Wooden hairpin and safety buckle
Yu Jinli felt like a giant power bank that was fully charged.
The warm and comforting scent emanating from the wooden hairpin circulated endlessly within her body.
In just over ten minutes, the koi fish luck that she had almost exhausted while drawing the "Life-Protecting Talisman" was not only fully replenished, but even... there were faint signs of a breakthrough.
Looking at the seemingly ordinary wooden hairpin in her hand, which actually held a hidden secret, she felt a surge of emotions.
What... what kind of magical treasure is this?
That's way too buggy!
With it, wouldn't it be like having a super plug-in that can last indefinitely?
She was staring at the wooden hairpin, her eyes shining with excitement, wondering if she should bless it and give it a patina or something.
The phone that was on the coffee table in the living room suddenly rang.
It was Feng Jinxuan who called.
"Hello? Boss?"
"Where are you?" The man's voice carried a hint of barely perceptible tension.
"I... am at my home."
"address."
"ah?"
"Send me your home address." The man's tone left no room for negotiation.
Half an hour later, a low-key black Phaeton pulled up in front of Yu Jinli's dilapidated apartment building.
Feng Jinxuan got out of the car, looked up, glanced at the old neighborhood full of historical significance, and frowned almost imperceptibly.
He found Yu Jinli's house and knocked on the door.
The door opened quickly.
The girl was wearing a casual cartoon pajama set, her hair was casually tied into a bun, and her face was bare of makeup, looking as clean as an innocent college student.
She seemed somewhat surprised to see him.
"Boss? What brings you here?"
Feng Jinxuan did not answer.
His gaze passed over her, landing on the small, brightly lit living room behind her, and then on her peach blossom eyes, which sparkled with excitement and joy, like two tiny stars.
He confirmed that she was safe, alive, and unharmed.
The man's heart, which had been hanging in suspense all afternoon, finally settled back into place.
"I..." He cleared his throat, trying to find a reasonable reason for his sudden visit, "I was just passing by and thought I'd come up to see if you... were doing any dangerous metaphysical experiments at home again."
Yu Jinli: "..."
Boss, isn't that reason a bit too perfunctory?
You live on the mountaintop, and I live in the west of the city. You just happened to pass by the South Heavenly Gate and stopped by the East Sea Dragon Palace.
But she didn't call him out on it.
She simply stepped aside to make way, a bright smile spreading across her face.
"Boss, come in quickly! I've just discovered a shocking secret and I want to share it with you!"
Feng Jinxuan walked into the small living room and, for the first time, felt a little... awkward.
The house was small, but very cozy.
The air was filled with a scent of sunshine and soap.
It was completely different from his spacious, cold mansion, which smelled only of disinfectant.
"What secret?" He sat on the slightly chipped wooden sofa, his posture still dignified, yet he seemed somewhat... out of place.
"Ta-da!"
Yu Jinli, as if presenting a treasure, placed the simple wooden hairpin and the safety buckle that she always wore around her neck on the coffee table in front of him.
"Boss, look!" She pointed at the two items, her eyes sparkling. "Don't you think they... look very similar?"
Feng Jinxuan: "..."
He looked at the two objects, one made of wood and the other of jade; one long and narrow and the other round.
Aside from the fact that they are all old antiques, he really couldn't see how they were similar.
"I mean, the feeling!" Yu Jinli explained anxiously when she saw his confusion, "The 'aura' on them is very similar! It's that kind of... warm, comfortable feeling!"
Feng Jinxuan picked up the two items and examined them carefully.
Although he could not see the so-called "qi".
But when he put the two items together, he could indeed feel a faint, warm current emanating from the point of contact between them.
It's amazing.
"You mean..." He looked at Yu Jinli, a bold guess slowly forming in his mind, "These two items might... be from the same person?"
"Bingo!" Yu Jinli snapped her fingers. "Great minds think alike!"
She looked at the wooden hairpin and the safety buckle, and the more she looked, the more convinced she was that her guess was right.
“Think about it, my adoptive parents’ diary says that this hairpin was given to me by an ‘old friend’ from the snowy mountains when I was ten years old.”
"And your safety amulet was a gift from a wandering Taoist priest when you were a child."
"Do you think it's possible..." she lowered her voice, speaking mysteriously, "that this 'old friend' and that 'Taoist priest' are actually the same person?"
This guess is too bold, and too... outrageous.
But for some reason, Feng Jinxuan felt that this was very likely the truth.
"Guessing is useless."
The man's rigorous scientific thinking once again prevailed.
He stood up and carefully put the wooden hairpin and the safety buckle into his pocket.
"Walk."
Where to?
"Go to a place that can tell us the answer."
...
One hour later, at the headquarters of the Feng Group, on the fifth basement floor.
This is the Feng Group's highest-secret Biomaterials and Energy Research Center.
It is also Feng Jinxuan's private laboratory.
Looking at this place filled with futuristic technology, full of sophisticated instruments she couldn't understand and researchers in white coats, Yu Jinli felt her worldview being challenged once again.
She strongly suspected that her boss was secretly researching some kind of alien technology behind the back of the country.
The head of the laboratory was an elderly German man with thick glasses and messy hair like a bird's nest.
Upon seeing Feng Jinxuan, he immediately rushed over excitedly.
"Oh! My dear boss! You've finally remembered your poor Hans!"
Feng Jinxuan ignored his enthusiasm.
He simply placed the two antique "mystical items" on a sterile tray.
“Hans,” he instructed succinctly, “analyze for me the materials of these two things, and…whether there is some kind of ‘energy resonance’ between them that we do not yet understand.”
"Oh my God! What a beautiful piece of Oriental art!" Hans picked up the peace buckle, his eyes shining as if he had seen a priceless treasure.
He carefully placed the two items into a huge, expensive-looking instrument filled with complex wiring.
After a series of complex operations, the analysis results appeared on the holographic projection in the center of the laboratory.
A three-dimensional structural analysis diagram appeared on the screen, composed of countless complex, precise, and dazzling data and models.
"Oh my God!" Hans exclaimed in disbelief as he looked at the data on the screen. "Boss! This...this is incredible!"
"This jade pendant is made of the finest mutton-fat jade from the Kunlun Mountains. But inside it, there is a trace element with extremely high energy activity that we have never seen before!"
“As for this wooden hairpin…” Hans’s expression grew even more shocked, even with a hint of fanaticism, “Its material is not any known type of wood on Earth! Its cellular structure is still active! It… it’s like a living piece of wood!”
Yu Jinli and Feng Jinxuan exchanged a glance, both seeing shock in each other's eyes.
"And there's more!" Hans pointed to another set of constantly fluctuating data on the screen, gesturing excitedly like a child who had discovered a new continent. "Look here! When these two items are placed together, the energy fluctuation frequencies within them are... completely synchronized! They are resonating! They are responding to each other!"
"From an energy perspective, they are not two separate objects at all! They are more like a lock, and a single key that can open this lock!"
key?
Looking at the safety buckle and the wooden hairpin, Yu Jinli felt that life's surprises came one after another, making it hard to resist.
A lock, and a key...
What does this mean?
Just then, Hans pointed to another line on the screen, a more detailed report of the material composition that had just been analyzed, and muttered to himself in an extremely confused tone.
"Strange... The core energy source of both of these items points to a superheavy element that does not exist on our periodic table..."
On the screen, a long string of chemical element symbols appeared. Yu Jinli couldn't understand them at all; they were extremely technical and seemed to be the code name for some kind of high-energy particle.
But at the end of that string of symbols was a handwritten Chinese annotation that made Feng Jinxuan's pupils shrink abruptly.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
