Here is the corrected and upgraded ending of Chapter 15, reflecting the use of the Holy-grade sword from Ji Yu's storage ring.
Chapter 15: The Forgotten Vault and the Weight of a Sleeping Star
Formation Hall, Heavenly Trade Centre
Shen Xuan stood amidst the glowing displays of the Formation Hall, his gaze critical.
To the cultivators of this era, the arrays floating in mid-air were masterpieces of runic engineering. To Shen Xuan, they were crude, resource-heavy contraptions that relied on brute force rather than the elegant flow of the Dao.
"Materials and source energy," he murmured, shaking his head. "They have forgotten that the true anchor of a formation is the Law itself."
He moved past rows of offensive arrays, ignoring the eager sales pitches of the attendants. His fingers brushed against racks of high-grade components, his touch light and discerning.
"Sir," an attendant asked cautiously, noting his precise selection. "Are these for a long-term deployment or a mobile array?"
"Temporary," Shen Xuan replied.
He selected a Fifth-Grade Spatial Stabilizer, three Sixth-Grade Spirit Convergence Nodes, and a set of Void Jade plates; blank canvases for his own inscriptions.
"Wrap them."
After paying, Shen Xuan turned to leave. He paused at the staircase. The guard at the entrance had mentioned that Xiao Yang's token granted access to the Fifth Floor.
The top floor, Shen Xuan mused. The domain of the elite.
Curiosity piqued, he ascended.
The staircase to the Fifth Floor was long and spiraled upward into a ceiling of shifting mist. As Shen Xuan stepped onto the landing, he felt a subtle distortion in space.
Independent Space, he realized immediately. Two formations. One for spatial expansion, another for anchoring. Clever.
The Fifth Floor was not a room; it was a pocket dimension. It was vast, silent, and bathed in a soft, twilight glow. There were no guards here, only a massive gate carved from meteoric iron, pulsating with ancient warding runes. In the center of the gate was a token-shaped indentation.
Shen Xuan placed Xiao Yang's green token into the slot.
Hummm.
The runes flared. The heavy gate groaned, swinging open soundlessly to reveal a hall that defied the geometry of the building below.
Whoosh.
He stepped inside.
The few occupants of the Fifth Floor turned. They were old monsters, powerful cultivators whose auras rippled with the weight of centuries. When they saw a thirteen-year-old boy in white robes walk in, surprise flickered across their faces. But then they saw the green token in his hand; the mark of a registered Alchemist of Lingchuan Hall; and their expressions smoothed into polite indifference.
An elderly man in gray robes stepped forward. His aura was restrained, but Shen Xuan could feel the turbulent ocean of power beneath the surface.
Peak Chaos Lord Realm, Shen Xuan noted. A guardian.
"I wonder," the old man asked, his voice polite but probing, "why this Young Master has come to the Fifth Floor?"
Shen Xuan looked at him calmly. "Is my presence forbidden?"
The old man chuckled softly. "Not at all. With the token of Lingchuan Hall; one of the pillars of the Eastern Region; you are certainly qualified. But the Fifth Floor is... different."
Another man, middle-aged with eyes like sharp flints, stepped closer. "Young friend, this floor is not a shop. It is a barter exchange. We trade in the unique, the unknown, and the forgotten. Unless you have treasures of equal value, there is little for you here."
"I see," Shen Xuan nodded. "Barter. An ancient tradition."
"Indeed," the elderly guardian smiled, stroking his beard. "If you possess anything interesting, you are welcome to trade. Otherwise, feel free to look. Knowledge is also a treasure."
"Thank you, Senior," Shen Xuan said, clasping his fists.
He walked past them, moving deeper into the hall.
The Fifth Floor was a museum of anomalies. There were no shelves, only floating pedestals of light, each holding a single item. Runes drifted around them, suppressing their auras.
Shen Xuan walked slowly, his hands clasped behind his back. He looked like a scholar browsing a ruined library, searching for fragments of lost history.
He saw medicines sealed in cracked jade bottles, leaking chaotic fumes. He saw bone fragments of extinct beasts. He saw weapon shards that still hummed with the thirst for blood.
To the people of this era, these were dangerous curiosities. Unidentifiable trash.
But as Shen Xuan passed, ancient knowledge surfaced in his mind.
Seven-Petal Ghost Flower... incomplete Soul-Nourishing Pellet from the Severed Heavens Sect... a fragment of a Star-Core Beast's horn...
"They aren't unknown," Shen Xuan thought, a trace of sadness in his eyes. "They have simply been forgotten."
Any one of these, if restored, could start a war in the Middle Plane. But he didn't stop. He wasn't here to play scavenger. He needed something specific. Something that resonated with his own fractured foundation.
