The sky was brightening.
With sleepy eyes, Wang Ba stretched his hand to his side to touch, only to feel the edge of the narrow wooden bed.
He jolted awake and sat up immediately.
Looking around, it was as cold and aloof as it used to be, as if the craziness of last night was just a dream.
He hesitated, gently lifted the corner of the quilt, and took a sniff.
A unique fragrance of grass and wood mixed with a faint scent of a young girl entered his nostrils.
He instantly felt refreshed, and then he found a strand of black hair under the pillow.
As he held the strand of hair, he finally convinced himself.
Last night was not a dream.
This realization caused him to freeze for a moment.
For some reason, at this moment, he suddenly felt closer to the world.
The early morning light shone into the room from the distance.
He couldn't help but get up, take a few steps forward, look through the wooden window, and take in everything outside.
In the distance, a familiar figure sat by the lake, her snow-white feet lightly fluttering in the clear lake water. She casually picked a reed leaf from the lakeshore, rolled it into a whistle, and blew it without any rhythm…
A white egret gently flew past her, stirring up a touch of thin morning mist.
The rising sun unabashedly bestowed its radiance onto the most, most enchanting girl at this moment.
For a moment, Wang Ba was bewitched.
After a long while,
He finally withdrew his gaze reluctantly, trying hard to stabilize the waves in his heart, planning to take some chicken essence and cultivate.
But he found that today's waves were impossible to smooth over.
Wang Ba shook his head and simply decided to give himself a day off.
After thinking about it, he took several storage bags from his clothes, preparing to check them.
Two of them originally belonged to him.
The other five, however, belonged to the three Incense-burning Dao Cultivators who had been slain by Zhao Feng.
He first took out the storage bag of the Foundation Establishment Competitor who had previously pursued him.
After infusing it with mana, unexpectedly, it opened.
"That's not right, this is the storage bag of a Foundation Establishment Competitor, could it be that my Senior Brother helped me open it?"
Wang Ba, feeling both puzzled and hopeful, opened the storage bag.
He was soon stunned by the items stored within.
Not because there was any treasure inside, but because most of it was full of various sacrificial supplies.
Incense, altar, faceless statue…
In the corner of the storage bag, he finally found a package containing only three or four middle-grade spirit stones, several sheets of gold paper, a Class I top grade flying magic tool, and three colorless water orbs.
He put the spirit stones into his own storage bag, took out the gold paper and examined the top grade flying magic tool.
The few sheets of gold paper were all rubbings of spells from the Yin God lineage, including spells for rearing and controlling Yin Ghosts.
Wang Ba quickly collected these gold sheets, planning to study them more thoroughly later.
On the top grade flying magic tool, however, he found a peculiar formation engraved on it.
As Wang Ba channeled mana into it, the formation instantly converted the mana into a wave of energy that Wang Ba found somewhat familiar.
"It's the power of the soul."
After tinkering for a while, Wang Ba put the flying magic tool into his storage bag.
Finally, he cautiously used his mana to lift the three colorless water orbs and examine them carefully.
However, he quickly discovered that the sensation these spherical objects gave him was very similar to the power of the soul.
Wang Ba instantly remembered something he seemed to have heard during his Soul Search on an Incense-burning Dao Cultivator named Ji Lin.
"Could it be, 'Divine Dew'?"
Surprise flashed across his face.
Divine Dew is one of the few treasures that can replenish and enhance a Cultivator's soul.
Just like Qi Refining Pills are for Qi-refining Cultivators.
However, unlike Qi-refining Pills, Divine Dew is a naturally occurring treasure, harvested from a Class II wonderous spirit plant called the 'Thousand God Tree'. A single leaf takes over a decade to accumulate enough for a drop.
Wang Ba hastily put away this 'Divine Dew', planning to use it when he goes to Lingshui Courtyard for cultivation.
Then, he opened the two other storage bags of the Foundation Establishment Competitor.
To his disappointment, the items in the storage bags were very similar to the first one, with a large number of sacrificial supplies and only a few items that Wang Ba deemed valuable.
There were, as expected, spirit stones and gold paper.
However, these pieces of gold paper were largely duplicates of the previous ones.
Surprisingly, there were two Divine Dews.
Apart from these, there was also a tremendously large human-skin drum.
Wang Ba gently tapped it, and immediately felt a wave of faint dizziness.
"What a good thing! It can directly affect the soul!"
Wang Ba played with it joyfully for a moment, and then put away the human-skin drum.
Shortly after, his gaze landed on the storage bags of the strongest of the three, the red-haired cultivator.
He opened the first one.
As soon as it was opened, the dazzling spirit stones inside momentarily blinded Wang Ba.
He quickly scanned the contents, and to his surprise, there were nearly ten thousand lower-grade spirit stones and about sixty middle-grade spirit stones inside.
That was roughly equivalent to a hundred and sixty middle-grade spirit stones.
At this moment, Wang Ba finally understood the saying, 'Without windfall, one cannot be rich; without night grass, a horse cannot get fat'.
"I've really gotten rich overnight."
Wang Ba couldn't help but exclaim, feeling a bit of joy in his heart, but also a great deal of caution.
He was afraid that he could not resist the temptation, act on impulse, go out, and actively engage in life-threatening battles with others.
In reality, he didn't mind getting into fights with others, but only when it was unavoidable.
He then calmed the excitement of suddenly becoming rich.
After searching, he found that aside from the spirit stones, there were also several magic tools in the storage bag.
Among them were strikingly a Class II middle-grade magic tool shaped like a short stick and a Class II lower-grade flying magic tool.
He fiddled with the former for a long time but still couldn't figure out what it was for.
He tossed it together with the Class 11 lower-grade flying magic tool into his own storage bag.
Since he hadn't reached the Foundation Establishment stage yet, it's very hard to use Class 11 magic tools, he found Class 1 top grade magic tools easier to handle.
He then opened the second storage bag of the red-haired cultivator.
As expected, this last storage bag indeed gave him a great surprise.
Besides the sacrificial items, there were a total of ten Divine Dews.
Eight gold paper rubbings.
Several talismans inscribed with peculiar patterns.
A black altar covered with an aura of Yin, and so on.
He didn't take notice of the other objects but swiftly flipped through the gold paper rubbings.
Indeed, among these gold paper rubbings, he finally found the one he had been longing for.
On the gold paper, three large words stood out:
"Divine Dream Spell.."