15 The Ancient Ruins
A white color bird came flying and sat on the shoulders of Shen Xue, thanks to this bird that they did not encounter any dangers or bandits on the road. it is the pet bird of Shen Xue and it is quite intelligent, it scans the surrounding area and informs the details to Shen Xue.
Shen Xue suddenly lifted her hand, signaling the group to stop, after the white bird landed on her shoulder and made some noise. All of them came to a halt and they looked at Shen Xue, she signaled them with hands not to make any noise. After some time she quietly whispered to them, "the front is a hundred member group of Red Wolf bandits and they are ambushing for someone to come," except Xia Tian remaining members became alert as he did not know much about the bandit groups here.
The Red Wolf bandits are the most bloodthirsty and notorious bandit group near the Divine Tiger Kingdom, they are of a large organization and even the kingdom sent an army to eradicate them but they only able to suppress them but not able to completely eliminate them.
Ting Hu hurriedly said to Shen Xiu, "we just change to another route, bypassing them, it will not be a good end for us if we are found out by them." Shen Xiu asked the opinion of others and they decided to take a longer route than before, because of this, their journey increased for another day.
In this path, they met a group of bandits from the Red Wolf bandit group but they are only twelve members with only three among them with the strength of the Nascent soul stage. Except Xia Tian remaining four of them combined hands and easily eradicated the group.
Seeing them fighting the bandits, Xia Tian became excited because one day, he wishes to fight that ferociously. He also understood the importance of martial techniques from their fighting. the fighting ended very quickly as the group members have superior martial techniques.
Niu Ming, Niu Bing are both heavily dependent on their high strength rather than the movement techniques to fight. Niu Ming used a battle ax and killed the third level of the nascent soul realm and two ninth level of vein opening realm bandits. Niu Bing used a hammer and smashed of Three ninth level vein opening realm bandits.
Tingu Hu used movement type and strength type martial technique to kill single fourth level nascent soul realm and two ninth level vein opening realm bandits with his sword. Shen Xue is the one, who completed her kills very quickly and stood with Xia Tian, watching the battle of others, she has used movement type martial technique and killed off single fifth level nascent soul realm and two vein opening realm bandits with her dagger and did not even use her sword, her movement technique is exquisite and Xia Tian is dazzled by her performance.
She can help others but she just observed, so that others can gain battle experience, only by fighting and using their skills, they can get a good grasp of their skills. They all collected the spoils from the bandits who they killed and gathered together.
Shen Xue knitted brows and said, " we need to be more carefully, I think the Red Wolf bandit group is ambushing the martial cultivators who are going to the ancient ruins, they must have obtained the information about this mission and are trying to get profit by ambushing the martial cultivators, even the group we killed now contain fewer members, they are all at ninth level of vein opening realm and their leader is at fifth level nascent soul realm, everyone be on your guard, we may face even more bandits along the way." All of them nodded and continued their journey.
Shen Xue threw three spatial rings toward to Xia Tian and said, "these things belong to the bandits, the things inside of it are of no use to me, you can use those things to improve your cultivation." Xia Tian hesitated to accept but he knows he doesn't have enough strength if he can increase his strength he can return her favor in the future. So, Xia Tian accepted the spatial rings and said, "thank you, I will definitely repay you in the future."
Spatial rings are devices which are connected to a small space, it can be used to store and carry things easily, they are common and are refined from special stones by weapon craftsmen. The spatial rings are also common in the human race but before Xia Tian is a trash and always stays at home and do not have many things to carry with him, so he did not have a spatial ring. This was his first time using a spatial ring, there are different grades of spatial ring depending on the size of space they are connected to. The rings in Xia Tian hand are all low-grade spatial rings with a one-meter cube in volume. There are around thirty spirit stones and a hundred gold coins in the spatial rings. Xia Tian can use it for two months of cultivation.
They did not meet with any danger because of the white bird and avoided high-level beast groups and reached the area of ancient ruins site. The ancient ruins are the ruins of a large city which was here before, from an unknown time, they are in the ruined state when the races first came here 50,000 years ago, and are submerged into the ground due to various reasons. Only some of them are found by accident and this one is the recent one and is being explored for the past ten days.
