Chapter 273 : The Secret of the Black Bead

Chapter 273: The Secret of the Black Bead

Chu Huaixu stared at the motionless time displayed on his System interface, his scalp tingling.

He knew very well what this meant!

He no longer needed to worry about Experience Points.

He didn’t need to worry about too much time passing and missing the Eastern and Western Continents’ Grand Competition.

Nor did he need to worry about any time limit for the inheritance trial.

Because time—wasn’t moving at all!

Right now, his feeling was that he had been “locked in a dark room” by the Dao Ancestor.

There was no passage of time here, yet he also couldn’t interact with the outside world.

The only thing he could do was walk through the “path of the sword” that the Dao Ancestor had once taken, learning every sword technique he had practiced.

At this moment, he truly realized how terrifying this inheritance secret realm was!

This meant that he could complete the Dao Ancestor’s entire “path of the sword” inside, while only a single instant passed in the outside world.

The surroundings once again fell into darkness.

When the scene reappeared, he saw the young Daoist at an auction.

“He really looks like the protagonist of a novel.”

“Even this classic auction scene showed up…” Chu Huaixu muttered inwardly.

What made it even more cliché was that the Daoist was an alchemist, and his own pills were being sold at the auction.

Then came the most classic trope of all—snatching a bargain.

The Daoist bought a small cat demon with poor hearing and mixed bloodline, along with a black iron fragment.

Demonic beasts in the Xuanhuang Realm were quite rare.

Most were like the Swift Movement Steed—creatures with only a trace of demonic bloodline.

In fact, this was related to their environment.

Demonic beasts with purer bloodlines were essentially treasures from head to toe.

On top of that, they cultivated extremely slowly, similar to cultivators from the Kunlun Grotto-Heaven. As a result, their growth was sluggish, and most were killed before they could become strong.

Over time, purer-blooded demonic beasts had nearly gone extinct in the Xuanhuang Realm.

The Dao Ancestor’s cat demon was recorded in historical texts.

Chu Huaixu had even seen it once while playing 《Borrowed Sword》.

Because that cat was currently at Spring and Autumn Mountain.

Once demonic beasts grew powerful, their lifespan became extremely long, but they would not transform into human form.

This cat had only followed the Dao Ancestor for a few years before later staying with the founding ancestor of Spring and Autumn Mountain.

Because of the long-standing gossip between the Dao Ancestor and that ancestor, this cat demon had even been regarded as their “token of love.”

This black cat seemed to have a very special bloodline.

But Chu Huaixu’s strongest impression of it was—

It was extremely fat.

Moreover, its status at Spring and Autumn Mountain was very high. Everyone treated it like an ancestor, and it lived an incredibly comfortable life.

As for why this scene appeared at the auction—it was because the young Daoist, relying on his alchemy skills, was quite wealthy and bought another sword technique, this time a Mystic-rank, High-grade one.

After the auction ended, there was no classic “tailing and robbing treasures” scene.

If robbing were that easy, the existence of auctions would become rather meaningless.

The Dao Ancestor returned to a courtyard. After briefly teasing the hard-of-hearing cat demon, he began practicing swordsmanship again.

Chu Huaixu immediately understood:

“Here we go!”

A Mystic-rank, High-grade sword technique was genuinely quite good.

His current 【Six Formations of the Broken Array】 had already reached Major Mastery—its power was definitely stronger than a fully perfected Mystic-rank, High-grade technique.

But the latter at least came with no cost and no backlash.

Chu Huaixu’s self-healing ability was indeed abnormal, and he wasn’t afraid of pain.

But sometimes, due to the need to show off, turning himself into something half-human, half-ghost wasn’t exactly a good look, was it?

Time passed, and he didn’t know how long he had practiced along with it.

This sword technique, called 【Ghost God Sword Art】, lived up to its name—its focus was on unpredictability and striking unexpectedly.

It was quite suitable for ambushes and sudden killing blows.

It also matched rather well with his crude body cultivation style.

