The rain kept falling in fine, dense sheets, blending with the cold wind to weave a net that drove pedestrians off the streets and back into the warmth of their homes. Only the vehicles on the road, like fish slipping through the net, raced desperately toward their respective destinations.
Walking along the deserted street, Mu Lin’s lonely figure was stretched long by the glow of the streetlights, making the path toward the park seem vast and desolate. The winter rain in London was cold and damp, and each gust of wind sent a chill that seemed to penetrate deep into one’s bones.
Mu Lin activated his true spiritual energy, finally feeling slightly warmer. Xiao Laipi, curled up inside the backpack behind Mu Lin, felt none of the cold at all, but continued to grumble nonstop. It didn’t understand why Mu Lin had to come out so late at night, and kept complaining that he had disturbed its rest.
Mu Lin was helpless in the face of Xiao Laipi’s complaints. If he left it behind, it would accuse him of abandoning it; but if he brought it along, it would chatter nonstop, nearly driving him mad. However, over the past two months, it was thanks to Xiao Laipi’s company that he hadn’t felt so lonely.
Since the museum was crowded during the day, Mu Lin had not made his move, only carefully studying the layout and security arrangements. At night, only a few guards remained inside, making it the perfect time for him to act.
As Mu Lin approached the museum, he found a quiet, secluded corner and began using his spiritual senses to scan the interior. Outside, the museum was brightly lit, illuminating everything around it. This meant that the guards only needed to monitor the outside from the control room to ensure the museum’s safety.
Because of the generally peaceful environment and the presence of modern surveillance equipment, the guards had all relaxed their vigilance, merely watching the monitors from the security room.
Mu Lin took out an earth-teleportation talisman, released his spiritual energy, and as the talisman shattered, he vanished from the spot. During the day, he had secretly placed a small marker inside the museum—a blind spot not covered by the surveillance cameras.
Once inside, Mu Lin retrieved a device from his ring and connected it to the camera feed, causing it to loop a pre-recorded video. This ensured that the guards in the control room wouldn’t notice any abnormalities.
Next, Mu Lin turned his attention to the infrared alarm systems on the display cases. This time, he used a set of devices he had previously seized from the Heilong Society, replacing the main switches of the infrared alarms on the display cases one by one. Only after completing the connections did he finally relax. The surveillance monitors would now show everything as normal. Unless Mu Lin were to set off explosives and attract the guards, even if he emptied the entire museum, nothing would appear amiss outside.
Once the cameras and alarms were disabled, Mu Lin began his treasure hunt, stuffing into his ring every antique he had eyed during the day that seemed useful.
It was only then that Xiao Laipi realized what Mu Lin was up to. For the items Mu Lin didn’t want, Xiao Laipi started picking the prettier ones and stuffing them into its own storage space, especially the ruby and sapphire ornaments unearthed from India, of which it took the most.
After they had taken nearly everything they could carry, Mu Lin turned his attention to the mummies. He stopped in front of one that exuded the strongest aura of evil energy and began carefully probing it with his spiritual awareness.
First, Mu Lin tried to locate the source of the energy on the mummy, but was disappointed to find that the energy was emanating directly from the mummy itself. He found no arrays or devices attached to it.
However, upon closely examining the lid of the “cursed mummy,” he discovered that the patterns arranged in a certain order, combined with the black gemstones on the mask, formed a small array designed to absorb energy.
This array absorbed life energy, silently drawing the vitality from nearby living beings. The closer a life form was to the artifact, the more energy it would lose. The absorbed energy was stored in the black gemstones. No wonder, despite nearly 7,000 years passing, the gemstones had not oxidized or weathered over time.
Humans whose life energy had been drained experienced a significant loss of physical and mental strength, leading to neurological or mental disorders. This caused them to do dangerous things they would never normally consider, triggering a deep inner despair toward life, resulting in some committing suicide or wandering alone into dangerous places to end their lives.
To confirm his findings, Mu Lin continued scanning the masks of other mummies with his spiritual awareness. Sure enough, he found similar arrays on them. However, these arrays were clearly incomplete compared to the one on the “cursed mummy.” Additionally, the gemstones used to store energy on the masks were of inferior quality, which prevented them from functioning properly.
Faced with this discovery, Mu Lin was puzzled. Did the ancient Egyptians share similarities with the cultivation practitioners of ancient China? Why had they created such energy-absorbing arrays? What was the connection between them? From some of the cultivation texts he had collected, Mu Lin had seen similar arrays described—this realization left him astonished.
“Hey, Master! What’s the point of staring at these corpses? We’ve already collected plenty of antiques, and it’s getting late. Shouldn’t we leave now?” Xiao Laipi interrupted Mu Lin’s thoughts.
“Oh!” Mu Lin was startled from his contemplation by Xiao Laipi’s voice, suddenly remembering that he was still on someone else’s territory.
“Just wait a moment. I’ll finish my study and then go,” Mu Lin replied.
At the same time, he quickly gathered everything related to these arrays and stored them all into his ring. Standing in front of the jars containing internal organs, Mu Lin hesitated slightly. He knew that these jars, marked with different symbols, contained various human organs—for example, a jar carved with a baboon symbol held the lungs.
Mu Lin was curious about how the internal organs of humans from thousands of years ago might have changed over time. He extended his spiritual awareness into one of the jars and soon felt a surge of energy traveling quickly along his consciousness toward him.
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