It was only at this moment that Ethan Thompson glanced up toward the overhead light fixture. To his relief, there were no signs of disturbance there, so his valuables should still be safe.

In this chaotic neighborhood, being extra cautious was definitely the right choice.

After resting for just a short while, Ethan Thompson began moving the various pieces of furniture inside, piling them up in the corners.

As a third-level Magus Swordsman, his physical strength was nearly at the human limit. Thus, this body of Ethan Thompson’s possessed three to four hundred kilograms of strength, making it easy for him to move large items like the bed and sofa.

Next, he used a fruit knife to carve a series of visually mysterious runes into the floor at the center of the room.

With each rune completed, a misty spiritual light would shimmer on the wooden floor.

If this were the original Realm of the Vault, Ethan Thompson would have needed certain celestial stones, jade, or other materials as a foundation to set up such an array.

But in this world, the abundance of primal energy was beyond Ethan Thompson’s imagination, so he simply skipped that step.

He was a renowned master of arrays and could compensate for such shortcomings by other means.

About three and a half hours later, a formation resembling the innate Bagua diagram gradually took shape at the center of the dimly lit basement.

Once Ethan Thompson had handled all the details and checked everything thoroughly, he plopped himself down right in the center of the array. Then, with a swipe of the fruit knife, he made a small cut on his wrist, letting a large amount of blood flow down and merge into the formation.

Moments later, a trace of excitement gradually appeared in Ethan Thompson’s eyes.

First, he drew a strange rune in front of himself, then reached his hand into a patch of black void that slowly manifested before him.

If someone were watching from the side at this moment, they would see that most of Ethan Thompson’s right hand had vanished into thin air.

—This was actually the top-secret technique of the Divine Firmament Sect, the “Heaven and Earth Divine Seal.” In the original Realm of the Vault, spiritual energy was scarce, and the yield of rare treasures declined year after year. Space artifacts that had been common tens of thousands of years ago were almost extinct by Ethan Thompson’s era.

However, thirteen hundred years ago, a peerless grandmaster of the Divine Firmament Sect created the “Heaven and Earth Divine Seal” technique. Anyone at the Golden Core stage or above could use this art to open up their own pocket space to store various items.

Although the size of this space was much smaller than that of true spatial artifacts, it was cost-effective, environmentally friendly, consumed no resources, caused no pollution, and even had some potential for further development.

A Golden Core cultivator’s “Heaven and Earth Divine Seal” could hold at most a cubic foot. But at Ethan Thompson’s level of Grand Ascension, it could be expanded to a radius of thirty feet.

What Ethan Thompson had never expected was that, after suffering that calamity in the boundless void, even his natal immortal treasures had all been reduced to dust, yet his “Heaven and Earth Divine Seal” had survived and not collapsed on the spot.

After a while, Ethan Thompson suddenly pulled something out of the black void. It was a pair of mirrors, entirely silver-white in color. He didn’t even glance at them, just tossed them casually onto the ground.

Next came four gleaming gold ingots, seven gemstones the size of pigeon eggs, five jade talismans, and nine spirit stones each five inches square—all of which he retrieved one by one from the black void.

As time passed, a hint of anxiety gradually appeared in Ethan Thompson’s eyes. With each retrieval, the already battered space inside the “Heaven and Earth Divine Seal” was being further destabilized by the influx of spiritual energy, teetering on the brink of collapse. Yet he still hadn’t found the item he truly sought.

He had no choice but to search in this clumsy manner, because everything inside was in disarray, and his severely injured spirit had lost its ability to sense things.

Finally, after a while, his expression relaxed slightly as he pulled out a nine-tiered purple-gold pagoda from the black void.

At that moment, the space within the “Heaven and Earth Divine Seal” finally collapsed.

With a helpless look, Ethan Thompson grabbed two more gold ingots at random, then quickly formed a strange hand seal in front of him, completely sealing the spatial rift. All the treasures he had accumulated over the years would now be lost forever in the void beyond the world.

Yet instead of feeling regret, Ethan Thompson collapsed to the ground, laughing heartily as he gazed at the purple-gold pagoda beside him. He thought to himself that his luck really hadn’t run out after all.

Even in the original Realm of the Vault, no one ever knew that the so-called “Divine Firmament Infinite Purple Void Immortal King” Brian Carter, hailed as the “genius among geniuses” in the cultivation world, whose achievements were unprecedented, was actually only of average talent in cultivation—no better than ordinary people. The reason he was able to reach Grand Ascension in just a few decades was precisely because of this extraordinary treasure he named the “Divine Firmament Spirit-Fortune Purple-Gold Pagoda.”