Dragon's Origin

With just that one move, the Great Elder lost all his previous confidence and composure. His body hunched over, he held out the torch, opened his eyes wide, and diligently searched for the names of the scrolls that met his standards.

After looking through three or four compartments, even the Great Elder of the Shi family had to admire Old Daoist Lingxu. Although he sorted the scrolls quickly, he clearly put a lot of thought into it. Each pile contained pill formulas, formation techniques, scrolls recording poems and odes, and even a ledger in one of the compartments.

Heaven knows how a ledger ended up among these priceless treasures. Perhaps the ancestors of the two families had simply gathered a bunch of items without taking the time to sort them before sending them in.

If that's the case, then perhaps their previous assumptions about the good stuff being inside and the lesser items being outside would be overturned. If they didn't even have time to sort out the ledgers, how could they carefully select which were good cultivation methods and which were inferior combat skills?

The Shi family's Great Elder didn't dare to waste any more time. He quickly glanced at each compartment, really just skimming through them. With two hundred compartments and only fifteen minutes in total—nine hundred seconds—he had less than five seconds for each compartment. And that didn't even account for the time spent moving around. It was truly a race against the clock!

Knowing this, the Great Elder could only scan them quickly, not daring to look closely at the names, only checking if there were the two characters he remembered. Fortunately, the characters from five hundred years ago were basically the same as now. They weren't in regular script, but he could still understand them.

At first, he was half-bowed, but later he simply squatted down. The people outside only saw the Shi family's Great Elder practically crawling on the ground, moving along the edges of the compartments. People with good eyesight like Wang Sheng could already see the sweat on the Great Elder's head.

Even with such movements, five seconds wasn't enough time to read through the scrolls in each compartment. Not everyone had Wang Sheng's ability to almost memorize everything at a glance. It was already good that the Shi family's Great Elder could quickly scan the names of the scrolls in a compartment in ten seconds.

Time flew by. More than half of the half-incense stick's time had passed, and there was only a short section left—about a minute. The Shi family's Great Elder was soaked in sweat from head to toe. Even the extreme cold here couldn't stop a single drop of sweat from escaping.

Finally, in the next compartment, the Great Elder caught sight of a name written on a scroll at a glance. He saw the name he was expecting—"Phoenix Flight Heart Sutra." The characters for "phoenix" and "flight" were exactly what he remembered. Since it was called a "heart sutra," it must be a cultivation method. This was it!

The Nascent Soul of that supreme expert from the Lin family had the character "phoenix" in it. This Phoenix Flight Heart Sutra was definitely related to that supreme expert. Thank heavens, he actually found it!

At that moment, the Shi family's Great Elder almost collapsed from exhaustion. He finally understood his current situation and quickly spread out the animal skin that Wang Sheng had given him. He carefully placed the Phoenix Flight Heart Sutra scroll on the animal skin first, and then began to move the rest of the scrolls onto the animal skin one by one.

The outside had already stopped timing. It was only a little bit away from the time limit. It was truly extremely dangerous. When the Great Elder slowly walked out of the compartment area with the animal skin on his back, he felt like he was floating. But he was ecstatic in his heart, yet he didn't dare to show it too much. He could only try to maintain a calm expression and slowly walk out.

It wasn't until he brought all the scrolls out and stored them in the storage ring on his body that the Great Elder finally breathed a sigh of relief. He had finally secured them.

"Start timing!" Grand Elder Gan also held up a torch and began to walk towards the compartment area. Wang Sheng also shouted, and the same three sticks of incense were lit to time Grand Elder Gan.

Like the Shi family, the first to go was definitely the Grand Elder himself. However, compared to Grand Elder Shi's state of being soaked in sweat, Grand Elder Gan seemed slightly more composed.

From Grand Elder Shi's performance, Grand Elder Gan knew that it was definitely impossible to see everything within the specified time. Therefore, it was still best to prioritize a group from those that he could possibly finish seeing. Grand Elder Shi's situation was obviously that he knew a little bit of inside information, otherwise he wouldn't have been willing to exchange 100 million gold coins for a first-mover advantage.

Grand Elder Shi's state just now seemed to have found what he wanted to find. This was not good news for Grand Elder Gan. However, Grand Elder Gan was not that anxious. Even if Grand Elder Shi found the cultivation method of the supreme expert back then, what could he do? Could he still find a phoenix Nascent Soul to cultivate?

This was the fundamental reason for Grand Elder Gan's composure. Since the Gan family could not replicate the success of the Lin family's supreme expert, then why bother to grab that first opportunity?

Someone over there reminded him of the time. When there was still a short time left, Grand Elder Gan recalled the compartments he had seen, and then chose the one he thought was the most valuable, piled it on the animal skin, and transported it out.

Next, it was the Shi family's turn. It was still the Grand Elder himself, but this time he was much more composed. The biggest peach had already been picked, so there was no need to worry about anything else. He slowly looked around from another direction, trying to remember as much as possible, and then selected from it.

There were more than ten consecutive times when it was Grand Elder Shi and Grand Elder Gan themselves. Everyone had the same idea, they would first determine the approximate range, and then instruct their own experts to go in.

When it was finally not the Grand Elder himself who went in, the two Grand Elders actually began to tell their own experts the approximate area before they went in, and let them choose in that area. After all, what they saw was not complete, and there might be omissions. If their own experts could find omissions, they would bring out the selected ones. If they couldn't find any omissions, they would bring out the scrolls according to their own understanding or the Grand Elder's instructions.

Both families were very orderly, very disciplined, and no one pretended to fall or anything. Wang Sheng had already said this in advance, and no one dared to directly provoke Wang Sheng's rules at this time.

As the number of compartments inside decreased, the two families selected more and more carefully. Fewer compartments meant that they could have more time to look carefully and think carefully, and no one wanted to easily waste the opportunity to go in. Every expert who went in would drag the time to the end.

This kind of selection was a torment for both sides, and even made everyone unable to pay attention to anything else. When they were hungry or thirsty, they would eat and drink something hastily, and all their energy was focused on this side.

Each compartment took about a total of twenty minutes, and after all the items in the one hundred and fifty compartments were selected, everyone realized that unknowingly more than fifty hours had passed, and more than two days had quietly passed outside.