All Things Are Contracts

Chapter 34

In a spacious room, two lamps hanging at the door aroused Zhanyue’s curiosity. They were two white flowers that emitted bright light when touched, and dimmed when touched again.

“Hurry up!” Mountain Goblin Clansmen were carrying wooden boxes, which directly occupied half the space in Zhanyue’s room. The boxes contained ancient books, paintings, stone tablets, animal skins with writing, and fabrics. The Mountain Goblin King had really brought everything with writing on it to Zhanyue.

“So much?” Zhanyue pointed at the pile of miscellaneous items stacked like a small mountain.

“Yes, all these things have writing on them,” said Dangdang, who was responsible for delivery.

“Alright, give me a hand,” Zhanyue stood by the small mountain of items, separating them according to the type of writing. Not everything was in that ancient script; Zhanyue even found some writing he didn’t recognize, not knowing which civilization it belonged to.

After a busy morning, Zhanyue finally categorized everything into useful, potentially useful, and completely useless.

“Take these… these and these out,” Zhanyue instructed.

“Yes, sir!” Several Mountain Goblin Clansmen hurriedly carried out the completely useless items.

“While checking these things, this one intrigued me the most,” Zhanyue took out an animal skin. On it was a very detailed map drawn with extremely fine strokes, including Worlds, oceans, and various rivers and mountains on the Worlds. But what puzzled Zhanyue was that this didn’t seem to be a map of the Myriad Spirits World.

Besides this map, there was a type of ancient booklet that emitted a medicinal fragrance even before opening, which was quite strange. There were quite a few such booklets, which Zhanyue set aside separately.

These booklets contained not only text but also diagrams, depicting the shapes of some plants and body parts of some beasts.

“Pill formulas? These are actually Pill formulas?” Zhanyue was shocked. Each of these booklets was a Pill formula. How could there be so many Pill formulas here?

“It seems I can’t fully understand these languages without completely deciphering them,” Zhanyue thought to himself. Previously, he was just translating the cultivation method for Hulu, but the appearance of so many Pill formulas made Zhanyue want to know what was really going on.

“These booklets look handwritten. Were they copied by the Mountain Goblin ancestors from ancient human alchemists?” Zhanyue speculated. Compared to the Pill formulas, Zhanyue was actually more curious about that map.

“Brother, how’s the work going?” A figure appeared behind Zhanyue – it was the chubby Hulu.

“Oh, it’s you. You startled me, appearing so quietly. This map, where is it depicting? It doesn’t seem to be this world,” Zhanyue pointed at the map in his hand and asked Hulu beside him.

Hulu looked at the map and explained, “It is our world. This map should also be left by my ancestors. The writing on it is also our own script.”

“But why is it completely different from the world map I’ve seen? Even with Worldal drift, there couldn’t be such a huge difference. And the proportions of mountains and rivers on the map are off. How could there be such large mountain ranges and rivers?” Zhanyue asked puzzled.

Hulu pointed to the upper right corner of the map and said, “Our world is just here, only a small part of this. I heard my great-grandfather say that our area is called something like the Spirit-Extinguished Realm, not the Myriad Spirits World.”

Hearing this, Zhanyue was thunderstruck. All along, he had thought the Myriad Spirits World was a complete world, but now this map told him that the Myriad Spirits World was just a realm in a corner of this world, occupying less than one-twentieth of this world’s size.

“Then what about the world outside?” Zhanyue asked further.

At this moment, the Goddess’s voice came in his mind, “There are no boundaries. You will reach the other side of the world at the world’s end. I tried to go to the end of the world before, but it was like a sphere – passing through one side, you arrive at the other.”

“Being like a sphere is right, but saying it’s not a sphere would be strange. Such a large Myriad Spirits Realm is actually just one realm. What’s really going on? By the way, Sister Xixuan, the Mountain Goblin Clan had a civilization break. What about humans?” Zhanyue asked further. This world seemed far more complex than he had previously understood.

“I know. Not just the Mountain Goblin Clan, all civilized races in the Myriad Spirits Realm seem to have had similar civilization breaks. For us humans, we can still find some traces, like the illumination Towers, illumination Stones, and alchemy and artifact crafting techniques. They all come from the pre-civilization era. The civilization break didn’t completely erase them from the world,” the illumination Goddess explained.

