Chapter 1404: The Myriad Spirit Fruit

"What legends?" Qin Sang pressed.

Valley Master Mu chuckled. "Legend has it that spiritual insects born with treasure-hunting abilities, like the Fire Jade Centipede, are uniquely gifted, extraordinarily keen toward the treasures they seek. Even if a treasure is sealed behind spiritual arrays or barriers, nothing can cut off their perception. Having lived with your Fire Jade Centipede day and night, you must have some sense of this? I wonder if the legends exaggerate."

Qin Sang thought back over his experiences.

The first time the Fire Jade Centipede had shown its ability was in the ancient cultivator's estate, where it found the Scarlet Gold Vine and the Crimson Fire Gilded Gold. The vine had been hidden behind an ancient cultivator's barrier, yet the centipede saw through it with ease, and at the time it was only at its first metamorphosis! The next occasion was at Xuling Sect, when it sensed the fire jade within the forbidden ground.

Such feats did indeed match the legends to a degree. But surely nothing so exaggerated; its ability to sense treasures had limits and would only sharpen as its realm rose. It was a pity the centipede cared only for rare fire-based treasures, or he could have taken it treasure hunting everywhere.

Seeing Qin Sang nod, Valley Master Mu's delight deepened, and only then did he explain the whole story. "Have you heard of Ethereal Sea, Daoist Master... Opinions have always differed about its peculiar climate. Idle experts have tried probing it over the years, and all returned empty-handed. Some time ago, Daoist Qi stumbled upon some unusual signs and suspected an ancient ruin, so he invited me along..."

Stumbled upon. He can utter such nonsense with a straight face! Qin Sang scoffed inwardly but did not expose him. If his guess was right, that ruin was very likely connected to the witch race!

"I nearly forgot to introduce them! Daoist Qi's ancestors were sworn friends of our grandmaster, and the successors of both lines have kept in touch ever since. There's another, Daoist Wang, who also came at Daoist Qi's invitation. The two of them wanted to welcome you in person, but I persuaded them to stay in Ethereal Sea and keep watch," Valley Master Mu said, shifting the subject.

Qin Sang countered, "It sounds as though your exploration of the ruin hasn't gone smoothly?"

Valley Master Mu smiled bitterly. "Far worse than not smoothly! The three of us have been stuck there an entire year and have yet to so much as glimpse the entrance! We've been pacing around outside the whole time!"

"You haven't even been inside?" Qin Sang was greatly surprised.

He had suspected that Hundred Flowers Valley's grandmaster obtained the witch race inheritance there, yet Valley Master Mu could not even get through the door. Had he guessed wrong?

Valley Master Mu nodded, shamefaced. "Around the ruin lies an array unlike anything we've ever seen, unfathomably profound. To this day we can't even tell what kind of array it is, whether it's the work of immortal cultivators or something born of heaven and earth itself!"

Qin Sang was quietly startled. Three Spiritual Infant cultivators had schemed for a year and could not even identify the array.

After hearing Valley Master Mu's description of it, Qin Sang asked, "Could it be some kind of illusion array?"

Valley Master Mu thought back. "Perhaps. We suspected as much ourselves. But it doesn't seem to confound the mind; none of us three has ever felt our primordial spirit being affected. It's precisely because everything seems normal that it's all the more eerie!"

Qin Sang mused privately that whether it could affect the primordial spirit was something he would know the moment he tried it himself.

"You hope to break the array with the Fire Jade Centipede's supernatural ability?" Qin Sang could not see how. If it were a simple illusion array, the Sky-Eyed Butterfly would be of far greater use.

Valley Master Mu nodded. "Exactly! We haven't been idle all this time. After racking our brains, we managed to devise a roundabout approach..."

He paused, and what came next finally reached the heart of the matter. "Though we haven't entered, through extensive investigation and cross-checking, and clues I found among our grandmaster's relics, the ruin within the illusion array is very likely a sect that once existed in Ethereal Sea: the Pure Sea Sect! It was a rare Buddhist sect, hidden from the world, deeply mysterious and known to few.

"Pure Sea Sect possessed a Myriad Spirit Fruit Tree, whose fruit holds an immense attraction for spiritual insects. What's more, the Myriad Spirit Fruit can be used to refine a supreme treasure called Spirit-Calming Incense. Burned before a breakthrough or a tribulation, it has the miraculous power to suppress heart devils and steady the primordial spirit!"

"Suppress heart devils?" Qin Sang exclaimed, ripples stirring in his eyes.

Most of it was theater, of course. However precious Spirit-Calming Incense might be, it was no Jade Buddha, hardly enough to make Qin Sang lose his composure. But he knew full well what such a treasure meant to immortal cultivators.

Those facing an approaching heavenly tribulation or standing at the cusp of a breakthrough would trade any treasure they owned for a single stick of Spirit-Calming Incense!

A faint smile touched the corner of Valley Master Mu's mouth; he had anticipated exactly this reaction. The heavenly tribulation was a life-and-death gate no Spiritual Infant cultivator could ignore, and no one could hear of a divine object like Spirit-Calming Incense unmoved.

Then he doused Qin Sang with cold water. "The Myriad Spirit Fruit is only one of the materials for refining the incense. The others are surely equally rare in this world. And whether Pure Sea Sect's ruins remain intact, whether the incense's refinement method even survives, are all unknowns. If the Myriad Spirit Fruit Tree still stands and we can obtain a few fruits, I'll be more than satisfied. Our grandmaster left instructions: a spiritual insect that consumes a Myriad Spirit Fruit not only gains many benefits unknown to the world, but its odds of success in the Spirit Elevation Rite rise as well!"

So that's it! Qin Sang thought.

Qin Sang glanced at Valley Master Mu, considerably tempted by the Myriad Spirit Fruit, his thoughts racing. "So you mean to use the Fire Jade Centipede's treasure-hunting ability to sense the fruit and thereby locate Pure Sea Sect's entrance... But surely it can't be that simple?"

For one, when the centipede had found the Crimson Fire Gilded Gold, it was hard to say whether it had been drawn by the spiritual herb itself, or whether it sensed the Scarlet Gold Vine only because the vine was rooted in a fire vein, drinking in fiery qi, making it a fire-based object.

For another, even if the Myriad Spirit Fruit did attract the Fire Jade Centipede, if the array outside Pure Sea Sect was really as unfathomable as Valley Master Mu claimed, the centipede's realm was too low; it would be hard-pressed to sense the fruit through the array.

It was better to pin his hopes on the Sky-Eyed Butterfly.

Valley Master Mu said, "I once raised a similar treasure-hunting insect, a Jade-Carrying Bee, though it was no match for a Fire Jade Centipede, and after its second metamorphosis I could do nothing more for it. But from what I know, this strange fruit is an enormous temptation to any spiritual insect with keen perception. Besides, I have a method that can temporarily heighten a spiritual insect's supernatural ability. It can raise the Fire Jade Centipede's perception to at least something approaching the fourth metamorphosis."

"What method?" Qin Sang asked hurriedly, astonished.

He had not expected yet another windfall.

If it could be used on the Sky-Eyed Butterfly, raising the Sky Eyes supernatural ability outright to the fifth metamorphosis someday, its power would be beyond imagining! Below the Divine Transformation Realm, no one would be able to hide from Qin Sang, and most arrays and barriers would no longer block his path.

His interest in Hundred Flowers Valley grew keener and keener. Its grandmaster's origins were certainly no simple matter; she had very likely obtained a great inheritance of the witch race!

"The Three-Spirit Coiling King Array!" Valley Master Mu answered in a low, grave voice.

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