Chapter 155: A Vast Mountain of Treasures

Before Yu Yan discovered their actual utility, she simply treated them as ordinary spiritual treasures.

She threw them into the spatial lotus root domain alongside all the mirage-eating bird blood crystal fossils, dumping them into a large crate. The space was already packed with seawater and various sundries, yet it astonishingly managed to accommodate these as well... Yu Yan's eyes lit up brightly.

What wonderful items!

Truly marvelous items.

Yu Yan cleaned out the internal space of this insect crystal fossil, and still feeling somewhat uneasy, she rinsed it thoroughly with clean water, rolling it around several times. After pouring out the dirty water, she gathered the most abundant type of high-tier spirit beast blood she possessed and poured it entirely into the insect crystal fossil.

The blood of over a thousand tier-three spirit beasts was poured inside, filling the internal space of the insect crystal fossil to the brim.

Looking at the multitude of containers floating on the seawater—among them wooden bath barrels, plastic buckets, large basins, and a pile of messy jars and cans—she realized there was more.

Because her containers were insufficient, Yu Yan had spared no effort in utilizing spiritual materials to craft crude receptacles herself.

These included thousands of low-tier purple star bamboo tubes, hundreds of gold-patterned wooden barrels, and so on.

Yu Yan let out a long sigh of relief.

Had she possessed these insect crystal fossils much earlier, how could she have possibly wasted so much low-tier spirit beast blood?

If not for the peculiar properties of these tier-three spirit beast bloods, which naturally emitted a chilly, refreshing aura, Yu Yan would have undoubtedly thrown them to the botanical spirit micro-world to be devoured. But she had no choice; she simply had nowhere else to store them!

Having reaped this benefit, Yu Yan promptly transferred all the spirit beast blood collected within her spatial lotus root domain into the insect crystal fossils.

During her last trip here, Yu Yan had found a total of seven to eight hundred insect crystal fossils.

Upon inspection, she discovered that their internal spaces varied in size.

The smallest had a cross-section of less than ten square meters, while the largest boasted a full thousand square meters!

Yu Yan selected over five hundred of the smallest insect crystal fossils specifically to store spirit beast blood.

Aside from this special chilling blood, all the spirit beast blood and carcasses that Yu Yan had managed to store within her spatial lotus root domain were strictly of the profound tier or higher.

Some species numbered in the hundreds, while others amounted to only a dozen or so.

Regardless of whether there were hundreds or just a dozen, a single smallest insect crystal fossil was more than enough to contain all their blood.

In the end, Yu Yan not only stored all the ready-to-use spirit beast blood, but she also drained the blood from the spirit beast carcasses and stored that as well. Only a few remaining high-tier spirit beasts were left untouched, as the quantities she had slain were truly too small.

With numbers ranging from just one to nine, it wasn't cost-effective to waste an insect crystal fossil on each variety.

Therefore, Yu Yan chose not to drain their blood.

After all this work, she had only used a little over a hundred of the smallest insect crystal fossils.

Yu Yan retrieved several small drawers—the kind she used before the descent of the dungeon world to store buttons, various material beads, tape measures, and other small handicraft items.

After clearing out the contents, she packed these hundred-plus insect crystal fossils inside.

She then found a sheet of name labels—needless to say, any parent with children in school understands these, as they are used at least twice a year, so it was no surprise that Yu Yan had prepared some. Using a marker, she wrote the bold characters "Spirit Beast Blood" and stuck it above the handle of that particular drawer.

Next, she filled another compartment with the remaining four hundred or so low-tier insect crystal fossils.

She attached a name label reading "Tier-One Mirage Pearls."

Mirage pearls were simply an abbreviation for the treasure pearls of the mirage insects, a nickname Yu Yan had coined for these mirage insect blood crystal fossils.

After all, she would undoubtedly distribute a portion of these insect crystal fossils in the future as rewards or through various other means to subordinates who possessed both sufficient ability and loyalty. She couldn't possibly hand over such treasures while telling them these items were called "insect crystal fossils," could she?

Though calling them that wasn't strictly wrong, it somehow made the treasures sound rather worthless!

She then categorized the remaining mirage treasure pearls into three tiers based on their internal capacities: thirty to one hundred square meters, one hundred to five hundred square meters, and five hundred to one thousand square meters. She placed each tier into its own small drawer.

