Chapter 171: Honest Qi's Blunder

Qu Jiangyuan interrupted their argument, "Elder Jin, for something that's not confirmed yet, it would be better not to use Heaven Seeking Palace's or even the Dao Gate's name to put out a bounty. Even if an outer disciple goes out to train, under unconfirmed circumstances, we can't use the method of putting a bounty on him to get him back."

On the inside, Jin Yu hated what Qu Jiangyuan just said. Even if he could not use Heaven Seeking Palace's name, he would still use a bounty to catch this outer disciple back. To daringly occupy Jiuzhen's seat in the Technique Hall, this was enough reason for him to have no mercy towards this mere outer disciple.

"Let's disperse." Now that they knew that this matter only involved an outer disciple, Qu Jiangyuan could not bother to say anything else. Jin Yu was very calculative, and protective of his own people, hence it would be impossible to get him to stop pursuing this matter.

The Dao Gate did not only have Jin Jiuzhen as the only genius disciple. Moreover, he did not like Jin Jiuzhen in the first place, so if he died, he died.

...

After entering the desert, Mo Wuji was completely relieved; it would be impossible for anyone to find him in the endless Lost Sky Ruins. He had the shop assistant to thank for this. If it were not for the shop assistant calling out to him, he might have fallen into someone else's trap.

However, while Honest Qi, which the shop assistant recommended, demanded quite a sizable amount of spirit stones, he could still deliver the goods, allowing Mo Wuji to find the Sky Channel Flower on his first try. From the looks of it, this was not the first time that the shop assistant introduced someone to Honest Qi's shop, which made it more likely that the shop was legitimate...

At this point, Mo Wuji's came to a sudden realisation. It was obviously not the first time that the shop assistant directed people to Honest Qi's shop, and everything that Honest Qi took out were quality goods. Since this was the case, he must not have been the first person to buy the map from Honest Qi.

However, if Honest Qi's map was so expensive, and had been sold so many times, why hadn't it been leaked out by then? Disregarding other people, even he would have sold Honest Qi's map to someone he knew or at least a merchant house before leaving the Lost Sky Ruins. After spending so many spirit stones, it wouldn't make sense to use it only once.

In reality, from the shop assistant's words, Mo Wuji could infer that Honest Qi's map was a unique copy.

Upon reaching this point in his chain of thoughts, a shiver went down Mo Wuji's spine. Things were very obvious now. The first possibility was that everyone Honest Qi sold maps to had fallen in the Lost Sky Ruins. If this was the case, there could only be one reason behind it: the treasures marked out on the map were located in dangerous places, and it would be difficult to survive going there.

The second possibility was that all those who bought Honest Qi's map had obtained treasures in the Lost Sky Ruins, but when they returned, all of them disappeared. Why would they disappear? It would be because of Honest Qi.

Now Mo Wuji did not have the mood to continue running. He immediately found a pile of rock and sand, bug a hole inside, and hid.

The first thing he did was to take out Honest Qi's map, and use his spiritual will to memorise everything on it. An hour later, the sizable map was already imprinted in Mo Wuji's mind. Following which, he took out the small book detailing various treasures, and spent another hour writing all of it down.

After that, Mo Wuji scanned both map and book, but simply could not find any sort of imprints at all.

Mo Wuji impatiently put down both of those things, as he only knew the most basic way of manipulating spiritual will. Without any techniques for training spiritual will, it would be too difficult for him to use his spiritual will to detect imprints made by other people.

These two items were now ticking time bombs in his hands, and he had to find some way to dispose of them, best not burying them at a fixed location.

No, he had also bought a black antidote pill too.

Once he recalled this fact, Mo Wuji quickly took out the antidote pill from his storage bag. When he bought this pill previously, he did not check it in detail. But now that the pill was in his hands, he could see that this pill was not that simple.

From his observations as a pill refiner, the pill in his hand was completely spherical, and without any impurity in colour at all, indications that the pill refiner that made this pill was highly skilled.

Mo Wuji brought the pill to his nose carefully for a whiff, and shockingly he smelled a slight stench. Finally, he remembered what this pill was, and it was a rather impressive pill, definitely not only worth 30,000 Earth grade spirit stones.

When the wordless pill manual introduced Tier 7 spiritual pills, it mentioned this particular pill, called the Solitary Dark Pill. It is very difficult to concoct, and was an antidote pill. However, the Solitary Dark Pill did not counter regular poisons, but a type of nerve poison. The price of such a pill was definitely much greater than the Elementary Life Pill that Yan Qianyin used previously.

It would have been such a waste to throw such a pill away, and he could not bear to do that either. However he also dared not to keep it by his side. Honest Qi was indeed quite scary, and he really did not want to leave anything from Honest Qi by his side.

After much thought, Mo Wuji decided that he did not want to throw it away. Other than this pill being very valuable, he was going to venture into the most dangerous parts of the Lost Sky Ruins, so what if he he really got hit by nerve poison?