Time passed quietly. He rejected soul crystals with micro-fractures, blood essences contaminated by mixed lineages, and roots harvested too early.
"Lacking," he murmured. "All lacking."
Just as he prepared to leave, a sensation tugged at the edge of his primordial soul sense. It was faint, heavy, and silent.
He turned toward a shadowed corner of the hall.
There was no pedestal of light. No protective runes. Just a sphere, half-buried in dust, resting on a reinforced stone slab.
It looked like a ball of rusted iron, roughly the size of a melon. Its surface was pitted and corroded, ugly and unassuming.
But Shen Xuan stopped. His eyes narrowed.
"This weight..."
He extended his spiritual sense. It bounced off the sphere instantly.
Gravity, he realized. Dense, condensed gravity.
This wasn't metal. It was a star. A dead, collapsed star core, compressed by laws into a physical object. The weight of it wasn't measured in tons; it was measured in mountains. Even a Chaos Essence cultivator would be crushed trying to lift it.
A slow smile spread across Shen Xuan's face.
"So it is here," he whispered. "A sleeping foundation."
He stepped closer, reaching out a hand.
"Wait a minute, young friend."
A voice stopped him.
An old man in white robes materialized beside the sphere. His presence warped the space around him. Fu Gao. An Elder of the Trade Centre.
"You look very young," Fu Gao said, his sharp eyes dissecting Shen Xuan. "And your cultivation... it does not exceed the Chaos Seed Realm, correct?"
"Yes, Senior," Shen Xuan replied.
Fu Gao sighed. "Then I must advise caution. That object... is cursed."
He gestured to the rusted sphere.
"Its weight exceeds that of a mountain range. Even experts at the Chaos Divine Transformation Realm cannot lift it. We have researched it for a decade. No inscriptions. No energy reaction. No origin. It is just... heavy. And dead."
Fu Gao looked at Shen Xuan kindly. "If you touch it carelessly, the gravitational field will crush your bones to powder. Why not choose another item? There are safer treasures here."
Shen Xuan listened quietly. Then he turned, meeting Fu Gao's gaze. His golden-purple eyes held a terrifying calm.
"Oh? Is that so?" Shen Xuan said softly. "Unfortunately, Senior... I am very interested in dead things."
He paused.
"May I barter for it?"
Fu Gao blinked, taken aback. He hesitated, then shook his head. "It is not that I am unwilling. But this object, despite being useless to us, is physically indestructible. Its material value is immense. Can the Young Master offer something that would satisfy an exchange of this level?"
He didn't believe the boy could. Even Great Clans had walked away from this sphere, unable to pay the price for a paperweight they couldn't lift.
Shen Xuan didn't speak. He simply raised his hand.
A faint spatial ripple spread from his palm.
SHING.
A sound like tearing silk echoed through the hall.
The air temperature plummeted instantly. A brilliant, azure light erupted from Shen Xuan's hand, piercing the twilight gloom of the Fifth Floor like a newborn sun.
In his grasp lay a sword.
It was slender, forged from translucent blue metal that seemed to contain a flowing river within its blade. Runes of the Water Law danced along the edge, not engraved, but naturally formed by the Dao. The aura it released was not just sharp; it was majestic. Holy.
It was the sword Shen Xuan had found in Ji Yu's storage ring. A Low-Grade Holy Weapon.
To Shen Xuan, it was a toothpick. But to this world?
"That..."
Fu Gao's pupils shrank to the size of needle points. He staggered back, his spiritual sense screaming in alarm.
"A Holy Weapon?!"
The cry shattered the silence. The other old monsters in the hall vanished from their spots, reappearing instantly around Shen Xuan, their eyes wide with shock and raw greed.
"Look at the Law patterns!" one elder gasped. "It is complete! A complete Water Dao artifact!"
"This sword alone could sever a mountain range!" another whispered, his voice trembling.
Fu Gao stared at the sword, then at the calm boy holding it. To trade a Holy Weapon, an item that Ancestral Realm experts would fight wars over, for a rusted, useless ball?
"Young Master..." Fu Gao's voice shook. "Are you... are you certain? This sword is worth ten cities."
Shen Xuan looked at the sword in his hand with indifference. He tossed it slightly, catching it by the hilt, treating the holy artifact like a common toy.
"It is merely a sharp piece of metal," Shen Xuan said, his voice bored. "I have no use for it. But that sphere... that has potential."
He extended the sword toward the stunned Elder.
"Is it enough?"
The silence on the Fifth Floor was deafening. It was the silence of men watching a god throw away diamonds to buy dirt.