12dz Chapter 256 The Elders’ Indifference
Chapter 256 The Elders’ Indifference
The bamboo shadows flickered in front of the master's desk. When Shen Yue stood outside the power transmission hall, the collar of his moon-white shirt was already wet with sweat from his palms.
The sound of a purple clay teapot tapping against a teacup could be heard from the hall, which was strikingly similar to the sound of the interviewer spinning a pen during her modern interview.
She took a deep breath and her fingertips touched the wooden sign of Bingtang Xiaoba on her waist. The skull totem looked cold in the morning light.
"Enter."
The voice of the elder who teaches skills came through the carved wooden door, with a hoarse voice from just waking up.
Shen Yue pushed the door open and saw the old man concentrating on a topographic map of Qinglan Mountain. The teacup on the desk was steaming, blurring the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
"Bingtang Xiaoba, what's the matter?"
Without even looking up, he ran his fingertips across the mark of the Cliff of Broken Souls on the map.
"Elder,"
Shen Yue's voice trembled slightly, remembering the sound of blood dripping into the center of the formation when the black-clothed man's dagger cut open his palm last night.
"Last night, my disciples were on duty at the Soul-Breaking Cliff. They saw someone carving symbols on the cliff. It seemed like..."
"There's no need to say something that seems to be true."
The elder suddenly put down the teacup, the cracks in the glaze glittering in the sunlight. "The Cliff of Broken Souls is filled with miasma year-round. You must have been blinded by the mist."
His tone was indifferent, very much like the tone of a modern supervisor when rejecting her proposal, "Outer disciples, please don't meddle in other people's business. Go away." Shen Yue's nails dug deep into her palm, and the old mark made by the broken wooden board suddenly stung.
She saw the jade slip on the elder's desk, the edge of which was engraved with the same flame symbol as Jun Jiuchen's dagger - it turned out that he was not unaware of it, but just didn't want to believe it.
"But that talisman array..."
She wanted to say more, but was interrupted by the elder with a wave of his hand.
"Go back."
The old man's gaze returned to the map. On the jade ring exposed from his sleeve was a vague word "Jun" engraved.
As Shen Yue bowed and left, she heard the sound of bamboo slips turning in the hall, which was exactly the same as the sound she heard in the secret compartment of the library.
It was drizzling in Zhuxi Garden at noon. Shen Yue squatted in Lingzhu Garden and pretended to weed, but his fingertips were twisting a bamboo leaf covered with fluorescent powder.
It was picked up at the Cliff of Broken Souls, and was the same color as the blood begonia powder that slipped from Jun Jiuchen's sleeve.
Suddenly, someone tapped her shoulder. She turned around abruptly and saw Jun Jiuchen standing in the shadow of the bamboo. His moon-white shirt was half soaked by the rain, and the bandage on his left sleeve was oozing light red.
"What does the elder say?"
He lowered his voice and glanced around, looking like a street agent in a modern spy movie.
Shen Yue noticed the water droplets on his earlobe, dripping along the outline onto the silver bamboo pattern on his collar.
It made the old scar even clearer.
"Just think I was blinded by the miasma."
She handed the bamboo leaf over and saw his muscles tense imperceptibly when his fingertips touched the powder.
Jun Jiuchen took the bamboo leaf and looked at it carefully against the light. Raindrops dripped through his fingers, forming tiny circles on the muddy ground.
"Soul Locking Formation," he suddenly said, his Adam's apple rolling from the effort, "Using the Jun family's bloodline as a guide, it specifically locks the spirit veins."
Shen Yue thought of the scar on the left eyebrow of the man in black last night, which was exactly the same as the old wound on Jun Jiuchen's forearm. His heart suddenly sank - that was clearly a fratricide.
“Why do you do it so obviously?”
She couldn't help but ask, noticing the hilt of the dagger in his sleeve trembling slightly. "That doesn't seem like the style of a Shadow Guard."
Jun Jiuchen was silent for a moment, then crushed the bamboo leaves in his palm. The fluorescent powder stuck to his injured tiger's mouth, looking like some kind of strange tattoo.
"The more obvious it is, the easier it will be for people to think it was done by my family."
When he looked up, raindrops fell from the ends of his hair and hit the puddle between them.
Shen Yue suddenly remembered the warning the system gave him before it disappeared: "Seemingly straightforward traps often hide deeper calculations."
