The little puppy stared at Tianshen for a moment with a confused look. ‘’Apex? Was this another way of saying: do you want to die?’’ thought Panhu.

‘’Tell me the way to get in and I will give you the cultivation technique of your Dragon-Dog race. Deal?’’ said Tianshen while still holding the little puppy at eye-level.

Panhu’s eyes widened when he heard Tianshen say ‘’cultivation technique of the Dragon-Dog race’’. He had the cultivation technique of his race stored in his memories from the moment he was born, but he always knew that it was not the complete technique. That’s why Panhu’s cultivation for a demon beast of his race was very low. It was only at the 5th Core Formation realm like Tianshen’s. But while 5th Core Formation might sound impressive for the Azure province, compared to the ancestors of Panhu, he couldn’t even be considered an insect.

‘’St-stop boasting human! How could you have the full cultivation technique of the Dragon-Dog beast race?’’ asked Panhu.

Tianshen was calmly smiling now ‘’You should have seen the illusions that the forest projected to me through you right? If you did see the illusions, then you should know that I’m not a being of this world, and I’m sure as hell not a being that you could ever hope to understand the ways of. How about this, I can see that you only have the first 3 stages of the Dragon-Dog race’s technique, I will give you two more stages as insurance now if you tell me the way to get into the tomb. And I will give you the rest if you become my beast companion. What do you say?’’

The little puppy looked like it was in deep thought for a moment. Then it suddenly smiled and said ‘’Deal, but you better not lie to this sir or I will bite you to death, and when this sir becomes your companion beast, you better treat me right. I want a lot of human beauties, a lot! You hear me?’’

‘’You shouldn’t be worried about beauties, with how small and cute you are, they will all be begging you for permission to pet you’’ said Tianshen with a smile.

‘’Who’s cute you bastard? This sir is a divine demon beast, I am as muscular and mighty as they come. By the way, what it your name?’’ said the puppy with its cute baby voice.

‘’Sure-sure, whatever makes you feel better. You can call me Tianshen, now stand still for a second, I will impart the 4th and 5th stage of the Dragon-Dog cultivation technique to you’’ said Tianshen while putting Panhu down.

Then Tianshen extended his finger and pointed at Panhu’s forehead, a blue ray of light came out of the tip of Tianshen’s finger and entered Panhu’s head. As soon as the blue ray entered Panhu’s head, he opened his eyes wide with shock. ‘’This human really wasn’t just boasting…’’

‘’Now that you have the next two stages of the technique, your advancements in cultivation will be even faster, not to mention your combat prowess which will increase exponentially. I will bestow the rest of the technique to you when we finish the blood contract’’ said Tianshen.

‘’You really have some great ability Tianshen, consider this sir impressed. Okay, stand back, I will now open the tomb for you. All the other geezers that came before you for the past 1000 years were clueless and never managed to open the tomb because they overlooked the forest. They thought that the forest was just an obstacle. But by defeating the illusions in the forest, and more specifically me, you gain the qualification to enter the tomb’’ said Panhu with a proud tone.

‘’So you’ve been in this forest for the past 1000 years? Did you know Azure Dragon?’’ asked Tianshen curiously.

‘’The old geezer? Of course I knew him, he found me when I was still an egg and raised me. When he was at death’s door from the poison, he asked of me to guard this forest for him until someone ‘worthy’ shows up. This sir of course said yes because I owed him a favor for raising me’’ said Panhu with a half-serious face this time.

Tianshen did not ask more, right now he needed to concentrate on what he was going to face inside the tomb. Since tombs were not something that cultivators at Tianshen’s level could face. Tombs of powerful cultivators like the Azure Dragon were full of traps and other hidden dangers. But of course, Tianshen was not just any cultivator. According to his calculations, as long as Cao Chen’s information on the Azure Dragon being a cultivator of the 2nd Martial King realm was correct, then he thought that he could get through the tomb without exerting 100% of his soul power, but about 95%. Granted, he would be exhausted after the fact anyway, but if this Azure Dragon was really a cultivator of the 2nd Martial King realm, then whatever was inside this tomb was definitely worth it for Tianshen at his current level.

Panhu stood in front of the stone wall and muttered some words, after which he bit the tip of his paw and spilled some drops on it. After a moment of silence the stone wall started rumbling and a huge gate 10 meters tall materialized.

‘’You can proceed inside, but I must advise you to be careful. With your cultivation, it is very likely that you won’t even be able to enter, much less come out alive’’ said Panhu seriously.

‘’You’re coming with me’’ said Tianshen with an evil smirk on his face.

‘’The geezer instructed this sir to not accompany any of the people that attempt to enter the tomb so don’t even think about it’’ replied the little puppy with a concerned face.

‘’I could not care less what he said, what matters is that I’m asking you to come with me, and that is what is going to happen, you’re about a couple of billion years too early to be able to talk back to me or reject me. Now be a good pet and follow me’’ replied Tianshen with a serious face as he started walking calmly towards the stone door.

