Beastmaster of the Ages

Chapter 2277 - Waiting

It wasn't just a fingerprint, but a palm mark that was darker near the fingers and lighter near where the palm actually was. Within the tomb, the mark should be rather hard to see. Tianming was really careful, as there were some traces of a ring near the ring finger of the mark that corresponded to the ring finger pillar he had seen.

Lin Hongchen picked up four of the skeletons and furrowed his brows. "If it's this heavy, it'll affect my swordsmanship."

"Are you that weak?" Tianming smirked and took the three remaining skeletons, then flashed the muscles on his black arm. "This weight isn't worth mentioning at all."

"Hmph, now just leave." Lin Hongchen's eyes flashed. With all seven skeletons taken, the tomb was empty.

"What do you mean?" Tianming asked, troubled. He intentionally avoided looking at the palm mark. He was pretty certain that Lin Hongchen hadn't seen it yet.

"I asked you to leave. What part of that did you not understand? You already got what you want, so what’re you still doing here? Waiting for me to escort you out of the Oldgod Domain? Or to send you to the afterlife?" Lin Hongchen applied full pressure to Tianming as he spoke. With the tomb already open, he was free to decide what to do with Tianming's life. He could even kill him for the skeletons and keep the secret of the tomb to himself.

"Didn't you swear an oath to split the benefits?" Tianming said.

"That's right. When I swore that oath, I said I’d give you half of what's inside the tomb, not the tomb itself."

"Are you really going to take the entire thing away?"

"Leave!" Lin Hongchen drew his sword and pointed it at Tianming. Snow-white cosmic impulse pulsed on the blade.

Seeing that he was about to strike, Tianming shrugged and left the tomb. "Fine. Take it away."

Only then did Lin Hongchen feel satisfied. He motioned for Tianming to move farther away while he tugged on the tomb. Back when it had been secured by the formation, there was no way for it to be taken into a spatial ring. But with it gone, it could be possible to take the construct made of divine ores away. Lin Hongchen didn't want to risk the slightest possibility of leaving any treasure unearthed.

If he really manages to pocket it, all my efforts would be for naught. There was nothing Tianming could do about it, thanks to the power disparity. He couldn't even defeat Shuntian Bohan, let alone the twenty-ninth ranked Lin Hongchen, so all he could do was gamble.

The light of a spatial ring covered the tomb as the spatial gate of the spatial stone on the ring opened. However, Lin Hongchen's joyful expression faded; he wasn't able to move the tomb at all. "Is there another formation?".com

"It might not necessarily be a formation, but the material it's made of. Maybe it's some kind of really high-grade divine ore from ancient times. The divine ordered patterns of the ore probably faded away after all the time that passed, though the innate properties of the ore might still prevent it from being taken in by your spatial ring."

"I don't need you to tell me that." Lin Hongchen still seemed rather proud. He coldly looked at Tianming, then went back into the tomb. When Tianming wanted to go in again, he snapped, "Stay away!"

"Come on, I'm just trying to help. If you do discover something inside, you'll need me to unlock it, won't you?" Tianming said.

"You aren’t needed here." Lin Hongchen continued to look at him warily. He already felt bad enough about giving him the three skeletons.

"Fine, I already got my share of the treasure. So long." Tianming turned and left without hesitation. It didn't take long before he disappeared from view.

Lin Hongchen's gaze lingered for a moment until he was sure Tianming had left before he entered the room again. "Lin Feng doesn't have any friends here. Even though he's Lin Mu's son, he isn’t some sneaky person, so he probably wouldn't intentionally lead other people here." He could have eliminated Tianming to get rid of that worry, but he chose not to do so.

......

Tianming did go quite far away, but Yin Chen didn't. In other words, he still had a constant view of the situation.

"As expected, he discovered the fingerprint." It was a normal-looking fingerprint, though it was in a rather peculiar location. Lin Hongchen intensively studied it, putting his palm against it and even searching for traces of divine celestial patterns. If he found any, that would mean there was a formation there. However, the tomb didn't react in the slightest no matter what he tried to do.

The obstacle he faced now was different from before. While the previous 'trial' was complicated, at least the test paper wasn’t invisible. But this time, he didn't even know where to write his answers. He spent around ten days studying the print with all he had and even slashed around the insides of the tomb with his cosmic artifact, only to find that it left no marks at all.

"Don't tell me this really is some kind of high-grade material that lost its divine ordered patterns as Lin Feng said?" Once the divine patterns were no more, the material itself would be of no value whatsoever. However, Lin Hongchen refused to believe it.

"Is this tomb really useless? Was the print something that was accidentally pressed there during its construction? Is there really nothing special about it?" He let out a wry laugh. "Perhaps I'm overthinking it. If a hundred-year-old disciple like Lin Feng is able to unlock this tomb, how special can it be?" He sighed and decided to leave, since he wasn't able to move the tomb at all, much to Tianming's glee. However, he gave up on leaving and turned back once more, still unwilling to give up.

"I'm speechless!" Tianming knew he would eventually leave; it was only a matter of time. Lin Hongchen wouldn't gain anything from wasting time there, either. Thus, Tianming decided to relax and find some other hole to hide in. He also had Yin Chen bury him in the hole to leave no mark on the outside. Then he took out the three sets of skeletons and used them to cultivate while he waited for Lin Hongchen to leave.

He had six skeletons in his collection, for a total of around twenty thousand elite caeli, which was a staggering number! The green caeli were far more powerful than those of the late council members of the Lin Clan, and those people were already among the best in the clan’s history. All twenty thousand caeli within the skeletons also belonged to bee-headed people. Tianming studied their odd ordines, improving his divine wills as he progressed.