Second Time

Extra Chapter - Treasure Pagoda

"The treasure pagoda will be opening soon," Renzhu told Shao Yue in a lazy manner.

"I've heard of it," Shao Yue replied.

Once every 100,000 years or so, the sect would open the treasure pagoda to talented disciples. It had a hundred floors, each with a progressively more difficult trial. Each floor they cleared would let them choose a reward. Naturally, higher floors would have better rewards.

Of course, they didn't only have such an event every 100,000 years. They had ten different treasure grounds that they opened in sequence, once every 10,000 years. Any one would excite the disciples to no end, but the pagoda had the biggest draw for Shao Yue in particular.

"It's a sealed world with its own spacetime," he noted, handing her a jade slip. "You'll be entering. Here's a list of the rewards that were placed on each floor during each opening. I'm sure you understand the implications."

Shao Yue's eyes widened as she accepted it. "Yes, I understand."

Within a sealed world, she could actually take advantage of her time powers without anyone being able to see her. The list had been provided for that reason. By reaching back through the river of time, she could take her pick of any treasure she liked, duplicate it, and bring it to the present.

When Shao Yue returned home, she immediately started reading through it.

Even though the pagoda only opened once every hundred thousand years, the sect had a very long history. Over a billion years the pagoda would have been opened ten thousand times. She had an absurd number of items to read through.

The first twenty floors were aimed at Void Traversal disciples. The next twenty for Dao Integration, and so on. Shao Yue didn't know how high she'd be able to climb even while using the Dao of Time, but she figured the fiftieth floor would certainly be above her limit. She focused her attention on the offerings in the bottom fifty and ignored the top half.

The rewards included weapons, armour, pills, techniques, materials, pretty much anything a cultivator could want. They were given on a first come, first served basis. Each floor had a few items with a quality exceeding the rest of the batch, to reward those who progressed quickly. Shao Yue checked those first and only looked at the rest if none of them were what she was looking for.

She didn't care for weapons. She had her grade eight sword from her home world. She wanted that to accompany her for life, much like Starlight had in her previous life. It would be able to get stronger after attaining human form and learning to cultivate.

"Puresoul Gold," Shao Yue read. "It can be imbued into a weapon to raise its grade? I have to get that. Raising my sword to grade ten would really help in the short-term."

She had yet to name the new sword. She wanted to see its personality as a human first, though she had a few ideas.

"Heavenspurn Jade. It can be crushed into a powder and spread onto swords to absorb some of the strength of a tribulation, increasing the chance of success. That's mandatory, too."

Sometimes, she would find an item in a later floor that was a better version of something she'd already picked. She would have to go back and decide on a different item on the lower floor, as long as the better one was obtainable.

Some she couldn't risk. She saw a better material for upgrading her sword on the fortieth floor, but didn't know if she'd be able to reach it. She'd still pick up the Puresoul Gold, then if she did reach the fortieth, she'd give the Puresoul Gold to Shao Xing to upgrade Starlight. She did still care for her old sword.

If she couldn't find anything she needed on a floor, she just picked the most valuable thing that couldn't be recognized. For example, if she took a wondrous sword, it might attract trouble when she sold it and people realized it matched another sword. Materials wouldn't have the same problem most of the time.