Next, Xia Li immediately had the Heaven Chip begin a full inventory and categorization of the contents inside Mo Ye's storage ring.
In less than three minutes, the chip had already produced a rough breakdown.
There were around 1.5 million spirit stones inside.
Not as many as Xia Li had imagined,
but still certainly not a small amount.
After all, no cultivator simply hoarded spirit stones forever.
The key was always how to turn spirit stones into strength.
Keeping only a portion on hand for ready use was normal.
Then there were all kinds of pills.
Unfortunately, not a single one of them was usable for Xia Li.
Every last one was a demonic pill,
refined mostly from the qi and blood of other living beings,
some of them even mixed with human blood, bones, and organs.
This was not merely a matter of being psychologically unable to accept them.
Eating them could very likely affect the mind itself.
There were also various materials for smithing, strange treasures, and unusual valuables.
But again, most of them were the kind of thing demonic cultivators favored, grotesque in appearance and wholly lacking the spiritual grace proper to true spirit treasures.
As for books, there were many demonic arts,
as well as all kinds of texts introducing demonic treasures, outlines of demonic cultivation methods, and the like.
Only one item stood out.
It was something wrapped in human skin.
Xia Li immediately took it out of the storage ring and began examining it,
because the Heaven Chip had reported that it could not scan whatever was inside the skin.
"What could it be?"
Just as Xia Li was about to peel back the outer skin and take a look,
Qiu Fu suddenly lunged forward and knocked the thing from his hands.
"Don't open it!"
With a face drained of color, Qiu Fu grabbed Xia Li's wrist.
Cold sweat stood on her forehead.
Her eyes were full of fear as she stared at the wrapped object on the ground.
"Qiu Fu? You recognize that thing?"
Seeing her reaction, Xia Li immediately ordered the Heaven Chip to scan his own body, afraid that something might already have gone wrong.
"I think I can guess what it is. Don't move..."
Qiu Fu stepped forward, carefully picked up the skin-wrapped object,
then slowly tightened her grip so that the shape of whatever lay inside became visible through the hide.
It looked like a dagger.
But the shape was deeply abnormal.
The whole thing twisted and curved unnaturally.
Even the hilt had numerous strange protrusions rising from it,
like thorns or barbs growing all over the handle.
"A dagger? Some kind of taboo treasure? A world-ending evil weapon?"
"Most likely an imitation Death-Curse Blade. It's a heaven-defying demonic weapon. The hatred of countless living beings is condensed into it. Once a true Death-Curse Blade is completed, it must be sealed immediately with saint-skin. And every time it's used, it drains the life of the wielder as the price. Whoever is struck by it suffers the most terrifying curse under heaven: the Foul-Death Curse. Even immortals cannot withstand it."
"This one is only an imitation, but the skin wrapping it absolutely belonged to a fragment of some former Great Power's body. It lacks the power to slay a true immortal, but it can still seal a pseudo-immortal."
"Mo Ye was planning to use this against a pseudo-immortal?"
Xia Li was horrified.
He had never imagined that Mo Ye had privately forged such a baleful weapon.
How many deaths had Mo Ye caused in order to make it?
"That should be the case. And he must have been preparing it for a very long time. A Death-Curse Blade cannot be made overnight. There are at least a million tragic deaths behind this thing."
"What?"
At that, Xia Li immediately smacked the Death-Curse Blade out of Qiu Fu's hands as well.
The thing was too evil.
Too terrifying.
Merely holding it made it feel as though some catastrophe might happen at any moment.
"During the ancient war against the immortals, all the major lineages created immortal-slaying instruments in order to rebel against the immortals. The Divine Path inheritance was even broken because of it. The Death-Curse Blade is the demonic path's immortal-slaying weapon."
"The righteous path used the Immortal-Suppressing Bell, forged by staking the fortune of all living beings. Demonkind used the Immortal-Rending Staff, forged from the essence blood of ten thousand demons. The Buddhists used the Immortal-Falling Seal, formed from the faith of countless beings."