She looked at the faintly visible Soul-Locking Array tattoo on Jun Jiuchen's wrist.
Suddenly she understood why the secret letter pointed to Bingtang Xiaoba - perhaps since she came here through time and space, this body has been involved in a huge chess game.
The missing fragments in the library. The library was bathed in dimness at the hour of You. Shen Yue knelt in front of the bookshelf at the bottom, running his fingertips across the mold spots on the "Records of the Sect's Forbidden Areas".
The book pages recorded that the Soul-Breaking Cliff "was once a burial site for the remains of ancient monks, and its spiritual veins had long since dried up", but she clearly saw the fluorescent light of the Soul-Locking Array seeping into the ground through the cracks in the rock last night.
There was a slight sound of wooden boards behind her. She turned around suddenly and saw a gray rat running by with a bamboo slip in its mouth. The words "Locking the Soul" were faintly engraved on it.
She chased to the secret compartment on the east side and found a new sandalwood box there. The flame symbol on the lid was exactly the same as the handle of Jun Jiuchen's dagger.
Opening the box, there was only half a fragment of a scroll inside, which recorded: "The Soul Locking Formation requires the same bloodline to activate. If the word 'Jun' is engraved at the center of the formation, it must be..."
The writing on the back was eaten by insects, leaving only a blurry word "rebellion".
Shen Yue's heartbeat suddenly accelerated, thinking of the jade ring on the desk of the elder who taught the skills, and the old scar on Jun Jiuchen's wrist - could it be that the ones chasing him were not from the family?
She heard footsteps coming from the stairs. She quickly stuffed the remaining manuscript into her medicine bag and turned around, pretending to tidy up the bookshelf.
The person who came was an inner sect disciple, with four golden bamboo leaves hanging around his waist. When he saw her, he showed a surprised expression: "Why is an outer sect disciple here?"
Shen Yue bowed his head and noticed that the blood-red crabapple embroidered on his sleeve was slightly different from the mark of the Shadow Guard - the petals had an extra vein.
After the man left, Shen Yue opened the scroll again. With the last ray of sunlight filtering through the cracks in the stone, he saw a line of small characters beneath the word "rebel": "...The bloodline is reversed, the spirit vein flows backwards, this is the reverse formation."
She suddenly recalled the strange sight of black blood flowing backwards when Jun Jiuchen was injured—it turned out that the Soul Locking Formation actually did the opposite, not sealing, but...
The candlelight in the library suddenly lit up, casting a faint glow on the fragment of scroll in her hand.
She carefully placed the fragment into the Essentials of Herbs, and when her fingertips touched the specimen of the fern between the pages, she suddenly understood why Jun Jiuchen asked her to catch seven-star fireflies - was there a secret hidden in the "Chen" character on the carapaces of those insects?
The flame symbol engraved on the blade now overlapped with the word "rebellion" on the fragment, forming a complete lock-shaped pattern.
"Reverse formation."
He suddenly spoke, tapping the pottery bowl with his dagger, and the firefly's light flickered. "Use my blood to stimulate it and draw the spiritual vein in reverse."
Shen Yue handed over the fragment and noticed that when he took it, his finger lingered on the word "rebel" for a long time.
"The elder who teaches the skills knows."
She whispered, remembering the topographic map on the old man's desk, "The spiritual veins of the Soul-Breaking Cliff haven't dried up. He's covering up something."
Jun Jiuchen suddenly raised his eyes, the glowing light shattered into stars in his eyes, and the light brown birthmark behind his ear suddenly became clear - the shape was not a lock, but a key to open it.
There was a rustling sound coming from the bamboo forest outside the window, as if countless people were whispering.
Shen Yue looked at the seven-star fireflies in the pottery bowl. The "辰" characters on their carapaces formed a line under the light, forming the inverse solution of the reverse formation.
It turned out that Jun Jiuchen had known for a long time that he had been involved in a conspiracy about spiritual veins since the day he fled the family, and she, the abandoned child of the system, had become the key to breaking the deadlock.
"Bingtang Xiaobachi."
Jun Jiuchen suddenly put down the dagger, his voice as deep as the night, "Your number may not be a coincidence."
Shen Yue thought of the cinnabar words on the secret letter and the jade ring in the sleeve of the elder who passed on the skills, and suddenly felt a chill.
How many secrets are hidden behind this that she doesn't know about?