“Da Wei, why are we moving through an unremarkable cave like this? I don’t even feel any Qi within it. What do we hope to gain from here?”
“Lingxi, the fact that you can’t feel any Qi from this cave should already tell you of its extraordinary nature. Think of it like this, everywhere in this secret realm is saturated with Pure Qi, yet, this cave has none, it is simply abnormal, is it not?”
Yin Lingxi felt startled as she realized the truth in her companion’s words and pondered deeply on how she had missed such a simple thing.
As the two slowly descended deeper into the cave system that stretched deep under the mountain, they soon arrived at a colossal opening.
It was a cavern shaped like a dome stretching several Li in all directions. However, despite its impressive size, it felt no different from the rest of the cave system, completely devoid of any Qi.
However, Da Wei was not fooled and slowly started to walk toward the center of the cavern, where a withered tree sat quietly, looking just like any other dead tree one would find in the outside world.
The only issue was that it was the only intact thing within the barren cavern, which made it extremely suspicious.
As Da Wei started walking forward, he silently signaled Yin Lingxi to stay behind.
‘Careful now.’
‘Relax, we’ve gone over this fight countless times in our minds, I’ve got this.’
‘I know, but it’s better to be cautious.’
Da Wei did not reply to his future self and carefully crept forward while using his Primal Qi as camouflage and bait at the same time.
His target must have taken the bait as the Qi he was releasing into the atmosphere was suddenly being sucked towards the withered tree.
Suddenly, the tree shook and took on a vibrant hue. Its withered branches sprang with black leaves as its trunk shone with Yin and Wood Qi.
Then, its roots suddenly moved out of the earth, and the entire tree stood up on its roots.
However, Da Wei spotted a single root still buried in the earth.
‘As Expected. A Natural Treasure is easy to deal with.’
‘Indeed. It took me everything I had to defeat this damned thing in my timeline, causing this Primordial Yin Wood to be greatly damaged and reduced the lake of Netherworld Yin Spring to dry up rapidly, leaving behind just a few drops of the substance for my use.’
Da Wei continued his tactic of luring the Natural Treasure towards him, hoping to separate it from the Netherworld Yin Spring even if for just a moment so that he could defeat it without causing too much damage to both the items.
Unlike Heavenly Treasures, which take thousands of years to develop a consciousness, Natural Treasures are born sapient, making them extremely difficult to deal with.
As the tree, the Primordial Yin Wood, slowly followed Da Wei, unaware that the ‘Pure Qi’ it was trying to devour was bait for its demise, Da Wei waited patiently while filling his body to the brim with his Pure Qi, preparing for his attack.
The best way to defeat and preserve a Natural Treasure is to strike its core, flooding it with Qi in an instant to destroy its consciousness. However, it is easier said than done for most cultivators due to the unpredictable nature of the Natural Treasures.
As Treasures formed from the very essence of elemental and conceptual Qi, Natural Treasures have no fixed shape or anatomy from which humans could learn their weaknesses.
For example, the previous incarnation of the Primordial Yin Wood took on the form of a Wooden Puppet shaped like a serpent, while the Netherworld Yin Spring took on the form of a clear lake in the middle of a forest with its core hidden within the body of the Primordial Yin Wood.
Even before that, the Natural Treasures hid themselves within the spirit roots of a child, leading the child to suffer and extremely gruesome fate at the hands of the various forces.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
And it is not just the Primordial Yin Wood and the Netherworld Yin Spring that use such methods to protect themselves. All the Natural Treasures are prone to take on new and completely different forms in each of their iterations, making it impossible for anyone to know their weak spots.
This was why it was nearly impossible for most people who discovered these Natural Treasures to take them intact, which fed into their scarcity and value since the majority of the material was destroyed during the attempt to defeat them.
Fortunately for Da Wei, he had a real-life cheat code in the form of his future self who fought this version of the Natural Treasures in his timeline, allowing Da Wei to know exactly where to strike.
Slowly, the tree lumbered over to the limit of its reach, just within Da Wei’s striking distance and close enough to absorb his Primal Qi.
The tree greedily sucked in Da Wei’s Primal Qi, rapidly draining his overwhelmingly large reserves, explaining why the entire cave system was devoid of any Qi.
