Chapter Ninety-Four: The Mysterious Jade Fragment!

After the rewards had been fully distributed, the disciple selection of the Azure Profound Sect also came to a successful close. Since some of the chosen competitors had been injured, the date for the new disciples to enter the sect was postponed to ten days later.

After returning to the Zhang residence, Zhang Tai hurriedly summoned the clan’s physician to treat Yang Yan’s wounds. Fortunately, in the final moment of his clash with Leng Yutian’s sword technique, he had avoided the vital points, so although Yang Yan was now covered in blood and looked ghastly and frightening, his injuries were not serious.

Once the wounds were dealt with, night had already fallen completely. Yet Yang Yan had no intention of sitting down to cultivate, for he was simply far too exhausted.

Although the battle with Leng Yutian in the Beast Hunt grounds had ultimately ended in Yang Yan’s victory, he had won with great difficulty. He had exhausted every hidden card he possessed, and both his spiritual power and soul force had been wrung dry. With the assessment over, the taut nerves that had been holding him together finally relaxed, and with that came a tide of weariness from the depths of his soul.

“What a satisfying sleep that was!”

Stretching, Yang Yan slowly got out of bed. A dull soreness spread through every muscle in his body, and all he could do was let out a bitter smile. It seemed that yesterday’s battle had placed a truly heavy burden on him.

Looking out the window, he saw the sun already high in the sky. If it had been an ordinary day, the little imp Zi Ling would surely have already come to his bedside, tugging at his ear and demanding he get up. But she understood that Yang Yan needed rest right now, and so she did not behave as mischievously as usual.

“It’s time to see what I gained from this Beast Hunt...”

Thinking of this, Yang Yan reached into his spatial pouch and drew out a suit of chain armor faintly veiled in black light. It was precisely the high-grade spiritual weapon he had chosen as his reward yesterday: the Profound Ice Chain Armor.

This armor had been forged from thousand-year Profound Ice Iron harvested from the depths of the sea. It felt cold to the touch. Though it looked extremely heavy, its actual weight was far less fearsome than one might imagine, only about ten or so jin. For Yang Yan now, wearing it would place no burden upon him at all.

After rummaging through the spatial pouch for a while longer, Yang Yan took out another pale-blue pouch. Naturally, it was the spatial pouch he had taken from Xu Shaoguang after killing him.

“What a huge space!”

Sending his soul force into the pouch, Yang Yan could not help but sigh. The space within his own pouch was only about a square meter, while Xu Shaoguang’s was six or seven times larger, about the size of a small room.

As his soul force continued to probe deeper, Yang Yan also discovered quite a few items, such as the spiritual weapon Xu Shaoguang had used during the clan tournament earlier: the Starfall Demonic Hammer.

However, he clearly had little interest in that object. His soul force swept past it and moved on elsewhere.

“Blazing Ember of Fire, a high-grade Yellow-tier martial technique...”

After a moment, a pale-red scroll appeared in Yang Yan’s awareness. He had seen Xu Tianlong use this technique before; its power was indeed formidable. But the name alone made it plain that this art was best cultivated and wielded by those with fire-attribute spiritual bodies. As for Yang Yan, he had not even brought his water-attribute spiritual reservoir to completion yet. As for when he might open a fire-attribute reservoir, who knew how many years that would take.

“Let’s set it aside for now.”

Yang Yan let out a soft sigh and no longer dwelled on the matter. After all, a high-grade Yellow-tier technique was still quite scarce within the Zhang family. Even if he himself could not cultivate it, handing it over to some clan members with fire-attribute spiritual bodies would be a fine use for it.

Skipping past the scroll, Yang Yan’s soul force continued to search the interior of the spatial pouch. Yet after a moment, he could not help but shake his head. Clearly, he was not satisfied with this harvest.

“Besides that Starfall Demonic Hammer and Blazing Ember of Fire, there are only a few dozen middle-grade spirit crystals. It seems the Xu family is not as wealthy as I imagined.”

But just as he was about to withdraw his soul force, something in an inconspicuous corner of the pouch caught his attention.

“What is this?”

Slowly opening his palm, Yang Yan revealed a pale-blue object that looked like a shard of broken jade.

