Faced with the moral quandary, Sage deferred to Wu Chang. Sage wasn’t the only one to have attained items from the Slavers, Black Saber and Wu Chang had no qualms with taking the initiative in giving things to the condemned criminal. They handed him a sword, and when the man’s energy flowed into it, there was a glint in his eyes. The condemned criminal knew he had no chance, but when a weapon entered his hands the thought entered his mind. Almost immediately, he realized it was futile and at that same instant, Wu Chang snatched the sword away. They could all see the man’s muscles start to quiver, not to attack them, but to turn the blade back upon himself. It was certainly not easy to live with a sword hanging above your head, and the desire to put it all to an end would be fierce.

Wu Chang wasn’t about to let the man commit suicide, so the sword was taken away. He also stared into the criminal’s eyes, “Not yet.”

The two gazed at each other for a moment and then the criminal nodded. Holding out his hand for the next item. Wu Chang had him check a half dozen objects, and then Black Saber did the same. Nothing unusual happened until the last item that Black Saber passed to him. At that point, the condemned man started to glow like a torch. His skin emitted a brilliant yellow light, almost too bright to look at from up close. It slowly strobed, rising and lowering in intensity at a decent pace and also shooting light upwards.

“Flare trap. It’s not very dangerous, but it’s pretty hard to hide when you’re lit up like that for a week. Pretty common on valuable storage treasures that aren’t rings.”

The item in question was a bracelet, which made it much easier for a thief to steal in comparison to a tightly worn ring. The bright light was intended to make them easy to track down. As soon as the thief tried to check their ill gotten gains, they’d be a glaringly obvious target, strobing and firing light into the sky. Given the annoying strobing and bright light, anyone nearby would be able to point out the criminal. It was far from foolproof, but it was pretty useful against petty criminals. Not many can resist checking a storage treasure till they are somewhere hidden, and can then stay in hiding for a week afterwards.

Black Saber spoke calmly and took the bracelet back from the criminal. Then he examined it and shot his Qi into it in a few spots, “Now it is disabled. Before these traps trigger, they’re extremely difficult to find, but after they go off they leave traces.”

Wu Chang was impressed and amazed, he had no idea Black Saber was so knowledgeable. Sage smiled and ruined the mystique, “It’s no wonder he’s an expert. He used to run a huge gang of bandits.”

Black Saber didn’t say anything else, just stepping back and motioning for Sage to take over. Sage handed the little bone necklace with a golden inlay to the criminal. He’d tested this one and it seemed like it had some sort of tracking trap. He wasn’t sure what the Storage Ring would do, but it looked dangerous so he saved it for last. The man in chains took the unusual looking bone and looked at it for a few seconds before sending his Qi inside. With terrifying speed, the three other men in the chamber felt a deadly force blossom into life.

Without even looking at each other, they darted back out of the room and slammed the door shut. They could see the room through a slot on the door, and they saw the criminal rise to his feet. The chains began to clank as he walked towards the door, “Where are you guys going? This thing didn’t even do anything. Am I done, when do I move?”

Wu Chang and Black Saber went silent, but Sage answered, “Just stay right there. We’ll move you to another cell very soon.”

“That’s a steaming pile of a lie if I ever heard one. You three just wanted to use me and now that you’re done you just want to make me suffer more. Hah, the jokes on you. This father here has a will of iron. Torture me all you want, mentally or physically, but you can’t break my will.”

“How do you feel right now? Do you feel any pain?”

“What? I feel fine, what are you talking about? Wait… why is it getting dark, what did you...”

The man’s voice cut off at that moment. A Formation Array sprang to life outside the cell and the three men outside watched the events inside the cage with wide eyes. None of them had ever seen anything like that before.

Almost immediately after that dark energy sprang to life, they had fled the cage. When they turned around the condemned criminal’s skin had already started to bubble up in some places and melt away in others like it transformed into wax. Before the man had taken a step forward all of his skin had already sloughed off, pouring off of him like melted butter. It was like he’d been instantly flayed and his muscles were completely exposed. Then those bundles of muscle fibers started to unravel, like many braided ropes slowly being sawn through, they split, snapped, and fell from him like hair at a barber shop. By the time he’d taken his third step, the condemned criminal had become little more than a skeleton. The last layers of flesh had fallen away and his organs were exposed. Each of them started to melt just as the rest of him had. The man was still talking, his eyes melted away and then his tongue was completely gone. A disgusting ooze dripped from the skull.

“What happened? Why is everything so dim? Why can’t I move?”

The three of them felt a voice. It wasn’t spoken through sound, but through the energy around them. Their Spiritual Senses were quite sensitive after becoming Core Formation cultivators, such that they could feel the vibrations of energy to the same detail as one could hear sound in the air. The skeleton of the man slowly crumpled to the ground and they saw in front of them the faintly illuminated outline of a spirit. The soul of the criminal was floating there motionless in front of them. They could hear his confused speech for a few seconds before the soul slowly faded away.

Upon death, a human soul would fade away. It left this world without a body to protect and nourish it. Cultivators that reached the fifth rank would build a core and house their soul within it. As long as the core remained unharmed even terrifyingly grievous injuries wouldn’t kill the cultivator. According to what he learned, those who reach rank 6 form a Nascent Soul. The soul isn’t just housed in the core, they become one and the same. Even if the body was completely and utterly destroyed without a speck of dust remaining, they could still continue to live on as an energy body.

The pile of bones fell to the floor, but the little bone necklace was still floating in mid-air. It was the source of that terrible energy. When the soul of the criminal finally faded away completely the energy coming from the bone slowly faded away as well. Then it gently fell to the ground with a clatter. All three of them could now feel that the deadly power wasn’t gone, it was still contained within that little bone.

“Okay, nobody touch that thing.”