Chapter 136

This small valley had a very peculiar shape.

Around it were spirit-rich herb mountains and herb fields, but this broken place barely grew any weeds.

As far as the eye could see, it was filled with rocks of all sizes and fragments.

Moreover, the scattered stones inside the valley were arranged in a regular pattern, as if forcibly blasted down from some cliff within the valley itself.

Xue Chiluo shot straight toward a large rock and stopped. “Grandma came here.”

Su Jin didn’t think much of it; she followed right behind.

Then—thud!—she and the soil tumbled straight down.

This place was actually a pit!!

Su Jin slid down along with a pile of soil and small rocks; she’d just landed on her butt, pain shooting through her, when the debris began sliding again, rushing rapidly deeper underground.

Xue Chiluo followed right behind her, but with far more ease, leaping off the surrounding stone walls and staying just a short distance behind.

With Xue Chiluo following, Su Jin felt a little reassured.

After sliding nearly a hundred meters, the pile of soil and rocks finally came to a stop.

Su Jin sat atop the debris, staring in shock at the sealed chamber lit by a ten-thousand-year eternal lamp.

The key was, the air circulation here was excellent—clearly supported by a ventilation system.

Su Jin checked the four corners of the chamber and indeed found pipes leading outward.

Inside the chamber, there was a jade bed.

Upon it sat a skeleton clad in ancient shaman robes.

The shaman robes showed not a single sign of wear—they looked brand new.

Su Jin remembered her mother’s warning: whenever you find the remains of an ancestor of the Witch Clan, whether incomplete or whole, rush over immediately and kowtow, then reveal your lineage—declare which Witch lineage you belong to.

So Su Jin jumped up, ran to the skeleton, and kowtowed three loud, resounding bows.

“Su Jin of the Mu Witch Clan pays homage to the ancestor.”

The skeleton’s eye sockets seemed to shift slightly.

Su Jin instantly felt as if someone were watching her—her scalp prickled.

Oh my god, she suddenly recalled her mother’s warning: if the ancestor wasn’t benevolent and tried to eat her after the kowtow, she must use the wooden talisman.

Su Jin quietly pulled a wooden talisman from her Xiao Wu Tian and clenched it in her palm.

Crack—the skeleton’s lower jaw suddenly broke off. A golden storage ring appeared atop its mandible.

Su Jin’s eyes widened instantly.

“Ancestor, is this really for me?” she asked.

The skeleton remained silent.

Clearly, it expected her to figure it out herself.

Su Jin looked at the ring, then at the skeleton—she guessed this ring was truly meant for her.

She remembered her mother saying: genuine Witch ancestors, upon encountering young Witch descendants, always gave them a greeting gift.

This ring was likely her greeting gift.

Su Jin extended her tiny hand, but paused just before touching the ring. “I forgot—Mother said you must offer blood before taking anything.”

Su Jin grimaced, squeezed a few drops of blood from her finger, and dripped them onto the ring.

Then, with wide eyes, she watched as the golden ring began to emit black flames with a hissing sound.

The moment the black flames ignited, they filled her with dizziness and nausea.

She immediately stepped back, thinking: Mother was right—these ancestors are all paranoid.

Just saying you’re from a certain Witch clan isn’t enough—you must prove it with blood.

Witch blood breaks through the defenses on greeting gifts.

Only when the black flames vanished completely did Su Jin reach out and take the ring.

This ring was indeed a storage ring, but far superior to the one her grandfather gave her—the tiny one with only one cubic chi of space.

Inside, it was spacious enough to fit the entire house she lived in.

It was so much larger than her old ring—Su Jin was overjoyed.

Of course, besides the massive storage capacity, the ancestor had also left her various ores occupying one-tenth of the ring’s volume.

Now Busa Tan wouldn’t lack food for a long time.

Su Jin thought for a moment, slipped the golden ring onto her finger, took off her old ring, and transferred everything inside it into the golden one.

The empty ring, she tossed into her Xiao Wu Tian—she’d give it to her younger sister, Su Shen, later.

Su Jin kowtowed three more resounding bows to the skeleton.

Then she grumbled: “How do I get back up? That small hole collapsed—how am I supposed to climb out?”

No sooner had she finished muttering to herself.

A crackling sound came from the nearby stone wall—a door opened automatically.

Instantly, Su Jin’s face lit up with delight. “Thank you, Ancestor! Thank you, Ancestor! I’m leaving now!”

She happily ran through the doorway, not even noticing the door silently closing behind her.

After finally crawling out from underground,

Su Jin sighed and sat on a large rock, drinking Ice-Chen Dew.

The Ice-Chen Dew was delicious, but offered little in terms of physical recovery.

Now she was covered in dirt and grime, while Xue Chiluo, ever by her side, looked perfectly pristine.

Why was there such a difference between a person and a Luo?

“Little Xue, how did you find that place?”

“It called me. Said it had a greeting gift for you,” Xue Chiluo replied.

“Huh? So the ancestor is still alive? But he’s just a skeleton!” Su Jin asked in surprise.

“He called me. All Witch descendants who have awakened a bonded Witch spirit can hear his call—because we can hear his voice. He was kind—he was a Metal Witch,” Xue Chiluo said.

“Then he didn’t ask you to return his bones to his homeland?” Su Jin asked, puzzled.

“No. He’s dead. His consciousness is chaotic and fragmented—only residual thoughts remain: to sleep, to give a greeting gift. Once the gift is delivered, he’ll likely return entirely to the earth, dissolving into the heavens,” Xue Chiluo said.

In ancient times, many Shamans had no descendants, and before death, they couldn’t bear to let their lives be wasted.

So someone devised this practice.

They left all their treasures to any descendant who happened upon their remains—that was the greeting gift!

How many gifts, and what they contained, depended entirely on the Shaman’s own wishes and whims.

But receiving an ancestor’s greeting gift was never easy.

One misstep, and you’d be killed by paranoid ancestors.

Because so many descendants had been killed, later generations compiled experience and created a formal procedure for meeting ancestors and claiming greeting gifts.

Poor things.

Other ancestors loved building lavish tombs, piling up treasures for descendants to take freely.

But our Witch ancestors? Even giving a greeting gift, they feared being murdered for it!