Chapter 495: Blood Opens the Treasure Chest

This chapter is a bonus update for the "Bittertree" reward.

Cris was fascinated by the spirit bug amber and wasted no time preparing to study its secrets, though it would take time. Liszt didn’t stay long in the magic workshop; he headed back to the castle and started his cultivation practice.

Having recently advanced to the rank of sky knight, his intermediate mana had evolved into advanced mana, which was gradually transforming into Dragon Aura. This made his cultivation plan rather erratic, and he hadn’t made much progress yet. He needed to wait for his body to stabilize before he could properly assess his progress.

However, practicing 'Crimson Sunflare Surge' wasn’t an issue.

The techniques in the advanced mana manual were rather unclear. This fire-attribute advanced mana manual contained only seventeen techniques in total.

They were broadly divided into two types: basic techniques and charged techniques.

There were twelve basic techniques and five charged techniques. The five charged techniques were Full Red Sun, Rising Sun, Scorching Sun Stab, Setting Sun, and Burning Red Glow.

The advanced mana manual didn’t include any ultimate techniques.

The twelve basic techniques weren’t too challenging. With Liszt’s memory and understanding, mastering them wouldn’t take long. In fact, he had already begun studying these twelve basic techniques during his time as an elite Earth Knight. Though he couldn’t execute them with intermediate mana, he could still simulate them.

Now, he just needed to practice calmly and methodically.

However, the charged techniques were far more challenging, involving the intricate mechanics of advanced mana and requiring extensive practice to master.

Liszt hadn’t mastered a single charged technique yet.

Before long, evening arrived. After dinner, Liszt hurried to the seaside villa to see if Acheronides had returned from salvaging the sky ship.

When he arrived at the seaside villa, she was indeed there.

Acheronides was at the door to welcome him: "Brother, you’re back."

"I got back this morning. When did you get here?"

"At dusk. By the way, brother, I’ve already brought all the valuable items from the sunken ship here." Acheronides took Liszt to another room, where a heap of seemingly broken items was piled up. "Everything’s here, but there are a lot of boxes that won’t open."

"Boxes?"

Now, the mere mention of boxes made Liszt inexplicably excited.

He first organized all the boxes, setting them aside without opening them right away. These boxes had dense patterns, similar to the drift bottles used by the Children of the Sun for communication. The patterns formed some abstract images, vaguely recognizable as forests.

In the forests, there were mountains, rivers, bears, eagles, fish, and some abstract humans, along with strange musical instruments, bows, and arrows.

No locks.

Apparently, these boxes also required the blood of Old Phil from the leather shop.

"I'll have to collect more blood from Old Phil later, the more the better. But I heard that the middle-aged widow Old Phil found seems to be pregnant?" Liszt thought to himself. Since the drift bottles weren’t very useful, he hadn’t paid much attention to Old Phil lately.

After all, he had already stockpiled quite a bit of blood.

If the middle-aged widow Old Phil found was indeed pregnant and gave birth, there would be no need to worry about the Sun's descendants' bloodline.

After sorting out the boxes, the remaining broken items were mostly damaged utensils, barely recognizable as basins, buckets, long swords, bows, wooden sticks, armor, ropes, and the like. There were also some stones embedded in the damaged items, probably once gems, now dull and lifeless.

"How long must they have been soaked in the sea for even gems to decay into stones?" Liszt cast Magic Eye and saw that this pile of broken items had no magic power reaction.

From this, it can be inferred that the sinking date of the Sky Ship was definitely not recent, dating back at least several hundred or even a thousand years.

"If it wasn't within the last hundred years, then it suggests that the Sky Ship was not here to pick up the descendants of the Sun, which no longer conflicts with the appearance of the message in a bottle... However, why would this Sky Ship have sunk in the waters near Black Horse Island several hundred years ago?"

Black Horse Island was formed by the eruption of a volcano created by the fall of the Fire Dragon.

Liszt wondered if this dead Fire Dragon had any connection to the Sky Ship—perhaps the Sky Ship came to explore the Fire Dragon's remains; or perhaps the Sky Ship and the Fire Dragon had a battle, both were severely damaged and sank here.

Thinking this, he asked Acheronides, "Acheronides, are there any signs of damage on this sunken ship?"

"I don't know, brother, half of the ship is buried in the mud of the seabed, I only cleaned the cabin part. But the exposed part doesn't seem to have any major structural damage, just many of the planks are missing. Also, many fish and shrimp are living inside."

It's quite normal for parts that aren't sturdy enough to have decayed after being submerged for so long.

"Did you see any human bones on the ship?"

"It doesn't seem so, the cabin was very clean, there were only some boxes."

Hearing this, Liszt immediately dismissed the possibility of a mutual destruction scenario between the Fire Dragon and the Sky Ship. Given the Fire Dragon's power, if there had been a battle, it could have torn the Sky Ship to pieces.

He suddenly asked again, "By the way, Acheronides, what's the difference between that sunken ship and my ship?"

The Sky Ship and ordinary ships should be quite different.

Acheronides thought for a moment and replied, "It doesn't seem to have a mast, I'm not entirely sure, brother, the ship is too old, covered in all kinds of coral."

Liszt didn't push further, as he would eventually salvage the Sky Ship anyway.

So he directly said, "Acheronides, you should go and rest, I need to carefully examine what's inside these boxes."

"Okay, I'll go and read, I've been studying magic arrays lately."

"Good, my dear Acheronides."

"Hehe."

...

After sending Acheronides, the mermaid, away.

Liszt directly placed a box into the gem space, then applied Old Phil's blood within the gem space. To his surprise, the blood didn't react at all.

"What's going on?"

"Is everything within the gem space static, even the reaction of this blood?"

Liszt waited for a moment, then chose to take the box out again, and sure enough, the reaction began instantly. The patterns on the box flashed with threads of magic power, forming dynamic images of bears, eagles, people, mountains, and flowing water.

Finally, it seemed like the setting sun fell, hitting the lid of the box.

With a click.

The box opened.

Learning from his past experience of salvaging treasure chests from sunken ships, Liszt quickly placed the box into the gem space to prevent the items inside from being exposed to air and oxidizing or decaying.

Once inside the gem space.

He extended his spirit inside, starting to observe the items in the box in another way. To his great surprise, it was filled with... seeds.

Seeds of some plant.

Seeds with a faint magic power.

He couldn't help but exclaim, "Potion Seeds?"