“Little brother, what are you spacing out about? Are you that shocked? What does it matter if you know? We can’t leave the Spirit-Extinguished Realm anyway. I heard my great-grandfather say that the outside world was destroyed long ago. The Spirit-Extinguished Realm is the last pure land for living beings,” the Mountain Goblin King dropped another bombshell.

“The outside world was destroyed long ago? This is the last pure land?” Zhanyue frowned.

“Don’t research useless things. Helping me translate the cultivation method soon is the main task. Oh, it’s mealtime. Have some food first,” Hulu called out, then walked out.

After the meal, Zhanyue’s mind was still on the map. Then he remembered an important matter – he had felt a palpitation when he came to the cave. Now, under the pretext of an after-meal walk, he wandered around the vast underground palace, finally finding the direction of that palpitation, and walked towards it.

“Second Great King!” Dingding suddenly appeared in front of him with a simple smile. “Is the Great King still hungry? It’s too late to go to the kitchen now.”

“Kitchen?” Zhanyue frowned. The palpitation was actually coming from the kitchen. “Yes, I wanted to visit your kitchen, to see how those delicious foods are made.”

“Good, good, good. If the Great King is interested, I’ll be your guide,” Dingding volunteered to be the kitchen guide, leading Zhanyue into the kitchen. It must be said that a kitchen providing food for four to five hundred people was indeed very large. Currently, there were still many people in the kitchen, busy washing various pots, bowls, and utensils. Zhanyue was gratified to see that the Mountain Goblin Clan was not a slovenly civilization, but quite particular about hygiene. Recalling those copied Pill formulas, Zhanyue suspected that the Mountain Goblin Clan must have had very close contact with humans long ago.

“Greetings to the Second Great King!” The busy crowd stopped their work and bowed to Zhanyue in unison. There was more curiosity in their eyes; most people didn’t know why the Great King had become sworn brothers with this human.

“Carry on with your work,” Zhanyue said, then walked towards the source of the heart palpitation.

It was a huge cauldron as tall as a person. The cauldron was golden, with a solid and exquisite shape, engraved with a pattern of nine dragons soaring among clouds. This was the first time Zhanyue had seen a five-clawed flying dragon pattern. The dragon patterns outside were basically like Mi Hongchen’s contracted dragon, not the divine dragon form. It could be determined that this was an ancient artifact.

“Second Great King, this pot is for making soup. It’s magical; whatever you cook in it tastes good,” Dingding introduced voluntarily, seeing Zhanyue staring at the huge cauldron.

Without replying, Zhanyue placed his hand on the cauldron’s body. A golden light flashed, and in a daze, the contract was formed. A name and a piece of information appeared in Zhanyue’s mind – Earth Mother Golden Cauldron, one of the two greatest treasures of the Alchemy Dao.

“Earth Mother Golden Cauldron?” The illumination Goddess rarely lost composure. “I heard from an alchemist friend that refining pills requires a good cauldron. In ancient alchemy, there were two great treasures: the Earth Mother Golden Cauldron and the Heavenly King Bronze Furnace. Legend has it that the Heavenly King Bronze Furnace can draw upon purple lightning from the Nine Heavens to refine pills, while the Earth Mother Golden Cauldron can absorb the essence of the earth’s spirit veins, greatly enhancing the efficacy of pills. Obtaining either one can elevate mortal alchemy to sainthood. These Mountain Goblins actually use such a treasure as a cooking pot! And you’ve actually contracted it.”

Zhanyue smiled, “No wonder drinking those soups gave a vague sense of cultivation improvement. It wasn’t an illusion after all. Just casually cooked soup in it has such an effect; it’s indeed a great treasure.”

In his excitement, another change occurred. The inside of the golden cauldron was densely inscribed with text, which now came to life. The characters flew out of the golden cauldron one by one, entering Zhanyue’s mind through his eyes.

“‘Earth Vein Dark Fire Body Forging and Pill Refining Method’… It’s actually a cultivation method, including both self-cultivation and Pill refining techniques?” Zhanyue could hardly conceal his excitement. He finally had his own cultivation method.