The Rat Cultivator

Chapter 177: Bone Bowl

Wu Yuan frowned slightly as he carefully calibrated his senses to the oppressive environment of the Spiritual Qi barren zone.

“The atmosphere here isn’t just empty,” he murmured, his voice low. “There is a profound, inert force actively suffocating the environment. It’s forcefully suppressing my Demon Power and suffocating my blood vitality.”

He analyzed the drain on his system. “The terrifying part is the scaling. The stronger the biological vessel, the faster the energy dissipates. Even at the mid-stage of Qi Condensation, my reserves are actively bleeding out. At this rate…”

He paused, a flicker of genuine concern crossing his eyes. “Ten days. If I stay in here for ten days, my Demon Power will degrade back to the early stage.”

The realization made him think back to the night of the Emperor Fluid shower and the sheer, apocalyptic presence of the Green Roc Great Demon.

“To casually fly through an anomaly like this… the Green Roc Great Demon’s sheer Cultivation base must be unfathomable,” Wu Yuan concluded, deeply humbled by the massive power gap between himself and the true overlords of the realm.

He committed every microscopic fluctuation of the barren zone to memory. Understanding the physics of this dead space could prove to be a vital tactical advantage if he ever needed to lose a high-level pursuer. In the brutal world of Cultivation, every ounce of preparation was an extra sliver of survival.

Shortly after, Wu Yuan arrived at the lip of the abyss in Snake Valley.

The chasm was pitch-black and seemingly bottomless. The jagged, razor-sharp rocks lining the descent occasionally vented plumes of scorched, red demonic aura—the lingering, ambient radiation left behind by the fire flood dragon’s violent birth.

Without hesitation, Wu Yuan scanned the perimeter, calculated an optimal trajectory, took a deep breath, and threw himself into the pit.

The wind shrieked past his ears as he plummeted into the darkness. He deployed his Demon Power to generate drag, controlling his descent and weaving through the jagged outcroppings. The ambient drain of the dead zone made the maneuver highly taxing; his energy reserves burned rapidly just to stay airborne.

His movements were crisp and Proficient. He navigated the subterranean maze of shattered rock and collapsed caverns with the fluid grace of someone who had entirely mapped the terrain in his mind.

Soon, he touched down before a massive, unassuming boulder.

To the naked eye, the stone was utterly mundane, blending perfectly with the surrounding subterranean rubble. But Wu Yuan knew better. He circled the boulder once, his eyes glinting with absolute certainty, and began to dig.

He didn’t use brute force. Instead, he extended a single claw, surgically slicing away the outer layers of the rock with clinical precision. Every movement was meticulously calculated; he was terrified of accidentally damaging the priceless specimen hidden within.

As the rock dust cleared, the boulder slowly took on a distinct, humanoid silhouette.

With a final, gentle tap, the last layer of stone skin crumbled away like falling snow.

A perfectly preserved, crystal-clear skeleton was revealed, emitting a faint, hauntingly beautiful yellow luminescence in the subterranean gloom.

These were the remains of Daoist Dragon Snake.

Wu Yuan crouched down, his scientific curiosity entirely overtaking him as he inspected the bones. It was a universal biological truth in the Cultivation world that an adult human possessed exactly 206 bones.

Yet, as Wu Yuan systematically counted the skeleton before him, he reached a total of 401.

“A side effect of his Cultivation technique?” Wu Yuan muttered, his brow furrowed as he ran through a dozen biological theories. “A radical flesh-forging secret art? Or… is this the skeletal structure required to biologically transform into a true dragon?”

Pushing the anatomical mystery aside for later study, Wu Yuan’s claws hovered over the skeleton’s chest cavity.

Resting directly over where the Daoist’s heart used to be was a specific bone, naturally formed into the shape of a small, inverted bowl. It looked like a biological chest plate, radiating an ancient, deeply resonant aura.

This was the prize.

Wu Yuan reached out to casually pick up the small bone bowl.

The moment his claws clamped around it, the sheer, impossible mass of the object violently yanked his arm down, nearly dislocating his shoulder. He stumbled forward, his eyes bugging out in absolute shock.

“What in the world?!”

