Chapter 116: Preparing for the Purifying Ritual
"The core region?"
Jiang Yue recalled the cloudy region on the map of the secret realm.
He initially thought it was an unexplored area of the inner region.
However, the more he knew about the thousand herbs garden, the more he became convinced that the area was the core.
Although he didn’t know what was there or how to get there, he was sure the most important treasure of the secret realm would be there.
"The thousand herbs garden opens once every one hundred years. However, the core region opens once every one thousand years. It should open this time around." Li Futian explained.
Jiang Yue’s heart skipped a beat, and he looked at his three companions.
Yu Nianzhen and Xuan Ke looked as surprised as he was, but Wang Xue’er didn’t look surprised.
This meant she knew something about the core region.
At the same time, Jiang Yue wondered why master Yang had not told his disciple about the core region.
He looked at Yu Nianzhen and raised an eyebrow.
Yu Nianzhen tilted his head to the right and rolled his eyes.
’It’s just like master Yang to mess around with his disciple like this. He probably thought it was fun for Nianzhen to figure it out himself.’
Jiang Yue threw Yu Nianzhen a pitying look and then turned back to Li Futian.
"How to enter the core region?" Xuan Ke asked.
"No one knows this." Wang Xue’er supplied.
"Fellow Daoist Wang is right. It all depends on luck if one can enter the core region from the inner region."
Yu Nianzhen frowned when he heard this.
He always disliked all these things that depended on luck.
However, it was said that luck was also a skill, and so far, he had been lucky.
’Let’s hope it can remain this way.’ He thought.
"What’s in the core region?" Jiang Yue inquired.
This time, neither Li Futian nor Wang Xue’er answered readily.
"It will depend on your luck and ability if you can get into the core region." Li Futian finally said.
His answer meant he wasn’t willing to go into details, but the three boys didn’t mind it.
After all, it was already a great favour that Li Futian had told them about the core region.
If they insisted on questioning him, it would be too inappropriate.
After that, the topic shifted to missions.
Jiang Yue asked about the tasks posted on the notice board, and Li Futian was forthcoming with this information.
"The mission you are referring to was posted by the second young master of the Jin family, Jin Xuan."
As soon as he heard this name, Jiang Yue shuddered.
They met the person in the underwater garden and had a conflict because of the nine-petal water lotus.
After that, he learned that Bai Ruyue was also from the Great Artisan city and had rejected the Jin family’s proposal right before the secret realm opened.
’What a headache.’ He thought.
He then turned to Yu Nianzhen to see what he meant.
"Can he go back on the reward?" Yu Nianzhen asked.
"Do the fellow Daoists have a grudge with the second young master Jin?"
"Our paths have crossed."
"Is that so? Fellow Daoist Yu and Fellow Daoist Jiang can rest assured. The second young master issued the mission, but the reward is in the custody of the allied forces."
Jiang Yue and Yu Nianzhen breathed out in relief when they heard that.
They didn’t want to be involved with the second young master Jin if they could help it.
"That mission has a special condition."
"Does Fellow Daoist Li know it?"
"Not yet. The condition will only be revealed when the gathered people are enough."
"If you want to participate in the mission, you need to register and wait for thirty people to gather."
"Has Fellow Daoist Li signed up for the mission?"
"I have. When I last checked, eighteen cultivators had already registered."
"With the four of you, only a few people will be needed to make the count."
A while later, Li Futian took them out to register for the mission and then helped them set up tents close to his.
"It should only take a few days to gather the remaining four people. Let’s meet again then."
After saying that, Li Futian returned to his tent, and the remaining four stood at the entrance of one of the tents.
"Should we take this chance to purify the five corpses?" Jiang Yue asked.
Since the corpse qi seeped out while in the trade valley, Jiang Yue had paid attention to ensure Yu Nianzhen wasn’t contaminated with something dirty.
Now that they had some free time, he wanted to take the opportunity to get rid of the bodies.
"The ritual is not a problem. However, it may be difficult to collect the required materials." Xuan Ke informed.
"What is needed?"
Xuan Ke rattled off a list, and the other three were relieved to hear the ritual didn’t require any rare items.
The difficulty was in the number of items required, which counted to eighty-one.
"The blood of a live beast." Jiang Yue muttered.
This requirement gave him a headache since there were no animals in the thousand herbs garden.
"Can’t we use a dead beast?" Wang Xue’er asked.
"Buddhism discourages killing." Xuan Ke said, and Jiang Yue rolled his eyes.
He had seen brother Ke drinking wine and eating meat.
"What about the blood of humans?" Yu Nianzhen asked.
Brother Ke thought about it and his face creased in a frown before he spoke, "it should work, but the amount required is a lot."
"I have blood replenishing pills."
"Except brother Ke, the rest of us can offer blood to prevent one person from paying too much." Wang Xue’er suggested.
The others had nothing more to say, and they separated to look for the items mentioned by Xuan Ke.
Jiang Yue and Yu Nianzhen first entered their tent.
Since arriving in the secret realm, they had dealt with many enemies and collected many storage artefacts.
Before looking for the items elsewhere, they needed to make sure they didn’t already have them in their storage artefacts.
"We need to organise these things into a semblance of order." Jiang Yue grumbled.
Apart from removing spirit stones from the various storage bags and rings, they hadn’t done much to organise.
"Let’s order them into four piles. The first pile should contain evil things like the weapons we collected from the corpse yin sect cultivator."
"The second pile should contain things we intend to keep for ourselves, and the third pile should have what we intend to sell."
"Let’s place herbs in the fourth pile. We can sort it out later."
After listening to Yu Nianzhen’s suggestion, Jiang Yue did not refute it.
They quickly went to work and began to separate everything into four piles.
When they discovered something required for the ritual, they set it aside in a fifth pile.
In this way, the two took half an hour to sort everything.
After they finished, they put the first and third piles into different storage bags.
The fifth pile was thrown into the jade box and immediately replanted within.
"What do you want from this pile?" Jiang Yue asked and pointed at the second pile.
This is the pile that contained things they wanted to keep.
Although it was the smallest, the things contained were rare and of high quality.
"There is nothing I need for the time being. What about you?"
"Nothing for the moment."
Since neither needed anything, they placed the things in a storage bag, which was then stored in Jiang Yue’s ring.
"Let’s bring these out."
The two brought out the pile required for the ritual and met up with Wang Xue’er, who had done the same.
"Let’s put everything together and see what’s missing?"
Xuan Ke was called over to look at everything, and he wasted no time.
Within a few moments, he examined the goods and realised that everything required had already been collected.
In fact, some things were more than they needed.
"I will perform the ritual at dawn. Until then, I will be preparing."
"We have troubled brother Ke." Jiang Yue said and cupped his hands at the monk.
"You can treat me to a good meal and wine later." The monk said.
"Thank you, brother Ke." The other three said, and the monk retreated with the things into his tent.
"We should also adjust our bodies to ensure nothing goes wrong with the blood."
"I will listen to fellow Daoist Yu."
Wang Xue’er said her goodbyes and returned to her tent.
A moment later, Jiang Yue and Yu Nianzhen also returned to their tent.
However, they didn’t immediately go into meditation.
Instead, Jiang Yue produced two cups from his storage ring, and Yu Nianzhen poured wine from the gourd at his waist.
"What do you think?" Yu Nianzhen asked.
"While looking for the soul-refining herb, we should search for a way to enter the core region."
Although they didn’t know what they would find in the core region, the two knew it would be something precious.
If not, the Death Flower Ascension Front wouldn’t have gone to soo much trouble to send people in.
