Chapter 2051, Jade Slip

The stone cavern was very large and there were some other things besides the magma pool.

Before Yang Kai could take a careful look, Liu Yan’s voice suddenly rang in his ear, “Master!”

Having heard her shout, he promptly let Liu Yan out with a thought.

Liu Yan didn’t take the human form but maintained her Firebird form, quietly hovering before Yang Kai. Her eyes were completely glued on the magma pool in front. There was actually a sliver of longing in her gaze.

“Is there something down there that’s useful to you?” Yang Kai immediately asked, noticing this.

Liu Yan promptly voiced out her desire, “There seems to be something there, and it’s not small. I will go check it out.”

As she spoke, she spread her wings and flew straight to the magma pool and plunged inside.

“Be careful,” Yang Kai in the back hurriedly exhorted, but Liu Yan had already disappeared.

He couldn’t help but shake his head. Only then did he finally begin looking around.

The stone cavern might be big but it was empty. So, the surrounding situation was clear at a glance.

Very soon, Yang Kai’s attention was drawn to a certain place.

There, a humanoid figure seemed to be sitting cross-legged. Yang Kai furrowed his brow and immediately spread his Divine Sense. After a bit of scanning, he finally confirmed that the humanoid figure was just a skeleton. It had not even a bit of vitality and aura. Obviously, it should have died a long time ago.

[If I’m right, this should be Gong Sun Mu’s corpse.]

[An Alchemy Grandmaster of his generation, the third disciple of one of Ten Great Emperors, Wondrous Pill Great Emperor. He was supposed to be an outstanding master who had everyone in the Star Boundary at his beck and call. But then, he had met a tragic end in an insignificant place like the Yuan Furnace Mountain.] Yang Kai couldn’t help but sigh again and again. He had no idea how Gong Sun Mu offended the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor so much that the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor expelled him. His end was so bleak and lonesome that he had no one to even collect his body.

Having set his mind, Yang Kai walked to the skeleton and cupped his fists and bowed slightly.

In any case, Gong Sun Mu was an elder, and most important of all, an Alchemy Grandmaster. Even if he died here, he deserved this bow from Yang Kai.

After standing straight, Yang Kai’s gaze was immediately attracted by what was in front of Gong Sun Mu.

Gong Sun Mu must have stayed here until he died. There was a small pot-like object not too far from him. This small pot looked like a wok used by ordinary people for cooking but it was much smaller in size. And underneath the small pot was the Earth Fire which was burning below the pot. It was drawn using an Array.

What Yang Kai cared about wasn’t this pot but the thing inside the pot.

Surprisingly, a pot of thick medicinal soup was boiling in this pot. There wasn’t much of it; it was only about a bowl, covering just the bottom of the pot.

From time to time, a bubble would appear in the medicinal soup. And whenever it burst, it would emit a colourful glow. At the same time, a strange fragrance would permeate the cave.

Yang Kai’s expression changed as he smelled this fragrance.

He was very familiar with this fragrance because it happened to be the very same fragrance he smelled outside the Yuan Furnace Mountain.

Back then, outside the Yuan Furnace Mountain, many cultivators were lured over by the appearance of a phenomenon. Whether the sudden colourful glow and the wonderful fragrance filling the world, everything was very similar to the scene before him.

A pondering look immediately appeared on Yang Kai’s face.

[In that case, the phenomenon of the Yuan Furnace Mountain isn’t because some precious treasure is about to mature but because of this pot of medicinal soup.]

Yang Kai immediately became interested in this pot of medicinal soup. Even though he was eighty percent sure that this thick medicinal soup was not poisonous and could even bring great benefits to the cultivator, he did not dare to take it rashly before he properly understood the thing.

He looked around and soon found a jade slip before Gong Sun Mu’s skeleton.

The jade slip seemed to have been placed by Gong Sun Mu himself before he died. From one glance, it was extremely clear that he had prepared it for the later generations to read.

Yang Kai first checked it with his Divine Sense. Only after he was sure that there was no danger, did he finally reach out to pick the jade slip.

The moment he grabbed the jade slip, things suddenly changed.

Gong Sun Mu, who should have been dead for years and had been reduced to nothing but a skeleton, suddenly moved. Immediately after, his eye sockets flickered with a pair of green glowing orbs that suddenly flew out and gathered into a ball of light that shot straight at Yang Kai.

Yang Kai was taken aback. He quickly jumped back, and at the same time, circulated the energy in his body to defend himself.

But what horrified him was that the ball of light actually ignored his defensive energy and went straight into his chest, disappearing in a flash.

In an instant, Yang Kai was frightened out of his senses and he broke into a cold sweat. He quickly scanned his body with his Divine Sense, but strangely found that he hadn’t suffered any injuries. There seemed to be nothing wrong with his body.

And after doing this, Gong Sun Mu’s skeleton crumbled down on the ground, as if it had exhausted its last strength. The bones were incomparably fragile, many of them broke apart.

After a short while, everything returned to normal. Yang Kai, holding the jade slip in his hand, stood rooted in his place with an ugly look on his face.

Just now, he had definitely triggered some kind of seal laid by Gong Sun Mu. And since he couldn’t detect it with his Divine Sense, so this seal was obviously very well hidden. He couldn’t dispel it either.

After pondering for a long time, Yang Kai, gritting his teeth, sat down and poured his Divine Sense into the jade slip, reading it carefully.

