Looking at the locks, Lin Wu smirked.

Of course, these locks were nothing for Lin Wu, though he didn't break them right away. Instead, he made a small hole with his tail and peeked into them only to find out that they were filled with treasures!

"Goddamn! There's a lot of stuff here." Lin Wu exclaimed before breaking down the doors.

In total, there were seven such storage rooms here and all of them had mixed items. They were chiefly composed of spirit stones, spirit weapons, spirit tools, talismans, formation plates, spirit herbs and many more things that a cultivator would like.

There were a lot of things that even Lin Wu could use at his current level and stored them away. Though the last room that he went to, Lin Wu left locked. This was the one he was intending to leave for Shirong.

"Gotta leave him something so that he doesn't suspect." Lin Wu stated before getting back out.

Even if Lin Wu had pretty much decided to leave Shirong by now, he wasn't going to let go of him as a pawn. He still had a few uses that might come in handy later, and his clan was another point that was important.

With the increase in Lin Wu's cultivation and skill, he no longer needed to follow his initial plans. The Taiji Celestial's tomb and even the Silver Beak Sky Soar Eagle were impregnation factors that led to this change.

The Taiji Celstial's tomb gave him the baseline to maintain while the journey with the Silver Beak Sky Soar Eagle gave him more opportunities and knowledge that expanded his borders. Lin Wu was sure if he had not become a spear for Shirong, he would not have had opportunities like this.

With all that done, Lin Wu left the underground area and covered the entrance with a large rock.

'If they can come here, then that must mean there is a different way of entry to the ruins. Can't risk someone else coming here and spoiling my set up.' Lin Wu thought to himself.

He also wondered who could be behind the murder of Ji Quan and the other members of his team. The most likely answer was the followers of the Skull god since they were looking for the bloodline crystals of the vermilion bird, but he didn't know for sure.

"Are there other keys for entry to these ruins, perhaps? The stone feathers might be for the most important part of the ruins, the hall with the essence of blood and it also allowed us to access the rest of the parts.

Maybe the Stone feathers were the master key and there are some smaller keys of the lower ranked areas?" Lin Wu muttered to himself.

He moved around looking for things but could not find any more useful items. A lot of the items were either destroyed or the halls that Lin Wu was able to access were empty.

"Hmm… there are clear signs of a human presence here…" Lin Wu said upon seeing the handprints on the walls.

Because of the dust, it was easy to see them.

"But why are there no footprints?" Lin Wu questioned, but then a few seconds later he got the answer himself.

"Ah! Of course, the dust would settle on the ground much easier than the walls. Ji Quan was killed about ten months ago and that should have been enough to cover the floor but not the walls.

Plus, the door of this hall was closed since then, so no new dust could enter this hall either." Lin Wu answered.

Lin Wu decided he was done looking at the left side and then went to the right side of the main hall. This time, he ended up in a slightly different area. The buildings here were far smaller than the ones on the left side and looked to be more of the residential type.

Lin Wu could see what were obviously living courtyards that were arranged in a uniform manner. There were rows upon rows of them, but even these were mostly destroyed. Lin Wu didn't really find anything of particular importance here.

He did end up finding some tattered paintings and scrolls, but they were far too damaged to make out anything. Even the system was helpless here and couldn't gather any reasonable data from the things.

"Hang on, system can you estimate how old these things are, maybe?" Lin Wu questioned.

~Ding~

——

ANALYZING: Please wait a moment

ANALYSIS COMPLETED: Estimated age of documents ~10,511 years

——

"Holy Shit! Now that's old…" Lin Wu said upon seeing the number.

"Wait, a minute… doesn't this coincide with the story of the Three Guardian beasts. They appeared ten thousand years ago and these documents are a little older than that. Even if the age varies by about 500 years, I think it should be the same time period." Lin Wu analyzed.

The more Lin Wu thought about it, the more he found it to be right. But there were still a lot of questions that were left unanswered. He didn't know how or why only three of the Guardian beasts were awakened and why they looked different from the actual guardian beasts that Lin Wu knew off.

'This only gets more and more complex huh… but also interesting at the same time…' Lin Wu thought to himself.

After another hour, Lin Wu was done searching through the right part of the ruins. He had gone all the way to the border of it and even there nothing was present. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that most of what was left was already taken by him.

It had simply been too long that a lot of things had deteriorated and thus not much was left to obtain.

"Can't say I didn't get anything. Even the much is enough…" Lin Wu muttered to himself as he returned to the main hall.

There he saw that the Silver Beak Sky Soar Eagle was still deep in slumber. Unlike before, Lin Wu could not sense any change in her and neither could he probe her body.