"Along with the Death-Curse Blade, or more properly the Immortal-Cursing Dagger, and the supreme Divine Path ability specially created in ancient times to break immortals, Sever Heaven and Earth, these four great instruments together could slay a supreme true immortal!"
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Qiu Fu told Xia Li everything she knew about the ancient war against the immortals.
"If there is a distinction between true immortals and pseudo-immortals, then that means the ancient war involved more than one immortal?"
"One Supreme Immortal, ten High Immortals, and a hundred Pseudo-Immortals."
"I see..."
Xia Li nodded.
An imitation Death-Curse Blade could threaten a pseudo-immortal.
Then the true Death-Curse Blade could directly contend against a true High Immortal.
And if all four great instruments were brought together, along with the Divine Path's supreme art Sever Heaven and Earth, then even a Supreme True Immortal could be slain.
But then again, given Xia Li's own understanding of immortals,
he had once thought of them as a higher-dimensional civilization, something against which the Profound World should have had no chance to resist.
Or had those immortals, like the higher-dimensional being he had once encountered, also been constrained after descending into a lower-dimensional universe?
Yet the Profound World's anti-immortal methods did not sound like things that would work against a higher-dimensional lifeform.
At least from Xia Li's own encounter, higher-dimensional beings feared only black holes.
So...
perhaps immortals were not higher-dimensional lifeforms after all.
Perhaps they were simply a more advanced cultivation civilization.
That made sense.
To use a simple analogy:
if modern Earth sent an invasion force led by one Nascent Soul, with ten Golden Core squad leaders and a hundred Foundation Establishment troops, to invade Earth from five hundred years ago, then the conventional weapons of that old Earth might be useless.
But if it deployed strategic-level weapons, nuclear weapons flattening the land, then killing such an invading force would not be impossible.
Immortals were not a higher-dimensional civilization.
They were perhaps only a superior civilization.
This information was crucial.
If the enemy were a higher-dimensional civilization, their hostility would be as unreasonable as a black hole drifting by.
Nothing could be said.
Nothing would matter.
But if they were only an advanced civilization, then they were not unassailable.
There might even be some reason why they could not launch an all-out invasion.
Otherwise, the Profound World would not still exist in its current form.
Once Xia Li grasped that, a realization flashed through him.
He bent down and picked up the skin-wrapped object once more, the same thing he had knocked from Qiu Fu's hand.
This Death-Curse Blade was, in essence, the Profound World's "nuclear weapon."
Its role was almost the same:
the last line of resistance against things that could not be measured by ordinary logic.
Mo Ye had been its wielder.
And throughout their entire battle, Mo Ye had shown no intention of using it.
At the end, he had even intended for the xiao demon to take it away.
Otherwise, could Xia Li really have won?
One strike from this thing would have killed him without question.
"Pitiful, tragic, regrettable, but never deserving of pity."
Xia Li looked at the Death-Curse Blade wrapped in skin in his hand.
He realized that Mo Ye was an exceptionally complicated man,
not someone whose actions could be judged by any simple theory of good and evil.
But no matter what,
this "nuclear weapon" aimed at immortals...
Xia Li accepted it.
It might have great use in the future.
It might become the sole chance of survival in some otherwise certain death.
"Xia Li, that thing can't be used. You would die."
Seeing Xia Li pick up the Death-Curse Blade, the worry in Qiu Fu's eyes nearly became tangible.
This was the demonic path's immortal-slaying weapon.
Though it was the easiest of the four to make,
the process was the bloodiest and cruelest,
and the price of using it was also the greatest.
"I... am not afraid of death."
More accurately speaking,
he was not afraid of dying for the first time.
Xia Li carried the authority of Twilight Afterglow.
That encounter with a higher-dimensional being had made him into an "incomplete young god."
Even if he once walked into sunset,
he could still return to dawn.