Boundless Cultivation-Chapter 76 - Treasures and Secrets
Alaric always knew the risks associated with sneaking into the inner halls and inspecting the sealed chamber. He was caught but he wasn’t afraid in the slightest. The king was smart — he wouldn’t attempt to kill or sever ties with Alaric if he wanted the key fragments.
The most he would do would be to completely restrict his access to the inner halls with an ultimatum. However, Alaric had already discovered what he wanted — a way to unlock the chamber.
“My friend, I’m so disappointed in you,” said Alaric with a sad expression as he traced his fingers on the surface of the stone door. “You say you have nothing to hide, and yet,” he locked eyes with the king, “Why do I feel you’ve hidden an embarrassing secret inside this sealed chamber?”
Anu-Khepra-Ra furrowed his brow. By the looks of it, he expected Alaric to cower in fear at being caught red-handed, not question him instead.
After pondering for a moment, the king responded with a chuckle. “Ha ha ha, it is exactly as you say,” his gaze grew distant, “Indeed, what’s inside would be humiliating for me to reveal - even to a friend.”
The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Alaric, but he didn’t interrupt the king. “So forgive my rudeness for preventing you from accessing this sealed chamber”. The king closed his statement with a smirk.
“Ahh...and here I thought I’d finally discovered a way to defeat you,” Alaric said, narrowing his eyes.
A sliver of anger crossed the king’s face just for a moment, before he relaxed. The artificial smile never left his face. “And, if that is so, what makes you think I'll let you leave here alive?”
“You wound me,” Alaric clutched his chest, feigning heartbreak. “And, here I put so much effort into fulfilling your request,” Alaric grinned, locking eyes with Anu-Khepra-Ra. “Does the promise of an ancient Pharaoh hold no meaning here?”
The king’s eyes sparkled. “Wait, what?” He leaned closer, putting his weight on his precious scepter. “Am I hearing this right? Did you finally recover all the key fragments?”
Alaric nodded as he retrieved all the scarabs and showed them to the king. Anu-Khepra-Ra’s mad laughter echoed through the halls. He clapped Alaric on the back and continued. “Marvellous. You’ve truly outdone yourself.”
Alaric handed over the key fragments to the king, who began inspecting them. “A promise is a promise,” Anu-Khepra-Ra smirked as he locked eyes with him. “You will receive half of my treasure. Now come.”
The king beckoned him to follow and Alaric obliged, eager to learn the location of the treasure and its contents. Even after exploring the pyramid for so long, he hadn’t discovered any central treasury.
But he was most eager to witness how the ensuing events would unfold. He had no doubt the king would keep his word - he was a ghost of honor. However, experience had taught him that promises could be interpreted differently, and not all gifts were beneficial.
This chapt𝙚r is updated by freeωebnovēl.c૦m.
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Alaric and Anu-Khepra-Ra arrived at the great hall, which loomed as majestic as ever with its towering pillars and vaulted ceilings. Only, it was completely devoid of any other ghosts. The king casually strode over to his throne and took his seat while Alaric paused a few feet away.
Tapping his scepter on the stone floor, the king commanded, “Come, you must be itching to find out all the secrets.” The throne groaned as it slowly rotated, releasing small dust clouds from beneath and sank into the ground.
Alaric activated [Mana Pulse], carefully noting all the changes unfolding in the surrounding. The floor of the majestic chamber split apart, following the throne’s descent, revealing a hidden stairway that led somewhere below into the dark.
Torches flickered to life along the walls of the stairway as he descended. The king had waited for him, facing an enormous stone door lined with ancient hieroglyphs. So, that’s the chamber that holds the treasure?
“Now, brace yourself, you are about to witness,” the king placed his palm over an indent on the stone surface of the door and muttered something under his breath. “All I’ve accumulated in my lifetime.” The stone door cracked open with a groan, revealing a massive hall - the grand treasure chamber.
Hmm…why didn’t he utilize any of the key fragments? The king stepped into the treasure chamber, and he followed, scanning everything with his [Mana Pulse] skill.
Mountains of precious stones and metals—ornate chests overflowing with gold coins, bars, and jewelry — lay abandoned, collecting dust for centuries. War crowns and weapons of defeated kings and emperors and other trophies claimed in battle, adorned the walls.
Ancient war machines—golden chariots, ballistae, siege weapons, and otherworldly constructions — occupied a massive portion of the treasury.
Ancient artworks featuring mind-boggling depictions of gods and conquest were on careful display. Mummified bodies of powerful beasts - basilisks, jackals, humongous serpents were carefully preserved to the side.
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In a far corner, remnants of ancient cultivation treasures — gold-trimmed cultivation manuals and mystical resources — were locked away in fortified showcases. By all standards, this was a treasure befitting a king.
And, yet, Alaric felt a hollowness to it all - like they didn’t have any weight. They were not real, mere illusions, the same as everything else inside this pyramid. Besides, what will he do with all these? He had no real use for them.
“You look disappointed, my friend,” the king remarked as he sneaked a glance at him.
Alaric shook his head, “Not at all. This is magnificent.” He let out a sigh, “Although I expected something more.”
Anu-Khepra-Ra wasn’t offended in the slightest. Instead, he laughed out loud and replied, “Of course, this is nothing.” He gestured at the piles of treasure that lay strewn across the chamber.
