Desolate Devouring Art - Chapter 1460 - Stone Rune

Chapter 1460 – Stone Rune

There were many kinds of magnetic fields, and the Nine Dragon Palace’s palace lord had heard of some before. Right now, though, the only thing that mattered was resolving the crisis of the withering spiritual herbs.

If they couldn’t solve this problem, they wouldn’t be able to fulfill this year’s orders on time and would have to pay an enormous amount in compensation to those who had ordered from them.

The Nine Dragon Palace could afford to pay, but their reputation would take a heavy blow. For the past million years, the Nine Dragon Palace had never once failed an order, after all.

“Wuxie, stop teasing us and just tell us what’s going on,” the palace lord said, changing his form of address from “Young Master Liu” to “Wuxie” in an attempt to draw him closer.

Ding Yuan also stared at Liu Wuxie with undisguised anticipation. They had been searching for answers for months and found nothing, yet Liu Wuxie had pinpointed the issue within ten minutes of his arrival.

Only Chang Wu’s expression grew terrifyingly dark, and a cold smirk lingered at the corner of his lips.

Liu Wuxie smiled faintly, swept his gaze over the herbal field, and finally let his eyes stop on a large boulder.

“When was that boulder brought over?” Liu Wuxie asked, looking toward the three elders who oversaw this herbal field.

“About half a year ago. We mainly use it to divert the spring and keep the springwater from flowing away,” Ding Yuan explained. The boulder looked ordinary enough and existed for a simple purpose—to block the flow of springwater, gather it into a pond, and use that pond to irrigate the herbal garden.

“Did no one examine it when they brought the boulder here?” Liu Wuxie asked.

Ding Yuan’s heart tightened, and a bad feeling rose within him. Could the boulder truly be the root of the problem? It sounded absurd.

The palace lord’s figure flickered, and he appeared beside the massive boulder. At first glance, it resembled nothing more than an ordinary rock, ten feet tall and five feet wide. Placed here, it looked like a small hill, blocking the spring and forming a lake at its base.

However, the divine sense of ordinary cultivators couldn’t pierce through it because of its size. A Quasi-Immortal’s divine sense certainly could, but no one would suspect an unremarkable boulder without reason.

“What happened to the boulder that was previously here?” the palace lord asked in a low voice.

He rarely visited the herbal field, but he still retained a general impression of its layout. He remembered that there had been another boulder here that also intercepted the spring.

“The previous boulder was too small and couldn’t intercept the springwater anymore, so we replaced it,” Shi An replied, stepping forward. He was the one who had placed the new boulder here, and if the problem lay in the stone, the responsibility would fall squarely on him.

“Palace Lord, don’t believe his nonsense. It’s just an ordinary boulder, and how could it possibly be the cause for the spiritual herbs to wither?” Chang Wu said sharply. He stepped up with a questioning tone. They had already probed the boulder’s interior long ago and found nothing unusual.

They couldn’t afford a single mistake with the spiritual herbs, and anything brought into the garden had to be approved by the upper echelons. They verified every item repeatedly before allowing anyone to use it.

When the palace lord extended his divine sense into the stone, he, too, failed to detect anything out of the ordinary.

“Elder Chang is right. This is nothing but an ordinary boulder,” Liu Wuxie said with a shrug, freely admitting that there was no problem with the stone itself.

Hearing that, the palace lord and Ding Yuan both froze. Since the boulder had nothing wrong with it, why had Liu Wuxie singled it out?

Even so, the palace lord knew Liu Wuxie wouldn’t have mentioned it without a reason. Since he had pointed it out, there had to be something there.

“Palace Lord, did you hear that? He’s spouting nonsense! I suggest abolishing his cultivation and throwing him out of here,” Chang Wu pressed relentlessly. They couldn’t kill Liu Wuxie because he was Hua Feiyu’s disciple, as doing so would only incur Hua Feiyu’s wrath. However, they could cripple his cultivation before throwing him out.

Chang Wu’s suggestion was vicious. Liu Wuxie had only mentioned a boulder, yet Chang Wu was already ready to abandon his cultivation. That alone exposed a guilty conscience, and the palace lord cast a long, meaningful gaze at Chang Wu.

“This is an ordinary stone, but it’ll give off a powerful magnetic field when placed together with the Blueheart Wood,” Liu Wuxie said with an easy smile, utterly unfazed by Chang Wu’s words.

Everyone immediately turned to look at the few Blueheart Wood trees nearby. The Blueheart Wood was also a type of spiritual herb, and its leaves served as excellent ingredients for refining seventh-grade spiritual pills.

The Nine Dragon Palace had ventured deep into the outer worlds to locate saplings of the Blueheart Wood. After cultivating them for over a hundred thousand years, they had finally grown to their current size.

In just a few more years, these trees would reach full maturity, and the palace could harvest large quantities of Blueheart Leaves every year.

The fact that Liu Wuxie identified the Blueheart Wood at a single glance made several faces change. They had no idea how he recognized such a rare tree, especially when the Nine Dragon Palace was the only force cultivating it in the entire Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain.

“Bullshit! We had a boulder here before, and why didn’t it form into a magnetic field then?” Chang Wu sneered.

There had been a boulder here in the past, and it had never created any powerful magnetic field or affected the spiritual herbs.

Liu Wuxie cast a deep, probing gaze at Chang Wu, and then he let a devilish smile curl at his lips.