The Red moon Lily usually grows in places where there is no sunlight, as inside the ruins it is completely dark, there is a maximum possibility for the Red moon Lily to present here. They saw a group coming out of the ruins and went up to them to ask about what they experienced in the ruins.
They are a team of three members with one woman from the rat race and two-man from the pig race. They said that there are no dangerous traps inside the ruins but there are some doors with complex energy sealing patterns on them which can only be destroyed by fulfillment level martial cultivators and they also came for the Red moon Lily and already here for two days but not able to find it.
After asking all the required information, Shen Xue called the team members and said "there are no dangerous traps inside the ruins, so we search separately, that way it is easy to find the Red moon Lily and the one who will find the flower will get the total rewards. This way we can also explore the ruins more and may have a fortuitous encounter in the ruins." Shen Xue looked at Xia Tian and said: " you can come with me and can also have experience exploring the ruins, with your cultivation it is not easy for you to explore the ruins alone."
it is an S ranked mission, not because of the traps inside the ruins but because of the remaining people in the ruins, some people will rob you of your findings and some even my kill you to get your belongings, so it is stipulated that a group of five nascent soul realm or, a spirit realm individual cultivators can register for this mission.
After some thought, Xia Tian nodded his head indicating that he is willing to explore the ruins with her. They all entered the tunnel-like entrance, it is made by martial cultivators in order to find mines of spirit stones or other precious mineral but unexpectedly found the ruins. With help of special crystal which emitted a smooth and gentle light, they traveled through the dark entrance and came to the area of ancient ruins.
It is first time for Xia Tian to see the ancient ruins, before coming here he still had doubts how to explore the ruins which are submerged in the underground, now he got the answer for his questions, generally any large city is protected by an energy barrier like a dome, when the city is submerged into underground due to earthquakes and other such phenomena, all the rocks, soil are blocked by the energy barrier and if the energy barrier operates for a long time, the soil and rocks become forming a hard shell over the city and even after the barrier vanishes they still remain intact without falling down. Only if a huge force is applied on the ground above the city, the naturally formed dome collapses and the city will be covered by soil.
The present ancient ruins is a big city and they don't know how big it is, many people are exploring the city and collected the wealth remained in the city, there are many flickering lights in the darkness, indicating the presence of the explorers, some of the streets are also lit with lights and exchange of things is going on there, they visited the streets and did not find anything interesting, they went into the darkness with crystal lamps in their hands and chose a house and went inside that house. The inside of the house is covered by a layer of dust and the furniture is almost decayed.
Shen Xue said to others " we will separate our ways here and search in different directions, after a month we will meet again here to discuss our search results if any of you wish to leave? in the middle, you can also to do so."
"Be careful, do not take risks that cost your life little Brother Tian," Niu Ming said Xia Tian before leaving the room. All of them left the room one by one and went in different directions.
" you can still keep the group intact, there are so many explorers here and with a group, we can easily explore without being oppressed by them. It seems to form the group in the first place doesn't have any value." Xia Tian said to Shen Xue who is thinking in which direction to start exploring, he did not call her sister Shen because it seems odd for him to call someone like that, who seems same age as him. Shen Xue didn't mind that and said "It is my first time to form a group and I thought it would be good to go together on missions with a group but that Ting Hu is irritating me so much, I want to get rid of him. So, I thought to disband the group." Xia Tian is stunned by her reply and did not ask for anything else.
They roamed around the periphery of the city in the darkness for about four hours and did not find anything valuable and all the houses and rooms are covered in the dust here, no vegetation is present there as there is no sunlight.
Shen Xue decided to move towards the center of the city and as they reaching the city center the number of cultivators they encountering also increasing. Sometimes it will be brutal if you don't have enough strength here, some groups will ambush you and take all the precious things from you. So, they moved cautiously in the darkness. " I think, The Red Wolf bandit group is also present in this city, so we have to be more careful," Shen Xue said to Xia Tian.
After roaming for so many hours they are not able to find anything, Xia Tian complained depressedly to Shen Xue " I think it is waste for us to come here, it is like a normal city without any useful items". Shen Xue laughed and said " you did not even enter the city center, they are places like treasure house, the city main building and other places where we can find things useful for us, we may even find ancient martial techniques in the treasure house or scripture pavilion of this city. We need a lot of patience to search the ancient ruins as some buildings may be collapsed and some may be protected with array formations that we may not be able to break through.
