Completely spent, Cao Yun did not really explore the temples right away. However, he noticed one thing immediately after crossing the door, there was not an ounce of Evil Qi in the temple he was in right now. Unfortunately, there was no Qi either for that matter...

But still, it allowed him to completely relax. Even the Drop of Wrath was not forced to continually absorb Evil Qi just to protect him. Despite his ability to better control it, Cao Yun still had to keep some of his mind on it just to make sure that it would not grow too gluttonous over time. In addition, now that the Drop of Wrath was way less busy, it would thoroughly digest everything that had happened. This would also be the case for the young man. After all, Cao Yun had done much progress in very various domains and he had to let it settle first. Even the Tail Star was slowly building up.

Right now, there was a vague blue and white hue floating in the sky where the Tail Star was supposed to be. But with Cao Yun's Chamber of Jade, he could mostly imagine what it would be like once formed. The Tail Star would be in fact composed of two stars, not larger than the Room Star each. And they would shine a blue-white color with almost the same brightness than the Room Star as well.

With his great intuition, Cao Yun was fairly certain that he would need less than a year to completely figure out this star and its variant. The last stars were the most complex to figure out. That was one of the main reasons behind his choice of energizing the Chamber of Jade first. Increasing his intuition was a great way to boost his understanding of any martial arts. To begin with, he had a lot of intuitions concerning martial arts, just because he loved studying new ones when he was still with his family.

Inside the temple, it seemed like it was another world. Outside Cao Yun could still hear the fights breaking out. They seemed to be more and more violent as time was passing by. Despite that, the worn-out walls were still able to isolate Cao Yun from most of the noise. The only reason he was able to hear anything was the fact that there were holes both in the roof and in the walls themselves. Without them, he was fairly certain that he would have been completely isolated from the outside world.

-

After a very long sleep, Cao Yun finally woke up refreshed. Still worried about his water supply, he only drank what was necessary. Then he left the gourd open. Since there was no trace of Evil Qi in this place, he could refill the gourd thanks to the humidity in the air. A tiny array formation had been built into the gourd so that water would condense faster. Despite its very limited use, this was still a 2-star Human array formation, the Clouds in the Lake array formation. Such a gourd had cost him a great number of points. Chief Elder Suxian had proposed to make one for him for free but he was embarrassed by the gift so the chief elder merely helped him reduce the cost a little.

The array formation was of very good quality and did not require to be recharged very often. Hopefully, it would last as long as Cao Yun was in this world. Since there were places where he could replenish his water supply, only food remained a problem. At most, Cao Yun could last maybe eight months. But without a good supply of Qi to nourish his tissues, he would slowly become weaker and weaker. Considering that the local fauna was made of literal skeletons, Cao Yun had abandoned the idea of finding any meat. And after seeing the rotten grass, he had not much hope for vegetation either...

For now, he wasn't hungry, but he had to admit that he was missing the taste of food. That would be a good test of his will. Thinking about this, he thought about his brothers in Yinmen City. In his stead, Ren Chao would have already become insane. Damn, he would have maybe tried to cook the egg by now... Chuckling a little, Cao Yun was able to reduce the tension that had crept its way into his mind.

Then, he finally explored the temple.

Although the architecture was very different from the style of the Hongchen Kingdom, Cao Yun could still determine that this was some kind of temple. But he was unable to say what religion or philosophy it was supposed to be from. There were several columns with many characters engraved in them. Sadly, most of them were too deteriorated to make out and even those that were a bit more preserved were unknown to Cao Yun. Still, he had the feeling he had seen them before.

Immediately, he thought about Cleansed Asura. Maybe they were written in his language. Thus, Cao Yun racked his mind to find any trace of the original language of his master. And he did. Cleansed Asura had tried to translate most of his texts, but he had left some works in his native tongue. Of course, the young man could not read them at all, but he was able to recognize the same kind of character. In fact, he was able to clearly notice some of them that were on those columns. He had been right. This place was clearly related to his dying master.

Considering the state of this place, it probably meant that Cleansed Asura was either very close to death, or simply dead. This would explain the presence of so much Evil Qi and Death Energy. No matter how powerful or wise Cleansed Asura was, he would probably have a lot of regrets and resentment upon his death. An expert dying on such a remote planet from the wounds he had not been able to heal was just too sad.

Exploring some more, Cao Yun discovered a few texts here and there. It looked like someone had already been here before him. There was no dust in this place so Cao Yun could not use it to determine that. However, he felt like someone had disturbed this temple not too long ago. The very first person he thought about was Can Mouye.

He had no concrete proof, but there was something in the way the texts were disposed. They had not been thrown to the ground or something. Someone seemed to have meticulously sorted them out. Seeing that, the idea that Can Mouye had done so dissipated. A demonic cultivator would probably not have that much respect. Well, maybe Cao Yun was just wrong and those texts had just been miraculously preserved. Looking around to review the condition of the temple, it seemed very unlikely, unless there was some kind of magic protecting those texts, which would be very far-fetched.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Still, Cao Yun took the books. There were all kinds of documents. Some were books made of bound sheets of paper. Others were bamboo sticks woven together. And there were even stone tablets. It felt like Cao Yun was looking at all the stages of civilization in this temple. As technology progressed, they had more and more mature tools to write down information.

