Chapter 457: Fragments of the Nephrite Throne

In the earlier half of the class six area of the Soulbeast Forest.

In a giant mountain that towered a kilometer over others, there could be seen a large cave.

The cave was dark, but by the entrance stood a giant wolf and a rather large prisma oriole sitting lazily on the side as if resting.

At a first look, only these two animals were there. But with a closer look, one would be able to make out the blurry figure of a person inside, but his aura was practically invisible.

Needless to say, the wolf and bird duo was the thunderfire wolf and Xiao Qi, and the person inside the cave was none other than Bai Yunfei. By using his Soul Concealment Art and the Walk-on Strawhat, he was able to hide his aura just enough so that any soul cultivator wouldn’t be able to find it.

All they’d be able to see are two ordinary soulbeasts.

Bai Yunfei had been speeding along ever since he picked up all the fragments of the Nephrite Throne. Unwilling to venture any deeper into the class six area, he stopped halfway to hide in a cave and take a break.

From what his soulsense was telling him, there were only a few early-stage class six soulbeasts in this area, and that was it.

He shouldn’t be in trouble here.

In truth, he had the Thunder Wolf King to thank for finding this cave. The direction he originally picked to follow would’ve taken him deeper into the forest, but when the Thunder Wolf King left, Bai Yunfei chose the opposite direction, which took him towards the outskirts.

Sitting crossed-legged on the ground of the cave, Bai Yunfei started to circulate his soulforce around his body. This way, his wounds would heal and he’d have some time to think about several things.

One of those things was naturally the Nephrite Throne.

Back when the Nephrite Throne was shattered by that soul refiner, Bai Yunfei had felt his own heart shattering almost. Before he could even familiarize himself with this regalia, it broke. And that much was enough to drive him crazy.

But there was still something strange he noticed, making him take a second look at the fragments he gathered.

One of the larger pieces was currently in Bai Yunfei’s hands to inspect.

These are the stats of the Nephrite Throne fragment.

Even the fragments of the throne had stats!

Though he found that out a lot earlier, he didn’t have much time to ruminate on it due to the soul refiner he had to fight. But now that the soul refiner was dead, Bai Yunfei had all the time in the world now to investigate the fragments.

With a turn of his hand, the fragment in his right hand was replaced with a fragment that had once been a part of the throne’s base.

His eyes shined brightly at this one. But not willing to say anything before every single fragment was looked at, Bai Yunfei took out another fragment.

This one fragment was the largest of them with it being almost half of the entire backrest.

The light in Bai Yunfei’s eyes glistened even more.

……

After a long time, each of the fragments had finally been studied by Bai Yunfei. There were about a hundred of these fragments with the smallest being only the size of a small marble.

“How strange! How does this work? Why does it work still?”

Puzzled by the fragments in front of him, Bai Yunfei muttered to himself with a wrinkle so heavy on his forehead that it almost seemed as though they were permanent features.

He really didn’t understand why there was such a change like this after the Nephrite Throne was shattered.

It seemed as though the Nephrite Throne had distributed its abilities into the fragments.

The destruction of a piece of equipment wasn’t rare to Bai Yunfei. He studied such cases before, but never had he had it turn out like this.

If a piece of equipment was destroyed by a failed upgrade attempt, it’d be reduced to dust and disappear forever. In the same line of events, if a piece of equipment—such as a stick—was broken by someone, the stats would still stay the same.

To be more specific, if the stick had an attack value of fifty, then it’d remain fifty after being evaluated again with the Equipment Upgrade Technique. Even the second half of the stick would retain the same value of fifty.

Swords were no exception to this rule. Should it be broken into two pieces, both halves would share the exact same attack value.

To extrapolate further on the matter, armor would also retain the same defensive value even if they were split apart. However, the rule was different in more extreme cases. Robes were fine if they were split in two, but if they were split into many many pieces, their defensive values would potentially drop. And in some cases, the pieces wouldn’t even show as having any stats at all.

In other words, they were no longer classified by the Equipment Upgrade Technique as being ‘equipment’.

There existed another rule in this vein of things. If a sword had an additional effect and was broken in two, then only one half of it would have the effect and not the other. If the damage done to the piece of equipment was far too serious, then the effect would disappear entirely.

And that was only pertaining to the cases of armor and weapons. Bai Yunfei applied these rules before on accessories and such, and they had special findings of their own.

If a bracelet were to break, then it wouldn’t have any stats at all and was basically a useless pile of junk.

……

But today stood an exception to what Bai Yunfei used to call ‘common sense’. The fragments of the throne had completely gone beyond what Bai Yunfei was confident about….

“I just don’t get it….” Bai Yunfei muttered, “I experimented before on low tier equipment, but this never happened before. Is it because these are way higher in grade than what I used before?

“Ah forget it. I won’t get the answer by thinking about it. These ‘results’ in front of me are far more important.”

Clearing his mind with a shake of the head, Bai Yunfei took one of the smaller fragments into his hand.

This one fragment had a slight deviation to the others….