Chapter 662: Chapter 263: Who Wouldn’t Be Tempted After Seeing the Dao Crystal?

Perhaps there were only so many Spirit Monsters nearby.

Perhaps he had already passed the trial and earned the right to leave.

Or perhaps the strength Xiao Chen had displayed was simply too great, exceeding the Secret Realm’s established rules of engagement.

In any case, after the thirty-six giant trees had fallen, no new threats appeared, and the path back was completely unobstructed.

Xiao Chen put away the Tree Hearts, checked his map, and hurried to the sixth location on the other side.

As it happened, he didn’t encounter a single Blood Vine attack on the rest of the journey.

With the path completely clear, it only took him six hours to arrive at the sixth location.

This location was marked with the number ’three’.

This meant the search area expanded to a three-hundred-li radius.

To be honest, in the outside world, a map with such poor precision would be less useful than just asking for directions.

But in a Secret Realm, having even a general area was already quite good.

So Xiao Chen didn’t complain. He followed the landmarks noted on the map and began to patiently search every patch of grass and every pit along the way.

The reason he had to be so meticulous was that natural Array Patterns were likely to surround the Dao Crystal, shielding it from Divine Sense.

When searching for most Treasures of Heaven and Earth, a Cultivator’s own eyes were their most reliable tool.

’Hiss... Don’t tell me there’s nothing here either?’

Four hours flew by in a flash. Xiao Chen had searched nearly the entire sixth location but had made no new discoveries.

He did a quick mental calculation. It should already be the fourth day in the Secret Realm.

Although less than half the total time had passed, he had to remember that someone had already beaten him to the third location.

If that person was fast enough, they had probably searched the fourth and fifth locations as well.

In other words, for the remaining five-plus days, the experience accumulated by the Ruan Family would be of little use.

It would truly come down to a test of the Cultivators’ luck.

’Sigh, I really don’t want to rely on luck!’

Xiao Chen sighed softly and looked at the last thicket ahead. ’If this doesn’t work out, I’ll go check the fifth location. Who knows, maybe they missed something.’

Although the Blood Vine Forest might seem to have the smallest total area, randomly searching for a palm-sized Dao Crystal here was no easier than finding a needle in a haystack.

CRACK!

Just as he stepped into the thicket, a crisp cracking sound came from the ground. It seemed he had stepped on something and broken it.

Xiao Chen looked down and saw a belt made of jade.

The sixteen white Jade Slabs strung onto it seemed to have already suffered a powerful impact.

Several of them were already covered in cracks, so they stood no chance against his weight and instantly shattered into a pile of fragments.

’Huh?’

Xiao Chen crouched down curiously to examine it.

Unfortunately, the remaining Jade Slab fragments only had a few generic inscriptions, with no useful marks or words.

However, two obvious clues could still be gathered from them.

First, the item had been broken recently. It wasn’t left behind by a Cultivator from a previous exploration of the Cangran Secret Realm, but by one of the newcomers who had just entered.

Second, judging from its inscriptions and material, the jade belt must have been a Top Grade Magical Artifact when it was intact.

Such a personal item, and a sturdy Magical Artifact at that, wouldn’t crack at a touch or shatter from a fall.

This meant that its owner had encountered an extremely dangerous battle, and by the looks of it, they had lost.

’What happened here?’

Xiao Chen scanned his surroundings but found no obvious signs of Magical Combat nearby.

At first glance, he hadn’t even noticed that a fight might have taken place here.

As he continued to explore forward, there were almost no other traces, save for a few blades of grass that seemed to have been crushed by something heavy.

It wasn’t until Xiao Chen completely pushed aside the thicket that he saw a few lingering drops of blood on the ground and some disturbed soil.

His first reaction was that a Cultivator had killed someone for their treasures!

In the cultivation world, such things couldn’t be called normal, but they were certainly common.

’No, that’s not right.’

However, Xiao Chen quickly dismissed his own theory. This definitely wasn’t the work of another Cultivator.

For one, few people would be so careless as to leave a jade belt on the ground.

Furthermore, while it’s difficult for a Tribulation Cultivator to completely erase their tracks, their work wouldn’t be this sloppy.

At this thought, Xiao Chen immediately channeled his True Essence and began to dig right where the bloodstains were.

He immediately unearthed a deep-red vine from underground.

Attached to it were many tendrils, each about the thickness of a little finger, looking like hundreds or thousands of writhing earthworms.

And wrapped within them was the lower half of a leg bone, not yet fully digested.

Suddenly exposed to the light, the vine seemed to be stimulated by something.

It began to tremble violently, trying to retreat back into the earth.

However, the tendrils clung tightly to the bone, getting the vine stuck and preventing it from immediately retracting into its hole.

’What a pity. May you rest in peace, fellow cultivator.’

Xiao Chen sighed with emotion and turned to leave.

Most of the time, risk and reward were directly proportional.

Since they had come to the Blood Vine Forest, they had to accept such a fate.

After all, not everyone could be like him, treating the vines and Spirit Monsters as nothing and running straight for the deepest parts.

If Xiao Chen’s guess was correct, the deeper one went into the Blood Vine Forest, the more dangerous it became.

The obstacles at the seventh location had been enough to surround and kill an ordinary Great Perfection Golden Core cultivator, so the sixth location should be similarly dangerous.

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