All the texts were however written in the same language. But there were also a few characters Cao Yun could not place at all. Considering the emphasis put on them, he surmised that those were probably Insight Writings. Only someone familiar with a concept could read those characters. They did not convey either sound nor a cultural meaning. What they conveyed was the literal truth of the universe as it had been understood by its writer. Unfortunately, Cao Yun was able to understand none of the Insight Writings. Just like 'Sealing the Seven Demons in the Nine Peaks', he tried to draw them in his mind, but nothing really happened.

For a moment there, Cao Yun wanted to take the documents with him but he had no spatial tool of any kind. And strangely, he felt bad about the idea of taking those documents outside of this temple. It was very peculiar but he felt as though it would be disrespectful toward his master. Yes, he had only met Cleansed Asura a handful of minutes, but he had accepted him as a disciple, saved his life and given him all of his knowledge. Even if he could only use a tiny fragment of a portion of it, this was still the knowledge from a God-Monarch.

Of course, Cao Yun had not the same attachment to Cleansed Asura as he was attached to his masters and instructors from the Wubei Sect or his own family. But he had fully welcomed him in his heart as his true master. Even if Cleansed Asura had been his teacher for less than a day, he would respect him as his own father for the rest of his life. Without him, Cao Yun would be dead. So, in a way, everything he had lived, the woman he had met, the friends he had made, the things he had learned, everything was derived from Cleansed Asura's actions.

Although he was not his parent, he had truly given him a second life. The fact that Cao Yun could not understand most of his knowledge was just a mild inconvenience compared to that. Hopefully, Cao Yun could grant his one dying wish. The God-Monarch had asked for a proper burial. Cao Yun knew that those rituals could help both Death Energy and Evil Qi settle down. As they were corrupted by resentment and regrets, the sincere emotions of the living could help them calm down and even purify them to some extent. Of course, several religious beliefs had surrounded those rituals and it was difficult to sort out the truth from the beliefs. But it was undoubtedly efficient.

Considering the condition of this world, Cao Yun could indeed imagine that Cleansed Asura had suffered much anguish. He had been slowly dying and decaying for several millenniums. According to him, it had been even more than thirty thousand years. But even he could have been mistaken. Maybe he had been there since the Legendary Era.

Anyway, Cao Yun still decided to memorize all the texts he could. Although he had no way of memorizing the Insight Writings, he could still engrave the unknown characters from Cleansed Asura's language in his mind. In fact, he had even built a complete set of characters from the various documents. In total, he had found more than a hundred thousand unique characters in this language. He had always found that the Nuhua was difficult. Now he had found something even more complex.

Thanks to his Chamber of Ultimate Truth, not only was his memory photographic, he was also able to sort those characters. In a few minutes, he had found many similarities between several sets of characters and was able to quickly sort them out into various categories. Unfortunately, he had no way to understand them because he had no context at all. But it didn't stop him from trying to analyze this language. With just a bit of information, he was convinced that he would be able to decipher some meaning out of it. Those texts were maybe too complicated right now, but he would not lose hope in this endeavor.

While he was organizing his thoughts, he realized something by accident. In the texts from Cleansed Asura that were in his memory, he recognized one of the Insight Writings from the physical texts. This was a bamboo scroll. Immediately, he took the scroll in hand and compared its content with the memory he had in mind.

The exact same Insight Writings were present both in the text and in his memory. Of course he was absolutely unable to read them but it was proof that Cleansed Asura had at least read, if not written, those texts. But this wasn't all. By analyzing his memory, the text in his mind had a similar structure. But it was written with Nuhua characters. What Cao Yun realized was that all the characters from the texts had been replaced by Nuhua characters, one for one. But different characters on the text had been replaced by the same Nuhua character sometimes.

Thinking about it, Cao Yun came up with an idea. Maybe Cleansed Asura had been too weak when he had transferred his memories. The most important document had been translated but everything else got scrambled with the Nuhua and his own native tongue being mixed together. Without more information, he would have a hard time figuring out what had happened to the texts precisely. But he realized that even learning the language of Cleansed Asura would probably not be enough to fully unravel his knowledge...

-

Cao Yun spent almost a week inside the various temples to both research the documents, memorize everything and also rest. His gourd was completely full and the water was perfectly normal. Cao Yun even found two other gourds laying around. Many others were destroyed but two had survived. Thus, he was able to fill them with water as well. The temples were great to refill his own gourd, but he didn't know how often he would get this great opportunity. Unfortunately, he found nothing useful besides that, not even a map.

Outside, the fights seemed to have calmed down. And when he went to look, Cao Yun saw that indeed many rib cages were back in the now cracked black sand. All the crows were gone and only several dozens of giant abominations were still standing and fighting. Apparently, they had completely forgotten about him, and it was a good thing.

In a few days, he would be able to get out and explore some more. Water was not a problem, but food was. Besides the lurking threats of this world, Can Mouye had maybe come here as well. Hopefully he had, and he had died. But Cao Yun was not the hopeful kind of man. Furthermore, he had to think about his friends. Even if this place was related to Cleansed Asura, he could come back later. To be honest, he wasn't entirely sure about that. But he truly needed to go help his friends.

Just as he was about to go back inside, he heard a powerful sonic boom up in the sky. From one of the ruined temples floating in the scarred sky, a giant figure suddenly flew out. Focusing his senses, Cao Yun saw that there was another smaller figure being chased by the giant. It was difficult to make out their respective sizes but the small one seemed human as Cao Yun could see clothings. And if that were the case, the giant creature after the smaller shape was somewhere between a thousand chi and a full li*.

*Approximately 1,000 chi = 1,000 ft = 300 m ; approximately 1 li = 500 m = 500 yd