The crack in the cliff was about three meters wide. The chest carrying Quinn Shepherd and the others squeezed inside, but after just a couple of paces, it got stuck. Quinn hurriedly tried to shove Bruno the Dragon-Qilin’s belly further in, but the chest still wouldn’t budge. Beneath the chest, Ben Coates was squashed so hard he started howling.
"Keep it down!"
Quinn hissed, telling the chest to back up. Outside, one of Aiden Starr’s divine eyes swept past, its godly light like a pillar scanning the area.
Quinn quickly had the big chest hide behind a protruding boulder. The divine eye flashed by at lightning speed.
"Good thing Starr’s divine eyes aren’t like Grandpa Blind’s, or this rock would never have fooled him."
He let out a sigh of relief, opened the chest, grabbed the loose skin on the back of Bruno the Dragon-Qilin’s neck, and stuffed the big fatty inside.
"Cult Master..."
Inside the chest, Bruno the Dragon-Qilin was trembling all over. "There are arms and legs everywhere in here! And heads! And hearts! And so many fingers!"
Quinn closed the lid and urged the chest to keep moving into the crack. Without Bruno the Dragon-Qilin’s bulk, things went much smoother. The chest pressed on, and the light ahead grew brighter.
Quinn sprawled on top of the chest, craning his neck to look ahead. Instead of a green grassland and blue sky on the other side of the fissure, he saw a vast golden desert—a completely different scene from before.
"Could it be this fissure leads to a different world than the last one?"
Just as the thought crossed his mind, another divine light suddenly shone from behind. Quinn’s heart skipped a beat—there was nowhere to hide now. He could only urge the chest forward as fast as possible.
Luckily, they weren’t far from the world inside the crack. The chest soon crawled out, tumbled down, rolled twice across the golden sand, and then righted itself.
Quinn glanced back. A beam of divine light shot out of the fissure, flickered, and vanished. He couldn’t tell if they’d been spotted.
Suddenly, his heart lurched. He jumped off the chest and looked underneath—sure enough, Ben Coates was gone.
"That guy’s fast!"
Quinn couldn’t help but laugh. Ben Coates must have slipped away when the chest tumbled into the golden desert, seizing the chance to escape before Quinn could pull any tricks on him.
Earlier, they’d all been trapped in the Great Ruins’ deep night, with Aiden Starr close behind, so they’d had to stick together. Now, with no darkness around, Ben naturally made a run for it.
He didn’t have any legs now, so he was no match for Quinn. If he’d hesitated, he’d never have gotten away.
"The Grand Venerable really is a sly one," Quinn praised.
He opened the chest, and Bruno the Dragon-Qilin immediately leapt out, utterly terrified, refusing to go anywhere near the chest again.
Quinn peered inside the chest. It was just as before: a frame made from taotie bones, covered in taotie hide, with shelves inside. But now, far fewer limbs were displayed on those racks.
He also saw marks left where the chest had been sliced open and stitched back together—scars from the Butcher’s twin blades, which had hacked it apart and caused so much damage.
After Aiden Starr escaped the Butcher’s knives, he must have repaired the chest.
"If I could use spirit-awakening to rouse these divine limbs—arms, legs, heads—even Starr wouldn’t be so hard to handle."
Quinn’s eyes flickered. He closed the chest and hurried away from the fissure, heading deeper into the golden desert. The chest raced after him, always keeping pace, and Bruno the Dragon-Qilin ran fast too, casting fearful glances at the chest every so often.
After a while, Bruno managed to overcome his fear and leapt onto the chest, crouching atop it and letting it carry him along at full speed.
"Dragon-Fat has reached a whole new level of laziness," Quinn thought, glancing back at the pudgy beast.
Ahead, the desert stretched as far as the eye could see. Quinn raced across the sand with the chest, then suddenly stopped. Before him, a massive skeleton lay sprawled across a dune, half-buried in yellow sand.
He stepped forward and immediately felt a surge of divine power, stopping in his tracks. The chest halted too. Bruno, who’d been napping on top, woke with a start and looked around. "Is Starr catching up?" he cried.
"Nope!"
Quinn examined the divine skeleton half-buried in sand. Its ribs were enormous, arching high, and the chest cavity could easily fit dozens of people standing upright.
He crept forward cautiously, the chest tiptoeing after him in tiny, careful steps.
Quinn reached out his hand, then hesitated. He fetched Ben Coates’s cauldron and slowly approached the divine skeleton.
Suddenly, there was a tremendous clang. Quinn grunted, his palm split open and blood streaming down, while Ben Coates’s cauldron had lost one of its feet—cleanly sliced off!
That cauldron was forged by Ben Coates in a past life, when he was nearly a god. Its power was on par with a sect’s sacred treasure!
Even when Quinn had fought him with his sword orb, he couldn’t damage the cauldron. Its defenses were that strong.
But here, in front of this divine skeleton, the cauldron was like soft clay—one leg chopped off effortlessly.
Quinn stifled the pain, sealed the wound, and picked up the severed cauldron foot. The break was perfectly smooth, as if sliced by an invisible blade.
And touching the break, he could feel it was scorching hot.
"This is... pure yang qi from the dual forces of yin and yang, refined by the owner of these bones into a divine protective essence."
Quinn stowed away the cauldron and its severed foot. Bruno the Dragon-Qilin stared ahead, trembling. "Cult Master, what just sliced through the cauldron?"
"The Divine Treasury of this god."
