacts.]
[High-quality acquired Spiritual Treasures could be auctioned off.]
[However, acquired Spiritual Treasures didn't have Artifact Spirits either, even the best legendary acquired ones.]
[You'd heard that innate Spiritual Treasures had Artifact Spirits, but you hadn't seen a single one yet.]
[Spiritual Treasures were indeed impressive in power.]
[For example, the temple's senior disciple was holding a pitch-black fire poker, and from it could spew what was called 'Triple-Origin True Fire.']
[Even though you cultivated a fire-element technique and had the Flame Clan talent, this flame could still injure your flesh.]
[What's more, after being injured, you could clearly feel that the self-healing from 「Wolverine」 had slowed down, as if wounds caused by 'Triple-Origin True Fire' were harder to heal.]
[There was also a female disciple holding an oilpaper umbrella.]
[With every opening and closing of the umbrella, she could silently flicker in and out of existence around you.]
[It wasn't invisibility—it was more like phasing. She used this trick to dodge many of your attacks.]
["Good, good, good! As expected of the Myriad Treasures Child Goddess! Even the stuff her disciples use is this good! Wonderful! It's all mine now!!"]
[You let out a great shout, stomped your feet, and the entire mountain trembled!]
[「Civil War God」!]
[「Calamity of Ten Thousand Races」!]
[「Qilin Arm」!]
[「Serious Punch」!]
[Spiritual Treasures were good, but the people using them were too weak—they couldn't stop you in your prime at all.]
[The one with the highest cultivation was the senior disciple, at the early Core Formation realm.]
[The rest were only at the Qi Transformation realm, or even lower.]
[Clearly, even the Myriad Treasures Child Goddess, who had scraped together plenty of resources with her artifact-forging skills, couldn't mass-produce Core Formation cultivators.]
[Core Formation required talent.]
[These disciples under the Myriad Treasures Child Goddess generally had low immortal roots.]
[From what was seen on Fortune Star and Blazing Star, humans with high immortal roots simply didn't grow up.]
[Single-handedly, you tore the Myriad Treasures Child Goddess's temple apart.]
[The temple wasn't big, but the formations laid out inside were numerous and varied.]
[But you were strong enough to brute-force your way through, and with 「Reverse Engineering」 exposing the formation structures, the formations barely hindered you.]
[There had originally been sixty-seven people in the temple. After a fierce battle, only ten remained, barely alive, kneeling and begging for mercy.]
[Three people had used the wonder of their Spiritual Treasures to escape during the chaos.]
[You searched the temple from top to bottom but didn't find your stuff.]
[You patted down all the corpses too, but still found nothing.]
[None of them had storage pouches, so they carried little on them.]
[From this battle, you gained nine Spiritual Treasures, eighty-nine magical artifacts, some Source Stones, and some cultivation-assisting pills.]
[A copy of the «Essential Artifact Forging Techniques» personally compiled by the Myriad Treasures Child Goddess.]
[A number of cultivation techniques practiced by the temple's disciples, including Qi Refining Arts, spells, killing moves, and so on, but you didn't see any Divine Arts.]
[There were also a large number of artifact-forging materials in the temple's warehouse, including some treasure-grade materials.]
[Additionally, you discovered that in the Old Hag's study, there was a massive collection of books related to human culture.]
[There were books on literature, on architecture, on agriculture, and so on—a wide variety.]
["No wonder she could build a Daoist temple like this in the Real Realm, where human culture is rarely seen."]
[You noticed that all these books were 'banned books.']
[How could you tell they were 'banned books'?]
[Because on the title page of each book, there was a red stamp with two big characters—Banned Books!]
[Below those two big characters was a line of small text noting the stamping institution—the Holy Dragon Society.]
["Holy Dragon Society... what's that?"]
[You had never actually heard of the Holy Dragon Society before, but you had heard of the Holy Dragon Clan.]
[You wondered if there was a connection between the two.]
[Looking at the ten people kneeling before you, you asked calmly.]
["I saw some of you using divine marks earlier. Why didn't I find any cultivation methods or teaching materials related to divine marks?"]
[Someone answered tremblingly.]
["Only the senior disciple and a few personal disciples were qualified to learn divine marks from the master. The master taught through oral instruction.
The master said that humans were forbidden from mastering divine marks, and even after learning, they couldn't use them in public."]
[You nodded.]
["I have a few things that your master stole from me. They look like this."]
[You took out a picture book, inside which were drawings of all the Immortal Artifacts the Myriad Treasures Child Goddess had stolen from you.]
["Have you seen them?"]
["Y-yes, we've seen them..."]
["Where are they?"]
["The back mountain... the Spirit Nurturing Pool in the back mountain..."]
["Spirit Nurturing Pool? Take me there!"]
[The Ten Thousand Souls Banner was definitely suffering the Old Hag's torment right now, maybe even beyond recognition!]
[Buddies, don't be afraid! Your bro is here to save you!]