Braised Dragon with Soy Sauce

In fact, some wealthy and powerful families will spend a sum of money to hire a formation master to refine some spirit-gathering formations for their family, for use by the core members or elites of the family.

However, hiring a formation master to create a formation requires a very high amount of financial and material resources, which is generally unaffordable for ordinary people.

Putting everything else aside, in the entire Shangyuan City, only City Lord Liao set up a basic spirit-gathering array in his backyard.

Mo Yuming went to check it out, and the effect of the formation was similar to that recorded in the book, with an improvement of about 30%.

Although it can't match the spiritual energy level within the valley, it's already quite good.

Judging from the tight protective measures around the formation, it is estimated that the man surnamed Liao paid a considerable price for this basic formation.

Even though the man surnamed Liao managed to collect this book of formations, he couldn't learn it himself, so he had to spend a lot of money to have someone else refine it.

The third book records the distribution of magical beasts and mineral deposits in the magical beast mountains surrounding Shangyuan City.

Although there are similar books at the market, none are as detailed as this one.

This was clearly collected by Liao using his power and a large amount of manpower and resources.

While some things in this book may be meaningless to ordinary people, and they may not benefit from knowing them, they are still very valuable to someone in power.

Mo Yuming flipped through the fourth book and initially intended to destroy it, but after some hesitation, he finally put it down.

He placed the array book, the demon core wooden box, and the sword blank into his storage bag.

Mo Yuming wanted to destroy the book because it contained despicable content, such as aphrodisiacs, mind-altering drugs, and evil practices like yin-yang cultivation, as well as harmful tricks like poisoning.

However, after a second thought, he kept it because if he learned these things, he would not fall into the traps set by treacherous people when he traveled the world, and he would be able to discover or identify their schemes in time and then find a way to fight back.

As the saying goes, there is no good or bad in the knife used to kill; the difference lies only in the person wielding it.

Mo Yuming left the books on sword techniques and resource distribution on the table, then got up and walked towards the master bedroom in the inner room.

The bedroom inside was decorated as luxuriously as the study, but apart from the large bed, wardrobe, and chairs, there were only a few decorative items, unlike the study which was filled with a dazzling array of items.

After looking around, Mo Yuming didn't find anything new.

As I was preparing to quit, a thought suddenly popped into my head:

I always felt that as the city lord Liao, who had been in charge of Shangyuan City for over a hundred years, shouldn't only have these things on the surface.

Although Shangyuan City is not a particularly wealthy place, it has a special geographical location, being adjacent to the Monster Mountain Range and located at the intersection of two continents.

With Lord Liao's methods, he usually has ways to get something special or money.

Given his greedy nature, it seems unreasonable that he would have plundered these things over the past hundred years. However, Mo Yuming had already checked carefully and there should be nothing missing.

Moreover, after Liao was killed, his personal bag had already been checked and there were not many valuables inside.

When Su Yangyan and his men captured Shangyuan City, they immediately sealed off the entire city lord's mansion, taking control of all the female servants and maids inside.

After investigation, it was found that the Liao family did not own any other houses or private residences. Apart from the city lord's mansion, they only had this small castle.

The women in the castle were unaware of how much wealth the Liao family possessed.

No one was allowed to enter or leave that study and bedroom without Liao's permission; otherwise, they would be severely punished or even executed.

As Mo Yuming retreated to his desk in the study, a sudden inspiration struck him, and a word flashed into his mind:

A formation! Mo Yuming suddenly realized and immediately took out the book of formations from his storage bag. When he opened it, he found that it contained a basic concealment formation.

This formation can conceal objects within a three-foot radius around the formation diagram, making it difficult for those unfamiliar with formations to detect its existence.

Mo Yuming already has a basic understanding of formations, so it shouldn't be difficult for him to discover this formation.

So Mo Yuming began to carefully read through the hidden formation, his brain cells working like high-speed machines, deducing, calculating, and familiarizing themselves with it.

A quarter of an hour later, Mo Yuming had thoroughly understood the obscure and difficult article. He turned and returned to the bedroom, once again examining the luxurious room with the meticulous care of a detective.

Finally, he found a clue next to a small table by the bed. If Mo Yuming had not been well-versed in the mysteries of this formation, no one else would have been able to detect that slight anomaly. Even the most discerning person would have only seen it as a blurry mark.

Mo Yuming arrived in front of the array and, as if in his element, used the techniques he had just learned to move his spiritual energy, using his fingers as knives to draw array diagrams back and forth in the air above the small table.

Soon, the space above the small table began to twist and contort in a bizarre way, like a pretzel. A moment later, a small door appeared as if by magic on the wall behind the table, its surface carved with intricate patterns, like a mysterious code.

Mo Yuming lightly raised his finger and gently touched a few small dots in the pattern. As if under a spell, the door opened silently, revealing a passage leading underground like a giant dragon behind it, as if it were the entrance to a mysterious otherworld.

Mo Yuming carefully stepped into the formation, slowly descended the steps, and entered a secret room.

The size of this secret chamber was comparable to the area of ​​the above-ground structure, resembling an underground palace. It was mostly filled with worldly gold and silver treasures, while other treasures were few and far between, like rare gems.

This perfectly matches the character of the man surnamed Liao. His cultivation aptitude is as ordinary as rotten wood, and achieving outstanding success in profound arts is harder than climbing to heaven.

Given his insatiable greed, he naturally devoted all his energy to accumulating wealth and indulging in a decadent lifestyle of extravagance and debauchery.

However, he was merely an insignificant city lord, and his access was limited to the lower classes of the secular world. Therefore, he could only amass ordinary wealth.

At the deepest part of the secret chamber was a long row of wooden shelves. On the upper shelf were hundreds of wooden boxes containing various magic crystals and hundreds of bottles of pills in jade jars.

Mo Yuming examined the bottle carefully and found that most of the magic crystals were common low- to mid-grade magic crystals, and the quality of the pills in the bottle was also quite ordinary.

The lower level of the wooden shelf contained many ores and spare parts for making weapons such as magic crystal cannons, magic-breaking arrows, and armored chariots. There were both finished parts and many unfinished parts.