“Thud! Thud! Thud!”
Dull, heavy impacts boomed one after another inside the mountain. The vibrations shook loose dust that had accumulated on the ceiling for countless years, sending it rustling down to scatter across the inner side of the heavy stone doors.
Fine shafts of sunlight filtered through the cracks of the forced-open stone doors, piercing the long-sealed darkness. Billowing dust drifted lazily within the golden beams of light. The sunlight, slanting inward, resembled pools of flowing liquid gold, tracing glowing lines across the dim stone chamber.
With a casual wave of Du Qi's hand, the giant battering ram he had just conjured out of sheer scholarly energy collapsed with a bang, dispersing into wisps of faint, clear mist before vanishing into the air.
He rolled his eyes inwardly. What a joke. This was an open-world cultivation setting where one could easily level terrains and shatter mountains.
Did he really need to obediently search for keys and crack formation mechanisms just to get inside? There was no such logic. In Cultivation Online, the freedom was far beyond anyone's imagination. Battering it open was both convenient and straightforward.
Du Qi lifted his foot, stepped over the shattered stone doors, and entered the secret chamber.
The small area right by the entrance was incredibly dark, with heavy shadows wrapping around his body.
However, after taking a few more steps inside, his field of vision suddenly widened. The entire secret chamber was actually brightly lit. Set into the ceiling was a large light-gathering formation of considerable scale. Shards of spirit crystals were embedded in the grooves of the formation lines, continuously supplying the energy needed to keep it running.
This thing was on a completely different level from the makeshift, simple light-gathering formations Lu Yan would whip up on the fly.
Bai Cen's formation was a proper, finely crafted, standardized array specifically designed to run uninterrupted for years on end. Ordinarily, filling such a formation with a few common spirit stones would allow it to diffuse soft light day and night, keeping this dark chamber lit for years.
Yet Bai Cen couldn't even be bothered to use ordinary spirit stones; he directly used precious spirit crystal shards as daily consumables.
What normal person would squander spirit crystal shards as single-use consumables like this?
Looking at the glittering shards on the ceiling, Du Qi cursed Bai Cen inwardly for being such a spendthrift. At the same time, a small flame of hope ignited in his heart, and his anticipation began to soar.
To think he would throw away something as valuable as spirit crystal shards just for a simple illumination formation.
The wealth of these elixir refiners was truly terrifying. The treasures hidden deep within this secret vault would surely not disappoint.
Du Qi's eyes gleamed with excitement as he eagerly made his way deeper into the secret chamber.
Along both sides of the secret chamber, row after row of tall, heavy solid wood cabinets were neatly arranged against the stone walls.
Most of the cabinet doors were wide open, and within the various storage compartments lay countless natural treasures, meticulously categorized.
These were all raw materials that Bai Cen had painstakingly gathered and accumulated over the years, specifically reserved for refining high-grade elixirs.
For many elixirs, he was only missing one or two rare supplementary ingredients. Unable to complete the recipes for the time being, he had stored the other prepared herbs here, waiting until he had all the ingredients before starting the furnace.
Beside the cabinets, rows of jade bottles were neatly stacked. Bottles of properly sealed elixirs sat quietly on the wooden shelves.
The mouths of the bottles were tightly sealed, their stoppers jammed in deep. Yet even without opening them, threads of rich, lingering elixir fragrance still seeped out from the crevices of the jade bottles. The faint scent filled the entire stone chamber, instantly refreshing anyone who breathed it in.
Du Qi stood in front of the shelves, but he did not rush to touch these priceless treasures.
He had calculated everything clearly in his mind. Nowadays, the market for high-grade immortal herbs was nearly saturated.
The vast majority of cultivators in the Central Continent simply could not handle the elixirs refined from such high-grade herbs. If a cultivator's cultivation was insufficient and their physical foundation could not withstand the medicinal potency, rashly consuming them would only result in an excessive intake of nutrients their body couldn't absorb. The violent medicinal energy would explode directly inside them, causing them to burst and die.
At the moment, these treasures were stuck in the most awkward of situations. In name, every single one was priceless, but in reality, there was no market for them. They were classic examples of having high nominal value but no actual buyers.
To stare at a room full of top-tier elixirs and rare herbs was like sitting on a mountain of gold, yet there was absolutely no way to liquidate them to pay off debts.
The more Du Qi looked, the more stifled he felt.
When he casually picked up a thick stack of daily ledger sheets nearby and flipped through the purchase accounts left behind by Bai Cen, the frustration in his chest nearly boiled over. The papers clearly recorded the astronomical prices Bai Cen had paid to acquire each rare immortal herb. Refining elixirs was a gamble to begin with; out of several batches, not even one was guaranteed to succeed.
Many times, when a batch was ruined, Bai Cen would prepare more ingredients and try again without a second thought. If it failed once, he tried twice; if it failed twice, he tried thrice. The cost of raw materials alone tripled! Triple the expenses!
Damn him! How could he squander my money like this? I swear to God, I want to strangle him!
Du Qi felt on the verge of a complete breakdown.
He had been pinning all his hopes on this treasure chamber as his final saving grace, expecting to dig up some hard currency to fill the mountain of unpaid debts weighing down the Central Continent Alliance.
He never expected that while the items here were impeccably valuable in theory, they were completely useless when it came to paying off a pile of urgent debts.
This feeling was excruciating. These treasures were exactly like high-end luxury goods in the mortal world. They had been bought with cold, hard cash, costing a fortune in spirit stones.
But when one desperately needed money and wanted to liquidate them, they couldn't even fetch a fraction of their original purchase price. If sold in a hurry, there would be no buyers at all.
Left with no other choice, Du Qi had to patiently sift through the piles of treasures.
He either specifically picked out common-grade elixirs that had high liquidity on the market and could be used by low-level cultivators, or selected a batch of mild, foundation-nourishing herbs that could be consumed directly without being refined. At the very least, these could be resold to slightly offset his deficits.
Looking at the large quantity of highly potent, inherently toxic rare herbs on the shelves, Du Qi couldn't help but sigh. These herbs were extremely toxic and could not be consumed directly; they had to be refined into elixirs to neutralize their toxicity before use.
Yet even if they were painstakingly refined into elixirs, almost no one in the Central Continent had the ability to consume them. Bai Cen had spent massive fortunes desperately gathering these raw materials and refining them with great effort—who on earth did he plan to give them to?
“Sigh...”
Du Qi let out a long sigh and placed the ledger back on the wooden table. The items in this main treasure chamber that could actually be liquidated were pitifully few. The assets capable of resolving his immediate crisis fell far short of his expectations.
He looked up toward the end of the stone chamber, where an unremarkable wooden door led to an inner room.
This was his last remaining hope. He could only pray that the inner room contained some high-demand hard currency that could drag him out of his swamp of debt.
Calming his emotions, he walked toward the wooden door and pushed it open.
Du Qi never could have imagined that the room inside would bring him anything but the long-awaited surprise.
Instead, it was a complete and utter shock.
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