The National Seal

Zhao Yunzhong struggled to open and close his mouth, desperately gulping in great mouthfuls of air. Only then, forcing himself to endure the pain, did he point into the distance and say:

“Kingdom… Kingdom…”

Before he could finish, his eyes rolled back and he fainted.

Lin Xiao immediately examined his condition and discovered that his heart meridians had suffered severe trauma. Blood was leaking from every one of his internal organs.

Lin Xiao quickly took out the healing pills Sun Yigao had packed for him before he left. At the same time, he guided his own spiritual power into Zhao Yunzhong’s body, using it in tandem with the medicinal effects to repair the damage throughout his body.

Only then did the Lord of Zhao’s deathly pale, bluish complexion begin to improve.

His consciousness also gradually returned, and the spiritual power within him began circulating on its own, desperately working to mend his injuries.

After all, his opponent had also been at the Core Formation stage. With injuries this severe, it was impossible to recover in an instant. Unless a great expert with a cultivation level far beyond theirs intervened, healing would inevitably take time.

Lin Xiao had already given him medicine, and now that the spiritual power within the Lord of Zhao could circulate independently, having an additional person provide spiritual power would not double the speed of his recovery.

So Lin Xiao stopped.

The Lord of Zhao was now seriously injured, while Yuan Jinsheng had gone down into the mine alone. Lin Xiao was the only one left outside.

The commotion caused by the explosion in the distance had yet to fully subside.

Amid the dust swirling through the sky, however, he could vaguely make out a glowing object slowly and steadily descending.

Lin Xiao focused his divine sense into a single point and sent it toward the object. The distance was barely within range.

But when his divine sense reached the layer of light covering the object, he discovered that no matter how hard he tried, he could not penetrate it even slightly to investigate what lay within.

After thinking for a moment, he put the Lord of Zhao, whose condition was no longer critical, inside the grand formation enveloping the entire area of the Jishi mine so that he could recuperate safely within it for the time being.

A patch of white mist suddenly appeared in the void. Then, following Lin Xiao’s will, the mist carried the Lord of Zhao, whose consciousness was still hazy, into the formation.

Lin Xiao himself hurried cautiously toward the center of the disturbance.

Judging from the direction the Lord of Zhao had pointed before losing consciousness, he seemed to know what had happened over there.

The explosion had also occurred within the formation’s range. With Lin Xiao’s current cultivation, it would not take him long to reach the site at full speed.

As he traveled, he thought about the pile of red lights he had seen in the central cavern of the underground landscape created by the white mist.

He had originally believed that the sealing formation produced by his system would be foolproof. Unexpectedly, someone had still slipped in without making a sound.

Fortunately, he had made a few preparations in advance. Otherwise, he would have had no idea where his opponent was, how many of them there were, or anything else about the situation.

As he pondered this, Lin Xiao arrived near the center of the earth-shaking disturbance.

The dust in the air refused to settle, turning the entire area gray and obscuring everything within.

Lin Xiao raised his hand and forcefully swept his sleeve. The dust swirling everywhere, blocking his vision, was instantly cleared away.

The center of the explosion, which had been concealed until now, finally revealed its current appearance.

This place had originally been a sparse woodland, but it had now been completely flattened.

More accurately, it had become a huge sunken pit.

In the middle of the pit lay a fat man.

His entire body was covered in wounds and caked with blood and mud. Both legs and one arm were barely attached to his body, hanging on by a thread.

His clothes were so badly damaged that their original appearance could no longer be discerned. Judging from the remaining scraps, however, they had clearly been made of a rather luxurious material.

Lin Xiao examined the surroundings and confirmed that there was no immediate danger. Only then did he cautiously approach the man.

At that moment, the glowing sphere that had been descending steadily from above landed safely on an empty patch of ground nearby.

Lin Xiao glanced at the sphere but did not approach it. He merely kept watch over it with his divine sense, monitoring any changes in its movements.

He first examined the injuries of the man on the ground, only to discover that all five of the man’s internal organs had been burned through. A violent surge of spiritual power was rampaging through his body, while his dantian had been completely shattered.

If the man had been conscious and possessed spiritual power sufficiently dense to regulate that violent force, there might still have been a sliver of hope for survival. Unfortunately, his cultivation was only at the Qi Refining stage.

The only way to save him would be for Lin Xiao to sacrifice his own cultivation and reconstruct the man’s internal organs and shattered dantian.

Whether Lin Xiao was willing to do that was one matter.

More importantly, he was currently in the dangerous territory of Huanyou Kingdom. Moreover, this man had not forced his way into the formation like the Lord of Zhao and Yuan Jinsheng. Instead, he had appeared here out of nowhere, just like the remnants involved in the Jishi incident, without Lin Xiao noticing anything.

Clearly, he was an enemy, not a friend.

Lin Xiao merely sent a little spiritual energy into the man’s body.

Perhaps it was the final burst of life before death, but the man on the ground weakly opened his eyes. Seeing that only an unfamiliar young man was beside him, he gave a self-mocking smile.

Then he glanced toward the glowing sphere nearby. His mouth, caked with blood, moved with great difficulty as he stammered:

“The imperial seal… must never… never… fall into the hands of the Jishi…”

Before he could finish speaking, the man’s eyes closed, his head lolled to the side, and he died completely.

At the instant of his death, a chaotic ball of light flew from his body toward the object that had landed nearby.

Lin Xiao watched the man’s lifeless body in silence for a moment. His gaze followed the gray ball of light to the object wrapped in the layer of radiance.

The gray ball of light flew close to the object and slipped into the layer of light with a soft hiss.

After absorbing the chaotic light that had emerged from the dead man’s body, the outer layer of light gradually faded.

In only a moment, the object’s true form was revealed.

It was a square piece of translucent blue-green jade.

A dragon’s head had been carved into its surface.

Using telekinesis, Lin Xiao lifted the object and turned it over. At the very bottom, he saw four engraved characters:

“Huanyou Kingdom Imperial Seal.”

He looked again at the man who had already breathed his last.

So this man was the former king of Huanyou Kingdom, the one who had allied himself with the Jishi…

It was simply unclear why the man had ended up in this state.

Logically speaking, he had passed through Lin Xiao’s sealing formation, while Yuan Jinsheng, who had been pursuing them, had been trapped inside it. They should have been safe for the time being.

As he continued thinking, Lin Xiao picked up the imperial seal from the ground.

For several hundred years, Huanyou Kingdom had belonged to the Zhao imperial clan, and the imperial seal had always been in their possession. It was not until the dynasty changed hands that the seal was seized.

Now that it had fallen into his hands, Lin Xiao could give it to the Lord of Zhao once he awoke. In that way, he would at least be returning what rightfully belonged to its original owner.

The moment the imperial seal entered his hand, Lin Xiao sensed something strange flowing into his body—or, more accurately, into his sea of consciousness.

Over the past year or so, as his divine sense had grown stronger, his sea of consciousness had gradually expanded and taken shape.

Now, within his sea of consciousness was a dazzling scene of brilliant stars stretching across a vast galaxy.

Senior Liao had said that an ordinary person’s sea of consciousness was usually a single concrete object floating in a haze. Lin Xiao’s, however, was an entire galaxy of stars, entirely different from that of ordinary people.

He was not the only one. Jiang Youfu and Sun Yigao, who had also cultivated the Origin Heart Scripture and successfully established their foundations, possessed seas of consciousness that were likewise very different from those of ordinary people.