Once filled, she attached name labels reading "Tier-Two Mirage Pearls," "Tier-Three Mirage Pearls," and "Tier-Four Mirage Pearls."

Looking at the spatial lotus root domain, which had instantly cleared out a massive expanse of space, Yu Yan decided to go all the way. She took a few tier-three mirage pearls and packed the spirit beast carcasses into them based on how precious they were.

As it happened, her small drawer unit had a total of six compartments.

The very last compartment was reserved for spirit beast carcasses—or perhaps one should call them mummified spirit beast remains?

After all, the blood of most of these spirit beasts had already been drained by Yu Yan.

With the spirit beast carcasses and blood no longer occupying the spatial lotus root domain, the portable space of over a thousand square meters—which Yu Yan had formed through several rounds of refining spatial lotus root blocks—unknowingly appeared vast and empty. After all, the lion's share of her dungeon spoils had consisted of spirit beast carcasses of various grades.

Well, she actually felt a bit unaccustomed to this for a moment!

It had been quite a long time since Yu Yan last saw the spatial lotus root domain looking so remarkably empty.

She proceeded to sort the remaining items according to their grades: mundane, yellow tier, profound tier, earth tier, and so on.

Heaven-tier spiritual treasures... well, Yu Yan felt a slight flush of embarrassment.

Aside from the thirteen spatial lotus root blocks, she only possessed mirage dragon skeletons and mirage dragon scales.

Both in variety and overall quantity, her collection looked pitifully sparse.

Yet, there was no helping it; Yu Yan simply lacked the audacity to enter three-S-tier dungeons, where heaven-tier bosses gathered in droves, just to court death. Even double-S-tier dungeons, which housed merely a hundred or so nests of heaven-tier dungeon monsters, were currently beyond her ability to breach.

A month from now, S-tier dungeons like the Firefly Soul-Devouring Sea would also become forbidden zones for Yu Yan.

Unless her spiritualist grade advanced to earth-tier rank seven or above, she would never step foot into an S-tier or higher dungeon while its full powers were active. That was a lesson written in blood and tears, summarized by countless augmenters who had perished in S-tier and higher dungeons in her past life!

Before she knew it, she had spent an entire day organizing her supplies here.

The neatly arranged spatial lotus root domain left Yu Yan feeling refreshed in both body and mind.

So she actually owned this many treasures.

Countless numbers of them!

Along with this realization, her anxiety regarding the future of the Firefly Base dissipated significantly. With so many spiritual materials at her disposal, and now that the Firefly Base possessed its own dedicated armor-crafter, could the emergence of a true artifact-crafter be far behind?

If worst came to worst, she would select a few fire-attribute augmenters and pile low-tier spiritual materials upon them until she forcefully cultivated one or two low-tier artifact-crafters.

When that time came, spiritual armor and spiritual weapons would be fully equipped.

The survival capabilities of the combat team members at the Firefly Base would experience a dramatic surge!

Of course, barring absolute necessity, Yu Yan had no desire to take that path.

An augmenter lacking talent in artifact-crafting would only achieve half the results with twice the effort if they forced themselves down that road. Squandering massive amounts of precious spiritual materials would ultimately yield results that were unspeakably poor. If a talented augmenter could successfully forge their first spiritual weapon by consuming at most one or two hundred portions of spiritual materials, an untalented augmenter might consume several hundred or even a thousand portions without ever successfully crafting a single spiritual weapon.

The greatest disparity still lay in the period after the first spiritual weapon was successfully crafted.
A talented augmenter, upon becoming an unranked artifact-crafter, would at worst manage to forge one spiritual weapon for every dozen or so material portions used.

As for the untalented ones, there was no telling.

They might waste over a hundred portions of materials and still fail to produce a single decent finished product.

No matter how many spiritual materials Yu Yan possessed, she couldn't afford such reckless wastage!

This cavern had already been thoroughly ruined by the backflowing seawater, stripping it of its strategic value as a secret refuge for the Firefly Base. And Yu Yan certainly wasn't going to toss the seven to eight hundred mirage pearls she had just acquired back into the subterranean seawater lake simply to restore the cavern to its former appearance...