Following seven-year-old Jiang Tuntun’s chubby pointing finger, every pair of eyes in Underground Spirit-Vein Slag Pit Number Four turned toward the northern end of the cavern.
Behind a thick curtain of dripping sulfur stalactites stood a thirty-foot-tall archway forged from gleaming, five-colored Rank 5 Five-Element Spirit-Locking Steel.
Unlike the rusted, soot-blackened iron crate where seven-year-old Tuntun had been chained for two thousand five hundred nights, this towering vault door was polished to a mirror finish. Intricate gold and crimson defensive runes pulsed across its five-inch-thick surface. Drawing continuous power straight from the forty-foot pillar of glowing white crystal—the Supreme Sword Sect’s Main Underground.
Core Spirit Vein—that rose directly behind the vault chamber like the trunk of an ancient crystal tree.
Above the archway hung a carved jade plaque written in Holy Son Chu Tian’s arrogant, flourishing calligraphy:.
[HOLY SON CHU TIAN’S PRIVATE SPIRIT-TREASURY — TRESPASSERS EXECUTED TO NINE GENERATIONS]
Across the stone floor, the bound and gagged Elder Hei and Elder Bai began thrashing like two salted earthworms on a hot griddle. Shaking their bruised heads frantically to tell Gu Changsheng that even a Rank 5 Peak elder couldn’t force open that door without Chu Tian’s personal blood-token.
“Look at how agitated those two debtors are,” Grandpa Fu said dryly, clicking three golden beads across his [Jade-Abacus Cane] as he walked behind Gu Changsheng toward the towering archway. “By my humble accounting, whenever a sect elder shakes his head that hard. It means the room behind the door contains at…
