Chapter 173: Plunder (1)

Ji Ruoyu hugged Pi Yuanhong tightly as he rolled on the ground.

He rolled seven or eight times before looking up and realizing that he had been ambushed by a steel puppet.

The puppet’s opening strike hadn’t landed, but its fist came crashing down towards Su Chen. Su Chen quickly dodged to the side. The iron fist slammed into the metal wall with a resounding clang.

Su Chen gestured, and a strengthened Erupting Firehawk slammed into the metal puppet, the force from the blow sending the puppet flying.

A cast of Erupting Firehawks flew forth in rapid succession, slamming into the metal puppet’s body and exploding in a brilliant display of fireworks.

The iron puppet wasn’t weak; it was roughly equivalent in strength to an average Blood Boiling Realm cultivator. However, Su Chen had seized the advantage with a single strike. It had no chance of counterattacking under the furious onslaught. It could only allow itself to be bombarded into oblivion as flames covered its body. After Su Chen’s slew of attacks, it finally toppled to the ground.

From start to finish, it hadn’t touched Su Chen even once.

Ji Ruoyu was stunned. He gave Su Chen a big thumbs up. “Senior Brother Su, you’re awesome!”

The iron puppet may be equivalent to a high-layer Blood Boiling Realm cultivator in terms of physical strength, but its adaptability was terrible compared to a normal human’s. Thus, Su Chen was able to easily blast it into oblivion.

“Even after thirty thousand years, this thing can still move. That’s really quite strange,” Su Chen said as he walked over, inspecting the puppet’s internal mechanisms.

“Do you see anything of note?” Ji Ruoyu asked, walking up to Su Chen’s side.

Su Chen reached his hand inside of the puppet and pulled out a crystal unit, inspecting it as he said, “It only has the old style of Origin nucleus installed. There’s nothing special about it. It wouldn’t even last three years, let alone thirty thousand.”

“Why can it still move?” Ji Ruoyu was perplexed.

Su Chen carelessly tossed the nucleus to the side.

It didn’t even have any value as a raw resource.

“Because it’s new,” Su Chen said as he stood up.

“New?”

“Yes, new,” Su Chen said as he entered the room.

Under normal circumstances, even precious treasures would decay after thirty thousand years. Perhaps only divine-tier objects would be able to resist the passage of such a long period of time.

However, this place seemed as if it were untouched by time. It was almost as if everything had just happened yesterday. Ingredients that hadn’t been completely used up were still out on the workbench, and all kinds of stuff was scattered on the floor.

Su Chen knew that this had nothing to do with how fast or slow time was flowing. Rather, a powerful Origin Formation had sealed everything here, preserving all of the items in the room in their original state and preventing them from decaying.

This was a method the Arcana Race used to preserve things. It helped them ensure that their property and assets wouldn’t decay over time.

It was for this reason that their successors were able to find all kinds of treasures within the Arcana Kingdom’s ruins.

However, most of these sealing Origin Formations had limited effectiveness. Over long periods of time, they would also gradually lose their effectiveness before eventually being smothered by the sands of time as well. Because of this, most of the treasures obtained were in various states of decay and weren’t particularly useful. Only extremely powerful items could survive for longer periods of time.

But evidently, that wasn’t the case here.

Even after thirty thousand years had gone by, the Origin Formation was still perfectly functional, preserving all of the items here perfectly.

However, because this period of time was so long, anything with life-force couldn’t have possibly survived even with the protection of the formation. Even though all of the ingredients on the workbench seemed perfectly fine, the energy they once contained had long since dissipated, making them as lifeless as rocks.

Fortunately, Su Chen wasn’t expecting to find any kind of treasure like a thousand-year-old Blood Lotus - all he wanted was knowledge.

He picked up a book from the table and flipped through it briefly. It was an experimental log.

By relying on the ancient Arcana script he had been learning, he could roughly understand the book’s contents. Most of the book was filled with insights from the experiments.

Su Chen casually stowed the book away and continued to browse.

Because so much time had gone by, the items here had lost almost all of their energy. They had no value to speak of.

Ji Ruoyu did a quick search but didn’t find anything particularly valuable. He sighed regretfully, “What a pity. None of this is useful.”

“Finding treasure in an ancient Arcana ruins depends a lot on luck. Don’t be so hasty,” Su Chen laughed.

To him, no treasure was as important as knowledge.

Time could slowly whittle away at treasures, but it couldn’t whittle away knowledge.

Because of this, Su Chen had harvested quite a bit.

As a research lab, there was no shortage of written documents, and logs were scattered everywhere.

As long as it was a book with writing on it, Su Chen took it with him.

After circling the place once, Su Chen was just about to leave when he discovered that there was still another booklet on the floor.

He opened it, only to find that it was a tattered diary.

The diary was in extremely bad condition. All that could be gleaned from it was a few fragments here and there.

“...... finally arrived at Patelocke’s lab. I’m so excited! I believe that this place will be the beginning of my glorious journey.”

“...... Is this Master’s plan? Too profound, too marvelous! Master really is awesome; I will follow in his footsteps and fulfill his grand dream!”

“...... The experiments failed, but it doesn’t matter. We will succeed sooner or later.”

“...... It seems like our luck lately isn’t that good.”

“...... I’ve had some trouble falling asleep lately. There’s always a strange sound echoing in my head. It sounds a bit like someone pleading and crying.”

“...... My slave died again. These idiots are always so clumsy; I worked this one to death. Hopefully, my slaves will be a bit smarter next time.”

“...... How unlucky! I got a female slave......”

“...... Her name is Yi. She has very beautiful eyes.”

“...... The experiments haven’t been going well and the troubles just keep piling on. Apparently, the higher-ups feel like we are wasting too many resources, so they plan on stopping the experiments. Master was infuriated.”

“...... Yi is sick. I’m very worried for her and can’t get much sleep. What’s wrong with me? She’s just a lowly, despicable human. I shouldn’t be anxious about her.”

“...... This is a disaster.”

“...... It feels like the end of the world is near.”

“...... Every living thing dies eventually; there aren’t any exceptions. Perhaps what we are pursuing may never come to fruition.”

“...... I heard Yi crying again in my head. This makes me fearful. This place has been overtaken by demons...... Demons that we created.”

“...... The experiments failed again. Master was infuriated; he killed twelve slaves all at once. We are all very afraid and don’t know what to do.”

“...... Master has gone more and more insane. Main thinks that he could have secretly used some of that on himself. Just the thought alone terrifies me.”

“...... When I first came here, I was filled with hope. I thought that I could fulfill my grand dream. But now, I feel like I’m in the depths of hell. Yes, this place is truly hell.”

“...... Main died. Master killed him.”

Su Chen flipped to the diary’s last page.

“Everything ends today!”