Divine artifact appears
The people at the table lowered their heads to pick up food and eat rice.
Yan Dan glanced to her left; the Taoist priest ate with an air of authority. To her right, she saw Qin Qi devouring chunks of meat and shoveling rice into her mouth—truly a heroine among women. Diagonally opposite, Tang Zhou's youngest junior brother stood there, pitifully staring at the stewed chicken leg in her bowl. Yan Dan picked up the chicken leg with her chopsticks, looked at him, and asked, "Do you want it? I'll give you this one."
The Taoist priest coughed, and the junior disciple immediately sprang to his feet, standing ramrod straight and saying loudly, "Thank you, young lady, but no need!"
The Taoist priest smiled with satisfaction.
Since they parted that day, Yan Dan had not seen Xu'er again, so she asked, "Where did Miss Xu'er go?" Liu Weiyang put down his chopsticks and kindly replied, "She didn't come with us."
Seizing the opportunity, Qin Qi quickly asked, "Young Master Liu, how did you manage to embed the chess piece into the stone so easily? Why don't you teach me that trick too?"
Liu Weiyang didn't speak, but the Taoist priest chimed in, "You think you can learn all that in a day, with decades of training already put in there?"
Yan Dan bit her chopsticks, thinking, even if it takes twenty years of practice, this Young Master Liu looks to be only in his early twenties, so wouldn't he look very young? Then she heard the Taoist priest say, "It took me fifty-eight years of martial arts training to achieve this. With your aptitude, it will take at least another sixty years." Qin Qi could only whisper, "Master is right." Yan Dan was bewildered.
"Master, I've heard some rumors that ancient artifacts have recently appeared in the world," Tang Zhou suddenly said.
The Taoist priest said, "These rumors have been circulating for the past few years. Since they can spread, there must be some truth to them." He turned to look at Liu Weiyang and asked, "As far as I know, there are four ancient artifacts in total. Is that right?"
Liu Weiyang nodded.
"One of the ancient artifacts is the Seven Luminaries Divine Jade, and another is called Paper Ink. I don't know about the other two." The Taoist priest glanced at his disciple. "Why are you asking about this? These artifacts are not something that mortals can touch. Even if you find them, you can't touch them."
Yan Dan looked at the Taoist priest and thought to herself, "The Seven Luminaries Divine Jade is already in your disciple's hands. He definitely wants the rest. As for the reason, she was also very curious."
Liu Weiyang said calmly, "I have read in ancient books that the southwest was originally a closed-off area, and the Yi people were even more barbaric. Yet they somehow learned witchcraft and even have the ability to see the heavens. I suspect that they must have obtained a divine artifact by chance."
Yan Dan nodded. Shen Yijun was a Yi person, and she did indeed possess the Seven Luminaries Divine Jade. If she obtained the Seven Luminaries Divine Jade after leaving the Yi tribe, it meant that the Yi tribe likely possessed another divine artifact; if she brought the Seven Luminaries Divine Jade from her tribe, it meant that the Seven Luminaries Divine Jade was not very important to the Yi tribe, in other words, there was a high possibility that they possessed a second divine artifact.
Qin Qi wasn't interested in the ancient artifacts; instead, she stared intently at Liu Weiyang: "Young Master Liu, how many years have you practiced martial arts? Even if I'm not very talented, I'll still strive to become like you."
Liu Weiyang thought for a moment and then slowly said, "Fifty or sixty years."
Yan Dan was stunned: Why wasn't his hair bald yet, his teeth loose, and his skin wrinkled?
She was deeply shocked and asked in a low voice, "Young Master Liu, how old are you this year?"
Tang Zhou glanced at her sideways without saying a word.
Liu Weiyang finally looked at her properly, and with a flick of his long, strong fingers, the chopsticks snapped with a crisp sound.
Yan Dan immediately said, "I was just asking casually, you don't need to tell me, really..."
The mountain was much cooler after nightfall. Yan Dan heard Qin Qi's breathing become heavier, rolled off the bed opposite her, and pushed open the door to go out.
