It's this long?
Three hours later, Yu Yan—who still hadn't reached the end of the passage—frowned at the tunnel whose destination was anyone's guess, wondering whether he should keep going.
"Yu Yan, what's wrong?"
Seeing him stop, Xiao Wu, who had been following behind, halted as well.
"We've already…"
Yu Yan didn't hide his thoughts; he told Xiao Wu exactly what was on his mind.
He'd assumed the spot marked on the treasure map wouldn't hold anything worthwhile and had planned to finish this quickly, but who could have guessed the passage would stretch on so? After three hours of walking, the end was still nowhere in sight.
The path ahead was unknown. If they kept going, they might miss Crown Prince Xue Qinghe's invitation.
"We're here anyway—keep moving. As for the prince's invitation, you never really wanted to attend. If we skip it, we skip it. We can always visit later and explain; I doubt he'll hold such a small thing against us."
Unable to see why Yu Yan was tangled in such a pointless worry, Xiao Wu offered a straightforward analysis.
"Right. Then let's keep going."
Smart people tend to overthink, yet matters are often simpler than they seem.
In this case, for example, Yu Yan's cleverness had trapped him in thoughts of Qian Renxue's identity and the two Titled Douluo at her side, blinding him to the surface facts.
Because Xiao Wu knew nothing of those convoluted schemes, she could simplify the problem and produce a workable answer.
Yu Yan wasn't stupid; he'd just been snared by his own cleverness. Once Xiao Wu spelled it out, he grasped the key at once.
With everything clear in his mind, Yu Yan collected himself and led Xiao Wu onward toward the tunnel's end.
Another two and a half hours of walking brought a faint glimmer into view, along with a thread of chill that made itself felt even from a distance.
After telling Xiao Wu what he'd noticed, both unconsciously picked up their pace; each wanted to know what lay at the end of this long, hazard-free tunnel.
Near the light, Yu Yan was first to see crystalline ice enclosing glowing, nameless Ore. The ice refracted the Ore's light, illuminating the once-dark cave.
He pried out a piece of the glowing Ore with brute force and studied it closely, certain he'd never seen its like before. No shame in that—no one can know every stone.
He asked Xiao Wu; when she didn't recognize it either, he tossed it into the golden scepter. They could always show it to someone who would know once they got out—simple.
Since neither knew what the Ore was, Yu Yan collected only a few pieces before continuing on with Xiao Wu.
The farther they went, the brighter the glow from the Ore embedded in the ice walls became, until eventually it was as bright as daylight.
"Amazing,"
Xiao Wu murmured, pressing a hand to the chill-veiled wall and releasing Moonlight Energy to sense the surroundings; she meant to record everything today and write it in her private travelogue—an extraordinary treasure hunt.
"There's an ice-attribute treasure ahead."
While she probed with Moonlight Energy, Yu Yan, too, felt the pure, ice-cold presence of something valuable.
"I still sense nothing." Hearing him, Xiao Wu lifted her hand from the ice and hurried to his side. "Come on, let's see what's there."
After more than six hours of walking, they finally reached the tunnel's end: a vast cavern of ice, its ceiling split by a slender fissure through which a patch of sky could just be seen.
The cavern floor was strewn with fine ice shards—the source of the ice-attribute aura Yu Yan had detected.
Apart from the shards, he also spotted several sheddings… silkworm sheddings, presumably?
Confirmed as sheddings, yet still doubtful—because their age felt wrong, and the larger ones bore golden patterns.
The fissure!
The ice vault!
Ten-thousand-year ice marrow!
Golden-patterned sheddings!
Put together, the clues pointed to one particular creature Douluo Continent's first million-year Spirit Beast of ice and spirit attributes: Heavenly Dream Ice Worm.
According to its own tale, Tianmeng had slipped through a narrow crack into an ice cavern filled with vast quantities of ten-thousand-year ice marrow. A weak little silkworm ate its way to nine hundred thousand years, only to be drained of its Origin Qi by the Vicious Beasts of the Lake of Life and finally reach a million years—a true under-beast story.
Were other Spirit Beasts to learn one of their kind had reached nine hundred thousand years merely by eating, they might die of envy on the spot.
If this was the ice vault Tianmeng spoke of, and the golden-ringed sheddings were its own, then the lucky-yet-unlucky silkworm was even now inside the Lake of Life, having its heaven-and-earth Origin Qi siphoned by the top-ten Vicious Beasts.
Yu Yan leapt down into the vault, moved behind the sheddings, and pressed a hand to them to sense their Spiritual Qi.
The smallest had worn away with time; that they still held shape at all was a minor miracle.
The golden-ringed ones retained considerable energy; the more rings, the greater the power.
A skin bearing eight full rings held energy so vast it dwarfed that of the sixty-thousand-year Spirit Beast he had once absorbed—by orders of magnitude.
"Xiao Wu, what grade of Spirit Beast Materials would you say these sheddings equal?"
Withdrawing his hand, Yu Yan let the reincarnated Hundred Thousand Year Spirit Beast judge the worth of the sheddings.
High-grade Materials were treasures one might search for in vain all one's life; these sheddings were treasures among treasures, and only an accurate dating would let them be used properly.
"Sure, leave it to me."
Xiao Wu stepped forward and began her appraisal.
A shedding with one golden ring equaled a thirty-thousand-year Beast's Material, but thanks to its unique substance it could stand in for forty-thousand-year stock.
Two rings meant eighty-thousand-year grade.
Three rings… one hundred and forty thousand.