Chapter 202: Too Much

Lian walked across the shifting coins with careful steps.

Every movement sent small cascades of gold and spirit stones sliding down the slopes around him. The sound was constant — soft clinks and metallic whispers that followed them no matter which direction they chose. The golden light never changed. It had no source and cast no proper shadows, leaving everything in the same rich, even glow.

Elara moved on his right, eyes scanning the nearest piles of weapons and sealed chests. Ryzek stayed slightly ahead, testing the ground with each step as if expecting the treasure beneath them to collapse or change.

It never did.

The mountains of wealth continued without end. When they crested one slope, another rose beyond it. When they passed a cluster of armor stands, more appeared further on, each set looking more refined than the last. Jade boxes sat in open rows, some cracked just enough to show the pills inside. Manuals lay scattered among the coins, their covers marked with titles that promised techniques far beyond Lian’s current level.

He stopped beside one of them and read the characters without touching the book.

The name alone was enough to make his fingers tighten at his side. A complete high-level movement art. Something that could close the gap between Star 1 and the higher stages far faster than normal training. For a moment the practical part of his mind calculated what that single manual would mean for him.

Then he forced himself to step away from it.

“This is too much,” he said.

Elara glanced at him.

“I know.”

Ryzek stopped on a higher rise of coins and looked back.

“The quantity is the problem,” the Veyrani said. “No cultivator leaves this much unguarded. No tomb stores this much without layers of restrictions. Either this is a reward on a scale that does not make sense, or none of it is meant to be taken freely.”

Lian’s eyes moved across the nearest weapon rack. A long black spear rested there, its shaft marked with faint formation lines that still held power. Beside it lay a pair of short blades that radiated a cold, cutting intent strong enough to feel from several paces away. Any one of those weapons would have been a major find outside. Here they were simply lying in the open, half-buried in coins.

He crouched and picked up a handful of spirit stones, letting them fall one by one between his fingers. The energy inside them felt real. The weight felt real. The sound they made when they hit the pile felt real.

That was what made the space dangerous.

Lian stood again and turned in a slow circle. No walls. No ceiling. No change in the light. No shift in the air. The treasure continued in every direction until it faded into the golden haze.

“We keep moving,” he said. “If this place has a boundary, we find it. If it has a center, we find that instead. Do not use anything. Do not store anything. Not yet.”

Elara gave a short nod and fell in beside him. Ryzek waited until they reached his position, then continued forward with them.

They walked for a long time.

The scenery refused to change in any meaningful way. New hills of coins. New clusters of weapons. New rows of bottles and boxes. Occasionally they passed structures that looked like open pavilions built entirely from stacked spirit stones and rare metals, their interiors filled with even denser piles of resources. Each one looked more tempting than the last.

Lian ignored them.

The longer they walked, the clearer the wrongness became. A real treasury would have divisions. Guard formations. Sealed sections. Records. Paths meant for retrieval. This place had none of that. It was only abundance, arranged to overwhelm the eye and the mind.

Eventually Ryzek stopped again.

“There,” he said.

Lian followed the line of his gaze.

In the distance, beyond several more slopes of gold, the haze thinned enough to show a different structure. It was larger than the pavilions they had passed, darker in color, and shaped more like a hall than a simple open shelter. The light around it was slightly weaker, as if the golden glow did not fully reach that far.

Elara narrowed her eyes.

“That is the first thing that has not looked like treasure.”

Lian adjusted his grip on the hilt of his blade and started toward it.

“Then that is where we go.”

They changed direction and began crossing the remaining slopes of coins, leaving the endless glittering wealth behind them as the darker structure slowly grew clearer ahead.

Power Scale / Cultivation Realms (Quick Reminder)

Foundation Realm (Layers 1–9): Body forging, no external Qi.

Circuit Awakening Realm (Early–Peak): First Qi loop, internal bursts.

Core Condensation Realm (Early–Peak): External Qi release, short flight.

Stellar Circuit Realm (1–9 Stars): True flight, Qi armor, energy projection.

Nebula Dominion Realm and higher: Domain control, galaxy-level power, etc

Power Scale Reminder

Lian Yu: Stellar Circuit Star 1.

Elara Voss: Core Condensation Peak

Keep it as reminders