However, Da Wei did not retaliate, instead, he continued to wait for the tree to suck his Qi, much to the horror of Yin Lingxi who was watching the whole thing.
She felt the urge to rush forward and destroy the damned thing that was sucking her friend dry of his Qi, but she was forced to stay put as Da Wei signaled her to stand still.
Suddenly, the trunk of the tree started to loosen, revealing a small gap from which a gleaming black crystal was visible.
This was the core of the Primordial Yin Wood.
Despite having followed Da Wei’s lure, the tree was always on guard, tightly guarding its core with its powerful body. Even when it started to suck the Primal Qi from Da Wei, it was still extremely cautious, looking out for any traps and carefully digesting the Qi a little bit at a time, worried about being poisoned by some unknown form of Qi.
However, as it continued absorbing the Qi and found nothing wrong, instead even feeling very refreshed thanks to the very potent Qi, it slowly started to relax, lowering its guard, which unconsciously caused its bark to part a little and reveal the spot where its core was.
‘Even if it is born with a consciousness, it is still, in the end, just an object.’
‘True. It’s naivety will be its downfall.’
Da Wei waited some more, watching as the tree completely abandoned its caution and started to greedily suck his Qi.
By this point, it had already drained nearly half of Da Wei’s absurdly large Qi reserves, an amount that is equal to nearly fifty peak Nascent Soul realm cultivators.
Finally, when he felt like the tree was completely free of any caution, he struck like a snake hiding in the grass.
With a swift blow, Da Wei unleashed his full cultivation of The Nascent Soul realm peak stage, directly shattering the bark of the tree and flooding the core of the tree with his Primal Qi.
However, the reaction to his blow was something that no one anticipated.
Da Wei had long since known about the regenerative properties of his Primal Qi. He even used it consciously when he tried to heal Jin Tianrui’s mother and used it several times to recover his and his disciple's stamina during their training sessions.
However, he had never guessed that this property of his Qi would also work on Natural Treasures, just in a completely different manner than he had ever anticipated.
The tree screeched in pain as its core started to grow in size rapidly, becoming larger and larger, pushing through the body of the tree and breaking its shell.
Da Wei stood there with a dumbfounded expression, watching as the core continued to swell and cracks started to show on its surface.
‘….Harvest the spring, and run. GO! NOW!!’
Xiang’s voice brought Da Wei out of his mind, causing him to run towards the hole where the tree was located before.
Looking down the hole, he spotted black liquid that was already starting to boil and evaporate in response to the tree’s damage.
Wasting no time, Da Wei took out a Heaven-Grade containment artifact he had prepared beforehand and drained as much of the fluid as he could into the container.
However, he was only able to harvest a few letters of the substance before it completely evaporated, leaving behind an empty hole.
Suddenly, his instincts screamed at him to run.
“Lingxi! Run!”
The princess shot out of the cave at his words just like he did, but not before grabbing hold of the tree’s body and ripping out a chunk of its wood.
The moment the two people rushed out of the cavern, a bright light nearly blinded the duo, followed by a massive explosion, resulting from the tree’s core exploding after being oversaturated with Da Wei’s Primal Qi, which caused the cavern and surrounding cave structures to collapse.
Fortunately, Da Wei still had full access to his nascent soul realm cultivation, allowing him to pick up Yin Lingxi and shoot out of the cave system before it collapsed on them.
The moment the two arrived out of the caves and into the open air, the two fell to the ground in mental exhaustion at the rapid series of events.
“…..Don’t ever do something like this again.”
“..Agreed.”
Da Wei smiled at the fuming look that Yin Lingxi directed at him.
For the first time in a long while, his life was truly in peril, and he loved every moment of it.
It reminded him of the times from before his awakening when he used to truly love fighting others and was obsessed with power.
He may no longer be that kind of a man, but there is no denying the thrill of adventure he felt at this moment.
Da Wei closed his eyes and lay silently on the ground, relaxing his racing heart.
‘With this, we have both the Primordial Yin Wood and the Netherworld Yin Spring, even if the quantity is only a fraction of what we truly wanted.’
‘Indeed. Where to next?’
‘Home.’
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Author Notes;
A smaller chapter this time since it was mostly action and explaining the nature of the treasures.
Read 6 chapters ahead on Patreon.
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