386: Chapter 386 The Tomb of the Cauldron

Tao Zhe walked in the direction Han Li was heading.

He passed through the dense forest of cauldrons, navigated around several collapsed large furnaces, and walked for about fifty meters.

Then he stopped.

The sight before him made him crane his neck.

Two giant cauldrons.

They stood on either side of a wide stone-paved corridor, one on the left and one on the right.

Each cauldron was nearly thirty meters high.

Three thick legs supported them on the ground, each leg with a diameter thicker than an adult's waist.

The furnace body was perfectly round, its surface carved with dense, intricate patterns.

Faint traces of luster still remained within the patterns; one could only wonder what Materials had been used, as they had not completely faded even after so many years.

The cauldron's mouth faced the sky, and along its rim was a ring of raised patterns as thick as a finger, resembling some sort of script, wrapping entirely around the opening.

Standing at the foot of the cauldron, a person looked as small as an ant.

Su Mingyuan also followed, looking up at these two giant cauldrons.

"Are these two cauldrons just for show? Or are they truly used for Alchemy?" he asked.

Tao Zhe did not answer his question, but instead looked at the corridor between the two giant cauldrons.

The corridor was very wide, at least ten meters across.

On the ground on both sides were regularly arranged column pits.

The columns were long gone, but the pits remained, evenly spaced and symmetrical.

At the end of the corridor—the direction where Han Li was standing—was a larger space.

However, blocking the end of the corridor was a pile of massive rubble.

The pile of rubble was four or five meters high, spanning the entire width of the corridor, completely sealing off the path ahead.

The rubble was irregular in shape, some edges quite sharp, and one could still see traces of carvings on the cross-sections—Dragon patterns, cloud patterns, lotus patterns—intermittent and incomplete.

Tao Zhe looked at the pile of rubble, squatted down, picked up a piece, and turned it over.

"This is a door," he said.

"A door?" Su Mingyuan looked at the pile of rubble.

"Yes. There used to be a large gate here, very large, perhaps twenty or thirty meters high."

Tao Zhe pointed to the remains of the door frame on both sides.

"Look here, the base of the door frame is still there, and the cross-section of the stone is the same as the rubble. The door was destroyed, and the rubble piled up in the corridor."

He stood up and glanced at the top of the rubble pile.

Although the pile was high, there was a gap at the top where the space behind could be vaguely seen.

Han Li had already bypassed the side of the rubble pile.

There was a gap there, wide enough for a person, just barely enough to squeeze through sideways.

"Dr. Tao, come over here," Han Li called from the other side.

Tao Zhe squeezed through the gap between the rubble, his pant leg catching on a piece of stone.

Past the rubble, the view suddenly opened up.

This was a depression even larger than the one outside.

The area outside, filled with cauldrons, was already large enough, but this area was at least three times that size.

It was over a thousand meters in length and width, and the surrounding low walls were built higher and neater.

Every three meters along the top of the wall stood a stone pillar carved with the shape of a cauldron.

The depression was also filled with cauldrons.

But the cauldrons here were different from those outside.

In front of every cauldron stood a stone tablet.

The tablets were small, about half a meter high, made of grayish-black stone, with text carved on the surface.

The cauldrons and tablets were arranged in pairs, row by row and column by column, with uniform spacing, orderly and neat, like a stone forest.

Tao Zhe stood at the entrance, looking at this neatly arranged expanse of cauldrons and tablets, and remained silent for a few seconds.

Then he walked to the nearest tablet and bent down to decipher the text on it.

After looking for about a dozen seconds, he straightened up.

"Cauldron Graveyard," he said.

Su Mingyuan had also squeezed past the rubble by this time and, hearing these two words, asked, "What does that mean?"

Tao Zhe pointed to the tablet in front of him.

"This tablet is carved with a person's name, their years of birth and death, and their position in the Danding Heavenly Palace," he said.

"'Outer Sect Disciple Zhao Yuanqing, born in the year 437 of the Heavenly Palace Calendar, died in the year 512 of the Heavenly Palace Calendar, lived to the age of 75. Skilled in refining Huiyuan Pills and Qingxin Pills, refined 36,000 furnaces of Medicinal Pills in his lifetime, with 723 failed furnaces.'"