Quinn scooped up a handful of yellow sand and blew gently. The grains floated forward, instantly revealing things that were invisible to the naked eye!
Inside the giant divine skeleton sprawled in the sand, there were actually seven intact Divine Treasuries!
Originally, these Divine Treasuries were invisible, but now, as the fine dust settled in, all sorts of divine light burst forth, illuminating the hidden treasuries in dazzling brilliance!
The divine corpse was enormous, but the treasuries themselves weren’t that large. The Spirit Embryo Treasury in the brow was only a few inches across; the Five Luminaries Treasury in the heart and lungs was a bit bigger. The Six Directions Treasury was at the dantian, and the Seven Stars Treasury was between the skull and the heart.
(This chapter isn’t over yet ^.^, please click the next page to continue reading!)
The Heaven-Man Treasury lay in the spine, the Life-and-Death Treasury below the waist, and the Divine Bridge Treasury shot out from the Spirit Embryo, forming a flying bridge that pierced beyond the skull!
Though none of the treasuries looked large, peering inside revealed vast, seemingly endless space—billions of miles, grand and awe-inspiring, even withered suns, moons, and shattered rivers of stars strewn within!
At the center of the Spirit Embryo Treasury sat the god’s spirit embryo. It should have been part of the Primordial Spirit, but now the soul was gone, and yet the embryo hadn’t completely withered.
"He died from a Primordial Spirit wound."
Quinn’s eyes spun with layers of formation runes as he focused on the spirit embryo within the treasury. The god’s spirit embryo had been pierced from behind by a sword, the blade protruding from his chest. The sword had left a phantom image—a testament to the terrifying power of the strike!
Broken suns and moons revolved around the spirit embryo, each one trailing radiant streams of yin and yang qi.
The force that severed the cauldron’s foot had been a strand of pure yang qi.
"Even after death, with flesh and blood gone, the Divine Treasuries and spirit embryo remain intact. The lingering divine essence is still powerful enough to slice through a sect’s sacred treasure."
Quinn mused. An ordinary god could never retain such power after death. He’d once examined Jade Lord’s corpse, the master of Victor Bloom’s teacher. Jade Lord had been blasted to pieces by the Solar-Shooting God Cannon Quinn invented, dying horribly.
Jade Lord’s corpse still radiated divine might, but it couldn’t compare to these bones.
And Jade Lord’s Divine Treasuries had collapsed after death.
"This was a true god—a genuine deity!"
His expression grew solemn. Rummaging through his taotie pouch, he took out the Black Tortoise Pearl and muttered, "How could a true god die here?"
Quinn activated the Black Tortoise Pearl, channeling its power to cast a spirit-awakening spell, attempting to rouse the skeleton.
Whoosh—
The skeleton suddenly twitched. Bruno the Dragon-Qilin was so frightened his scales stood on end, and even his tail snapped straight.
Quinn used the All-Gods Natural Art. It was a technique best suited for women, and his mind was too scattered to master it, but with the Black Tortoise Pearl’s help, he could barely get it to work.
A giant bony hand slowly rose from the sand as the skeleton sat up. Its huge skull drooped, as if inspecting Quinn and Bruno, yellow sand pouring from its eye sockets and mouth like waterfalls.
"Fight!"
The skeleton stood, snatching up a tattered battle flag from the dunes and waving it. Its jaw moved, and the lingering power in its Divine Treasuries shook the air. Even without flesh, its voice thundered: "By imperial order: our ancestral land lies behind us. There is no retreat! Fight! Only fight!"
Quinn gaped, scratching his head. He’d expected to summon a new soul from the bones, but it seemed a fragment of will had survived. That will hadn’t faded, just slept, now awakened by his All-Gods Natural Art.
"The war ended ages ago, senior!"
Quinn called out, "Where was your homeland? Why did you die here? Whose orders were you following? Who was your enemy?"
The skeleton looked down at him, its voice booming: "Under the Supreme Sovereign’s banner, Logan Northfall, Deputy Thousand-Commander, ordered to hold this ground. Where are you from, boy? This is a battlefield—leave now! Where are my brothers?"
The divine skeleton waved its flag and leapt up the dune, then froze, standing motionless.
"The Supreme Sovereign Era? Wasn’t that tens of thousands of years ago?"
Quinn stared in disbelief, hurrying over with the chest. When he reached the top of the dune, he was stunned—on the other side lay an endless field of bones.
Countless skeletons were scattered across the golden desert, huge bones half-buried, jutting out of the sand.
Divine weapons stabbed into the wasteland at all angles, alongside battered war chariots, towering corroded warships, and metal discs a hundred meters tall...
Quinn was dumbstruck. This had once been a battlefield of gods and demons, where thousands had fallen and no one had buried the dead.
"What year is it now?"
Beside him, the divine skeleton lowered its head and asked, "And the Supreme Sovereign? Why have my brothers’ bones been left to bleach in the wild? Why were these warriors denied dignity in death...?"
Quinn’s heart ached. "Senior, the Supreme Sovereign Era ended long ago. It’s become legend. Not just the Supreme Sovereign—even the Pioneer Emperor’s age is over..."
"Did the Supreme Sovereign fall in battle as well?"
The skeleton bowed its head, as if weeping, though no tears fell. It strode onto the battlefield, gently lifting a bone. "My brother, my comrade... The Supreme Sovereign Era is gone, but I can’t let you be left unburied. Young one."
He turned to 'look' at Quinn. "Can you awaken my brothers? We’ll bury ourselves and finally rest in peace."