Dao Chapter 33: The Puppets

"What the hell is this place? It’s damned spooky!" Di Qiu muttered. His face turned pale as he saw more and more skeletons scattering on the ground. Apparently, he was terrified to the extreme.

Shiao Chen also appeared a bit frightened with caution teemed in his eyes. He grasped firmly dozens of low-grade talismans in his hand in case any incidents might happen, he would not hesitate to react at any time.

Although Chu Kuang’s face also became slightly pale, no fear could be detected from his eyes, looking quite calm. Secretly noticing this, Shiao Chen indiscernibly pulled a distance from Chu Kuang and began to put on more guard against him.

Launching forward for another hundred meters, there were fewer skeletons on the ground, only one in every dozens of meters. However, the ever more intense traces of fight in the cave made everyone even more stressed.

"Chu Kuang my junior brother, this place is more than weird. Do you think we can get treasures on our cultivation? Why not we retreat for now and wait until we are sure as shooting to make it?" Di Qiu said, looking scared by the traces and cavities by flame or swords in the cave. He could not help  flinching a bit because after all they had to have the life to enjoy the treasures.

Hearing his words, Di Shuai demonstrated a bit of joy on his face, and said in approval, “That makes sense. Chua Kuang my junior brother, wouldn’t it be better that we retreat before having a sophisticated plan?”

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Our cultivation, by its very nature, is against heaven’s will. How is it possible to achieve anything without great perseverance and sufferings?" Chu Kuang was still calm and unconvinced; traces of coldness sprawled out along the corners of his mouth, “And today you already know the location of the adobe. What if you came back with others to usurp the treasures? At this point, there is only stepping forward and no pulling back. Surely, I will not stop you if you want to leave, but you should consider whether you have the ability to get out of here.”

"You..." These words turned Di brothers’ faces into gloomy dark.

Shiao Chen remained silent and cold-eyed. Up to this point, they were already holding a wolf by the ears. The only option for him was to forge forward step by step with as much caution as possible.

"Look! There is another skeleton in front." By Wu Wanli's voice which swarmed with surprise, obviously he discovered something.

Chu Kuang and others ceased the quarrel to hurried over.

The skeleton remained intact, and its color seemed a little crystal like that of a distinguished jade stone buried deep underground. A faint aura of majestic dominance disseminated from within the skeleton, delicate as it was but enough to take the breath of all the five people present.

At this moment, even the ever-calm Chu Kuang was terrified. His voice trembled, “Gold Core…Gold Core Cultivator!”

Everyone took a look at one another and saw the indefinite fear from other's eyes. What kind of incredible threat was hidden here that even an overmatch of Gold Core perished here?

Shiao Chen made quite an effort to suppress his shock and fixed his eyes on the skeleton. It was in the poise of sitting, facing up to the sky, against the wall of the corridor. Its arms crossed but oddly, the thumbs were pointing right to some point in the cave.

Shiao Chen stopped looking at the skeleton and contemplated in secrecy for a while shortly before recovering to a normal look.

"Storage bag. Here is a storage bag!" Di Qiu's surprise tone awakened others whose eyes, at the sight of this inconspicuous bag, shimmered with some desire. The bag belonged to a cultivator of Gold Core Realm, so the things inside surely excited people by mere thinking.

"My friends, I suggest all the items in this storage bag be evenly distributed. For things cannot be distributed evenly, compensate the person missed out with spars. What do you think? " Chu Kuang said slowly. His eyes almost burst with fever, but he managed to withhold the thought to arrogate all within the bag.

"Agreed." Others nodded after thinking for a while.

Chu Kuang swallowed nervously and carefully cast a testing spell. After making sure there was no danger, he reached out to the storage bag. Scanning it with his divine sense, he was at once stunned and quickly become wild with excitement.

Crash!

Chu Kuang opened the storage bag. And as the things inside were poured out, they quickly piled up like a hill, occupying half of the corridor.

Spars, elixirs, spirit tools, jade slips, and talismans, giving out dazzling brilliance that stunned the five people.

Shiao Chen was also astonished, a flash of zeal shimmered in his eyes. Supposedly, there were more than ten thousand spirit stones, among which more than one hundred pieces were top-grade stones. The various spirit tools plus the many elixirs, jade slips and talismans, altogether would be worth at least ten thousand spars! This wealth, far from modest even among Gold-Core cultivators, imposed such a battering shock as one could imagine on these rookies of Qi-refining period.

"Wealth…We are filthy rich…" The Di brothers repeatedly muttered to themselves as if having lost their minds.

An hour later, the pile of treasures was divided by the five people. Although trapped in potential danger at the moment, Shiao Chen could not help but appear unconceivably satisfied. The Di brothers were even more excited with faces flushed in scarlet, crying determinedly in high spirits for a thorough exploration of the whole adobe.

"This is just the beginning of the harvest, and as long as we work together, there will be more treasures waiting for us later." Chu Kuang said with fever on his face, which, however, faded away and turned to fright after a slight shake of the entire corridor.

Shiao Chen and others all had the grim sense of foreboding and turned around slowly, finding out a pair of scarlet eyes staring at them. The owner of them was exactly the statue armed in golden stone armor at the inner wall of the corridor!

"Damn it. I woke up puppets. Haven’t these things consumed all their energies and fallen into eternal sleep?” Chu Kuang was panic-stricken and drew back swiftly, the calm in his eyes disappearing in a split second.

Shiao Chen and others did not dare to take any risk and also retreated immediately.

As if sensing the breath of Shiao Chen and others, the puppets completely regained consciousness as the scarlet in their eyes becoming more and more brilliant.

“Whoa!”

“Whoa!”

Two low-pitched roars burst out from the mouths of the puppets and the scarlet eye holes exuded a radiance of blood-thirsty. A wave of spirit pressure was emitted from the two puppets and firmly locked Shiao Chen and the other four.

Chu Kuang sensed that the spirit pressure was at the early stage of Foundation-establishment period and became relieved a little bit.

"This is the puppet guarding the adobe. By estimate, they should have run out of spiritual power and fallen into dormancy, but I have no idea why these two would wake up. Luckily, though they wake up, their strength has reduced to the early stage of Foundation-establishment period. Otherwise, two Puppets of early stage of Gold-Core period can easily kill us all."

"Gold-Core Puppets!"

Even Shiao Chen could not help but take a deep breath. Gold-Core period! What a powerful existence! How could someone actually create such horrifying power and make it into puppets! Possessing such formidable ability, ancient cultivators were indeed terrifyingly invincible!

Naturally, the death of the Gold-Core cultivator was easy to explain—he must have been killed by these two powerful puppets.

Chapter end