The entrance to the Deep Storage Vaults was located in a remote valley behind Bai Cao Peak, carved directly into the mountainside. Unlike the heavily guarded core herb vault, the entrance here was less imposing but carried a different kind of solemnity. Two weary-looking Foundation Establishment disciples stood guard before a simple stone archway sealed by a rippling energy barrier. The air here felt heavy, thick with the stagnant aura of centuries.
Yue Qingqian approached, clutching Elder Liu's high-authority token. The guards straightened up, surprised to see anyone, let alone the famous Quasi-Saintess, venturing into this forgotten corner of the sect.
She presented the token without a word, her expression serene and distant, as if merely following an inner calling.
The guards exchanged a bewildered look. They recognized the token instantly – it belonged to Elder Liu and granted near-unrestricted access. One of them respectfully took the token, verified its authenticity against the energy barrier, and then bowed deeply.
"Elder Liu's personal disciple," the guard murmured, his voice hushed with awe. "Sector Gamma-9... for 'quiet contemplation'... Please, enter, Sage Yue. The barrier has been keyed to your passage."
The rippling energy barrier shimmered and opened a narrow path just wide enough for her to pass through. Yue Qingqian nodded slightly, a gesture that could have meant anything, and stepped inside. The barrier sealed silently behind her.
The air inside was instantly different. It was cold, damp, and utterly still, carrying the thick, musty scent of ancient dust, decaying wood, and countless forgotten objects. Faint echoes of residual spiritual energy from centuries past clung to the walls like ghosts. Long, dimly lit corridors branched off in multiple directions, lined with heavy stone doors marked with complex sector designations.
Following the faint markings on the wall, Yue Qingqian navigated the labyrinthine passages. The silence was absolute, broken only by the soft padding of her own footsteps. It felt less like a storage vault and more like a tomb for unwanted memories.
Finally, she arrived before a door marked with the archaic symbol for "Gamma-9". Using Elder Liu's token again, she pressed it against a specific indentation. With a low groan of protesting stone, the heavy door swung inward, releasing a cloud of dust so thick it momentarily choked her.
She stepped inside, and her breath caught.
Sector Gamma-9 was not a room, but a cavernous space stretching far back into the darkness, far larger than she had anticipated. It was an overwhelming, chaotic landscape of forgotten things. Mountains of broken furniture, crates filled with unidentifiable metallic objects, racks upon racks of dusty scrolls deemed worthless, shattered puppets, failed alchemical contraptions, confiscated demonic artifacts sealed in weakening containment fields – it was a graveyard of ambition, failure, and lost history. Everything was coated in a thick layer of grey dust, undisturbed for decades, perhaps centuries.
The sheer scale of the task hit her with full force. Finding three specific, fist-sized fossilized eyes in this colossal junkyard seemed utterly impossible.
But panic was not an option. She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and centered herself. She was not just a disciple; she was Lin Fan's operative. She had a mission.
Remembering her cover story, she found a relatively clear spot near the entrance, sat down cross-legged on a dusty crate, and assumed a posture of deep meditation. She needed to maintain the appearance of "listening to the whispers" should anyone, however unlikely, check on her.
While outwardly serene, her powerful spiritual sense, carefully modulated by the Breath-Concealing Jade to avoid detection, began to spread out like an invisible net. Lin Fan had briefed her on the specific energy signature she was looking for: a faint, cold, almost dead yin aura, distinct from the active energy of living beings or potent artifacts, carrying the unique fossilized imprint of the extinct Shadowscale Vipers.
Her spiritual sense swept through the nearest mountain of junk. She felt the residual energy signatures of countless objects: the faint resentment clinging to a confiscated demonic blade, the lingering hope imbued in a failed longevity potion recipe, the sorrow embedded in a broken musical instrument. It was a cacophony of forgotten emotions and energies.
Filtering through this noise was incredibly difficult. The Viper Eyes' signature would be weak, easily lost in the background clutter. She focused, using techniques Lin Fan had taught her for isolating specific energy frequencies.
Hours passed. She moved slowly, methodically, from one section of the vast cavern to another, always maintaining her meditative posture. She scanned crates filled with brittle, yellowed papers, sifted through piles of rusted, unidentifiable mechanisms, and examined shelves laden with cracked pottery and strange, inert crystals.
Dust coated her robes, and the stagnant air began to weigh heavily on her spirit, despite her cultivation. Doubt began to creep in. Was Lin Fan's deduction correct? Were the Viper Eyes even still here? Could they have decayed or been moved centuries ago without any record?
Just as despair began to set in, her spiritual sense brushed against something. It was faint, almost imperceptible, hidden deep within a massive pile of discarded, low-quality spirit stones and mining debris in a far corner of the cavern.
A cold, dead, distinctly serpentine yin aura. Weak, ancient, and filled with a phantom chill.
Her heart gave a single, hard thump.
She opened her eyes, her expression remaining perfectly placid. She slowly rose to her feet, moving with the deliberate grace of someone following an unseen spiritual current. She drifted towards the pile of debris, her movements looking less like a search and more like a somnambulist's wandering.
She stopped before the pile, tilted her head as if listening intently, and then, with a look of dawning understanding, she knelt down.
"Ah," she whispered softly, loud enough only for the dust motes to hear. "Such a quiet whisper... buried for so long..."
Her performance was still flawless. Now, came the delicate task of excavation, while hoping that faint aura truly belonged to the Serpent's Eye.