Chapter 1861: The Fearsome Stone Tablet
Translator: StarveCleric Editor: Millman97
Knowing that it would be best for him to distance himself as far from Su Feifei as possible, Yun Xiang harrumphed coldly. “Given your gold digger personality and your subpar looks, do you really think that you are able to move my heart? If not for the fact that there’s a treasure beneath your house, there’s no way I would have put up with you till now!”
“Enough!” Zheng Yang said with a fling of his sleeve.
Peng!
Struck in the chest, Yun Xiang was sent flying before cras.h.i.+ng heavily onto the ground. His face reddened, and a mouthful of crimson blood spurted from his lips.
“You only have to answer what I want to know,” Zheng Yang said coldly. “Everything other than that is just a waste of my time!”
“Y-yes!” Suppressing his injuries, Yun Xiang heaved a sigh of relief upon knowing that he had managed to make it clear that he did not have any relations.h.i.+p with Su Feifei at all. “I don’t really know about treasure and the like, but over the past year of work, I have gotten near my goal. However, it’s just that the barrier around the treasure is too strong, such that I’m unable to breach it due to my lacking cultivation…”
Zheng Yang pondered with a deep frown for a moment before replying, “Take me there!”
For someone of the Sage Yun Clan to go through so much effort just to acquire some treasure, it was likely that the treasure was truly nothing ordinary. Since that was the case, he really should head over to take a look.
“Alright!” Yun Xiang nodded.
Given that his life was in the other party’s hands, there was no way he could turn the other party down.
Thus, Zheng Yang released his pressure on Yun Xiang, and under the latter’s lead, they entered the manor. As for Su Feifei, she stood hesitantly on the spot for a moment before choosing to follow them.
As soon as Zheng Yang and Wei Ruyan entered the manor, the first thing they noticed were innumerable isolation formations set up all around. It was really no exaggeration to say that the manor was an enclosed fortress by itself, such that nothing inside could get out.
Proceeding ahead, it did not take long for them to stop before a majestic hall. Pus.h.i.+ng the door open, they saw a ma.s.sive pit lying right ahead of them. There was a huge pile of white bones all around, forming a sight of desolation.
“You killed so many people just to acquire the treasure?” Zheng Yang narrowed his eyes as killing intent seeped out of his body.
The responsibility of the Combat Master Hall lay not only in fending off the Otherworldly Demonic Tribe but to maintain the peace and prosperity of mankind as well. To kill so many humans just to acquire a treasure was already an infringement of the Combat Master Hall’s moral code.
“N-no, I didn’t kill them! They were workers whom I spent a fortune to hire! They are in charge of the excavation job, but not too long ago, when they dug up a stone tablet, an aura was released, and all of them died on the spot. For fear that it would draw suspicion, I reduced their corpses to white bones and left them here!” Yun Xiang explained in a fl.u.s.ter.
“I have already compensated the families of the workers handsomely. Even though I desire the treasure a lot, I dare not kill the innocent for the sake of it…”
“Stone tablet?” Knowing that these workers were already dead and that it would be difficult to continue investigating this matter, Zheng Yang decided to put that matter aside for the time being and inquire about the other suspicion that he had.
“It’s located at the bottom of the pit. I dispatched ten death soldiers to inspect it, but all of them died as soon as they reached the vicinity of the stone tablet. So, I’m not too sure about what’s going on either,” Yun Xiang explained with a bitter look on his face.
He had thought that he had stumbled upon a huge treasure, but who could have known that the death toll would just keep rising higher and higher? He had already sunk in too much to allow himself to back off with nothing in hand.
As there was no one else who was willing to approach the stone tablet, Yun Xiang had no choice but to turn to Shen Zhui in hopes of acquiring some death soldiers from him. It was just that he had never expected to stumble upon those two experts shortly after leaving his manor.
“Let’s head down and take a look!” Hearing that a stone tablet had actually taken away so many lives, Zheng Yang was growing more and more intrigued.
“This… I am a little too weak for this, so I’ll leave the two of you to be…” Yun Xiang’s face paled.
It went without saying that he did not dare enter the pit himself. He was afraid that he would die just like many others that had gone before him.
“Cut the cr*p and get moving!” Wei Ruyan harrumphed. With a wave of her hand, Yun Xiang was thrown into the pit before he could release a scream of agony.
