“I didn’t expect this Plague Demon King to be an alchemist, that’s quite unusual.”
Ling Xiao murmured, continuing his search for items useful to him.
However, the voice of the Plague Demon King’s martial soul didn’t stop, “Master, that jade token is likely related to some ancient inheritance treasure, and it’s probably one of the keys to unlocking that treasure. The Plague Demon King only recently obtained it and hadn’t had time to study it.”
“Treasure? That’s interesting, I love treasures!”
For a martial artist, treasures meant the possibility of finding divine weapons, martial arts secrets, or even rare treasures.
The Mysterious Realm had a history spanning over 100,000 years, during which there were several blank periods with scant historical records.
Especially the relics left by the generation of the Human King from 100,000 years ago, no one had discovered them to this day.
Ling Xiao injected his soul force into the jade token to examine it, vaguely discerning a place that resembled a tomb. However, the image was incomplete and unclear, making it impossible to determine its exact location for now.
Moreover, Ling Xiao’s knowledge of the Mysterious Realm was too limited.
His understanding of the Heavenly Dragon Continent was equally sparse.
Even if the image were clear, he might not recognise it.
He decided to keep it for now and study it later. Without this key, even if others found the treasure, they wouldn’t be able to access it.
“What’s this tattered umbrella?”
Ling Xiao asked directly.
“That’s the ‘Plague Umbrella’ once used by the Plague Demon King, a divine-grade spiritual artifact!”
What! A spiritual artifact! And a divine-grade one at that!
Ling Xiao was utterly shocked.
No wonder when he touched the tattered umbrella, he felt an extremely terrifying aura surge into his body, as if it meant to destroy him.
Fortunately, his Mountain River Martial Soul neutralised the aura instantly.
To think this was a divine-grade spiritual artifact, truly unexpected.
The Plague Demon King was cunning, placing this umbrella here. If someone broke in to seize his treasure and touched it, the sudden burst of terrifying aura would be enough to kill them instantly.
Unfortunately for him, it was Ling Xiao who came, and his scheme failed.
“I can’t use this thing.”
Ling Xiao had been thrilled, thinking he’d found a great treasure, but when he tried to activate it, there was no effect.
It seemed the books were right: only Celestial Realm experts could wield spiritual artifacts. Though the Plague Umbrella was damaged, losing much of its power, it was still at least a common-grade spiritual artifact, beyond the control of a mortal realm martial artist like him.
He recalled Yang Danlin mentioning that the Moonlight Sect’s most powerful treasure was the Moonlight Sword, a sect-guarding treasure.
But that was merely a fine-grade spiritual artifact.
Within the sect, most elders, even the current sect leader, used only divine-grade treasures.
It was once mentioned that martial artifacts were divided into treasures, spiritual artifacts, true artifacts, supreme artifacts, and heavenly artifacts.
In the secular world, the latter two were sometimes called immortal artifacts and divine artifacts.
Each category was further divided into common, fine, rare, immortal, and divine grades.
For instance, Ling Xiao’s Ice Dragon Sword was a rare-grade treasure, the Snowfall Sword a fine-grade treasure, while the Plague Umbrella was a common-grade spiritual artifact.
He had seen plenty of treasures, but this was his first encounter with a spiritual artifact.
According to the Moonlight Sect’s records, the strongest martial artifacts on the Heavenly Dragon Continent were likely spiritual artifacts; no one had ever heard of anything higher.
Within the sect, treasures were the most common, mostly below rare-grade.
Only those with deep heritage, or elders and sect leaders, could possess immortal-grade or divine-grade treasures.
Such items, once revealed, would be immediately snatched up.
“I didn’t expect a tattered umbrella to be a spiritual artifact, but even if it were a treasure, I probably wouldn’t use it. Better to use it as material to forge a better sword…”
If the Plague Demon King knew Ling Xiao planned to use his magical artifact as material for a sword, he’d probably be furious enough to come back to life.
But Ling Xiao didn’t care what a dead man thought; he had already decided.
For him now, a spiritual artifact was useless since he couldn’t activate it, just a piece of junk.
Speaking of spiritual artifacts, he suddenly recalled an iron fragment he had seized in Cloud Sky City, brimming with terrifying killing intent.
Now that he thought about it, that killing intent was even more terrifying than the Plague Umbrella’s aura.
Could that iron fragment be an even higher-grade treasure than a spiritual artifact?
Ling Xiao looked within his Mountain River World, seeing the iron fragment embedded in a rock, standing tall between heaven and earth, constantly emitting fearsome killing intent.
Forget it, that thing is too dangerous; better to study it slowly later.
He continued looting the Plague Demon King’s treasure, finding tens of thousands of low-grade spirit stones, thousands of mid-grade spirit stones, and hundreds of high-grade spirit stones.
Naturally, he pocketed them all.
There were also a few martial arts manuals, all demonic techniques from the True Demon Empire, all gold-grade. Unfortunately, their cultivation methods were completely different from human martial arts, so he didn’t plan to practice them but kept them for potential future auctions.
He believed there were plenty in the Mysterious Realm who cultivated demonic techniques.
Finally, he collected all the gold and silver.
His Mountain River World was vast, and though gold and silver were of limited use to martial artists, they weren’t entirely useless.
…
After thoroughly looting the Plague Demon King’s treasury, Ling Xiao went to find Shangguan Lei.
This mission had been full of twists and turns. Wanyan Jun and Chen Zui had so easily defected to the enemy, showing no backbone.
But that was fine; it saved Ling Xiao the trouble of killing them himself.
Their rare-grade treasure artifacts and that gold brick became his spoils.
At this point, Shangguan Lei had passed out, likely overwhelmed by the intense battle and the terrifying aura.
He was lucky, to be honest.
Had he followed Wanyan Jun and Chen Zui down their path, he’d likely have been devoured by the Plague Demon King.
Fortunately, he held to his principles and stood with Ling Xiao, preserving his life.
Though he lost a leg, it wasn’t an issue. Mortal realm martial artists could use puppetry to attach a prosthetic limb, which would be highly functional.
Hei Suo had lost nearly a third of his body and was fully rebuilt with puppet materials.
If Hei Suo could do it, so could Shangguan Lei, especially since he only lost a leg, with the rest of his body mostly intact.