He felt that since Gong Sun Mu had intentionally left this jade slip, he must have left some clues that might help him know what happened just now.

As his Divine Sense scanned through the jade slip, the content of the jade slip immediately became clear to him.

“I, Gong Sun Mu, the third disciple of the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor, met the Great Emperor in my young and ignorant days, when I used to beg for a living. The Great Emperor didn’t look down upon me and even took me as his disciple, teaching me the Alchemic Dao…”

As expected, the jade slip was really left by Gong Sun Mu, so this cave mansion indeed belonged to him. The information in the jade slip was very complicated. At first, it just had a memory of Gong Sun Mu. He was a very unfortunate person. When he was young, he tasted the cold bitterness of the world, almost starving to death. At the same time, he was also a very lucky guy. He actually caught the notice of the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor. He was then taken as a Low-Ranked Disciple, staying by the Great Emperor’s side while cultivating and learning Alchemy skills.

“My aptitude was far better than my two Senior Brothers and the Great Emperor loved it very much. He taught me everything without hiding anything. My Alchemy skills quickly surpassed the two Senior Brothers, and as I rose to fame at a young age, I grew proud and arrogant. I was out of control. When my Senior Brothers tried to mediate, I ridiculed them, creating discord between brothers…”

“At the age of three hundred, I advanced to the Emperor Realm and became an Emperor Grade Alchemist as well. I became renowned in the Star Boundary, but that wasn’t enough for me. I want to surpass the Honored Master in Alchemic Dao. So, I started researching the way of the Human Pill, eventually hurting my life and Heaven… First Senior Brother informed the Honored Master, and he was furious. He stopped me from researching it, but I couldn’t accept it. I agreed on the surface but continued as before in private. I was beyond control…”

“At the age of three hundred fifty, my secret was exposed by the First Senior Brother again. I attacked Senior Brother in my anger, heavily injuring him. The Honored Master couldn’t take it anymore and expelled me from his tutelage. I then found Yuan Furnace Mountain and lived here in seclusion…”

Almost all of Gong Sun Mu’s life was recorded in the jade slip. According to his own statement, his aptitude was almost comparable to the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor. Unfortunately, he seemed to be a little eager for success. In order to surpass the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor, he studied the way of the Human Pill.

As for what the way of the Human Pill was, Gong Sun Mu didn’t say. But judging by the meaning in between the lines, Yang Kai felt that it should be a very cruel Alchemy technique.

Obviously, the reason why he was kicked out of the tutelage had a lot to do with the way of the Human Pill. Of course, a part of the reason was that he attacked his Senior Brother, even severely injuring him.

After he was kicked out, Gong Sun Mu settled down in Yuan Furnace Mountain. After this life-changing experience, his temperament seemed to have changed a little, and he realized his mistake.

He wanted to return to the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor many times but he never met the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor. Finally, he died alone in this cave mansion.

Apart from this, the jade slip also had Gong Sun Mu’s own understanding of the Alchemic Way. It could be said that this jade slip itself was Gong Sun Mu’s notes of Alchemy, which was of great value to any Alchemist.

It had all kinds of pill recipes, Spirit Arrays used during refining pills, Pill Condensing Techniques… it had all kinds of stuff. Every Alchemist would go crazy for its contents.

However, Gong Sun Mu also stated in the jade slip that everything was the crystallization of his own life’s wisdom. It had nothing to do with anything taught by the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor.

Without the permission of the Wondrous Pill Great Emperor, he didn’t dare to leave that knowledge in the jade slip.

“I don’t know who you are, but since you have passed many of my tests and got this jade slip, it means that you are an Alchemist as well. Now, you can be considered as my successor. And since the jade slip is in your hands, it means that you should have also been hit by my Withered Soul Seal. The Withered Soul Seal will not harm you within the next hundred years, but after a hundred years, it will swallow your Soul. There are only two ways to remove this seal: One is to have cultivation better than mine, and the other is to find my Honored Master and ask him to take action. I hope that you can meet my Honored Master in a hundred years, hand him this jade slip, and ask him to take me back under his tutelage!”

“As compensation, you can take the Ten Thousand Medicinal Treasures Soup for which I have worked so hard on for the rest of my life. You will realize its many benefits in the future!”

After this, there was nothing more mentioned in the jade slip.

After having read it completely, Yang Kai heaved a long and deep sigh, squeezing the jade slip. He was finally free from the worries.

At the very least, he now knew exactly what he was just hit with.

Obviously, the Withered Soul Seal should be a seal laid by Gong Sun Mu before his death. As long as anyone took the jade slip, the Withered Soul Seal would be activated, penetrating into the body of the person who took the jade slip.

This seal was harmless for a hundred years but it would swallow the Soul after that.

A century wasn’t a short period, so Yang Kai wasn’t worried about anything for the time being.

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As long as his cultivation exceeded Gong Sun Mu’s within a century, he could remove this Withered Soul Seal. Although Yang Kai had no idea about Gong Sun Mu’s cultivation before his death, he should be in the Emperor Realm for sure.

Yang Kai was confident in reaching the Emperor Realm in a century. What he was afraid of was that Gong Sun Mu might be a Third-Order Emperor. In that case, he would need to become a Great Emperor, and only then could he remove the Withered Soul Seal on his own.