Chapter 1593: Pandora's Box

After dealing with the black sea, Zhang Lie and the other members of Team Zenith followed their map to Bu Wentian's second warehouse, only to find a huge fight breaking out.

There were a pillar of flame and a floating crystal man deep in meditation on one side, and a monstrous creature that was difficult to describe on the other.

Blinding light seared their retinas. Within the light, all sort of elements were clashing against one another.

Strange minerals and crystals evoked a nasty gleam out of scaled, translucent flesh. The creature's body was submerged in some sticky, wriggling source of light that pulsed as the creature moved.

Shadow and fog accompanied that monstrous creature, which looked like a complex combination of a plant and mineral. A huge compound eye was located roughly where its head would be. When Iod came into view, sticky fluid was dripping down the membrane of its compound eye. It wheezed, signaling its ravenous hunger. A huge compound eye stared motionlessly at its enemies, who were no simple foes in their own right. One was a huge pillar of flame, one that no one could stare at for more than a few seconds before their eyes started to water. Similarly, no one could stand the heat that the flaming pillar was giving off.

Even Zhang Lie and the others wouldn't have been able to stare at it for more than ten seconds.

The other entity was no weaker. It looked to be playing with a small ball—but on closer inspection, that small ball was like a miniature world. That entity was clearly very skilled with spatial manipulation.

"How do we deal with them?" Yang Ze asked.

"They seem to be blocking the entrance." Sun Xiaowu frowned.

"They're fighting by the entrance. We're coming in from the back. Why bother with them?" Zhang Lie brought out a high-tech microchip that Bu Wentian had given him.

Over these last few days, Zhang Lie had figured out how to use it. He pressed a hidden button on its surface, causing it to project a map in the air.

𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

"We just have to head in over here to be able to avoid those fighting at the door. Then, we'll walk here, turn, and walk straight to get into the deepest part of the treasury."

Within the microchip was a map of the second warehouse, a complete map that illustrated all sorts of trap doors and mechanisms.

The airship stopped far from the warehouse as Zhang Lie and the hunters snuck in through a back door.

Meanwhile, Iod continued to fight with the two monsters from the Ancient Gods' Abode. None of them noticed Zhang Lie and the others at all. Most importantly, Yang Ze was skilled with spatial manipulation and able to hide from Iod and the two other monsters.

As they approached the backdoor, Zhang Lie held up a card to be scanned. An electronic voice proclaimed, "Confirmed to be administrators of the warehouse. Welcome back, administrators."

With the card in hand, Zhang Lie easily passed through the second warehouse without any obstacles whatsoever. The AI of the warehouse even provided him with some information.

"The second warehouse has a number of regions. We don't have to worry about some of them—there's barely any treasure there. We need to head to the herb repository where Bu Wentian's Pandora's Box is located, as well as the armory that Sun Xiaowu's interested in."

Fang Yi glanced at the warehouse's records. "There's even a fragment of the stone of counteracting fate here!"

"That thing that's stuck to your body now, right?" Sun Xiaowu asked.

Zhang Lie glanced at it. "That's in the special items zone."

The hunters first headed toward the herb repository, where they found an incredible wealth of precious herbs, many of which they hadn't ever seen before.

Naturally, they took everything they could with them.

Next was the second area, the special items zone.

Everyone was surprised to see the mounds of treasure there as well.

Zhang Lie discovered that he didn't know what many of those items were.

He was no ordinary hunter; given his two lives, he was able to recognize just about everything that had appeared in the dimensional world.

The fact that he couldn't recognize much of what lay before him was shocking as a result.

Many of those objects before him weren't from the dimensional world or the Milky Way—no, that wasn't quite right. In his past life, Zhang Lie had stopped in the fourth realm, never having reached the fifth.

"In other words, much of what lies before us is from the fifth realm."

From that, he could conclude that Bu Wentian was indeed from the fifth realm himself.

Zhang Lie wasn't shocked about this conclusion at all. He had guessed it the moment Fang Yi showed up with a stone of counteracting fate, and the items in the warehouse before them were what clinched the deal.

However, Zhang Lie was very curious why Bu Wentian had expended such great effort to bring the treasures of the fifth realm into the fourth. Was he only intending to cultivate talent in the fourth realm?

But why would he do so?

Zhang Lie didn't believe that anyone's desires were purely altruistic.

He was reminded of another existence that had provided him with significant benefit—the king of chaos.

In the third realm, the king of chaos had held a tournament between the members of Team Zenith and of his own faction, the Demonic Temple. In theory, it was meant to entice Team Zenith into joining the Demonic Temple, but in practice, the king of chaos just showered them with gifts.

The king of chaos was similar to Bu Wentian. Bu Wentian seemed to be an existence of the fifth realm, whereas the king of chaos seemed to originally have been an existence of the fourth realm. After passing through the trial chamber, the king of chaos had obtained some treasure that allowed him to stage a rebirth in the third realm.

However, Zhang Lie hadn't yet encountered the king of chaos in the fourth realm, and couldn't yet confirm the truth of this for himself.

Sun Mengmeng shouted, "Found it!"

"The Pandora's Box that Bu Wentian was talking about?" Zhou Ying exclaimed.

Everyone rushed over to a shelf clearly marked 'Pandora', within which were a number of black boxes with rows of teeth where their opening would have been. They were locked shut with padlocks.

"Twenty-one of them in all," Zhang Lie said. "Three for each of us."

The hunters divided up the Pandora's Boxes. Zhang Lie said, "Let me give it a try."

He broke one chain. The box seemed to come to life, biting at him like a rabid dog. Zhang Lie suppressed it and held a soulshard up, intending to test whether the box's effects were as Bu Wentian had stated.

Zhang Lie didn't dare to use soulshards that were too powerful. He brought out the superior-grade white-grub soulshard, one that he had kept in his soulspace since the very beginning. It was the first superior-grade soulshard he had obtained after spending three months in the first realm, and it was of particular symbolism to him.

Zhang Lie stuffed the superior-grade white-grub soulshard into the Pandora's Box. After it 'ate' the soulshard, the box turned completely black. Black smoke wafted into the air; the box dashed about madly as though it had eaten some toxic poison or another. Its features distorted as it slowly melted, a portentous change.