Chapter 133: A Very New Skeleton

Ruan Xing slowly sat up and looked around.

Although this place was also a ruin, and the dust that had accumulated for who knows how long filled everything before her with a gray, dim color, Ruan Xing could be certain that it was different from the scene she saw before dying in the previous Simulation.

In other words, although her landing points were all high in the sky, the places she fell into were not the same place.

She slowly extended her Divine Sense; the maximum range of her Divine Sense at the Golden Core Stage could already reach about one kilometer, but even so, she did not see the figure of any Cultivator within a one-kilometer radius around her.

But there was one piece of good news: she found her Flying Sword, which had landed on a stone not far from her.

Ruan Xing moved slowly, crawled onto that stone, and picked up her Sword to use as a crutch to prop up her body.

She touched the huge stone beneath her, only feeling that it seemed somewhat familiar.

When she first entered the world of Cultivation, she had just learned about things like Spirit Stones; she remembered that stones with a Spirit Qi content of less than twenty percent could not be used as Low-grade Spirit Stones, but because they contained weak Spirit Qi after all and were smooth and translucent like Jade, looking very beautiful, they were often used in construction as basic materials.

The large expanse of irregular stones before her was very similar to the substandard Spirit Stones mined from a Spirit Mine, only they had already lost their original Spirit Qi.

Stones the size of grapes, crystal clear, had been stuck together by an unknown method to form walls or foundations, and then, for some unknown reason, they had shattered and turned into large chunks of stone.

Wiping away the thick dust on top, the smooth stone surface revealed many reflected glimmers.

But not all the ruins of the buildings were made of this material; looking around, there were more ordinary stones and wood.

Ruan Xing frowned and pondered: could this place have been a town many years ago?

Supporting most of her body with her Sword, Ruan Xing stood up and chose a direction at random to move forward.

Because her leg bone had not completely healed after fracturing, she walked very arduously, and the ground was full of uneven, broken walls and ruins, and there were even sunken pits, which added to the difficulty of walking for Ruan Xing, who could not use Magic Art.

The place where she landed should have been a luxury shop specifically for high-level Cultivators; besides the grand foundation walls, there were also two broken vermilion wooden pillars, and in the ruins inside, Ruan Xing also saw some things similar to counters or curio shelves.

It was just that perhaps too much time had passed, and the things inside had not received the protection they deserved, long ago losing their Spirit Qi and becoming unrecognizable; with a light touch from Ruan Xing, they fragilely turned into debris.

It had a very strong sense of a post-apocalyptic world.

If she had arrived here not long after this town was destroyed, she might have been able to get rich by scavenging; after all, the things in these shops looked like they were only ruined by the passage of time.

Unfortunately, she arrived too late.

Crossing this area and walking another dozen steps forward, Ruan Xing suddenly paused.

Under her feet was a skeleton.

Half of the body was buried, the hand bones were placed on the head, and the upper body was slightly curled up, looking like an instinctive self-rescue posture.

But Cultivators would not have such subconscious reactions; when encountering danger they could hardly resist, ninety percent of Cultivators would choose to fly away on their Swords.

This was highly likely a mortal... Ruan Xing reached out to move his hand bones aside and checked; indeed, there were no traces of cultivation.

Since she did not find any useful clues, Ruan Xing continued to walk forward; unfortunately, the key left by Guangyou Xianjun was still in the hands of Qintai He, and she did not know beforehand that this space-time rift would be related to the key, so she did not borrow the key in advance.

Now she could only search slowly without any leads for the inheritance left by the Xianjun, and see whether this strange place was truly a Secret Realm.

If it were a Secret Realm, it would be too strange; a ruin without a single living creature. In some post-apocalyptic AI simulations she watched in her past life, no matter why a city was destroyed, various plants would soon grow, various animals would appear, and it would return to the state of a primeval forest, because this was an ecosystem evolved from Earth's natural laws. But here, apart from ruins, dust, and trash, there was nothing, not even a blade of grass, making Ruan Xing very suspicious of whether there were any treasures here at all.

After walking a few more steps, Ruan Xing stopped again.

That's not right... a mortal's bones, how could they remain for so many years?

That luxury shop just now should have had many items containing Spirit Qi, but they all turned into powder; surely there were things among them sturdier than this mortal, right?

Ruan Xing turned back, endured the pain in her body, and dug out the buried bones; only then did she discover that this skeleton had not only left behind its bones, but beneath it were also some cloth fragments that looked like clothing, as well as a woven grass basket and a hoe.

It looked somewhat out of place.

The sense of incongruity was very strong; Ruan Xing thought for a while and could only conclude that the times were different.

For no other reason than that every single thing in that collapsed shop just now told Ruan Xing that they were at least thousands of years old, while this skeleton was different; it was too new.

The decomposition time for a mortal's woven goods can reach up to eighty years.

Although the clothing fragments and the woven grass basket on the skeleton had been mostly decomposed, they had not completely disappeared, proving that this person had died less than one hundred years ago.

As far as she knew, this space-time rift first appeared one month ago; it hadn't appeared when the Cultivators from the Central Province participating in the Golden Terrace Secret Realm went to Nanzhou, but it appeared on the way back to the Central Province, which led to their entire army being wiped out.

Perhaps one hundred years ago, this space-time rift also suddenly appeared and disappeared in some place.

But in any case... Ruan Xing still obtained a piece of information from this skeleton, though she did not know if it was useful.

Not everyone's spawn point is in the sky.

This mortal... was clearly not killed by falling.

Ruan Xing continued to walk forward; this time, besides paying more attention to whether any special treasures were left in the ruins, she also kept an eye on those unknown skeletons.

Most of them crumbled into dust as soon as she touched them; they were not as new as the first one she encountered.

She silently withdrew her hand, and the whimsical thought in her mind was actually wondering if a corpse that was nothing but bones could be used as a material to refine into a Puppet.

Probably not, right? They were already bones; they certainly couldn't summon a soul.

Ruan Xing mocked her own inexplicable flight of fancy.

After walking for about another hour, Ruan Xing finally saw a building that was still relatively intact, an arched house similar to a yurt; it was the only one on this street that had a roof.

It was also the only one with relatively less dust.

Without Spiritual Power to perform Magic Art, Ruan Xing had to be much more cautious; before entering this building, she first scanned it with her Divine Sense.

Ruan Xing's pupils shrank violently.

Inside the house, she sensed a faint sound of breathing.

Thanks for the monthly tickets, ka-ka-da-da-da~(End of chapter)