It didn’t feel like he was holding a piece of bone; it felt like he was trying to deadlift an entire mountain range. Despite exerting the full, terrifying physical strength of his Barbarian Beast physique, Wu Yuan couldn’t budge the bowl a single millimeter.

Realizing brute force was useless, Wu Yuan flattened himself against the cavern floor, bringing his eyes level with the skeleton’s chest to inspect the artifact at a microscopic level.

The bone bowl was flawless. It possessed the creamy, translucent texture of the highest-grade spiritual jade. Suspended within the dense bone matrix were intricate, draconic spirit patterns. They drifted lazily through the artifact like living, microscopic dragons swimming in a milky sea. However, Wu Yuan noticed their movements were sluggish and lethargic—a clear symptom of severe energy starvation.

Etched across the exterior surface of the bowl was a chaotic web of faint, jagged red lines. They looked like bursting capillaries. These specific red patterns radiated a terrifying, lethal energy that made Wu Yuan’s instincts scream in absolute terror.

“These red lines… they are the residual radiation from the demon king’s seal on the Azure Radiance Grotto-Heaven,” Wu Yuan deduced, his voice hushed.

“This is just ambient, scattered radiation—not even the primary sealing matrix—yet the power it contains is catastrophic. A sentient Dharma Treasure Embryo, possessing the core essence of a Golden Core expert, was instantly suppressed into a coma just by brushing against it.”

Wu Yuan shuddered. “The raw power of the complete, intact seal is literally beyond my comprehension.”

Staring at the jagged red lines, Wu Yuan’s eyes narrowed as a radically dangerous hypothesis formed in his mind.

“These residual red patterns shouldn’t have an active, tethered connection to the main seal above ground,” he reasoned aloud. “After all, a lion doesn’t monitor a single hair it shed in the dirt. Right, Karma Pearl?”

As if confirming his theory, the Karma Pearl pulsed, projecting a holographic prompt.

[Blue Intelligence: There is no active tether between the residual sealing radiation and the primary matrix. However, your current Cultivation tier is too low to utilize your Awakening Talent on this artifact!]

Wu Yuan scoffed, a flicker of annoyance crossing his snout. “You really don’t leave me any loopholes, do you?”

But Wu Yuan wasn’t one to surrender to a technicality. If he couldn’t conquer the artifact, he would manipulate its restraints.

A sharp golden light flared at his fingertips. Carefully, he injected his own, pure Demon Power directly into the jagged red lines on the outside of the bowl.

The reaction was instantaneous. Starved of high-quality Spiritual Qi for millennia, the residual sealing runes greedily devoured Wu Yuan’s energy. The faint red lines flared to life, glowing with intense heat. Like parasitic vines, they began to rapidly multiply and branch out, violently spreading until they completely encased the exterior of the bone bowl in a suffocating red web.

Wu Yuan hadn’t attempted to use his Awakening Talent to hack the artifact. He was a mere Qi Condensation demon; trying to establish a psychic link with a Golden Core-level Dharma Treasure—or the apocalyptic sealing runes suppressing it—would have instantly liquefied his brain. The power disparity was a biological absolute.

Instead, he had used his innate talent to simply act as a raw battery, feeding the red runes the energy they needed to organically multiply. Because the foundational essence of Wu Yuan’s power was vastly inferior to the runes, the newly grown red vines were a degraded, secondary iteration of the original seal.

“I am basically a living AA battery,” Wu Yuan grumbled, watching the process.

“Let’s calculate the hierarchy. If the primary sealing runes on the Azure Radiance Grotto-Heaven operate at the Nascent Soul level… and the original red radiation on this bowl operates at the Golden Core level… then the degraded, secondary vines I just forced it to grow operate at the Foundation Establishment level. A tier I can actually interact with.”

Wu Yuan watched as the bone bowl, now entirely mummified in glowing red runes, went completely inert. The draconic spirit patterns swimming inside the bone ground to a dead halt. The Dharma Treasure Embryo had been forced from a light coma into an absolute, vegetative state.

Wu Yuan nodded in deep satisfaction. “Much better.”

“If you weren’t fully anesthetized, I wouldn’t dare move you,” he whispered to the artifact. “This is safer for everyone.”

He reached out and grabbed the bone bowl. The impossible, mountain-crushing mass was completely gone. It felt exactly like a regular, lightweight ceramic bowl.