Nine Star Hegemon Body Art (WN)
chapter-4309

As the gate swung open, their eyes fell upon a small mountain of spirit stones, and Long Chen couldn't contain his excitement at the sight.

“Primal chaos spirit stones!”

Xia Chen and Guo Ran joined in Long Chen's jubilation upon realizing these were primal chaos spirit stones. However, their enthusiasm was short-lived as they rushed over and saw the reality.

“How can this be?”

Long Chen picked up a spirit stone, only to find that it was already shattered inside. That was a clear sign that its energy was exhausted.

Although the spirit stone still had some remnant primal chaos qi fluctuations, it was just an empty shell, as no primal chaos qi could be extracted from it. These primal chaos spirit stones were nothing more than worthless debris.

“Fuck, we are one step too late! These primal chaos spirit stones are all used up!” Xia Chen couldn’t help gnashing his teeth when he saw hundreds of thousands of depleted spirit stones.

“We’re probably not just one step, but more likely ten thousand steps too late. It’s very likely that the black tortoise was so powerful that it inadvertently activated the formation here, resulting in it unleashing the energy of these spirit stones,” sighed Long Chen.

In this repository of spirit stones, everything had already been exhausted and rendered worthless. Their initial elation had been in vain.

“What are you doing?” asked Long Chen upon seeing Guo Ran grabbing a few spirit stones and putting them away.

“Even if they’re trash, we should keep a few as mementos,” said Guo Ran solemnly.

Long Chen was speechless. “Don’t be like that. The main reason we’re here is for primal chaos spirit stones. Xia Chen, let’s take a look. There should be other depositories. If there’s nothing of value, let’s just leave.”

Xia Chen did a quick scan and found a weapon storehouse, but it was empty. All that remained were some broken weapons that were already rusty.

Following that, Xia Chen found a treasury in a collapsed area. Based on the remains, this place had once housed precious medicinal plants. However, they had long since crumbled to ash, and Long Chen couldn’t even recognize what they were.

Finally, Xia Chen found another treasury, and after opening up the ruins, Guo Ran let out a cheer. This place had quite a few precious ores.

Although Guo Ran didn’t recognize them, given his years of forging experience, he was sure that these ores contained immortal metals suitable for crafting Eternal divine weapons. Although he was currently incapable of refining these ores, it didn't dampen his enthusiasm. He directly took away everything inside this treasury.

“There are ores but no immortal metals or other materials. This faction clearly did not possess the ability to refine metals and forge divine weapons. However, this is a good start. As long as we find more ruins, we can find even more treasures,” said Long Chen with a smile.

Both Xia Chen and Guo Ran were excited by that thought, so they started to make probing formation discs that could sense primal chaos spirit stones. With these formation discs, they would find the ruins of the human race.

After tidying up, Xia Chen placed an illusion formation around this place, and the three of them left.

Even with their big guts, the three of them were still very careful here, not daring to be the slightest bit careless.

The reason for their apprehension was that the terrifying Eternal experts they had just encountered were merely rogue cultivators. However, even without the backing of a faction, they had reached the Eternal realm.

Since that was the case, the experts belonging to major factions would be considerably more powerful. If the three of them were to provoke individuals of that caliber, not even ten thousand lives would be sufficient to save them.

Two days later, Xia Chen’s probing formation discs finally showed some response, and the reaction was extremely intense. The three of them had located another vestige of the human race.

They couldn’t help but gasp in awe. Although this place was also in ruins, the remnants of the colossal shattered gate testified to the once-great glory of the human race here. Even just a fragment of the gate, despite its current state of ruin, still stretched up to the clouds. One could only imagine how majestic it must have been in its prime.

Crack.

When walking past the gate, a strange sound came from beneath Xia Chen’s feet, and he looked down to see that it was a bone. The bone had long since eroded and instantly turned to dust after being stepped on. The dust wafted away with the wind, yet even as bone dust, it appeared to harbor faintly flickering runes within.

“A piece of bone that managed to endure the ravages of time until now. At the very least, it had to belong to a half-step Eternal. However, even half-step Eternals couldn’t keep their corpses intact after that battle. Just what happened?” wondered Long Chen.

The three of them continued past the corner of the gate, finding no more corpses. Most likely, they had all disintegrated into dust over the passage of time.

“Primal chaos spirit stones!”

Out of nowhere, Xia Chen let out a shout and plucked a thumb-sized crystalline spirit stone from the debris. This was a pristine spirit stone, with primal chaos qi embedded inside in the form of mist. It seemed that not a trace of its primal chaos qi had dissipated.

“There’s more!” Guo Ran cried out as he found another primal chaos spirit stone nearby. They then found dozens of primal chaos spirit stones scattered around this area.

“What’s going on? These are primal chaos spirit stones! Why are they on the ground? Is there some sinister scheme here?” Guo Ran’s expression suddenly changed, and he looked around suspiciously.

“There’s no scheme. They were just tossed around during the ancient battle. Primal chaos spirit stones are indeed treasures for the human race, but to other races, they are just mundane rocks. They can't harness the stones’ power at all,” Long Chen rubbed the primal chaos spirit stones and sighed. “Perhaps only they know what happened back then. But they cannot tell us.”

Spirit stones were truly eternal divine items. If their essence was not extracted, they could survive for eternity. However, they weren’t photographic jades, incapable of recording what had happened back then.

Hearing that, Guo Ran relaxed and continued his search. However, he was quickly disappointed. Aside from a few dozen spirit stones, there was nothing else here.

However, just a few spirit stones were good enough as they were priceless treasures. If the primal chaos qi within them was unleashed, it would lead to an inconceivable density of primal chaos qi within a specific range and duration.

If they were to use that energy for battleships, who knew what kind of effect it would produce? Guo Ran and Xia Chen were looking forward to it.

The three of them continued searching carefully. After a while, Xia Chen quickly sensed the fluctuations of a formation underground and immediately tried to connect to it. However, he failed countless times without being able to reach it through space.

“Ah, let me do it!” Guo Ran took out a strange tool; it was a metal pangolin with dozens of spades at the front.

"What's this?" Long Chen inquired. Then he recalled, "Did you get this when you were with Mo Nian?"

Long Chen’s guess was accurate. This thing’s function was to dig through the earth, and it was extremely fast. In less than an hour, they were already deep underground.

Boom!

All of a sudden, the surroundings illuminated, and they let out startled cries as they found themselves face-to-face with an armored monstrosity. Its mouth was agape, exposing its bared fangs, and it was fixedly glaring at them.