Du Qi reached out and pushed open the seemingly unremarkable small door.
The outer treasure chamber had already doused his expectations in cold water. Seeing the massive piles of priceless yet completely illiquid top-tier medicinal herbs and elixirs had left a heavy, stifling feeling in his chest.
Now, he was staking all his remaining hopes on this cramped inner room. He silently prayed that there would at least be some proper, easily tradeable, hard-currency-like valuables hidden inside to help offset the endless pile of bad debts plaguing the Central Continent Alliance.
With a long, drawn-out creak, the old wooden door slowly slid inward, opening a crack. The harsh, grating sound of friction suddenly shattered the dead silence of the stone chamber, sounding like a skeleton that had slept for decades being forced awake from its long slumber, letting out a rusty wail of neglect.
Du Qi’s ears instantly perked up, his heart thumping hard as a sudden chill crept up his spine. He quickly comforted himself, desperately looking on the bright side: Perhaps the more unremarkable and dilapidated it looks, the more likely it's a deliberate cover to hide the most precious family assets, right?
But the moment he stepped through the door, the last shred of hope in his heart cooled by half.
The inner room was pitch-black, so dark he couldn't see his own hand in front of his face. A thick, heavy darkness wrapped around him, completely unlike the outer hall, which was brightly lit by the light-gathering formation.
There wasn't even the simplest, most basic lighting torch set up here. Not a single sliver of light could leak in from any direction; the entire space was utterly submerged in deep gloom.
Left with no other choice, Du Qi gave his fingers a gentle flick, letting a wisp of spiritual energy drift from his palm. Tiny, glowing green particles of spiritual energy floated into the air, casting a faint, cold light.
This barely carved out a small illuminated area, gradually revealing the outlines of his surroundings.
As the green light spread, the layout of the room finally came into view. Rows of cabinets stood here as well, but they were completely different from the wide, solid wood storage cabinets outside.
These cabinets were carved directly into the rock face—stone cabinets sculpted from a single block of mountain rock, firmly embedded into the walls as if they had grown out of the mountain itself. The surface of the stone walls was densely covered with countless winding, overlapping, and intricate lines, which could be recognized at a glance as formation lines.
Du Qi stared at those lines, his brow furrowing. The study of formations had never been his forte. He could only look at them for the novelty; he couldn't make heads or tails of them.
If he truly wanted to dismantle and decipher the secrets hidden within these formations, he would have to invite Lu Yan over to analyze them in detail.
This inner room was not spacious. It was very narrow horizontally, but exceptionally deep, with a long, thin corridor extending straight into the depths of the mountain.
Du Qi walked inside slowly, step by step. The further in he went, the more a piercing, damp cold seeped up from the soles of his feet and into his bones, pricking his flesh and making the back of his neck go numb.
At the same time, a very strange, unfamiliar, and subtle fragrance slowly drifted over. The scent was not pungent; it was light and even felt somewhat warm and gentle. Yet, the more he breathed it in, the more an inexplicable panic rose in his chest.
Du Qi strictly controlled his hands, not daring to casually touch any of the stone cabinets or the lines on the rock walls. No one knew if a random touch would directly trigger some deeply buried formation or lethal trap. After all, what he was doing right now—sneaking into the secret chamber of the Elixir Hall's master to rummage through his belongings—could hardly be called honorable.
If this ever came to light, and everyone found out that this Young Master-in-Law of the sect master, who spent every day cleaning up messes and paying off debts everywhere, had stealthily crept into Bai Cen's secret chamber to sneakily plunder treasures... Cough, cough.
He sighed helplessly in his heart. Deep down, he didn't have the slightest romantic connection to that Little Ancestor. Yet, everyone in the sect, from top to bottom, called him “Young Master-in-Law” so smoothly.
Besides, the real reason he was able to sit in his current position could not be openly explained at all.
Since things had already reached this point, the people below could call him whatever they wanted in private. The young lady herself hadn't stepped forward to dispute these rumors and idle gossip, so why should a grown man like him get all worked up over a bit of empty reputation? Was it really worth the trouble?
As Du Qi continued toward the depths of the narrow inner room, the eerie, chilly aura grew heavier, pressing down on his chest like a lead weight.
The doubt in his heart deepened, and he couldn't help but mutter to himself: Just what kind of thing is sealed in this secret chamber to produce such a dense, bone-chilling cold?
Finally, he reached the very end of the narrow stone chamber.
The faint green glow of his spiritual energy floated upward, illuminating the scene at the end of the room.
Sitting there was a simple wooden table, its surface completely empty. There were no piles of spirit stones he had been yearning for and dreaming of all this way, no radiant top-grade magic artifacts, and certainly no crates of hard currency that could be immediately used to pay off debts.
On the tabletop, only two things sat in lonely isolation. A palm-sized, antique-looking small cauldron, and beside it, a tattered notebook with a heavily damaged cover.
That indescribable, strange fragrance was slowly drifting out from this very cauldron, lazily dispersing into the air.
He couldn't tell what material the small cauldron was forged from. It looked ancient and heavy, and was highly likely a magic artifact. However, Du Qi couldn't immediately discern its purpose, so he didn't dare to rashly pick it up.
His gaze naturally fell onto the old notebook beside it.
The notebook was extremely old. Its edges had been rubbed and flipped through so many times over the years that they had worn down into a fine, fuzzy fringe, feeling soft to the touch.
The cover was a dull, faded gray, and whatever had originally been written on it had long since worn away. Du Qi hesitated for a moment, then reached out, picked up the notebook, and casually flipped open the first page.
The moment his eyes swept across the lines of dense, tiny handwriting on the paper, Du Qi's pupils suddenly contracted.
“East Sea Sea Spirit Cult transaction... sacrifice to purge calamity spirits, feed calamity seeds for harvest... warn the Talisman Sect... calamity seed riot, harvest souls...”
Line after line of clear handwriting stared back at him from the paper. For a split second, Du Qi even felt a sense of disorientation, as if he had suddenly forgotten how to read. A massive flood of chilling information slammed into his mind all at once, clashing and churning chaotically in his head. His vision blurred, and he almost couldn't make out the words on the page.
His heart began to pound violently, hammering against his chest, and his breathing grew heavy without him realizing it. His fingertips tightened as he forced himself to keep turning the pages.
“Acquire spiritual herbs... crash the market... threaten elixir-refining sects...”
The handwriting was neat and precise, calm and methodical. It was impossible to detect even a shred of hesitation or emotion from the person who had written down these schemes.
Du Qi’s fingers gripped the notebook so tightly they went numb, and he could barely hold onto the thin booklet.
“Calamity spirit teleportation experiment... accidental village slaughter... difficult to control... confirmed no survivors... souls recorded...”
A cold, detached record. Just a few simple sentences, and a past event soaked in blood was casually brushed aside in a single stroke.
He suppressed the rising chill in his heart and kept turning the pages, one after another.
“Ice Spirit Cult transaction, long-term supply of Ice Spirit calamity seeds... Great Wall of Formations, flanking from behind...”
Secret transactions, covert conspiracies, hidden allies, and blood-drenched plans—all of them were written with absolute clarity in this notebook. For all these years, Bai Cen had been far more than just a mad alchemist.
Du Qi’s fingers turned the yellowed, brittle pages one by one, finally reaching the very last page of the journal.
There was only a single, short line of text on the page. The ink was dark, and the brushstrokes were incredibly heavy, pressing deep into the paper:
“Calamity spirits... the will of the Heavenly Dao. Those who conform... shall ascend to immortality.”
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