One light-year away.
Zhi'er looked just like a beggar.
However, now that his power was no longer suppressed, mere superficial injuries had no effect on him whatsoever.
He cradled a red pot in his hands, wild ecstasy written across his face as he muttered to himself, "Helick, oh Helick, so what if you plotted and schemed to the utmost?"
Although Helick's Great Trove had differed somewhat from what he had imagined, in the end, he had still obtained the treasure he had dreamed of.
This Infinite Pot was arguably even more perfect than he had envisioned. Once he refined it, he would stand invincible. Even against Yu Xian—who had previously struck terror into his heart—he felt he could hold his own once more.
The sky had cleared, the rain had stopped.
Zhi'er felt he could stand tall again.
Clutching the Infinite Pot, he finally couldn't help throwing his head back in raucous laughter. His body then dissolved into primordial water and swiftly slipped into the Infinite Pot.
...
A few days flashed by in the blink of an eye.
Yu Xian and the others had been searching for storage gear the entire time, but an esteemed figure like Feng Laixian had probably disdained nesting storage rings inside storage rings. After scouring several islands, the group had come up completely empty-handed.
Yu Xian, however, had managed to swap out a few items, though he wasn't really sure whether the new tools he kept were actually better than the ones he had discarded.
By now, Yu Xian and his companions had drifted quite a distance apart from one another, separated by roughly a dozen islands.
Everyone searched on their own, and whatever anyone found belonged to them.
Yu Xian searched for the entire morning. When he grew tired, he sat on the edge of an island to grab a bite and rest; repeatedly bending over and standing back up was genuinely exhausting.
He had tried growing a pair of hands from his waist so he wouldn't have to bend over to pick things up, but the sprouted hands couldn't lift anything here at all.
Later, he experimented with several other abilities before arriving at a hypothesis.
It was likely determined by the shape of the soul: limbs devoid of a soul couldn't pick up anything here. The hands he conjured naturally had no soul, and without a soul, there was no way to unite spirit and flesh, making it impossible to lift the items.
Having no other choice, Yu Xian could only resign himself to picking up items one by one and setting them back down one by one.
At noon.
Calling a halt to his tedious treasure hunting, Yu Xian simply sat by the edge of the island holding a pineapple bun, observing the seawater while he ate.
These past few days, he had consistently eaten by the shore, catching sight of the sea intentionally or otherwise. Eventually, he noticed something: there wasn't a single fish in the seawater.
Assuming this water had been drawn directly from the ocean, theoretically, fish from the ocean should have been swept in as well.
Bending down, he elongated a finger, dipped it into the seawater, and analyzed its composition. He confirmed that it truly was seawater, which made it rather strange.
There were no ocean currents, no tides, and no waves.
How could this seawater still maintain its present state? Theoretically, all salt and impurities should have settled to the bottom.
"Time to take a look underwater."
Yu Xian devoured the rest of the pineapple bun in a single bite. With a thought, he plunged directly into the seawater.
He had always been someone who acted the moment an idea struck. Now that his curiosity was piqued, he had to satisfy it.
Underwater, he dove swiftly. The nearby island possessed an immense volume submerged beneath the surface; evidently, what he had searched before was merely about a tenth of it, while the portion submerged underwater had been left entirely untouched.
This sea was immensely deep. Though he dove at high speed, half a day slipped past in a flash, and he was still diving, with the bottom nowhere in sight.
However, the islands had disappeared.
Clearly, those islands were more like junk floating in the water.
"Isn't this way too much seawater?"
Yu Xian had originally assumed he could reach the bottom in a few hours, but more than half a day had passed without bottoming out. He felt half-inclined to give up, yet the stubborn streak in his nature urged him to keep exploring downward.
In the end, he simply stopped thinking about it.
Might as well keep going down. Since he was already here, what if he hit the bottom after diving a bit longer?
He had actually noticed something: normally speaking, where he currently was already qualified as super-deep sea—Earth didn't even have an ocean this deep—so by all rights, the water pressure bearing down on him should be extraordinarily immense.
In reality, however, the water pressure on his body hadn't changed at all; it had felt pretty much the same ever since he entered the water.
Furthermore, the light hadn't changed either. There was none of the pitch-black darkness typical of the deep sea. Instead, the water remained an azure blue. Looking up, he could still seemingly see the sky, and looking down, there was still an expanse of azure.
After emptying his mind, Yu Xian mechanically dove downward.
He was actually very accustomed to not thinking. When practicing his punches in the sea of flowers, he spent most of his time without a single thought, merely throwing punches by rote. Right now, he was simply diving out of instinct, his mind even emptier than an ocean sunfish's.
A week later.
Yu Xian suddenly emerged from the water. His limbs flailed clumsily midair in a dog paddle twice before he finally snapped out of his daze, light returning to his eyes.
He immediately looked down, and his eyes widened in shock.
Beneath the sea lay an even vaster space. This entire sea was actually floating inside the storage ring, and beneath the water were mountains upon mountains of treasures.
If the islands above the water were mere specks, then what lay below was an entire continent.
Gulp.
Staring at the dense, multicolored sea of treasures down below, Yu Xian couldn't help swallowing hard.
Compared to this, the islands above were truly insignificant, not even worth mentioning.
"Storage gear, where are you?!"
Yu Xian's expression shifted several times before he finally looked up and sighed toward the sky.
He was sorely tempted to cry out, O Vast Heavens, why have you treated me so harshly?!
What could be more agonizing than having treasures right before one's eyes yet being unable to take them? To make matters worse, every single treasure was within easy reach, completely ownerless, ripe for the taking.
These past few days, he had wracked his brains trying to obtain more storage space—for example, using the spatial power previously absorbed within the World Eye to open up a world inside his body to hold things.
Yet it didn't work.
Inside Feng Laixian's storage ring, one could teleport or use spatial escape, but one couldn't create bubbles or forge a space.
This was actually normal. Most storage rings couldn't be nested. For instance, placing a storage ring inside another storage ring was generally impossible; the two spaces would squeeze against each other until they ruptured, causing everything inside both spaces to be lost in the spatial turbulence, likely drifting into the Tree Universe in the end.
However, Feng Laixian's storage ring should be able to contain other storage rings.
After all, even Zhang Buyao was helping search for them, which meant she subconsciously assumed Feng Laixian's ring was of a high enough grade that such an issue wouldn't occur.
In addition, Yu Xian had also tried summoning Auntie Number Two to ask where the storage rings inside Feng Laixian's storage ring were located.
This time, however, Auntie Number Two disappointed him. Clearly, this question exceeded the scope of what she could answer; no lifeform below the Star Rank knew the answer to this question.
Based on the countless experiments above, Yu Xian had abandoned all hopes of taking shortcuts. Looking at the continent below, he finally steeled his resolve: keep searching!
He immediately landed on the ground and began hunting for treasure.
Chapter 348