"Ahem... as long as you're pleased, Senior."
Outside the phantom void, in the dim and empty underground chamber, Lin Mu's face — tense for so long — had taken on an extraordinarily strange expression.
The corner of his mouth was twitching in a way he couldn't quite control.
He was genuinely struggling not to laugh.
He looked at the imposing statue of the Black Bone King carved from black bone, then recalled the insufferably arrogant phantom from moments ago — the one who had declared with absolute certainty that anyone standing here must be at least Rank 3.
As someone who had essentially cheated his way through the entrance exam, Lin Mu felt a deeply satisfying, wordless glee rising in his chest.
"If that old demon could see from the afterlife that his carefully designed threshold had been battered open by a Rank 2 initial-stage cultivator through sheer brute-force spending..."
Lin Mu's inner monologue ran wild.
"The old bastard's phantom would probably claw its way out of the grave on the spot. His expression would be a hundred times worse than someone who'd just eaten a mouthful of filth."
The more he thought about it, the more absurd and satisfying it felt.
Lin Mu rubbed his hands together and turned his gaze back to the two Amber Gu resting on the offering table beneath the statue.
"Given how punishing the prerequisite trial had been, whatever grand gift the first layer of inheritance had left behind was not to be underestimated."
With barely contained excitement, Lin Mu channeled his Primeval Essence and carefully enveloped the left Amber Gu.
"Dissolve."
Under the flow of Primeval Essence, the jade-hard surface of the Amber Gu began to ripple like disturbed water.
The solid crystal melted away piece by piece, and the treasure within — under Lin Mu's breathless, unblinking gaze — finally revealed its true form.
Hum —
A soft, pure aura radiated outward — gentle, yet carrying something that made the very soul tremble. It lit up the dim chamber in an instant.
It was an extraordinary Gu worm.
No larger than a thumb, perfectly round, without a single extraneous limb or shell.
Its entire body was a brilliant, immaculate silver — noble beyond measure, without a trace of impurity — like a radiant fragment of a star that had fallen from the ninth heaven.
"This... this is —?!"
The moment Lin Mu recognized it, his breath seized. His pupils contracted to pinpoints.
He knew this thing all too well.
Not long ago, in the Jia Clan Caravan's Three Star Cave, behind the thick crystal display case at the core of the third-floor treehouse — he had looked up at it with eyes full of desperate, unreachable longing.
Rank 3 — White Silver Relic Gu.
"This thing?! The Black Bone King really didn't hold back at all!"
Lin Mu's heart hammered against his ribs like a war drum.
This was a priceless treasure — rare beyond measure, with no ceiling on its value. At the caravan's sealed-bid auction, its reserve price alone had been thirty thousand Primeval Stones. The final transaction price would certainly have exceeded fifty thousand.
It had no offensive or defensive capabilities whatsoever. Its sole function was to forcibly elevate a Rank 3 Gu Master by one minor cultivation stage — with zero side effects.
This was a strategic-level asset.
The kind that could drive the elders of any mid-sized clan into absolute frenzy — the kind worth starting a blood feud over.
And yet.
That sky-splitting elation lasted on Lin Mu's face for less than half a second.
The next instant.
His smile died — as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice water mixed with lime directly into his face. It froze there, rigid and lifeless.
The feverish gleam in his eyes extinguished.
What replaced it was an expression of profound, tangled, indescribable suffering — like a man who had swallowed a whole dead fly and couldn't spit it out.
His smile, in that moment, looked a hundred times worse than crying.
"...Damn."
A single, utterly defeated curse squeezed out from between his teeth. Brutal reality swung like a hammer and knocked the wealth-drunk haze clean out of his head.
No matter how heaven-defying this thing was, no matter how priceless — it was made for Rank 3 Gu Masters.
And Lin Mu?
He was Rank 2, initial stage.
What he needed right now was the Red Iron Relic Gu.