After reaching full perfection, Chu Huaixu’s 【Fearless Sword Intent】 progress bar increased by another 7%.

“Next should be Earth-rank sword techniques, right?” Thinking of this, Chu Huaixu felt a bit excited.

Up to this point, he still didn’t feel tired, nor mentally drained.

“Seems like it’s thanks to that initial mass of cyan energy,” he speculated inwardly.

However, when the scene shifted again, he felt somewhat disappointed.

“It’s actually another Mystic-rank sword technique—and only Mid-grade.”

Chu Huaixu realized that the Dao Ancestor didn’t seem to be picky about this at all.

As long as the sword technique wasn’t too bad, he was willing to study it.

This made Chu Huaixu increasingly suspect—

Could it be that the Dao Ancestor truly couldn’t use sword techniques?

He was purely researching them out of personal interest!

So whether the technique was powerful or not didn’t seem to matter to him.

After finishing this Mystic-rank, Mid-grade sword technique, the scene shifted again—to a Yellow-rank, High-grade one.

This made Chu Huaixu even more suspicious.

By now, he had already learned a total of nine sword techniques within the secret realm.

But the strongest among them was only Mystic-rank, High-grade. No Earth-rank techniques had appeared yet.

Still, the gains were not small.

However, Chu Huaixu suddenly realized something was off.

“In my memory, the Han Shuangjiang in 《Borrowed Sword》 didn’t know a wide variety of sword techniques at max level.”

If everything were as he had assumed, then the Big Ice Block should have learned a large number of sword techniques here and would have had many chances to use them later.

But that wasn’t the case.

Han Shuangjiang usually only used her signature techniques over and over again.

Her skill set was definitely richer than that of players, and her techniques were of higher rank—but that was all.

“So what exactly changed?”

“Did the entire inheritance secret realm change?”

“Or is it that her experience here was actually different from mine?”

After thinking for a long time, Chu Huaixu concluded that there was only one abnormal factor since entering the secret realm—

—【Black Bead】!

He could touch it. He could poke it.

And every time he touched the black bead, the young Daoist would react.

“In 《Borrowed Sword》, Han Shuangjiang’s Life-bound Object obtained on Hidden Spirit Mountain was also 【Zhegutian】. That hasn’t changed.”

“Little Xu got the Bronze Sword.”

“So the Dao Ancestor’s Sword Scabbard and the black bead were sealed at the summit of Hidden Spirit Mountain.”

“When she entered the inheritance land, she definitely didn’t have the bead with her.”

But this was only Chu Huaixu’s current analysis.

He couldn’t be completely certain that everything was related to it.

“And is the problem with the bead itself, or with the 【Dao Birth One】 inside it?”

Previously, Chu Huaixu’s attention had mostly been focused on the Medicinal Cauldron.

But he knew clearly that this black bead was also an extraordinary object.

First, it could block the perception of experts like Jiang Zhi!

Even with Jiang Zhi’s cultivation, he couldn’t detect anything unusual about the black bead, nor sense the Medicinal Cauldron inside it.

During the Eastern and Western Continents’ Grand Competition, Chu Huaixu had openly drawn upon the power of the Medicinal Cauldron within the bead to block the incoming Bronze Sword.

Yet all the great cultivators seated on the high platform saw nothing unusual—they all assumed it was the power of the Dao Ancestor’s Sword Scabbard.

Secondly, the space within the bead was extremely mysterious.

Previously, he had only thought that the bead contained a spatial storage—it didn’t seem that remarkable.

But the Accursed Pill could be stored inside it.

The Accursed Pill, refined from baleful aura, was an extremely evil object that could devour everything.

Logically, it should have devoured the black bead itself.

Yet the internal space of the bead was incredibly stable, as if the Accursed Pill had lost its effect.

“So… could it be…”

Chu Huaixu now began to understand why he could touch this bead.

Because everything else was an illusion!

And illusions naturally could not be touched.

But the black bead was real.

“The bead I see is my own bead.”

“The bead I touch is also my own bead.”

Right now, it was very likely that—

—It had already merged into this secret realm!