Once he was clear of that deathly presence that seemed to flay his skin, Yise calmly reviewed what had just happened.

'Dodging that is no easy feat.'

Without a body tempered through body-refining methods or a movement-related ritual implement that could be activated instantly, that strike would have cut him clean in two. He had barely escaped because he could deploy his Ghoststep Boots and Dokkaebi Steps at a moment's notice. An ordinary Qi Refining Cultivator would have been erased before even deciding to flee.

This was a combat puppet that returned people to nature with a single attack.

Yise resolved to put distance between them the instant he heard those pounding footsteps, however far away they might be.

* * *

Corpses, corpses, and more corpses.

There were so many that he nearly tripped over them with every step. What shocked him, though, was their condition. Without the spreading red bloodstains, he would never have recognized them as corpses. Lumps of meat would have been a better description.

They came in just two varieties: crushed to an unrecognizable pulp, or reduced to some tiny remnant—a limb, half a head.

THUD. THUD, THUD!

The stone puppet's footsteps rang out again. Without time to examine the bodies, Yise immediately darted toward the outskirts of the inner depths.

Compared with the outer region, the inner depths were positively pleasant.

Though he wasn't sure “pleasant” was the right word. It only felt that way because so many of the people who had entered were dead.

Still, fighting other Cultivators was exhausting, so in that sense, it was pleasant.

Advancing slowly without letting down his guard, Yise encountered his first living person since entering the inner depths.

A man sat at an angle on a flat slab of limestone in the shadow of a fallen stone pillar, staring into space. He wore faded robes, his hair hung loose and disheveled, and a sword as long as he was tall hung at his waist.

A sword Cultivator. This was the first time Yise had seen a Cultivator outside Daemudo use a sword, and he watched the man warily.

The man slowly turned his head from the empty air.

His gaze held no hostility. No, it held no emotion at all.

“Will you fight?”

Yise shrugged at the low voice.

“Why bother, unless you attack first?”

“I see.”

The man turned back to whatever he had been watching.

“Then move along.”

Yise followed his gaze, curious about what he was looking at, but saw nothing. Only a ruined city.

He gave the sword Cultivator one last glance and walked on.

'Refreshingly straightforward.'

He chuckled inwardly.

If the other person didn't attack first, he would keep going his own way. That was the rule Yise had set for himself.

* * *

With neither sun nor moon, he had lost all sense of time. It felt almost like being in a seclusion cave.

How long had it been since he entered the secret realm? Seven days and nights? Ten days?

In the seclusion cave, he had roughly gauged the passing hours by his hunger, but even that was impossible now that he had reached Great Attainment. His body scarcely felt hunger anymore and no longer needed food.

It felt as though several days had passed.

In all that time, the gray-robed sword Cultivator was the only other Cultivator Yise had encountered. Perhaps others had passed nearby without his noticing, but he had sensed no one.

He was beginning to wonder whether every Cultivator who had entered the inner depths had died.

Then Yise stopped once more.

A hole gaped in the roof of a collapsed pavilion, and dense spirituality seeped from beneath it. Peering inside, he saw a black, porous rock, riddled with holes and about the size of a human head.

It looked as though it had flown in from somewhere and crashed through the building. At that size, it ought to fit in a storage pouch.

He landed on the floor and picked it up, only to stagger. The rock was quite heavy.

Yise set it down and brought his hand axe down hard, imbuing the blow with spiritual energy.

CLANG!

A clear, sharp report rang out. The rock wasn't even scratched.

He decided to take it with him for now.

But there was a problem.

'Why won't it go in?'

The rock would fit neither into his original storage pouch nor into the kind that showed its contents through a mental image.

'Is it over the weight limit? Or are they full?'

The nine storage pouches dangling from his robes had been getting in his way already. He had planned to sort through them once he left the secret realm, lest greed put him in danger.

He might as well do it now.

Yise stepped outside to check that the surroundings were safe, then tore a Lamplight Talisman and floated it in the air. A yellow flame bloomed at its tip, slowly illuminating the area.

Then he began emptying the pouches he had yet to inspect: three taken from the demonic practitioners, and one recovered from a dead Cultivator.

'There's so much.'

The sheer quantity left his jaw hanging.

He now understood why Cultivators called secret realms both lands of death and lands of opportunity. In just a few days here, Yise had amassed more resources than most Cultivators could acquire in a lifetime.

Even if he had inherited them from other people.

His original waist-mounted pouch. The largest pouch, taken from a demonic practitioner, which could be worn over both shoulders. A purse-shaped one that displayed its contents in his mind. And finally, the spiritual-herb pouch.

He kept just those four storage pouches and set the rest aside.

'To think the day would come when I'd throw away storage pouches. I really have become wealthy.'

Not that it didn't hurt. No, it hurt terribly.

