The three-legged cauldron, now large enough to fit a person inside, floated in mid-air. It spun slowly, casting out countless rays of multicolored light. Bizarre and dazzling, they resembled thousands of strands of divine radiance weaving through the nearby forest in a display of magnificent beauty.
The air rippled like water, filled with illusory shapes, and the atmosphere grew serene. Then, the light slowly dissipated, and everything returned to normal.
Even so, the ancient, rustic aura emanating from the seemingly plain, small green cauldron made Shen Lang sense the incomparably powerful energy it contained. It was like a cosmos in turmoil, its terrifying fluctuations vast and unfathomable…
The slowly rotating green cauldron seemed to possess a will of its own, stopping only after turning its inscribed face toward Shen Lang.
Shen Lang wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and focused his gaze. He saw three large, gleaming golden words carved on the small cauldron: "Heaven-Sealing Cauldron"!
'Heaven-Sealing? What a domineering name.'
Shen Lang circled the small cauldron once and scanned his surroundings, but the figure in black was nowhere to be seen.
The people at Tayun Academy didn't know Shen Lang well. To them, he was just a youth who couldn't practice cultivation and had given up on himself. They had no idea he possessed the fused memories of two lifetimes, making his mind sharper and far from ordinary.
And after gaining another set of memories in a dream, he had undergone many more subtle, indescribable changes.
In a moment of crisis, faced with immense power, an ordinary person would only feel fear or think of fleeing for their life.
But he not only reacted with lightning speed, he also analyzed everything that had just occurred in the blink of an eye.
Hong Yu's grave was in a remote, rarely visited location at the foot of a cliff.
For a powerful expert to appear out of nowhere and ambush him was exceedingly strange.
The "Lover's Arrow" was a Fifth Grade Profound Artifact that Hong Yu had spent decades of her cultivation to refine; it was no Ordinary Weapon or Spiritual Artifact.
Moreover, Hong Yu herself excelled at assassination, and she had designed it as a hidden weapon. Not only was it capable of Breaking Ten Thousand Techniques, but its speed was erratic, its trajectory bizarre, and it could lock onto a target. An expert caught off guard would find it absolutely impossible to dodge with ease.
But the person in black had dodged the Lover's Arrow far too easily.
So easily, in fact, that it was as if they knew he would use the Lover's Arrow and were already familiar with its flight path.
Furthermore, this person's power was immense. They could fly through the air, which meant they were a peerless expert of at least the King Martial Realm. For an expert of that caliber to kill a nobody like him, would they really need to close the distance and use just two fingers?
With the ability to make the Lover's Arrow vanish into thin air and dissipate his Sword Qi without a trace, a casual wave of their hand could probably turn him to dust.
And most importantly, as he faced his opponent, Shen Lang had been staring into their eyes…
Within those cold, indifferent eyes, there was no Killing Intent!
"No Killing Intent, a bizarre appearance, and when I tested you with my words, an expert of your caliber actually faltered… Sister Hong Yu, you're still alive! This is the best news I've had all day!" Shen Lang murmured to the dark forest around him, not caring if anyone could hear.
A moment later, he looked down and tore open his shirt. The small cauldron mark that had been on the right side of his chest was gone.
'All this time, they told me the small cauldron on my chest was a birthmark. I never imagined it was actually such a heaven-defying Magical Treasure.'
Shen Lang calmly scanned the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron. Even with the fused memories of the War Emperor, he was unable to determine what Level of Magical Treasure it was!
Ordinary Weapons, Spiritual Artifacts, Profound Artifacts… none of the categories fit this Magical Treasure. 'Could this thing be something beyond an Immortal Artifact?'
'This is getting a little out of hand…'
Shen Lang gave a bitter smile. To think he had such a powerful item on his person, yet in a place like the Murong Family, which teemed with experts, no one had noticed anything unusual about the mark on his chest for six whole years, from his birth until his escape.
And now, it took Hong Yu appearing to remind him of the small cauldron's existence.
As Shen Lang stared at the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron, desperately trying to permeate it with his Divine Thought and establish a connection, his mind worked on two tracks, continuously analyzing the purpose behind Hong Yu's actions.
DONG!
It was as if someone had struck the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron. Shen Lang, his face beaded with sweat, felt his head swim for a moment before a look of joy filled his eyes.
'Finally made contact! It's not full control, but at least I can manipulate it a little. For crying out loud, I can't just carry a huge cauldron like this home, can I?' In a great mood after learning Hong Yu was alive, Shen Lang smiled and pointed at the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron…
A wisp of faint light shot into the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron. With a whir, the cauldron spun, rapidly shrinking as it flew back toward him.
With a faint flash of light, the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron vanished, and the small cauldron mark reappeared on Shen Lang's right chest.
"Sister Hong Yu, I don't know why you're unwilling to see me, but it doesn't matter anymore. Just knowing you're still by my side is enough to put my heart at ease. When my strength reaches the right level, I will find you."
Shen Lang declared this in a clear voice, then turned and strode back the way he came without another moment's delay, humming a little tune.
He came and went in a hurry, but his state of mind was completely transformed. Knowing that Hong Yu was alive was like untying a knot in his heart. His spirit soared, as free and boundless as the open sky.
Once his figure had vanished into the distant forest, a person dressed in black stepped out from behind a large tree near the grave. They stared fixedly into the distance, then pulled down the black cloth covering their face. Who else could it be but Hong Yu, the very person who was supposed to be chasing the old fortune-teller?
…
By the time Shen Lang returned to his dormitory at Tayun Academy, it was late at night.