The crescent moon overhead was bright. Yan Dan circled the courtyard, found a sharp, protruding rock, and squatted down beside it to continue polishing the seal on her hands. After polishing for a while, she suddenly heard a faint rustling sound not far away. She quickly leaned against the shadow of a tree and remained still. Then, a figure passed before her eyes. By the moonlight, she could tell that the person was a woman, with a beautiful figure and dressed in night clothes.
Yan Dan raised her hand to her chin, secretly feeling that the person's back looked somewhat familiar. She hadn't met many mortals, and she could count the number of people she knew on two hands. Suddenly, the woman stopped a dozen steps away, as if waiting for someone.
Yan Dan slowly moved forward two steps, hiding behind a large tree in the shade. As long as she didn't make a sound, she wouldn't be discovered. She had only been hidden for a short while when she felt a breeze brush past her back, followed by a numbness in her waist, and then she couldn't move. She felt cool fingers tap her neck again, and her eyelids began to grow heavy.
In her hazy state, she only caught a faint scent of sandalwood. She tried desperately to stay awake, but grew increasingly drowsy. Before completely losing consciousness, she heard a cold, icy voice say, "...Should we kill him...?" She thought resentfully, why has she been so unlucky lately?
When Yan Dan woke up, she found herself alive and well, without a single injury. She tried to sit up, but couldn't move a single finger. She tried to call for help, but discovered that she had been silenced and couldn't make a sound.
An unidentified insect swaggered across her arm. Its legs were barbed, and as it crawled over her wrist, which was exposed outside her sleeve, a chill ran down her spine. The insect moved on, and then a toad appeared, hopping and hopping until it came into her line of sight. She stared at the wrinkled, bulging-eyed toad for a moment, before it finally hopped away backward. After a while, the hissing sound grew closer, and Yan Dan felt a chill creep into her heart. Even through her clothes, she could feel something sticky, icy, slowly coiling around her.
She had asked Tang Zhou before if there were many birds, beasts, insects, and snakes on the mountain, but she never expected it to turn out like this...
A sudden chill ran down her neck, and the sensation of slow, wriggling movements and the friction of tiny scales sent shivers down her spine. A slender, brightly colored snake with a triangular head lay beside her neck, slowly raising its body and opening its mouth to reveal three sharp fangs.
Yan Dan's eyes stung, but she didn't dare blink. The snake was still waiting for its chance; if she closed her eyes, it would bite her immediately. She was no different from an ordinary person now; if she were bitten, she would surely die on the spot.
The snake stood upright, slowly writhing in the moonlight, its tongue flicking in and out with a hissing sound. Yan Dan had already cursed Tang Zhou seventeen or eighteen times in her mind, finally unable to bear it any longer and closing her sore eyes. With a whoosh, a cold sword light grazed past her nose, slicing the venomous snake in two. The force of the sword was immense; it slid forward several feet without losing momentum, finally embedding itself in the sand.
Yan Dan's eyes widened, still shaken, as Tang Zhou walked to her side, sheathed his sword, and helped her sit up. Seeing her silence, Tang Zhou asked, "Were you silenced?" Yan Dan blinked, looking at him. Tang Zhou immediately released her silence and asked again, "Do you remember which other acupoints were also silenced?"
Yan Dan said softly, "You almost cut off my nose just now..."
Tang Zhou comforted him, saying, "I'm always very accurate when I make a move."
"I remember feeling a sudden numbness in my lower back and then I couldn't move," Yan Dan recalled. "But I only know the general location."
Tang Zhou remained silent, resting her head on his shoulder and gently massaging her lower back. Yan Dan felt a sudden release, and she was able to move again. She wiped her neck with her sleeve, a look of disgust on her face. "I've never had a snake crawl on my body in my entire life." She then naturally blamed everything on Tang Zhou: "It's all your fault! You made me run for my life while being chased by mortals, and I had to worry about your master discovering my identity. Anyone could easily knock me down; if that person had killed me, I wouldn't even have seen who my enemy was. Now it's even worse, a snake has crawled onto my head!"