“I’ll show you what’s really valuable,” the king beckoned Alaric to follow to the center of the chamber where a massive obsidian cube rested. “This is my life’s work,” he declared as he turned around to face Alaric.
The obsidian cube was as large as a room, etched with simply white lines. For some reason, an uncanny feeling of wrongness gripped his heart. The king removed his golden sun disk crown and fitted it into a slot on the cube.
The king opened his grip, revealing the four key fragments as four additional scarab-shaped slots emerged around the crown. The key fragments shot toward each of their respective slots, fuelled by some mystic energy, and settled in.
A moment later, a low hum ripped through the air as the white lines on the cube flashed in the colors of the rainbow. Then, a section of the cube split apart to reveal an opening inside it - a door. Alaric followed the king inside the icy-cold chamber filled with white mist.
What he witnessed inside took his breath away. Elevated on a black stone platform rested a construct that resonated with otherworldly power - something that couldn’t be comprehended.
A series of five golden discs hovered in the air, stacked atop one another, connected by an intricate network of thin threads of some unknown material. The web of wires dangled at the base of the construct, encompassing a crystalline, triangle-shaped object that pulsed with mystical energy.
The top of the construct connected to large, cylindrical tubes the size of his forearms, which vanished into the darkness above. He sensed the triangular object feeding power through the web of wires, which coursed through the cylindrical tubes and vanished somewhere above.
What in the heavens is that? Alaric had witnessed many wonders in life, but nothing like what lay before him.
“When I said I knew everything under the sun, I wasn’t exaggerating,” the king smirked. “That construct is an advanced machine,” he motioned toward it, “—a miniature replica of the system. Crafted by yours truly.”
Seeing Alaric’s stunned expression, the king launched into his story. Unfortunately, most of what he disclosed was censored by the system. But Alaric could still read between the lines and grasp the crux of the matter.
The Pharaoh had unearthed the system’s true nature and its origin. Using his knowledge and resources, he had managed to engineer a miniature replica of the system.
The system didn’t appreciate that - even though the duplicate was far less powerful, not even remotely comparable. Powerful as the king was, he couldn’t really rival the might of the system.
Still, leveraging the power of this replica, Anu-Khepra-Ra was able to avoid the wrath of the system for fourteen days and nights.
Impressed by his intellect, power, and perseverance, the system offered him a choice instead of outright killing him and destroying his treasures - the opportunity to serve under it. The king wasn’t afraid of death, but he couldn’t bear to witness his life’s achievement destroyed.
And so, he had accepted the system’s contract - only at that time, he hadn’t realized that the contract would bind him under a lifetime of servitude. An unimaginable curse for a king.
Ever since then, he had played the role of the boss of The Howling Expanse. No wonder the king was pissed at the system — for fooling him, mocking him, and imprisoning him in a cage for all eternity with no escape… or was it?
Alaric didn’t miss the fact that Anu-Khepra-Ra had conveniently decided to gloss over many important details such as the conditions of the contract. In fact, his sixth sense told him that the king was hiding much more information than he was letting on.
Not that he could really blame him. The system actively censored the king, and nobody in their right mind would disclose all their secrets to an enemy.
The king allowed Alaric to digest the information for a moment while he silently approached the complex construct and fiddled with a few attachments. Alaric narrowed his eyes as he activated [Zen Flow] and [Mana Empowerment].
It looks like playtime is over! Now it’s time for the real show to begin.
He channeled every drop of energy to his limbs, ready to escape at a moment’s notice. Alaric wasn’t delusional. There was no chance to defeat the king inside this chamber.
“Ooh, somebody is nervous,” Anu-Khepra-Ra snickered as he finished doing whatever he had been configuring. A blast of blue light erupted from the machine and pierced the darkness above it, steadily rupturing a hole in the air.
Is that energy beam tearing a hole through this dimension into our world?
That fleeting moment of astonishment cost Alaric his focus. He failed to evade the vicious, slithering tubes that jabbed at his spine and latched onto his back.
His body seized, and pain assaulted his senses. The parasitic tubes drained his blood, funneling it somewhere beneath the ground.
“Oh, don’t glare at me like that,” said the king. “I’m a man of my word and always keep my promises.”
Alaric struggled to keep his senses active. The parasitic tubes dug into his flesh the harder he tried to move. So, instead of writhing, he decided to listen to the king carry on with his speech.
“All of this,” Anu-Khepra-Ra gestured at the machine and the mountains of treasures, “means nothing to me,” he spat. “The real treasure is freedom from this accursed existence where I’m neither truly alive, nor entirely dead. The real treasure is new life, a fresh existence in a new world.”
The king twirled, laughing like a madman. “Oh, I waited so long for somebody like you,” he jabbed a finger at Alaric. “Somebody who could disprove the system and be foolish enough to collect the key fragments for me.”
Now, everything made sense. The system had dangled a carrot, offering the Pharaoh an opportunity to escape his life of servitude. The king took the bet, forever attempting to manipulate naive cultivators into doing his bidding.
Or so you think. Alaric remained silent, preparing a concentrated mana-scrambling wave.
“Life and death — both sides of the same coin,” the king continued. “And as promised, you shall receive half of my spoils — I claim life and deliver death unto you.”
