Chapter 196: Beast Cores.

"And what is this?" Haru asked as he looked down at the small bag in confusion. He wasn't sure what to think of it.

"Do I have to tell you everything? How about you take a look inside for yourself. You will know what it is when you see it." Li Jun said in reply before rubbing his hand down the side of the stone wall while trying to sense the dragon's corpse. But it was no good. Although he had a dragon bloodline he couldn't tell where the body was. It would call for the help of an actual dragon to find it.

Haru looked down at the bag while Li Jun thought of what to do. He opened it to see a dark void. Even the light from Kun's flame couldn't illuminate the inside of the bag to show him the contents within it. 'Okay? This is a little strange.' Haru thought before sticking his hand inside.

As he reached down into the small bag, he felt nothing. It was almost like the bag was filled with space but the strangest thing was that he couldn't feel the inside of the bag. He tried to touch the sides of it to make sure that he didn't miss anything but it was no use.

"Is this a universe bag!?" Haru asked. A universe bag was like a storage ring in the sense that they both had an array to store items. But a storage ring used the wearer's Qi to activate it. A universe bag supported itself and could store much more than a storage ring.

He then put his hand in deeper until nearly his whole arm was inside the bag that was no bigger than the palm of his hands. It looked funny from the outside but there wasn't anyone yo judge him for it. And he also wanted to know what was stored inside so he continued putting his arm in deeper until he felt something cool contact the tip of his fingers.

He put his arm in a little deeper until his hand was covered in what felt like hundreds of tiny pebbles. They were both smooth and cold to the touch but as he grabbed a handful and pulled his hand back out he realised what they were.

He pulled out his hand while clutching what he thought to just to be a handful of pebbles but the bright blue colour and slight glow to his hand showed him otherwise. His hand was filled with beast cores.

What he previously thought to be a rare item was now abundant to him within a few minutes of entering this cave. He had only seen two in his life but now he was holding at least ten of them at once and there were likely much more within the bag.

Just as he was about to ask Li Jun about them he blurted out.

"You sense It already? Which tunnel should we take?" He responded to Lao whose voice had been echoing throughout the cave without Haru even realising before. He was too interested in his bag of beast cores to notice.

As he looked over at Li Jun he noticed a little green glowing orb that was about the same size as a baseball. 'What is that thing?' He asked himself. He didn't see him take anything else from the skeleton.

"The very right tunnel. Wait, no… Not the tunnel. The wall behind the tunnel. It's behind there." Lao's voice echoed throughout the tight tunnel once again but this time Haru located the source of the voice and it seemed to be coming from the green orb.

"Lao?" Haru asked before leaning toward the orb and inspecting it for a few moments.

"If you don't move your face away from me I will use your body to open a hole in that wall," Lao responded as Haru's face got uncomfortably close to the little orb.

"Sorry sorry…" Haru said and then took a step back while Li Jun walked over to the wall that Lao had directed him to and pressed his ear against it.

"Is this your soul or something?" Haru asked Lao as after four years of knowing him he had never seen anything like this. He knew that his soul was bound to the dragon emperor's ring but he didn't think that he would be able to come outside at will.

"My soul!? Don't make me laugh boy. This is my eye." Lao responded with a chuckle.

"Your eye?" Haru asked again. How could a glowing ball of light be an eye? But it wasn't like Lao to make jokes.

"Well, it's not my eye… It's the eye of a flood dragon Li Jun killed for me. He was trying to get me a body too at one point but the body was too badly damaged for me to use so he just took the eye. I am using this to see. I can sense things that happen around to a great degree but I can't see anything that goes on out here. I forgot what the outside world looks like.

It's quite detailed. I can almost feel the coarseness of the rock… It almost makes me miss living. I hope this body will be in good enough condition to contain my power." Lao said in a tone like he had been through a similar situation many times before. He didn't even seem excited that he had the chance to have a body again.

Haru wasn't quite sure how long Lao had been trapped inside the ring but it was probably at least an eternity. Before Li Jun met him he had been trapped in the ring for thousands of years and that was a couple of thousand years before Haru was even born.

The ability to live for thousands of years remained a pipe dream for Haru but he hoped that just maybe he would eventually gain the power to do so.

"Hm… It seems like this is the centre of the volcano. Haru come here and help me!" Li Jun called for Haru as his ear was still pressed to the wall of the cave.

"What is it?" Haru stopped his daydreaming and ran over to where Li Jun was standing.

"Break this wall. The dragon's body should be through here." Li Jun said and then took a step back away.

"Break the wall? Are you sure? Lava isn't going to rush through the hole I create and burn me is it?" Haru joked but then turned back to see the look of confusion on Li Jun's face which worried him.

"Probably not… I didn't hear any flowing lava nearby. It sounded quite far away." Li Jun said while scratching the back of his head indicating that he wasn't quite sure.

"Well if that isn't the most reassuring thing I have ever heard, I don't know what is." Haru expressed sarcastically before walking over to the wall and preparing to break it.

He gathered Qi in his hand. Blue light swirled around his fist, creating a vortex of air that spiralled around each one of his knuckles. He looked at the surface of the wall and estimated that he would probably need to use around sixty per cent of his strength to break it.

He carefully measured the amount of Qi he was releasing from his fist while trying his hardest to not make his punch so hard that it would cause the cave to fall in on them. He got to the point where he was happy with the power he was going to use and then struck the stone as hard as he could.

A sound similar to that of a pickaxe striking the inside of a mineshaft bounced around the cave as a large portion of the rock split from the wall and slid down to the ground.

The rock that chipped off from the wall was about the same size as a human but apart from the obvious missing chunk, the wall was still standing perfectly fine.

"Put your back into it. This is a volcano with enough energy to kill an ancestral dragon. Do you think you will be able to break through a wall with a single punch? At this rate, we will be here all week." Li Jun mocked Haru from the sidelines as he made him do the hard work of getting them to the body.

"What is this cave made out of!?" Haru yelled as he looked down at his hand that had a slightly red discolouration to the skin. He had managed to bruise himself from the hardness of the rock.

He then repeated the same steps of gathering Qi within his hand before striking the wall again. And again. And again and again. Each time adding more and more strength to his punches as he slowly shaved off bits of the stone.

He continued for what felt like hours until his arms felt tired. And just as he was about to give up he gave a final punch before blistering heat ran in through a tiny crack in the wall. It was unlike anything he had felt before.

This heat seemed so hot that Kun's powers wouldn't even be able to control it.

"Well done! You finally did it. I thought I was going to sleep." Li Jun said with a yawn.

Haru turned back to look at him but as he did he noticed that he was standing at least thirty metres away from Lao and Li Jun.

"Didn't you say I was supposed to break through the wall?" Haru asked.

"Yeah. And you did it. Let's keep moving." Li Jun said as both him and Lao approached the wall Haru had just opened a tiny hole into.

"A wall?! I ended up tunnelling through half of the mountain!" Haru shouted in outrage as the muscles in his arms felt like they were about to drop off. He had almost exhausted his Qi with the amount of time he had to hit the wall with his full strength and his knuckles were all black.

"That's your fault for not being strong enough." Li Jun said and then put his index finger on the wall. As soon as his finger made contact with the stone it crumbled revealing the red glow from within the centre of the volcano. He smiled gleefully before turning back to Haru whose face was cast in shadow.