While Lin Mu was doing all this, the Brown Shrubby Forest Cat was lying in the grass and was basking in the warm sunlight while taking a nap. It had long since fallen asleep and did not notice Lin Mu do all this.
Lin Mu opened his eyes after recuperating his spirit qi to the full and looked at the skeleton. No physical change could be observed on the skeleton, and it seemed to be the same as before. Lin Mu extended his spirit sense and probed it, facing no repulsion like before it easily touched the skeleton.
Upon finally touching the skeleton, Lin Mu could not find anything peculiar on it.
"That was… a bit underwhelming, after all that." Lin Mu uttered as a sigh escaped his mouth.
"It is safe to touch now. There are no remnants of a soul on the skeleton. If there were, you would have felt them there." Xukong spoke up.
Lin Mu nodded in response before a question popped up in his mind.
"But Senior, what was that repulsion I felt?" Lin Mu questioned.
"That was the final layer of protection that was left on the skeleton of the cultivator. Usually, when a nascent soul realm cultivator dies, their remaining spirit qi would accumulate onto their skeleton due to its characteristics.
This ends up forming the repulsive layer that you felt before. It is a kind of precaution that prevents the remains from being disrespected. But this also ends up preserving the remains, as you can see. Although the flesh may wither away, the bones will stay on." Xukong answered.
Lin Mu was listened on with interest and felt amazed by this new tidbit of information. He then pushed these thoughts aside as he now needed to check what was actually left on the skeleton.
Lin Mu brushed the soil away and revealed the ring that was hidden beneath.
On the index finger of the right hand of the skeleton, a plain golden ring was left. It was loosely hanging on the finger as there was no flesh left on it. At the top of the ring, a square surface was formed on which a green gem laid.
As soon as Lin Mu saw it, only one thing appeared in his mind.
"Is that a spatial storage ring?!" Lin Mu exclaimed.
Lin Mu probed the ring with his spirit sense and confirmed his assumption, it was indeed a spatial storage ring.
But a moment later, Lin Mu's brows furrowed as he sensed something else.
"There are barely any spatial fluctuations coming from it, is this normal Senior?" Lin Mu asked as he pulled the ring off of the skeleton's finger.
"No, this ring is damaged and those items that you found before were probably kept in this ring. They were probably ejected out after the ring was damaged." Xukong answered.
"But don't the injects stored in a spatial treasure get lost in the void if they are broken?" Lin Mu questioned.
"Not always. There are certain modifications that can be made so that the objects in a ring are not lost in the void and are instead ejected out. Though most cultivators prefer having the ability to destroy their spatial treasure so that others cannot obtain its contents.
Usually, a modification such as this is only done for specific purposes, as it is rather difficult and expensive to make. Also, it is impossible for any spirit tool refiner below the immortal Ascension stage to make it." Xukong answered.
"But then Senior, doesn't this mean…" Lin Mu replied before he was interrupted.
"Yes, it is from a higher world and similarly this skeleton also belongs to a cultivator that came from a higher leveled world. This also makes sense as the Dual Circe Ascension Vine is rare in worlds such as this. It is likely that it grew from a seed that the cultivator was carrying, which was ejected upon the spatial storage ring being damaged.
The other objects such as the peak grade spirit stones and the stone badge were also ejected along with it, after which the seed sprouted and took support from the peak grade spirit stones." Xukong hypothesized.
Lin Mu was lost in his thoughts after hearing Senior Xukong's words as things started linking up in his mind. He silently thought for a few minutes before coming up with a theory of his own.
"Senior… considering all the events that have happened till now, the beast storage treasure, the invader, and now this; they all seem to be linked. Is it possible that this cultivator is the source behind all of them?" Lin Mu said in a serious tone.
Xukong did not immediately reply to Lin Mu and did an analysis of his own before responding.
"I think that you are right. But… this brings us to a rather grave question; there is no chance that this cultivator died naturally, there was certainly something that killed him. It was definitely not a beast, as any beast strong enough to kill a nascent soul realm cultivator would have been able to easily eat it whole.
It does not seem like the cultivator suffered from any qi deviation of even a tribulation, otherwise there would certainly be signs present on the skeleton.
This leaves only one option, another cultivator killed him." Xukong replied.
Lin Mu realized the graveness of Senior Xukong's words and wondered who could be the likely culprit.
"Hmm, if the cultivator was able to kill this man easily then they would have definitely taken his spatial treasure right? They would have left it behind like this. Also, there doesn't seem to be any damage to the bones which could mean that the cultivator wasn't attacked from by any kind of overwhelming power, rather by someone who was at the same strength level as him." Lin Mu thought out loud.
"That's a possibility. The two cultivators probably battled and both must have sustained injuries otherwise the spoils of the battle would have surely berm taken by the victor. This narrows down the list of suspects to all the nascent soul realm cultivators that have been recently injured. The most obvious suspect would be someone from a cultivation sect." Xukong added.