Following which, Zheng Yang and Wei Ruyan leaped in.
The pit was roughly several hundred meters deep. There were many Night Illumination Pearls placed all around, making the interior s.h.i.+ne as though it was morning.
As soon as they reached the bottom of the pit, Zheng Yang and Wei Ruyan immediately began looking around, only to have frowns creep onto their faces shortly after.
“This aura… feels a little weird!” Zheng Yang said after a moment of careful examination.
“It’s the aura of an Ancient Sage,” Wei Ruyan said. She turned to Yun Xiang beside her and asked, “Where’s the stone tablet supposed to be?”
“It’s supposed to be down there…” Gulping from fright, Yun Xiang pointed in front of him.
Knowing that there was something sinister about this place, Zheng Yang took a deep breath and whipped out his spear.
Hula!
He flicked his wrist lightly, and a large pile of sand was raked up, revealing a ma.s.sive stone tablet.
There were mysterious, unreadable inscriptions on the stone tablet, and it emanated an air of killing intent. Just looking at the stone tablet was enough to leave one with a splitting headache.
The aura of an Ancient Sage that the two of them had felt earlier originated from that very stone tablet.
“This is the stone tablet that I talked about. Masters, I am a little too weak for this, so I’ll take my leave now…”
With quivering lips, Yun Xiang immediately turned around and darted away fearfully.
However, barely after taking two steps, his body suddenly froze on the spot. No matter how much he struggled, he found himself unable to go a single step further.
“With us around, there’s no way you will lose your life. If we die, there won’t be anyone to treat your poison, and you’ll die,” Wei Ruyan remarked calmly.
Yun Xiang was really on the verge of bursting into tears.
The other party was right. He was afflicted with severe poison, so if these two died, he would be the next to follow no matter where he fled.
“I’ll head over to take a look!”
Taking a deep breath, Zheng Yang placed his spear in front of him before approaching the stone tablet with wary, controlled steps.
Before even reaching the stone tablet, he suddenly felt concentrated killing intent gus.h.i.+ng in his direction, seemingly attempting to tear him in two.
In the face of such might, any Great Sage cultivators would have succ.u.mbed to the immense pressure by now. However, Zheng Yang was an Ancient Sage cultivator, as well as the head of the Combat Master Hall. He had tempered his mind before, making him exceptionally resilient to the Otherworldly Demons’ Zhenqi of Slaughter.
No matter how concentrated the killing intent was, it would not pose a threat to him.
Walking up to the stone tablet, he noticed that it was emanating a warm glow. As if the tens of thousands of years that it had spent buried underground had not damaged it in the slightest, its inscriptions looked as if they were freshly engraved.
Tracing the inscriptions with his finger, Zheng Yang shook his head. “These are characters from the ancient era. I can’t read them at all!”
Due to the limitations of his knowledge, he could not discern the content of the inscription. If their teacher was with them, they might still have been able to do something about it.
Geji! Geji!
Seeing that Zheng Yang actually dared touch the stone tablet, Yun Xiang’s teeth clattered together in fright.
All of the workers and death soldiers that he had sent in had pa.s.sed away even when they were standing a long distance away from the stone tablet. Yet, this young man was able to walk up to it and even touch it directly with his hands. Just how powerful was he?
Why would such a formidable figure suddenly come to a place as minor as Tianxuan Kingdom?
Wait a moment. He recognizes Su Feifei, he uses a spear, and his junior is a master pract.i.tioner of poison… Could they possibly be…
All of a sudden, Yun Xiang’s body froze on the spot as two names surfaced in his mind.
Even though he had not been in his clan over the past few years, there was probably no one in the world who did not know of the deeds of that legendary man and his many disciples.
Thinking about it… they seemed to have their roots in Tianxuan Kingdom.
Could the young man before him possibly be the most talented individual the Combat Master Hall had ever had, Hall Master Zheng?
He knew that the new hall master of the Combat Master Hall went by the surname of Zheng, but he had not been too sure of the other party’s full name. However, now that he was raking his mind, he seemed to have the impression that the other party’s full name was Zheng Yang…
An ordinary woman like Su Feifei actually had the fancy of the inc.u.mbent head of the Combat Master Hall?
This…
Sweat droplets began filling Yun Xiang’s head as he felt a hoa.r.s.eness at the back of his throat. He felt as if he would pa.s.s out at any moment.