Feeling the pressure of the approaching family competition and the threat of the panther and fox families individual motives, Shadow began to empty all of the storage bags after returning home.
Sitting at the back of the cave she began to arrange her new treasures while her family were silently using their cultivation manuals to refine spirit energy.
Her mother had made significant progress during this time, increasing one rank and stabilising her cultivation while her brother and sister were nearing a breakthrough with the assistance of beast core provided by Shadow.
Her father had made a lot of progress in his cultivation too and would soon see results in a few days time.
Her eyes glanced towards her family members and her gaze turned gentle.
In her previous life she grew up with no family members and the only thing she owned was a small patterned broach, she spent her early years in an orphanage but had to depend on herself to gather food to survive.
Now she had been blessed with a second life with a family which she had once yearned for, perhaps she could have wished for a peaceful and ordinary life with her family and forget her previous life's wish for revenge…
However the world is never so easy to live in, if she does not step onto the road of cultivation once more then she will have to helplessly watch as she loses what she loves disappear from the world.
With every item in her sight she nodded with satisfaction. "Let's see… 7 spirit gathering pills, 2 bone tempering pill, 2 meridian tempering pills and more than a dozen injury pills. These will definitely come in useful!"
Ignoring the stack of herbs, different spirit fruits and weapons her eyes fell upon a square shaped piece of animal skin which had caught her eye.
She showed great interest as she picked it up and glanced at the front of the animal skin.
The animal skin looked to be very old and had had a couple of holes in it and was quite dirty, possibly the previous owner had found it hidden somewhere and kept it for themselves.
Drawn on the animal skin was a map of an unknown forest area she had not seen or heard of before and it had 5 X marks in different locations on the map.
Although she held no interest at first towards finding the treasures as it could be a waste of time if someone had already found it previously but the humans writing below the map had greatly increased her interest as she read.
"Greetings and may fate shine on you for finding this map I have left behind.
First I will introduce myself, I am James Moonlight, formerly a child of a family that owned an auction house and catered to many wealthy and powerful influences on a daily basis.
Unfortunately we got our hands on some rare items which were beyond our range of expertise, within our city everyone took part in the auction and even outside forces came to take part. Sadly not everyone would sit back and wait for the auction day to come and the strong influences invaded the auction house starting a bloodbath and stole the treasures. Left with a ruined business and our strongest cultivators crippled or dead we were in a hopeless situation. Our family sold the business quickly and placed all of our wealth, treasures and resources into five storage bags and buried them in five different locations. What followed was the other families in the city confronting our remaining family members to hand over our fortune, they declined and were killed!
By law the families were not allowed to harm those who had not reached origin realm in their cultivation, those below origin realm were sent to this prison… To avoid slaughtering of entire family we had no other option as other families would fear one of us coming back to take revenge in the future so everyone was sent here. This whole piece of land is within one big formation array which traps everyone inside and provides everyone who live here with a poor cultivation environment which is why the spirit energy is so poor.
They said if someone breaks through origin realm that is the key to exiting this vile prison and I will walk the path of endless struggles to get out of this place and one day get revenge! The rest of my family gave up a long time ago and took over these lands living the fantasy of being royalty within their own country but I see things for how they really are! They are nothing but rulers of a bunch of prisoners! Even if it takes my whole life to reach origin realm I will train so that the future of my family can live beyond this prison and be great once more.
This desolate forest is merely a part of the forest area that is between the prison and city I once lived in, I have tried to escape but the rumours are true… I once found myself on the edge of the formation but a barrier blocked me from going any further.
If I have failed in my dream I hope that I can give hope to a fellow prisoner to break free from this cage, I leave my families treasures to you should you succeed!
My last request is if my descendants are still alive take them out of this place!
James Moonlight"
Shadow read over everything carefully and let out a sigh and was lost in thought. 'If this is true then the barrier set up must be a large scale trapping formation array, it is limited to holding mortals, spirit gathering cultivators and beasts. Which means in order to leave I must reach origin realm before I can cultivate in a better environment with better resources.'
She grew even more determined after reading this animal skin map and was looking forward to seeing the outside world.
The treasures left behind also sparked her interest, a family who owned an auction house would have to have a lot of things helpful towards her cultivation and towards the other beasts!
Setting goals is a positive thing to do as a cultivator with every small goal they set they can strive to improve themselves at a faster rate and push themselves further.
Right now Shadow had a very long term goal which was survive in this world for as long as possible, perhaps one day she can make her way back to the immortal world and find out who was the main culprit behind her death.
Unfortunately it had been ten years since then and many lives may have already been lost so perhaps she may not make it in time before the sect is completely taken over which only made her slightly helpless and pressured which was bad for her state of mind.
Fortunately she had short term goals to distract her right now!
One was the upcoming competition, next escaping from the formation array and after that looking for the treasure if it is still where it was buried!
What comes after that… she will have to figure it out when the time comes.