Upon pulling out the object, Lin Mu found it to be a crystal. It was about the size of a finger and was dull grey in color.
"A peak grade spirit stone?" Xukong muttered.
"What! This is... a peak grade spirit stone?" Lin Mu exclaimed.
"It is indeed. But it has been depleted." Xukong replied.
Lin Mu couldn’t begin to imagine how a peak grade spirit stone would end up here, albeit a depleted one. The highest grade spirit stone he had seen until now was a defective mid grade spirit stone that he had previously used.
Lin Mu was now extremely curious, thus he searched the ground with his spirit sense carefully. This turned out to be effective as he detected more things hidden in the ground.
"Senior, there is more stuff buried here." Lin Mu said with excitement.
"Dig it out then," Xukong replied.
Lin Mu immediately started digging and soon unearthed a few objects that were buried in the ground. There were about three more depleted peak grade spirit stones that were buried in the ground, and on these spirit stones, the roots of the Dual Circle Ascension Vine were wrapped.
"This makes sense. No wonder the Dual Circle Ascension Vine was able to grow in an environment . It has been absorbing the spirit qi from these Peak grade spirit stones." Xukong explained.
Lin Mu picked one of the depleted peak grade spirit stones out of which led to the roots of the Dual Circle Ascension Vine that were wrapped around it to break. The instant those roots broke the Dual Circle Ascension Vine started withering.
"Senior, what’s happening?" Lin Mu questioned in a shocked tone.
"It is as I said before, the Dual Circle Ascension Vine cannot be moved from its position once it has grown. Not to mention it has lost its only source of sustenance that was the peak grade spirit stones. The tree it was parasitizing is not sufficient to sustain it either.
It seems like it was barely holding on after growing all these Dual Circle Ascension fruits and this was the last straw." Xukong answered.
Lin Mu watched as the Dual Circle Ascension Vine withered and its leaves turned yellow before falling to the ground. The vines that were wrapped around the trunk of the tree too crumbled and the Dual Circle Ascension Vine was no more.
"At least I was able to get the Dual Circle Ascension fruits." Lin Mu said in a helpless voice.
"The Dual Circle Ascension Vine was a lost cause already. No need to worry about it." Xukong stated.
"I understand, Senior." Lin Mu replied before turning to the other objects that were buried in the ground.
Along with the three depleted Peak grade spirit stones, there seemed to be a cloth of some kind buried. Lin Mu pulled it out and looked at it. The cloth was actually a pouch of some kind that was torn in the middle.
"This is rather high quality," Lin Mu said as he felt the texture of the torn pouch.
He put it aside for the time being as he then dug the next object from the ground. This object looked like a circular flat stone that had some strange characters engraved on it. Lin Mu couldn’t read the characters, thus decided to show it to Senior Xukong.
"Hmm, these characters are written in the script of a different world. Not only that, it seems to have an identification formation placed on it, though it looks like it has been damaged as well." Xukong stated.
Lin Mu curiously looked at the Stone and tried to probe it with his spirit sense, but was unable to observe the formation that was placed in it.
"You won’t be able to read the formation this way. It is a special identification formation that can only be read using the counter formation for it, similar to a lock and key. Such kinds of formations are rather unusual and are used for identification badges, but only for secretive organizations.
It is unusual for them to be used by anyone else, as it means that they would rather have it destroyed than others discovering this stone badge." Xukong explained.
Xukong was now quite curious as well and did not know how such a thing could turn up in a world such as this. He had heard about organizations that would use such kinds of identity formations, but nearly all of them were dangerous.
While looking at the stone badge, Lin Mu’s eyes spotted a small white pointed object sticking out from the ground. He had already known that it was the last object that was rather big. It was also the one that his spirit sense was not able to recognize easily as the object seemed to be repelling it.
The repulsion was so strong that Lin Mu could not even tell the shape of the object.
Lin Mu did not dare to dig this out directly with his hand and instead decided to use a stick to do so. Since he couldn’t sense the object properly, he couldn’t tell for sure if it had any traps placed on it, thus he was extra careful and did not want a repeat of before.
But just a second after he prodded the white point, he saw what it was and became extremely shocked.
"A bone!" Lin Mu exclaimed.
He then carefully dug the soil around the bone, slowly expanding the dig area. Eventually, he ended up excavating an entire skeleton.
"What the! How did this skeleton end up here?" Lin Mu wondered.
"Careful, step back! It’s not just any skeleton, rather it’s the skeleton of a nascent soul realm cultivator, it could have a remnant of a soul on it." Xukong warned.
Lin Mu immediately took a few steps back as he contemplated on the revelation.
Lin Mu had learned about the Nascent soul realm from Senior Xukong before, but it was only some surface level information, thus he did not know what Senior Xukong was talking about.
"What do you mean Senior?"