51 The Mysterious Cave Abode (2/2)

He gently paced along the front of the passage and to check for booby traps, and then entered the passageway once he determined the area was clear.

Barely 55 yards in, the passageway divided into three branching pathways.

Mo Wen hesitated for a bit, and then walked towards the path in the middle. Around 22 yards in, he came face to face with a stone door.

The stone door was covered in dust and spider webs. It had obviously not been opened in a long time.

”This is most likely an ancient cave abode,” Mo Wen thought to himself. Although he hadn't ruled out the possibility of a hermit sage living in isolation in the mountains, it seemed that this cave abode had no signs of recent human activity. It was probably sealed long ago.

He walked up to the stone door and scanned it for a bit. He found a stone ball protruding at one side of the door. Naturally, he placed his palm over it and pressed it.

The heavy stone door started to rise and revealed a stone walled room inside.

Mo Wen stood outside the door and quickly scanned the inside of the room. Upon seeing that it looked safe, he took a step in.

The stone walled room had simple furnishings. A stone table, stone stool, and stone bed: all the furniture was made of stone.

The stone table was placed in the middle of the room, with just a few things on top: the usual brush, paper and ink, and a few sandalwood boxes.

There was an altar in the east side of the room with the remnants of offerings on top. Behind the altar hung a portrait. The portrait was yellowish, showing how much time had passed.

The room's west side had two bookshelves which contained many paper books. The bottom of the shelves had a few large boxes that seemed to also be filled with books.

The north side had a stone bed. On the bed was a snow white skeleton sitting upright and cross-legged. It looked like a monk.

”He must have passed away in sitting posture many many years ago,” Mo Wen guessed to himself after quickly scanning the skeleton.

The master of the stone room was clearly the master of the skeleton. However, looking at the skeleton, the person would have been dead for a few hundred years. Despite that, the skeleton remained completely intact without even a shiny glow to it. This was unlike normal skeletons that would have decayed over a long period of time.

Crystal Muscle Jade Bones! Mo Wen gazed in awe. The master of this skeleton must have been an elder with an extremely high Cultivation level, or at least higher than the old, otherworld Mo Wen.

For ancient martial arts practitioners, they never stopped training their bodies even as their level of Cultivation got more and more advanced. This brought out hidden potential, which in turn made their bodies far stronger than that of common folk.

Legend has it that some mighty monks could cultivate a body of Crystal Muscle Jade Bones. Even after death, their bodies would not rot and decay.

Calling it Crystal Muscle Jade Bones was a bit of an exaggeration, but from the looks of this skeleton: pristine even after a few hundred years, the master was surely a person with high Cultivation levels. Possibly even one in the Golden Elixir realm.

Mo Wen solemnly bowed to the skeleton. He showed great respect towards elders.

It was probably fate to accidentally stumble upon an expert elder's resting place.

Mo Wen walked towards the stone table at the center of the chamber. It had been a few hundred years since anyone cleaned the chamber, and the stone table was covered in a layer of thick dust. Many things were hidden underneath the dust.

He reached out and dusted the table. A small booklet was revealed. It seemed like a handwritten article used to record happenings.

Even though it had been a few hundred years, the handwritten article was still well-preserved, other than slight yellowing and loosening.

Mo Wen opened the handwritten article that had been sealed for hundreds of years, and began to read it in detail.