Chapter 46

Chapter 46: The Locked Wooden Chest
A disciple cried out: “Wow, it really is a Scarlet Flame Lion!”

Another laughed: “What a cute little lion. Come here, let Elder Brother rub you!”

A third muttered: “Scarlet Flame Lions are so fierce, but their youngling is this cute. That totally goes against common sense!”

“…”

This youngling seemed to have been born not long ago. The blue film on its eyes had not even faded yet, and its fighting power was almost nothing.

The disciples of the Five Elements Dao Sect surrounded it in a tight circle, their hands roaming over it from head to tail.

The youngling was both startled and scared, and could only let out helpless whimpering sounds.

Yu Zhao was not as interested in the youngling as they were. She was more curious about whether there were any other treasures deeper inside the cave.

So she went farther in with Zhou Jin Yue, Zhang Jun, and Mu Ye.

They had only walked a few steps when a thick, fishy stench rushed toward them.

The four of them were caught off guard, and their eyes almost watered from the smell.

They hurried to seal off their five senses and then added several layers of defensive shields around their bodies before continuing forward.

The cave was very long but also extremely wide. As they walked, they could hear faint echoes.

Crack.

Zhou Jin Yue lowered her head to look.

It was a broken bone.

“Be more careful.” She gave a short reminder, her expression growing even more alert.

The farther they went in, the more bones there were in the cave.

Some of them had shallow teeth marks. Some were even thicker than Yu Zhao’s own body.

They also looked very fresh and did not seem like bones that had been left here for a long time.

Walking at the back of the group, Yu Zhao’s brows furrowed tighter and tighter.

Other than the Scarlet Flame Lion, she had not seen any signs of other demonic beasts living in this secret realm.

So where did all these bones come from?

“There’s no road ahead!” Zhou Jin Yue called from the front.

Right after she spoke, she suddenly froze in place and did not move at all.

“What’s wrong?” Zhang Jun stuck his head out from behind her, then his eyes widened. “Whoa! There’s so much blood!”

Yu Zhao quickly took a few steps forward.

She lifted her head.

All over the stone walls of the cave were dried bloodstains and claw marks of different depths.

A few tufts of bloody fur were still stuck to the protruding rocks.

Yu Zhao suddenly understood.

“I get it now!”

The three others all turned to look at her. Mu Ye asked curiously: “Yu Zhao, what did you figure out?”

Yu Zhao bent her knees and jumped up, plucking off a tuft of fur from the stone wall. She showed it to everyone. “I kept wondering what was going on with all these bones. Now I understand. These beast bones also came from Scarlet Flame Lions. There wasn’t just one Scarlet Flame Lion here at first, there were two.”

“Two?” Zhang Jun scratched his head, his eyes full of clear, silly confusion. “Why would there be two?”

Mu Ye covered her mouth in surprise: “I think I’m still not getting it. Do you mean there should have been a male and a female Scarlet Flame Lion in this secret realm? Then the female Scarlet Flame Lion got pregnant, but this secret realm was about to collapse and couldn’t give her enough energy. So she ate her own mate, the male Scarlet Flame Lion. These bones are the male Scarlet Flame Lion’s remains?”

“That’s right.” Yu Zhao nodded.

If there had not been two Scarlet Flame Lions here, there was no way to explain how the Scarlet Flame Lion got pregnant and gave birth to the youngling.

Zhang Jun shivered like he had just heard a horror story, his lips trembling. “Scarlet Flame Lions are way too scary. It actually ate its child’s father. That’s so heartless.”

Zhou Jin Yue rolled her eyes. “They’re not human to begin with. Besides, in the Cultivation World, the weak are prey to the strong, and only the fittest survive. If it hadn’t eaten the other Scarlet Flame Lion, it might not have been able to protect its child, and it might have died too.”

“But still…”

Zhang Jun still found it hard to accept.

Zhou Jin Yue did not want to keep explaining.

What the Scarlet Flame Lion did might seem cruel to cultivators, but for its own kind, it was just a sacrifice it had to make in order to live.

While Zhou Jin Yue and Zhang Jun were talking, Yu Zhao and Mu Ye had already started searching along the stone walls.

This time, Mu Ye was the lucky one. She found a large locked wooden chest under a pile of bones.

Other than that, they did not find anything else.

The four of them were a bit unwilling to leave and searched again, but still ended up with nothing. In the end, they could only carry the chest out of the cave and return to the pavilion.

“Senior Sister Zhou is out, Senior Sister Zhou is out!”

As Yu Zhao and the other three walked out of the cave, the Five Elements Dao Sect disciples happily ran up to greet them.

Yu Zhao saw Ye Cong Xin right away, standing in the middle of the crowd, holding the Scarlet Flame Lion cub in her arms. Her brows and eyes were curved in a sweet smile, making her look very lovable.

Ye Cong Xin spoke softly: “Senior Sister Zhou, Senior Brother Zhang, you finally came out. Everyone was really worried about you.”

Zhang Jun gave her a strange look. “We weren’t in there for that long. What’s there to be worried about?”

Ye Cong Xin choked on her words.

She had only wanted to show how gentle and kind she was, yet she ran into such a blockhead.

Zhou Jin Yue swept a cool glance over Ye Cong Xin, curled her lips, then dragged the wooden chest to the crowd.

“This is the chest we found in the cave. There was nothing else.”

If anyone else had said this, the Five Elements Dao Sect disciples might have felt suspicious and wondered if something had been taken.

But since it came from Zhou Jin Yue’s mouth, everyone trusted her without question.

“Senior Sister Zhou, let’s open the chest now and take a look!”

“Yeah, we should see what’s inside. We can’t have come all this way for nothing!”

“The wood this chest is made from looks pretty good. Whatever is inside probably isn’t bad.”

“…”

Zhou Jin Yue looked around at everyone. “Then I’ll open it?”

“Open it, open it!”

“Yeah, open it!”

“Alright.”

Zhou Jin Yue answered, then sank her breath into her dantian. Thick Spirit Power poured out from her fingertips and formed a blade of light.

“Heh!”

With a low shout, Zhou Jin Yue used her hand as a blade and chopped down hard.

Crack!

The lock on the wooden chest broke at once and fell to the ground, shattering into pieces.

Everyone could tell that this wooden chest had to be very old. Even the lock had rotted away.

If the lock was that decayed, could anything inside still be intact?

A trace of disappointment flashed through everyone’s hearts.

Zhou Jin Yue also felt that the things inside were likely damaged, but since the chest was already open, they had to see what was inside to be sure.

She stepped forward and lifted the lid.

In an instant, colorful metallic light burst out, and a sharp, clanging aura rushed toward them.

Everyone jumped in surprise, then their faces broke into wild joy.

They had struck it rich!

All of them rushed forward without thinking.

Inside the half-human-tall chest were more than ten pieces of different ores. The smallest was about the size of a fist, and the largest was as big as a millstone.

“Starry Sky Stone, Blood Sun Iron, Silver Thread Crystal, Geng Essence…”

Yu Zhao silently recited the names of the ores in her mind, and the corners of her lips curved in a pleased smile.

These ores were not extremely rare in the Cultivation World, but they were still quite valuable. More importantly, they were preserved very well and were all fairly large.

Even better, Yu Zhao spotted two types of ore she needed.

With these two ores, the materials she needed for Artifact Forging would soon be complete.