Destiny in Cinders

The True Talisman glowed brightly, but An Jing didn't give it much heed. Instead, he quickly packed away his gear and flipped through the corpse of the Fengdu soldier.

The dead soldier had left behind quite a lot of things. Though the self-destruct drone had melted quite a bit of the armor's external layers, its frame was still intact. An Jing pulled the corpse out of the armor. It was not so different from using a toothpick to clear out tapped material in a screw hole.

He noticed that the soldier's four limbs and chest were completely pitch black, filled with many evergreen wood sprouts and roots. The roots were connected to the armor and was probably what allowed him to control the whole thing. Rather than calling the wearer of the Fengdu Armor an armored cultivator, he seemed more like a mere cog within a humanoid tank.

An Jing didn't have the time to spare on taking the armor apart piece by piece. He followed Yvelbane's instructions and extracted two cores within it. One of them was green in color, the evergreen core. It was a material that could be used at the second level of the Foundation Building Realm. It wasn't that large, but it contained very pure vital qi, the same kind provided by vital talismans, making it useful for survival or recovery. That was one of the reasons for the soldier's incredible combat capability and endurance.

The other core was an energy-storage part, consisting of a souljade and an hourglass-shaped apparatus. This souljade was not the same as the green ones An Jing possessed. Instead, it was a beautiful azure. According to the sword soul, this was a grade-two spirit stone, making it tens of times or even a hundred times the worth of a grade-one spirit stone.

However, Yvelbane said that the qi within the spirit stone wasn't that pure. It was probably a reusable spirit stone that could be recharged after the qi within ran out. Even so, the spirit qi contained within was still the real deal.

The hourglass-shaped object was probably a customized spirit-qi crucible designed to extract spirit qi from the stone. An Jing shouldn't have been able to remove it normally, but its connection to the stone was already brittle from the frost, likely from the ghost cultivator's attacks. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

"I got a new high-grade spirit-qi crucible! I should be able to fire the sword case more times than before." He was quite delighted and had been worried about his emptied spirit-qi crucible. He needed something to power the sword case to use against the vilespawn fiend in Void Embrace, so the upgraded replacement came at a perfect time.

The ghost cultivator had been a great help. If the Fengdu soldier had been able to access the spirit qi within the stone, An Jing probably wouldn't be able to kill him. It took two ninefold Qi Refinement cultivators and An Jing's weapons to be able to kill a single Fengdu soldier, and that was only possible due to the soldier's last careless mistake. The Skywatch Bureau truly did have some menacing killing machines.

"You still have to be careful. Equipment like this probably has a spirit signal that can be tracked in the event of theft. It might seem fine now, but once you activate it, it might draw some eyes."

"I won't use it in Deepnight City or Skysource." He had considered the possibility before. Since he was going to return to Void Embrace by crossing the void between worlds, he didn't have to worry about the consequences.

There were many other valuable parts, but his backpack was only so large, so he had to prioritize what he could take with him. Yvelbane found it quite a bit of a shame. As long as An Jing had enough time and resources, Yvelbane was confident it could make him grow rapidly, at the very least with regards to the immortal path of qi cultivation. Having a void ring that could store all of it would be ideal. Alas, it was also important to know when to let go.

"We already got quite a bit of loot." An Jing took the True Talisman and Bo Yan's body and rapidly headed toward the escape route. He passed through many corpses on the way, unsure if they had been killed by the ghost cultivator or the first wave of invaders. He put Bo Yan's corpse amidst one of those piles; it had begun to deteriorate and turn into dust, turning indistinguishable from the other scattered remains.

He then used the shopkeeper's watch to scan the secret waterway entrance. It didn't really stand out and he wouldn't have found it had it not from a bloody handprint on there. When the scan concluded. the secret entrance clicked open. The waterway beyond it was completely dark and looked like a path straight into the underworld.

He could smell a rotting stench and hear the sound of water dripping from within. This must be connected to the sewage systems of Deepnight City. Where could the winding maze possibly head?

He didn't have the time to slowly ponder and had to leave the waterway before the more of the Fengdu Guard arrived. He also had to evade the patrols of Deepnight City's authorities and find a place to forage for food and medical supplies. He needed to heal up and recover spirit qi to prepare for his final clash against the heavenly fiend.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the darkness, blending in with the shadows and disappearing into the waterway. The waterway itself was actually rather wide. There were countless junctions that seemed to wind more and more the deeper he went. It was practically an underground labyrinth. Due to good planning, the pungent smell of rot wasn't too overwhelming despite the moist air within.

The sound of flowing water helped mask that of An Jing's footsteps as he wormed deeper and deeper into the maze, using the shopkeeper's watch to navigate. He had been given full access to the watch and could use the map to rapidly make his way to his destination. Soon, he reached a deep location with no sign of human activity.

"This should be enough. Even if someone's on my tail, it would take them quite some time to reach me." He turned off the watch's projection within the pitch darkness. Then, he switched on its flashlight function and looked at the crossroads ahead of him. It was time to make a choice.

"The map says that I will be able to gradually ascend if I take the right path and walk for an hour. I'll emerge from an exit near an uninhabited area. But I have a feeling that this is far from ideal. Ocher Hill's shopkeeper must be connected to some other party in the black market. Not to mention, the True Talisman that she was supposed to pick up is something that the Skywatch Bureau is hunting. I have a feeling that taking the right path will lead to my capture."

"That's right," Yvelbane agreed. "But the problem is if we don't use this path, how would we get aboveground?"

"We should find a different waterway exit nearby. The most important thing now is to leave this path. There are many uninhabited zones near Deepnight City where we won't risk being discovered at night. We don't need a perfect escape. All we need is to leave this danger zone so that the next time we come back, I won't be falling right into their hands. I also need to find a quiet place to recover my spirit qi."