He patted the half-person-high bronze-colored Medicinal Pill cauldron next to the tablet.

"This cauldron was his Life-Bound Spirit Cauldron. After he died, the cauldron was sent here to be buried."

He turned to face Su Mingyuan and the others.

"This is the Cauldron Graveyard of the Danding Heavenly Palace," he said.

"When an Alchemist of the Danding Heavenly Palace dies, their Life-Bound Spirit Cauldron is sent here. The person is buried elsewhere, and the cauldron is buried here. For the people of the Danding Heavenly Palace, the cauldron is their life, and the Cauldron Graveyard is their second grave."

Han Li was crouching in front of another tablet, her eyes moist.

"Refined 36,000 furnaces of Medicinal Pills in a lifetime," she recited softly, "723 failed furnaces. That means this person's success rate for their entire life was ninety-eight percent."

She touched the furnace wall of that Medicinal Pill cauldron.

"My success rate right now isn't even twenty percent."

Tao Zhe had already walked toward the giant cauldron on the other side of the entrance.

That thirty-meter-high giant cauldron was also inscribed with text.

Unlike the ring of text on the cauldron's rim, these characters were carved on the middle section of the furnace body, larger and more formal.

He craned his neck to look for a while, identifying the general content.

"This records the rules of the Cauldron Graveyard," Tao Zhe said.

"For five thousand years in the Danding Heavenly Palace, whenever a Disciple passes away, their Life-Bound Spirit Cauldron is buried here."

"Five thousand years," Zhao Ping repeated from behind.

Tao Zhe nodded and continued reading.

"There is another passage—'If future Disciples have need, they may enter the Cauldron Graveyard to seek a cauldron that resonates with them. Spirit Cauldrons possess spirit; if one gains the recognition of a Senior's cauldron, one may take it away. This is not considered grave robbing, but rather a Legacy.'"

He turned around and glanced at the group.

"In other words, the Cauldron Graveyard is not just a graveyard, but also a place of Legacy. If future Disciples do not have their own Life-Bound Spirit Cauldron, they can come here to find a cauldron left behind by a Senior. But the prerequisite is that the cauldron must recognize you; otherwise, you cannot take it."

He looked up again at the last few lines on the giant cauldron.

"The last passage says—'However, although there are many Spirit Cauldrons in the world, the one that best fits the user is ultimately the one they refined with their own hands. Another person's cauldron will always have a barrier. Those with ability should refine their own Life-Bound Spirit Cauldron; that is the true path of the Alchemy Dao.'"

Han Li listened attentively from the side, muttering the words "refine their own Life-Bound Spirit Cauldron" to herself.

Su Mingyuan did not pay attention to the details of the cauldrons; he was thinking about something else.

Five thousand years.

The Danding Heavenly Palace had existed for five thousand years.

The history of the Great Xia, at most, was only five thousand years.

From the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors to the present, over a dozen dynasties had changed—Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing—countless wars had been fought, and countless nations had been destroyed.

But the Danding Heavenly Palace had always remained.

Five thousand years without changing dynasties, five thousand years of a single lineage of Legacy, three million Disciples, seven outer medicinal fields, and a Cauldron Graveyard burying the Life-Bound Spirit Cauldrons of who knows how many generations of Alchemists.

This kind of foundation, this kind of stability, Su Mingyuan had never seen in the Main World.

What allowed a Sect to continue for five thousand years without perishing was not military force, nor power, but Legacy.

Generation after generation, Master passing to Disciple, the craft of Alchemy, Pill Formulas, and experience, taught by word of mouth, never severed.

But now, the Danding Heavenly Palace had perished.

The five-thousand-year Legacy was broken.

Su Mingyuan looked at the neatly arranged cauldrons and stone tablets in the Cauldron Graveyard, a heavy feeling inexplicably rising in his heart.

"Roar—roar—roar—"

Just then, a low roar suddenly came from the depths of the Cauldron Graveyard, one sound after another.

Everyone tensed up simultaneously.