But it was still better to check the pill out first. Using his spiritual will, he was confident that he would be able to find out if anything was wrong with it. Of course, if he could not find any problems with the pill, he still had to dispose of it. Succumbing to nerve poison was still better than being tracked by an expert, and finally landing into his hands.

Placing a bottle of Earthly Soul Protecting Pills by his side, Mo Wuji slowly extended his spiritual will bit by bit into the outer layers of the Solitary Dark Pill in his hands. Through this process, it was as though the pill was taken apart and inspected. This was the second time since the purifying of the Tier 7 Purple Jade Toad Lotus that he exhausted his spiritual will at this rate.

The process of checking with his spiritual will, seemed to almost squash Mo Wuji's entire brain, but he still fervently drew out more spiritual will to slowly immerse the Solitary Dark Pill in it.

As long as he could find the abnormality within the Solitary Dark Pill, he would likely gain an extra lifeline.

Time passed by gradually, and Mo Wuji's face became paler, with beads of sweat dripping down from the side. Half a bottle of Earthly Soul Protecting Pills had been used up already, but the inspection of the Solitary Dark Pill was not completed yet.

Another half an incense's time went by, and just as he was about to give up, Mo Wuji's spiritual will suddenly hit some shadowy energy.

This is it. Mo Wuji excitedly clenched both his fists as he downed another Earthly Soul Protecting Pill. At the same time, his spiritual will carefully circled around this shadowy energy while observing it. A moment later, the source of the energy was located: a few complex runes. Those runes seemed to be wrapped around something, which Mo Wuji dared not touch at all.

If he were stronger, he could have removed both the runes and whatever was within them, leaving the pill undamaged. However, Mo Wuji's current strength was insufficient, hence he could only use the most basic method: breaking open the pill, then slowly extracting the small piece of it that had the energy of the runes.

While this would cause much of the pill's effect to be lost, it was still better than throwing the entire pill away by many times. Moreover, Mo Wuji was also a Tier 4 Earth pill refiner, and he knew how to break the pill open with the least effect on the pill's efficacy.

Honest Qi probably couldn't even imagine in his dreams that a Channel Opening Stage cultivator like him had spiritual will.

Once the procedure was done, he kept the broken pill into a jade bottle, before keeping the jade bottle in his storage bag.

Then, Mo Wuji stuck the small piece of the pill, with the runes that he dug out, onto the thin book, and wrapped it in the map.

These had to be settled quickly, and the best solution was not to bury those items here, but to find a moving thing that would bring these items by its side.

Upon leaving the sandy cave, Mo Wuji chose a direction to move in. According to Honest Qi's map, he would see a gigantic lake after travelling in this direction for two days. There were low level Sand Crocodiles and also rare smithing materials in the centre of the lake, called Blue-gold Glass. Mo Wuji chose this location, firstly for the sand crocodiles, and secondly for the water. As for the Blue-gold Glass, he had no idea what that was at all.

When he left for the Lost Sky Ruins, it was in a rush, he did not prepare any water. Last time when he was trapped in the ice mountain, luckily there were Inedia Pills and water on him. If he were to be trapped at a waterless place this time, it would be a joke for him to die from dehydration.

With his fast speed, within half a day, Mo Wuji could see the glistening water surface from afar. Happiness erupted inside him, as this proved one point, that Honest Qi's map was real. Hence he increased his speed further, and in a few steps, arrived at the side of the lake. The lake was clear with light ripples on the surface, giving off the sound of waves softly as wind blew past. This refreshed Mo Wuji mentally, a feeling that he had not felt in a long time

If the Lost Sky Ruins was full of such places, there would really be nothing much to worry about.

As Mo Wuji bent down, drank a few mouths of water, and gently rinsed his face, a loud sound exploded through the air.

Immediately, he raised his head, and looked to the side. Three figures were rapidly closing in on his location, and they reached the lakeside very quickly. All three of them did not even bother looking at Mo Wuji, but jumped into the lake, without removing a single piece of clothing.

Taking out a few bags, Mo Wuji filled them with clean water, and prepared to leave. Those three people seemed to have come from an even deeper region of the Lost Sky Ruins, but regardless of their reasons, he would not poke his nose where it did not belong.

"Friend, please wait for a moment..." As he was about to leave, one of the three that entered the lake leapt out, and called out to him by the lakeside. Once this man spoke, the other two of them exited the lake too. Two men and one woman made up the trio, and the one that stopped Mo Wuji was a skinny man.

Mo Wuji indeed stopped, and staped at those three warily, asking "May I ask what the few of you stopped me for?"

All three of them were at higher cultivation levels than his, possibly of Spirit Building Stage.

The skinny man's gaze fell on Mo Wuji's storage bag, and said with a smile, "Let me make a trade with you. Can you sell your storage bag to me?"