The three-person room was empty. It looked like Lin Feng and Su Hen had taken the Gathering Spirit Tokens and gone to Celestial Phoenix City.
Although he had inherited a set of priceless memories, his Celestial Vein Sacred Body remained unchanged. Even with memories of such a powerful existence, he had yet to find a Cultivation Technique suitable for it.
A physique that was said to enable one to become a Saint of the Flesh in the Ancient Era was now looked down upon by all as useless. This was because the current system of power had no cultivation path or Cultivation Technique suitable for this kind of physique.
However, with such memories, Shen Lang had no intention of letting them go to waste. 'First, I need to get some money and refine a few Spirit Medicines,' he thought.
He had originally wanted to create a Bone Marrow Cleansing Potion and a Body Forging Potion, both of which were items that experts would fight to the death over.
However, the ingredients for either of those were astronomically expensive. Even though the 'him' in his memories was a grandmaster, a Peak of Ninth Grade Artifact Refining and Alchemy Master…
And even though his soul was now far stronger than an ordinary person's, his Divine Thought was still relatively weak. It wasn't realistic to expect to earn a massive fortune through Artifact Refining in a short time. He had no choice but to settle for the next best thing and concoct a few slightly inferior potions first.
After glancing around the empty room, Shen Lang went out, gathered some branches and stones, and began to set up an Array.
Normally, setting up an Array required Magical Artifacts or Spirit Stones that contained Spiritual Qi. Pitifully, he didn't have a single Spirit Stone to his name. He was dirt poor, so he had to make do with ordinary stones.
In this world where Martial Arts reigned supreme, the common currencies were Gold and Silver. Spirit Stones were a tier above.
Spirit Stones were mainly used for cultivation, and a single low-level one could easily cost over a thousand Gold Coins.
Shen Lang's monthly living allowance was only one hundred Gold Coins, and he had to hand over fifty of them to Xue Dangdang on time as a protection fee.
The ring he had taken from Shen Daofeng contained two thousand Gold Coins, which to him was already a huge sum of money.
Once everything was in place, Shen Lang focused his Divine Thought on his chest and summoned the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron.
BUZZ!
The small cauldron floated in his palm, rotating slowly as its ancient, rustic aura washed over him.
'My Divine Thought can't penetrate it at all. Just summoning it is already my current limit; trying to activate this Heaven-Sealing Cauldron is harder than climbing to heaven… What in the world is this Magical Treasure? It never appeared in the War Emperor's memories, and I've never seen any great expert use one like it.'
'What did Sister Hong Yu mean by revealing this item to me? If she knew about the mark on my chest all those years ago, why did she never mention it? She didn't say a word even ten years ago when she was dying from her wounds… No! She couldn't have been faking her death! Back when she was succumbing to her injuries, even if she could have faked her aura, she couldn't have faked the look in her eyes or her emotions! She was so unwilling to die, so worried about what would happen to me after she was gone. She held on by a thread just to give me the Lover's Arrow and kept telling me to forget everything and live a quiet, peaceful life here…'
A sharp glint flashed in Shen Lang's eyes in the darkness. 'Could it be that Sister Hong Yu's death and revival are related to this Heaven-Sealing Cauldron? After her aura completely vanished, I passed out for a while before burying her. Did something happen during that period?'
'Otherwise, even if the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron is a powerful treasure, I can't activate it right now, let alone use it. So why reveal its existence to me at this specific moment?'
'Sister Hong Yu drew her last breath on the first day of the twelfth month in the Star Calendar. Tomorrow happens to be the first day of the twelfth month. And this morning, I ran into that mysterious old fortune-teller… all of this seems a little too coincidental.'
Even Hong Yu could never have imagined it. Shen Lang had recognized her the moment she appeared, and then, with almost no other clues, he had laid out all the pieces of the puzzle, peeled them back layer by layer, and reasoned his way to the final answer.
'The period when Sister Hong Yu's breathing stopped and I passed out… it was the Hour of the Rabbit, between five and seven in the morning. If I'm not mistaken, something might just happen to the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron during that same time frame.'
Shen Lang gave the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron a calm look, letting it float in the air as he closed his eyes and began to sort through the memories from his dreams.
Most of those memories were fragmented and incomplete, but even so, they were a priceless treasure.
Time passed slowly. As the first ray of dawn shone through the window, Shen Lang opened his eyes.
He stared silently at the small Heaven-Sealing Cauldron, not even blinking.
The Heaven-Sealing Cauldron still showed no signs of any change.
After half an hour, there was a sudden BUZZ. A green mist materialized out of thin air, enveloping the small cauldron.
The mist seemed to be bound by an invisible force, roiling up and down the cauldron's surface but unable to escape it.
Slowly, the mist gathered at the hollow opening of the cauldron and coalesced into a single, peanut-sized drop of crystal-clear green liquid that rolled lazily on the surface.
A refreshing, soul-soothing aroma emanated from the droplet. Just by inhaling a single breath of it, Shen Lang felt as if he were floating on air. The injuries he had sustained on the mountain from his Burst of power and use of the Forbidden Blade Technique instantly felt much better!
'Such a heaven-defying substance actually exists in this world! If I absorb this single drop of green liquid, won't my injuries heal completely? Could Sister Hong Yu have come back to life because of this mysterious green liquid from the Heaven-Sealing Cauldron…?'
Suppressing his excitement, Shen Lang took a deep breath, slowly approached the small cauldron, opened his mouth, and inhaled the drop of liquid…
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