Chapter 154: Sumeru Pouch?

Xiao Wenzi saw the wooden sword used to slay the skeleton first pierce through a man's chest, after which the man's appearance rapidly aged until he turned into flying ash.

The dim wooden sword did not stop even then, finally stabbing into the chest of a frantically retreating elder, matching the exact angle and position of the dead skeleton's wound.

He wanted to take a closer look at the elder's specific appearance, but felt a sharp pain in his divine soul, and his consciousness instantly returned to the spirit stone space.

Emboldened, Lu Yin stepped close to the skeleton, bowed to it once more, and then began to carefully observe the furnishings inside the thatched cottage.

A table, a chair, and a bed—the small space was clear at a glance. The young girl's gaze was soon drawn to a jade slip on the table, as there was nothing else besides it.

When Lu Yin first saw the skeleton, she already understood why no one had answered previously; the master of this place had long since passed away.

What could the skeleton's identity be? Had he left behind a method to break the maze array outside?

Perhaps those two jade slips could provide answers. Lu Yin bowed to the skeleton three more times, then walked over to the table, bent down to pick up a jade slip, and tried to infuse it with her divine sense to examine it.

As Xiao Wenzi recovered his clarity, he found himself still at the hilt of the wooden sword. Beside him, Chu Xin'er was still gathering spirit stones, letting him know that everything just now had merely been an illusion.

Of course, by being pulled by the wooden sword into the ancient illusion lingering upon it, he seemed to have discovered an unknown, monumental secret.

The man killed by the wooden sword should be this skeleton. Who on earth was he? And what about that mysterious woman? Did she really perish in the end?

Wait, that woman said that even in death she would not let them obtain it. Obtain what, again? Why did he have not the slightest impression of it?

Regardless of what secret the ancient times concealed, it had nothing to do with him, and Xiao Wenzi could not be bothered to dig deeper. However, he soon found something a bit strange.

While his other memories were extremely clear, when the mysterious woman spoke of a certain item, he had clearly heard it, yet he had not a single trace of an impression left, as if his memory had been deliberately wiped.

What kind of heaven-defying capability was this? For someone who had been dead for who knows how long to still be able to cause a lapse in his acquired memories—just what kind of treasure was it that everyone was fighting over?

Xiao Wenzi was not interested in why the woman, the elder, and the others had fought to the death, but the treasure they competed for was surely heaven-defying. Unable to suppress his curiosity, he wanted to re-enter the previous illusion to investigate.

However, no matter how he subsequently infused his demonic spiritual power into the wooden sword, he could no longer trigger the illusion as before. At this moment, the wooden sword looked as plain and unadorned as if it had exhausted its very last shred of spirituality.

With no other choice, Xiao Wenzi had to try pulling out the wooden sword to study it. Flapping his wings and exerting a little force, he easily dislodged the wooden sword from the skeleton's chest cavity.

"Little Wen, can you tell what kind of treasure this is?"

As Xiao Wenzi stared intently at the wooden sword, Chu Xin'er had also collected all the intact top-grade spirit stones surrounding the stone platform. She walked over and asked with a smile.

"Unclear, but this sword is definitely not an ordinary magical treasure. Master, you should still put it away carefully and make sure others don't discover it."

The wooden sword was one of the mysterious woman's magical treasures. Let alone the fact that Chu Xin'er had not yet reached the Golden Core stage, even if she broke through to the Nascent Soul stage, it remained unknown whether she could refine and drive it. Unable to make anything of his research, Xiao Wenzi could only reply helplessly.

Chu Xin'er nodded, taking the wooden sword and resting it in her palm to examine it closely. After trying to infuse it with spiritual power and divine sense to refine it, all of which failed, she put it into her storage bag.

"Senior, offense taken."

Although the Daoist robe on the skeleton had been pierced through, to Chu Xin'er now, it was still a rare and precious item that she would not miss out on under any circumstances.

Therefore, she intended to lay this skeleton to rest in peace and take the Daoist robe by the way.

The rocks and soil here were very solid and hard. After expending quite a bit of effort, Chu Xin'er dug out a large pit beside the stone platform, and then, with an apologetic expression on her face, went to peel the robe off the skeleton.

The skeleton had died far too long ago and had long since lost any consciousness. The process of Chu Xin'er stripping it bare and placing it at the bottom of the pit went very smoothly. As the skeleton was moved away from the stone platform, a storage bag was revealed.

At first glance, this storage bag looked no different from ordinary ones, but when she had previously probed with her divine sense, she had been unable to sense it. Had the skeleton not been moved away, she likely would have missed it entirely.

Pleasantly surprised, Chu Xin'er picked it up, but her expression turned somewhat strange after a closer inspection.

Neither her divine sense nor her spiritual power could be infused into it, nor did she find any restrictive branding on the storage bag; it was as if the storage bag didn't exist at all, her energy passing right through it.

Even Xu Lingzi's top-grade storage bag could have its branding broken by Chu Xin'er to make it her own, yet she had no way whatsoever to examine the storage bag left behind by the skeleton. Could this be the legendary Sumeru Pouch?

Sumeru and mustard seed; as Buddhist teachings say, a single flower holds a world, and a single leaf holds a Bodhi.

Immortal cultivators similarly had legends of the Sumeru miniature world, reportedly capable of containing tens of thousands of worlds within an inch of space.

Although the Sumeru Pouch was not that exaggerated, the space inside it was astonishing enough, incomparable to hundreds or thousands of top-grade storage bags.

If this storage bag truly was a Sumeru Pouch, its value would be so immense that even ancestors of the Deity Transformation stage would probably fight crazily over it, not to mention that there might be other treasures inside.

However, wanting to use a Sumeru Pouch required a cultivation realm far, far beyond her current level; she could only temporarily store it away and wait to open it in the future.

Having obtained the skeleton's Daoist robe and the mysterious wooden sword, Chu Xin'er had already reaped a bountiful harvest. Even if she could not open the Sumeru Pouch right now, she had nothing to regret.

Chu Xin'er quickly gathered her thoughts, began burying the skeleton, and then pried out the remaining four supreme-grade spirit stones from the stone platform to store them properly.

With this done, Chu Xin'er took out another storage bag—the one she had recently obtained after slaying Wei Suo—which she had not yet had the time to check.

Now that she had acquired all the treasures within the space, and unable to leave without a high-grade Earth Escape Talisman, Chu Xin'er finally remembered her previous spoils.

Wei Suo had already turned to ashes, and the restrictive branding on his storage bag was gradually dissipating. Chu Xin'er did not expend much effort to break through it.

Discovering that inside, aside from some spiritual stones and materials, the Earth Escape Talisman she wanted was reduced to only a single top-grade one, Chu Xin'er could not help but shake her head helplessly.

An Earth Escape Talisman of this grade simply could not withstand the pressure of the earth to allow her a prolonged journey underground, making the prospect of fleeing far away to completely shake off her pursuers an extravagant hope.

Of course, using it merely to rush to the surface shouldn't pose too big of a problem, but the key issue was Chu Xin'er's worry that the outside was already surrounded by disciples of the Lingtian Sect. It seemed she could only temporarily cultivate within this space.

Fortunately, although this was deep underground, due to the large amount of spiritual stones scattered around, the spiritual Qi was extremely pure and concentrated.

Coupled with the top-grade water spirit stones she had just collected, even without the assistance of pills, as long as she had enough time, breaking through to the Golden Core stage would pose no problem.

The only trouble was the threat from the Lingtian Sect. Chu Xin'er did not know when they would pursue her here, but having no other good options, she could only take it one step at a time.