Chapter 265 Digestion, Intelligence

Shen Wen did not take Cao Xiu's provocation to heart.

An Intermediate Grade 7, even if praised to high heaven, was still only a Grade 7. He had never cared about opponents at this level.

Cai Lin was nearing her delivery date, so he stayed in the manor these few days to accompany her while settling down to study the items he had just obtained.

The great dao treasure bottle.

This Cultivation Technique originated from Empress Ruthless, and its Profound Truth lay in the word 'devouring'.

It was not the usual sense of absorbing Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, but a true sense of swallowing.

Enemy attacks, violent energy, and even poisonous miasma could all be taken into the bottle and converted for his own use.

Shen Wen sat cross-legged in the Quiet Room, his palm held up as a pitch-black halo slowly condensed, turning into a palm-sized small bottle.

The bottle was ancient and simple with mysterious patterns, and its mouth had a faint suction flowing, as if it could swallow everything.

He tried putting a wisp of Fallen Heart Flame into the bottle.

The moment the flame entered, the bottle shook slightly, and then that wisp of flame was crushed, decomposed, and transformed, finally turning into a wisp of pure energy that fed back into his body through the bottle's mouth.

A light flashed in Shen Wen's eyes.

This thing is quite interesting.

If he were fighting someone and the opponent struck with full force, he could directly catch it with the great dao treasure bottle and feed it back to himself after conversion.

With one side weakening and the other strengthening, who among those of the same rank could outlast him?

Even if facing a siege, this treasure bottle could be of great use.

Combined with the devouring ancestral talisman, it would be invincible!

He suppressed the urge to try it immediately and continued to study further.

Detailed Explanation of Shangqing Formations.

This Legacy covered everything, from basic Spirit Gathering Formations and Concealment Formations to the extremely complex Heavenly Stars Great Formation and simplified versions of the Immortal Slaying Sword Array.

Shen Wen read for several days, becoming more shocked the more he looked.

It wasn't because of the ingenuity of the Formations, but because he suddenly realized a problem.

The Fighting Qi Continent did have Formation legacies.

Those Ancient Ruins and Dou Sheng Immortal Caves—which one wasn't guarded by layers of Formations?

The Pill Tower's Great Tower Guarding Array, the Burning Flame Valley's Nine Dragons Valley Guarding Array, and even the Small Worlds inhabited by those ancient families all relied on extremely profound Formations to be maintained.

But the Formations currently circulating on the continent were mostly incomplete fragments.

The truly deep path of Formations had long been lost.

Shen Wen had once heard Xuan Danzi mention that in ancient times, the continent was not like it is now.

Back then, there were passages to the Major Thousand Worlds, and the paths of Formations, Artifact Refining, and talismans had all flourished for a time.

Later, the connection between heaven and earth was severed, the passages were cut off, and the continent became its own world.

Combined with years of constant warfare, many legacies slowly became lost in the passage of time.

The existence of pill cauldrons was the best evidence.

With an Alchemist's Soul power, it was by no means easy to refine a cauldron capable of withstanding the Pill Lightning of high-rank Medicinal Pills.

Yet those cauldrons passed down from ancient times could do it.

What did this indicate?

It indicated that the path of Artifact Refining back then was far more mature than it is now.

What is called Artifact Refining on the continent today is merely melting Materials into shape and then embedding a few monster cores into the weapon to increase some attribute power.

It is crude and simple, far removed from true Artifact Refining.

Shen Wen looked at the Detailed Explanation of Shangqing Formations in his hand and thought of the refining techniques, rune inscriptions, and spirit nurturing methods recorded in the Yuqing Artifact Refining Method, suddenly realizing what he held in his hands.

If these two legacies were released, they would be enough to shake the entire continent.

However, he quickly suppressed this thought.

An ordinary man is innocent, but harboring a jade makes him guilty. Before he possessed enough strength, he could only digest these things slowly on his own.

What truly concerned him was another problem.

The Hall of Souls.

Or rather, the Hun Clan.

In the original work, in order to launch that blood sacrifice, Hun Tiandi ordered the people of the Hun Clan to set up countless Formations across the entire continent, with a scope so wide it included almost all places where living beings gathered.

Once the Formations were activated, the flesh and Souls of billions of living beings would be refined to become nourishment for him to break through to Dou Di.

Shen Wen previously knew nothing about Formations, so even though he knew the Hall of Souls was laying out a plan, he had no way to intervene.

But now it was different.

With the Detailed Explanation of Shangqing Formations, he was fully capable of reverse-engineering, breaking, or even tampering with those Formations.

The problem was—

He couldn't find the specific locations of those Formations.

The Hall of Souls always acted secretly, so those Formations must be extremely well-hidden, some perhaps buried deep underground or hidden in space cracks.

If he went looking for them one by one, he wouldn't finish even in a month of Sundays.

If he publicly offered a reward for information on the Hall of Souls' Formations, it would surely alert the enemy.

The Hall of Souls was merely a tool used by the Hun Clan on the surface; alerting them wouldn't just alert the Hall of Souls, but the Hun Clan itself.

Once the Hun Clan was alerted, with his current strength, he still couldn't withstand the full retaliation of such a colossus.

Shen Wen leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowing slightly.

This was indeed a difficult problem.

He needed intelligence.

He needed an intelligence network that could quietly penetrate the entire continent without drawing suspicion.

Ordinary spies wouldn't do.

The Hall of Souls acted secretly and was extremely wary of strangers approaching; ordinary spies couldn't even get close.

He needed a natural intelligence gatherer.

A thought suddenly flashed through Shen Wen's mind.

The Gold-Devouring Rats.

This Demonic Beast group had appeared in the original work.

They were small, agile, and alert, good at tunneling through earth and mountains, able to travel freely underground, and they reproduced very quickly, with their tribe spread all over the continent.

Most importantly, their perception of energy was extremely keen; they could always be the first to notice where there was an abnormal energy fluctuation or where a treasure might be appearing.

The Formations set up by the Hall of Souls would inevitably involve energy flow and spatial fluctuations. Human spies couldn't sense these fluctuations, but the Gold-Devouring Rats could.

Besides, who would pay attention to a rat?

The light in Shen Wen's eyes grew brighter.

If he could subdue the Gold-Devouring Rat tribe and have them spread across the continent to monitor energy anomalies for him, the locations of those Hall of Souls Formations would surface one by one.

Even better, the Gold-Devouring Rats were not combat-type Demonic Beasts and their strength was generally not high, so they wouldn't attract the attention of powerful experts.

It was their nature to be active in various areas, so no one would suspect them.

Once this thought arose, it could no longer be suppressed.

Shen Wen stood up and paced back and forth in the Quiet Room, carefully weighing the feasibility.

Who would care about a few rats?

Even the people of the Hall of Souls wouldn't imagine they were being secretly watched by a group of rats.

He remembered that the Gold-Devouring Rat tribe even knew intelligence on many Emperor Clans!

"Looks like I'll have to go to the Tianmu Mountain Range!"

Shen Wen stroked his chin; he knew the core tribe of the Gold-Devouring Rats was in the Tianmu Mountain Range, and there was also the Tianshan Blood Pool there, which could help a Peak Dou Huang break through to Dou Zong.

Although the energy could only allow one person to break through, it was still considered a major event for the Tianmu Mountain Range.

And Xiao Yan had broken through to Dou Zong here.

He had no interest in that, and besides, the people around him wouldn't be unable to even break through to Dou Zong.

He was only interested in the Gold-Devouring Rat tribe.