Chapter 365 184: Death Breath Crystal

Seeing the Spirit Maiden approach, Li Ziyu pushed his frustration aside and smiled. "What is it?"

"Master, I... I want to help you too, but I've never seen a Death Breath Crystal. I just have a guess..." the Spirit Maiden said cautiously, her large eyes glinting with intelligence.

"Hmm, go on. What's your guess?" Li Ziyu nodded. This girl loved to play innocent. Though she was a Ghost who had been around for who knows how many years, when it came to acting cute, not even the Cat Girl Sisters could compete. She always managed to make Li Ziyu forget her age and treat her like a little sister.

"First, you have to promise not to scold me if I'm wrong, Master," the Spirit Maiden said, pouting coquettishly.

Having been by Li Ziyu's side for some time, she had grown familiar with his ways. She knew that even if she were wrong, he wouldn't scold her for it. She was just saying this now to maintain her persona.

'Fox People are clever, to say nothing of a Fox Maiden. It's only natural to have a thousand schemes up your sleeve, right?' the Spirit Maiden thought to herself.

"Haha, fine. Go ahead. Even if you're wrong, I won't scold you," Li Ziyu said, amused by the Spirit Maiden, his tone doting.

"Then... come with me, Master." The Spirit Maiden nodded obediently, then turned and floated toward a corner.

Li Ziyu stood up and followed the Spirit Maiden toward the corner where the Soul Coffin was kept.

'Don't tell me the Spirit Maiden found the Death Breath Crystals and put them in the Soul Coffin?'

Li Ziyu wondered to himself.

"Here, over here! Master, look," the Spirit Maiden called out in her clear voice, stopping in front of the Soul Coffin. She beckoned to Li Ziyu and pointed at the coffin.

Filled with doubt, Li Ziyu walked over to the Spirit Maiden's side and looked at the Soul Coffin. It was the same as always, with nothing out of the ordinary. Li Ziyu couldn't see anything unusual.

He turned to look at the Spirit Maiden, his eyes full of confusion, wondering what she wanted him to see.

"Oh, it's here, right here!" Seeing his confusion, the Spirit Maiden leaned closer to the Soul Coffin, pointing to a gap between the bones and urging Li Ziyu to look carefully.

Li Ziyu leaned in closer to look at the gap between the bones, and froze.

He saw a small sphere wedged between two bones. It was the size of a glass marble from his childhood—crystal clear and immaculately white, yet at its very center was a mass of pure black.

'What is this?'

He rarely used the Soul Coffin. Most of the time, it just sat in the corner, and he had never examined it as closely as he was now. Naturally, he had no idea these little marbles were hidden in the crevices between the bones.

"Master, is this the Death Breath Crystal you're looking for?" the Spirit Maiden asked, blinking her large eyes.

"I'm not sure. How did you find these beads?" Li Ziyu asked as he examined the small spheres.

"I just happened to notice them a while ago," the Spirit Maiden said matter-of-factly.

The Spirit Maiden had a very lively personality, but in truth, she was the most meticulous of the four Fox Maidens. She loved to observe and was skilled at discovering hidden things. Her bubbly exterior was just a form of camouflage.

A simple, naive girl could never stand out from a crowd of clever Fox Girls to become Upper-Rank. One who becomes a Fox Maiden is certainly no simple-minded beauty who relies solely on her looks. It was hard to say how calculating the Spirit Maiden truly was, but her attention to detail was second to none among the four Fox Maidens.

After listening to the Spirit Maiden, Li Ziyu nodded and reached for the small bead. The Soul Coffin was his possession, completely under his control. With a mere thought, the bones on the Soul Coffin shifted, allowing the small bead to fall. Li Ziyu quickly caught it.

Pinching it between two fingers, he brought it before his eyes. After a moment of observation, he had the system analyze it to find out what it was.

The system could accurately identify things like raw materials, but it was a different story for processed items. There were far too many items in the world, with all sorts of bizarre functions; not even the system could possibly know the use of every single one. Materials, however, were different. Their number was finite, and the system had data on all of them.

[Death Breath Crystal (Special Material)]

[Introduction: Formed from the condensation of a large amount of death breath. The shell is hard, transparent, and possesses a certain life Attribute. It can seal death breath within. The interior can contain a terrifying amount of death breath; if the shell breaks, the death breath will spread with extreme speed.]

'Holy shit, it really is a goddamn Death Breath Crystal!'

Li Ziyu's eyes widened as he stared at the small bead in disbelief. The very material he had been agonizing over was right under his nose the whole time, and he'd been too foolish to realize it. He wanted to slap himself.

He had assumed the Death Breath Crystal would be like a Blood Crystal—a pure black, irregular polyhedron. Who would have thought it would actually look like a glass marble?

'And the Introduction is a bit strange, too. The shell actually possesses a life Attribute? How can something formed entirely from death breath have the opposite property?'

'Is this some kind of "life at the end of death, creation at the end of destruction" thing?'

'Is it getting all yin-and-yang on me?!'

'Whatever, as long as I've found them, it's fine.' He had just seen that there were quite a few of these beads wedged among the Skeletons of the Soul Coffin. A quick glance told him there were definitely more than 1,000. That was one more material found for the Fortress upgrade.

"Spirit Maiden, brilliant work! You get major credit for this!" Li Ziyu said, looking at her with delight and giving her a thumbs-up.

"It wasn't that big a deal..." the Spirit Maiden said, looking bashful. She materialized a pair of delicate, pale feet and began tracing circles on the ground with her toes.