How much did a single storage pouch cost? Even a small one fetched hundreds of spirit stones. If not for the stone puppets, he would have found some way to keep them all dangling from his body.

Yise resented the heavens.

Why, why couldn't you put a storage pouch inside another storage pouch?

Why couldn't ritual-implement artisans make a “storage-pouch storage pouch,” or a “storage-pouch storage-pouch storage pouch”?

It was lamentable.

Yise stopped complaining and reined in his inner demon. Then he set about organizing his ritual items as best he could.

First, elixir pills, talismans, and anything else he needed to retrieve immediately went into the belt-style pouch. Ore and heavy, bulky ritual items such as the cannon went into the backpack-style pouch. The other ritual implements, whose names he didn't know, and the spirit stones went into the purse-shaped pouch.

After sorting for some time, Yise's hands stopped. His eyes narrowed.

'Wait, this is...'

A golden silk box from a demonic practitioner's pouch had caught his eye.

Consumables like Healing Pills and poison pills weren't kept in silk boxes. Nor would anyone use such an expensive-looking case for an ordinary low-grade elixir pill.

This had to be at least mid-grade.

Yise hurriedly opened the lid. A single pill sat within in all its lofty splendor, radiating brilliant golden light.

A hue more lustrous than gold, a honeyed fragrance sweeter than flowers, and the emblem of the Pill Refining Sect engraved on its surface.

“A Foundation Establishment Pill?!”

The words escaped aloud before Yise could help himself, and he clamped his mouth shut.

'Why is this here...?'

A Foundation Establishment Pill.

Exactly as its name suggested, it was an elixir pill taken to break through to Foundation Establishment.

But it was in a different league from other pills. The Pill Refining Sect produced them using secret cultivation arts, and even within the sect, the annual supply was so limited that only exceptionally gifted disciples from its families received them.

In other words, they almost never circulated outside the sect. It was common knowledge on the Eastern Continent that most of the few Foundation Establishment Pills on the market were spoils of battle.

He was dumbfounded. This wasn't something that belonged in a Qi Refining demonic practitioner's storage pouch.

Then he slowly worked through the facts: the age of the demonic practitioner he had killed, the pill, and the black cannon ritual implement with the power of Foundation Establishment.

Putting the three together painted a picture.

'... Was he a demonic practitioner the Iron Sun Thunder Sect was grooming?'

He had likely been a cherished prospect. Neither a Foundation Establishment Pill nor a Foundation Establishment ritual implement was something they would give just anyone.

Or perhaps he had seized it while guarding the entrance to the inner depths.

Single-use ritual items and elixir pills were constantly consumed in battle, and ritual implements broke over time, so the total haul was small relative to the number of people.

But a Foundation Establishment Pill was different.

However many times it had changed hands, every owner would have wanted to get it out of the secret realm at any cost, even at the risk of death.

Though Yise did wonder why anyone would bring it in when they weren't going to cross a major threshold here.

One thing, however, was certain.

The demonic practitioner who had dropped dead with a Foundation Establishment Pill tucked behind his back would find no peace even in death. And the Iron Sun Thunder Sect would be bitter indeed over losing its cherished prospect.

Delighted, Yise carefully packed away the Foundation Establishment Pill and placed it in his storage pouch.

Only after he finished sorting his storage pouches did he take in the half-ruined building's interior.

Some unknown material clung to the walls, and the remains of a brazier carved from stone lay in one corner. A ring was embedded in a corner of the ceiling, presumably for hanging something like a lamp.

'... Life here seems quite different from the human realm.'

Yise took his time looking around, satisfying his curiosity before resuming his exploration of the secret realm's inner depths.

* * *

When he reckoned he had traveled halfway around the outskirts of the inner depths, Yise noticed something odd.

He had encountered five stone puppets so far. Their subtly different shapes made it clear they were separate creatures. Yet each seemed to be “patrolling” its own fixed territory.

First, once he got a certain distance from what he presumed was the center of the inner depths, they stopped pursuing him.

Second, when two stone puppets appeared at once, their ranges of movement didn't overlap.

And finally, whenever he ventured into a particular area, a stone puppet inevitably came looking.

The Cultivators' bodies were the proof.

The places where corpses were most densely clustered invariably lay near the limits of the stone puppets' range.

He closed his eyes and pictured the locations of all the bodies he had passed. Viewed from above the inner depths, those corpses would trace a shape.

A circle.

The stone puppets were patrolling a circular territory, killing intruders.

'There's something inside.'

In other words, the puppets' range marked yet another division within the inner depths.

They were guarding something.

Probably the most precious thing this secret realm had to offer.

The scent of a fortuitous encounter tickled his nose.

Yise's eyelids lifted, revealing eyes that gleamed brightly.