The puppy looked like it wanted to talk back and scold this stupid human but after a moment of thinking it gave up, sighed and just followed behind Tianshen. This human was just too domineering for the little puppy. The dragon-dog race was a race of beasts that possessed intelligence that at least rivaled that of humans, so by now Panhu already realized that the youngster walking in front of him was not a being of this world. He exuded the commanding aura of a being that oversees the fate of everything around him, which made one not being able to refuse him. Panhu had the feeling that refusing this person was like going against the Heavens themselves.

Just as Tianshen was one step away from the stone door, he detected an invisible force-field that covered it. Tianshen recognized this as being Spirit power. It surprised him because he did not expect such a small, trash province on a barren planet like this could have a person that could use spirit power to some degree, even if the spirit power was the weakest of the weak by his standards. It looked like the person who built this tomb had a faint grasp of the profound principles behind spirit power, which meant that he came in contact with people from outside the province or even beyond that, otherwise it was basically impossible for him to develop spirit power by himself.

Panhu, who clearly knew what was ahead of them stayed quiet because he wanted to observe how this person in front of him would deal with a spirit power force field. Panhu himself had some grasp over spirit power, otherwise he would not be able to control the illusions of the forest to their fullest potential.

Spirit power was a mysterious and ancient art, legends said that the laws of the Universe itself followed the Spirit principles to some extent. On this planet, spirit power was greatly underdeveloped and nobody actually understood the mysteries behind it. As far as the knowledge of this planet went, spirit power could be used to set up simple and complex formations that could have different effects, such as force-fields.

After a moment, Panhu watched as Tianshen extended his hand forward toward a specific area of the force-field and poked it with the tip of his finger. The force-field then materialized for a second, after which it broke like a glass wall into many pieces and dissipated into thin air.

Panhu was surprised and did not know what to say. That was when Tianshen turned his head around and looked at him blankly and said: ‘’You shouldn’t be surprised, with the memories bestowed to you by your dragon-dog ancestors’ blood, you most certainly have a grasp of Spirit power, you should know enough to realize that this kind of spirit power is not even close to be considered at the basic first stage. If I allowed something like this to hinder my advance forward then it would be equal to slapping myself in the face.’’

‘’But you didn’t even use Spirit power yourself to break that force-field, how did you do it?’’ asked Panhu with a puzzled face.

‘’Every Spirit power formation has a weak point, that is if you know enough about Spirit power to be able to detect the weakness to begin with. This specific one was so sloppily made that I didn’t even have to use Spirit power to break it, just injecting my soul force into the weak point is enough to break it.’’ Said Tianshen with a smile, after which he turned around and entered through the door.

The insides of the tomb were pitch black with no visibility whatsoever, but as soon as Tianshen stepped foot inside it, torches started to light up which revealed a long hallway. The walls and the ceiling of the hallway were all colored in bronze and one could detect different sceneries carved into the wall.

Tianshen started walking steadily forward with the puppy following closely behind him. After a couple of minutes of walking, Tianshen realized that the carvings on the bronze walls depicted different stages of the Azure Dragon Ancestor’s life.

Although Tianshen was walking and spoke no word to the puppy, he was secretly looking down on this tomb. It’s not that it wasn’t up to his standards, or that he was expecting more. It was that he generally looked down on tombs built by cultivators for themselves. To him it was laughable that a cultivator was basically building his own grave. In Tianshen’s mind, Cultivation meant going against the will of the Heavens and achieving the peak, immortality, endless wisdom and power, how could one achieve those if they were dead? He didn’t see death as something which should be glorified by building luxurious tombs. Death for lowly beings such as the Azure Dragon Ancestor meant the end of the road, not many had the chance to cross the Yellow Springs and reincarnate even in the upper realms.

Tianshen soon reached the end of the hallway and entered a big hall as more torches lit up revealing his surroundings. The hall was big and the walls and ceiling were built from pure gold, in the middle of the hall itself, there stood an altar with a transparent cup in the middle of it which contained some kind of liquid substance inside. The altar was also surrounded by numerous golden chests full of riches, weapons and pouches full of cultivation medicines that looked like they were enough to support a small sect.

Tianshen observed his surroundings carefully, after which he took a step forward in the direction of the altar. Suddenly a mysterious Qi appeared which made Tianshen a bit uncomfortable, and a male voice that sounded like it came out of no specific direction spoke in a domineering manner: ‘’Welcome challenger, since you now entered this tomb, you will be subjected to 3 tests which will all measure different aspects of yourself, there is no turning back. You now have 2 choices, the first choice is to pass the tests, failure of which will result in a painful death.’’

‘’How about the second choice?’’ asked Tianshen seriously.

‘’Your second choice is to refuse taking the tests and die a painless death immediately.’’