“Wuxie, go on,” the palace lord urged, his eyes shining with urgency. He had already guessed part of the truth, but still couldn’t piece everything together.

“The boulder seems normal on the surface, but you’ll know after dripping your blood on it,” Liu Wuxie said. He offered no further explanation, leaving the palace lord to test it himself.

“I’ll do it,” Shi An said. He drew a dagger across his palm and let his blood drip onto the boulder.

Nothing happened at first, but after roughly three breaths, the blood on the stone vanished. It did not seep into the rock like ordinary liquid; instead, it looked as though something had devoured it.

“This…” Shi An stared, horrified. How could a boulder devour blood? The rock showed no obvious spirituality, and the scene made no sense.

All eyes swung back to Liu Wuxie, and even the palace lord could not understand what he was seeing.

“Young Master Liu, what’s going on?” Ding Yuan asked. He sounded like he was on the verge of losing control.

They were one step away from the truth, yet Liu Wuxie still refused to reveal the answer. The suspense was driving them mad.

“This is a Cloud Stone, and even a Quasi-Immortal wouldn’t be able to detect its secrets. The only way to find out is to cut it open,” Liu Wuxie said. He hadn’t expected to encounter a Cloud Stone in the Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain at all.

It was a rare type of boulder capable of absorbing spiritual energy on its own.

Before anyone else could move, the palace lord slammed his palm into the boulder and split it cleanly in two. Springwater immediately rushed down from above now that the obstruction was gone, but the palace lord quickly formed seals and conjured a light screen to block the flow.

“Look!” Ding Yuan shouted. He rushed over to the halved stone and saw several droplets of blood pooled at its center—Shi An’s blood from moments ago.

“Don’t panic. Keep watching,” Liu Wuxie said, gesturing for them to remain calm.

The blood began to dissolve and spread, and vein-like patterns slowly emerged across the surface of the Cloud Stone.

“These are stone runes!” the palace lord exclaimed, narrowing his eyes. But how could ancient runes like that appear in the Nine Dragon Palace’s herbal garden?

“That’s right. These are stone runes, and you can encounter them only in Cloud Stones,” Liu Wuxie said with a nod, confirming the palace lord’s guess. The Cloud Stone was the culprit behind the withering spiritual herbs.

“Young Master Liu, even if there’s something wrong with this stone, how can it possibly cause so many spiritual herbs to wither?” Ding Yuan asked, still baffled.

The palace lord also looked perplexed; his knowledge in this area couldn’t compare to Liu Wuxie’s.

“Do you know which race created the stone runes?” Liu Wuxie asked.

The four of them shook their heads. Even the palace lord only knew of the existence of stone runes and had no idea who first created them.

It was like how the loulan race created soul runes, humans comprehended talisman, blacksmithing, pill, and array runes, the buddhist clan mastered buddhist runes, and the dragon clan grasped dragon runes.

Every race had once comprehended its own unique engravings of heaven and earth.

“Then, do you know which race created the Blueheart Wood?” Liu Wuxie asked.

This time, the four were utterly stunned. They had only read about Blueheart Wood in ancient texts and had no idea which race it originated from. That knowledge had already vanished with the passage of time.

“Young Master Liu, please don’t make things difficult for us and reveal the answers already,” Ding Yuan said anxiously. The spiritual herbs were still withering even as they spoke.

“The golem race created the Blueheart Wood, and they practiced the stone runes. This Cloud Stone didn’t hold any stone rune before someone brought it here, and the Blueheart Wood must have awakened it while the spiritual herbs nourished it,” Liu Wuxie explained.

Everyone finally understood. The stone runes inside the Cloud Stone siphoned away the spiritual herbs’ energy, causing them to wither, while the stolen energy nourished the runes in turn.

“Who brought this Cloud Stone here?” asked the palace lord. He might have overlooked it if this had been a coincidence, but if someone had done it deliberately, he had to uncover the truth.

“I brought it back,” Shi An said, stepping forward with guilt written all over his face.

No one could casually dig out a boulder of this size; seekers had to unearth it in special locations. Cultivators rarely found Cloud Stones because they did not form naturally in ordinary mountain ranges. Explorers could discover them only in the outer worlds.

“Where did you buy it from?” the palace lord asked. He had every intention of tracking the source.

It could just be a coincidence if only one herbal field had been affected, but over ten fields had suffered the same fate. That was no minor issue.

“The Skybrim Pavilion,” Shi Yuan replied, not daring to conceal anything.

He had initially wanted to find a boulder for his personal use, but everything he found was either too small or too fragile to withstand the constant impact of springwater.

Since the water had to be used to irrigate spiritual herbs, ordinary stones full of impurities were unsuitable, so he eventually chose this Cloud Stone instead.

The palace lord didn’t pursue the matter further—for the moment. The Skybrim Pavilion occupied an exalted position. As long as you had enough resources, you could buy anything there, even hire a Quasi-Immortal Realm expert.

Then again, that depended on whether you could actually afford the price required to employ a Quasi-Immortal. Not many in the entire Indigo Bamboo Astral Domain possessed that kind of wealth.

“Wuxie, can these spiritual herbs still be saved?” the palace lord asked, turning back to Liu Wuxie. The most urgent task now was to restore as much of the herbs’ medicinal potency as possible.

“We can restore them, but doing so won’t be easy,” Liu Wuxie said, rubbing his hands together. It presented the perfect opportunity for him to rip the Nine Dragon Palace off.