This White Silver Relic Gu, sitting right there in his hands, was like a supreme delicacy he could see, touch, and smell — but could never, under any circumstances, actually consume.
"Truly..."
Lin Mu felt as though he'd bitten into a mouthful of raw coptis root. The bitterness went all the way to his bones.
If he ever wanted to use this thing, he would first have to cultivate his way to Rank 3 through proper, painstaking effort.
But what he lacked most right now was time.
Wait until he had steadily cultivated his way to Rank 3?
"By then, the weeds on my grave would probably be taller than a man."
"And this treasure would most likely already be a trophy Li Mang dug off my corpse — a gift I'd wrapped up nicely for that old dog."
A complete reversal.
The Lin Mu who had been inwardly mocking the Black Bone King as a blind old fool just moments ago now felt his cheeks burning.
The statue of the Black Bone King stood silently before him, unmoved.
The phantom had long since dispersed — but Lin Mu could almost hear that Rank 5 powerhouse laughing at him across the span of centuries, loud and utterly without restraint.
"Serves you right. Serves you right."
Lin Mu stood there, his complexion cycling between pale and green.
The suffocating frustration of standing inside a treasure vault and being able to do nothing but stare made him want to slap himself twice.
But frustration was frustration. His body, at least, was perfectly honest about its priorities.
"Damn it all — even if I can't use it now, this thing has a floor price of fifty thousand Primeval Stones. Anyone who tried to take it from me right now, I'd fight them to the death."
While cursing the Black Bone King thoroughly in his mind, Lin Mu extended both hands and brought out every last ounce of reverence and care he possessed.
He cradled the White Silver Relic Gu in his palms with extraordinary delicacy, terrified of so much as grazing it.
Then he channeled his Primeval Essence, gathered the last remnants of the Amber Gu's sealing power, and layered a thick coating of red mud over its surface — sealing it airtight — before solemnly depositing it into the deepest recess of his Aperture.
Collecting a treasure through tears. That was precisely what this was.
With that bittersweet matter settled, Lin Mu exhaled a long breath to release the frustration coiled in his chest, turned his head, and fixed his gaze on the second Amber Gu on the offering table.
"The first one held a physical reward. Whatever is sealed in the second one must be a clue — either to the next layer of the inheritance, or to the other portions of it."
After the violent emotional swings of a moment ago, Lin Mu's composure had largely returned.
But as he looked at the amber crystal, a trace of wariness and apprehension still showed through his eyes, impossible to fully conceal.
"The threshold for the first layer already demanded Rank 3 combat power and a flood of Primeval Essence. The requirements for the clue to the second layer..."
Lin Mu swallowed, offered a silent prayer to no one in particular, and spoke.
"Dissolve."
As the crystal melted away, a Letter Gu — shaped like a dried leaf, its surface covered in dense, tiny script — drifted free from the amber.
Lin Mu immediately reached out and closed his fingers around it, easing his consciousness into it with great care.
The next second, a torrent of text and imagery surged through the Gu worm and flooded into his mind. Time seemed to stop in the dim chamber.
A full quarter of an hour passed.
When Lin Mu finally finished reading every piece of information recorded within the Letter Gu and had fully processed it all, he slowly opened his eyes.
If his expression upon seeing the White Silver Relic Gu had been the look of a man who'd eaten something foul — then now, his face had gone the dark, waterlogged grey of a sky about to break open.
Beneath it ran a current of something close to despair.
His jaw was clenched so hard his cheeks had gone rigid. Every muscle in his body was pulled taut.
Crack.
Lin Mu squeezed the Letter Gu's remains — already crumbling to ash, its purpose fulfilled — in a white-knuckled grip.
In the sealed silence of the underground chamber, he drew a slow, deep breath.
In the end, he couldn't hold it back.
What came out was a low, grinding curse — utterly resigned, bone-tired, yet carrying within it a reluctant, almost prostrate admiration.
"I can't fault you for it... Black Bone King."