Its glow was faint. Resting in his palm, it gave off subtle waves of strange energy tinged with a chilling,阴寒-like coldness, continuously emanating from within. This extremely concealed frigid power even caused Yang Yan to feel a trace of dread.

“If my soul force were not growing stronger and stronger right now, I’m afraid it would be quite difficult to detect the fluctuations of energy here...”

Turning the jade shard over in his hand, Yang Yan murmured to himself.

In his perception, this jade shard seemed to contain something exceedingly mysterious and powerful, far from being as simple as it appeared on the surface.

After examining it for some time without any result, Yang Yan’s gaze sharpened. Soul force surged from between his brows like a tide, completely wrapping the pale-blue shard in his hand.

Yet to Yang Yan’s astonishment, the soul power that had always served him so well in both battle and reconnaissance began to act as if it had sunk into a swamp the moment it touched the jade shard. Little by little, it was devoured into nothingness. It was as though Yang Yan’s soul force were being swallowed by that bizarre pale-blue piece of jade.

“What a strange thing!”

Yang Yan stared in amazement at the jade shard in his hand, utterly shocked. This was the first time he had ever seen something capable of devouring a person’s soul force.

But he clearly had no intention of continuing to study it. The soul is the most important thing a person has; if one lost it, one would become a mindless walking corpse, worse than death. At present, Yang Yan’s strength was obviously still insufficient to unravel the shard’s secret. If he were careless and allowed that uncanny devouring force to侵蚀 his soul, he would truly be gaining nothing and losing far more.

Suppressing his shock, Yang Yan carefully returned the pale-blue shard to a corner of the spatial pouch. Afterward, he began transferring the contents of his own pouch into Xu Shaoguang’s, since compared with it, his own storage space was simply far too small.

When he placed Moonshadow Remnant Frost inside, it actually trembled faintly in a strange way. Then, under Yang Yan’s astonished gaze, it flew on its own to a spot far away from where the pale-blue shard had been placed. It was clear that even Moonshadow Remnant Frost feared that jade piece greatly.

“Sure enough, it’s something good!”

Seeing that even Moonshadow Remnant Frost kept its distance from the shard in fear, Yang Yan felt not worry but delight. His interest in whatever powerful thing might be hidden within that mysterious piece of jade only grew stronger.

Interest was interest, though; he still did not have the strength to unveil its secret. For now, he could only smack his lips in lingering regret and reluctantly turn his gaze away.

“This thing should count as the biggest gain of the whole trip.”

Yang Yan’s voice now carried a hint of delight, and in his hand appeared an object shaped like a small, crimson cauldron. It was the Crimson Refining Cauldron he had seized from Leng Yutian in the Beast Hunt grounds.

A high-grade array-type spiritual weapon—something like this would likely be quite rare even in the Azure Profound Sect.

“Back during the clan tournament, the crimson disc Elder Li Chengfeng used to shield me from the storm of attacks from Liu Zhengqing and me should also have been some kind of array-type treasure. I just don’t know whether this Crimson Refining Cauldron is stronger or weaker than it.”

Muttering softly, Yang Yan’s eyes filled with interest. He condensed a small wisp of water-attribute spiritual power and slowly sent it into the Crimson Refining Cauldron.

In the Beast Hunt grounds, Yang Yan had personally experienced the power of the Burning Spirit Fire-Bath Array. Now that he was in the Zhang residence, he had no desire to turn the place into a wreck.

“Is it because I’ve infused too little spiritual power?”

After waiting for a while, a look of confusion appeared on Yang Yan’s face. He could feel that the spiritual power he had just injected into the cauldron had vanished like a stone sinking into the sea, without provoking even the slightest response from the Crimson Refining Cauldron.

“Try again!”

Gnashing his teeth, Yang Yan increased the amount of spiritual power he fed into it once more, but the result remained the same.

Such an outcome was obviously not what Yang Yan wanted to see. So over the next several attempts, he increased the amount again and again with considerable reluctance, yet the result was always the same: no response at all.

By now, he finally confirmed one fact. This Crimson Refining Cauldron could seemingly only be activated with fire-attribute spiritual power.