Yan Dan took a breath and looked at him resentfully: "Ever since I met you, I've been unlucky all the time. I don't want to see you again, not even in this life or the next!"
Tang Zhou slowly raised his hand and placed it on her back, whispering, "So you hate me this much..." He gently grasped her wrist, and a faint light flashed. The restriction suddenly split in two and fell to the ground.
Yan Dan stared at her empty wrist, still somewhat incredulous.
"If you want to leave now, no one can stop you."
Upon hearing this, Yan Dan paused for a moment, remaining motionless.
Tang Zhou turned around, took a few steps, and looked back at her in the darkness: "Perhaps we can meet again when I find those four divine artifacts."
The patriarch of their flower spirit clan once concluded, based on his long life experience, that the intense curiosity that flower spirits all possess stems from their centuries-long roots in the same place.
Yan Dan originally thought she was an exception, but now it seems she couldn't escape the common fate.
She stood there, hesitated for a moment, and then couldn't help but ask, "Why do you insist on going to find those ancient artifacts? Your master is right, these immortal powers are indeed beyond the reach of mortal flesh and blood."
Tang Zhou smiled slightly: "I always have a dream. In the dream, I am in a completely unfamiliar place, where there is nothing but endless white mist. I seem to be trying to catch up with someone in front of me, and I keep running in the sea of clouds. Every time I am about to catch up, that person will suddenly disappear. I hear a voice telling me that if I want to know all this, I must obtain one of the four ancient divine artifacts."
"The divine artifact you're looking for can't be the Seven Luminaries Divine Jade, can it?"
"That artifact is called Earth Stop."
Yan Dan sighed: "As far as I know, the four ancient divine artifacts were preserved after Pangu created the world and belonged to Emperor Jiuchen. Later, in a great battle between the Heavenly Court and the demons, they were all lost to the mortal world. You have now found the Seven Luminaries, as well as Chumo, Lichen, and Dizhi. Perhaps you will not be able to find a second one even if you spend your whole life on it."
"...I don't know. I just have a vague feeling that that person is very important. You said last time that memories of past lives would be sealed away, and I think this is a memory from a long time ago. Even after a thousand or a hundred years, I can't remember anything else, but I can still remember that person's back." Tang Zhou said softly with gentle eyes, "I just want to see her again. At least, when I look back in the future, I won't just remember a back."
Yan Dan felt a surge of emotion rush to her head, and for a moment she didn't have time to think about what she had said: "In that case, I'll go with you to find Di Zhi. Actually, I don't have anything special to do, and I know more than you do, so maybe there's something I can do to help you!"
Tang Zhou smiled and said, "Thank you." Then he turned and left.
After uttering these bold words, Yan Dan's rare, feverish sense of justice vanished. She could only listlessly bury her face in her hands, squatting on the ground, muttering to herself, "How could I say such a thing... I'd already escaped, yet I still foolishly jumped back into the cage. Am I really such a complete idiot? No way..."
She held her head and thought for a while, then suddenly remembered the words written in blood by Shen Yijun before her death:
...If you take my life, I will sever his hopes for the rest of his life.
“The Palace Master of Shenxiao Palace is also searching for ancient artifacts. Even Yu Mo said that he and Zi Lin combined are no match for the Palace Master of Shenxiao Palace,” Yan Dan was already on the verge of collapse. “Am I doing something as stupid as pulling teeth from a tiger’s mouth? I think I should just run away tonight. I might not even see the artifact and lose my life for no reason. It’s too obvious who gains and who loses in this matter… Anyway, I’ve always taken oaths seriously. Who cares about breaking promises?”
She slowly stood up, but as soon as she took a step, the words seemed to echo in her ears again: "I just want to see her again. At least, when I look back later, I won't just remember a silhouette." She couldn't take another step. Those words struck a nerve. She didn't know what this obsession would ultimately become, like a moth drawn to a flame, indifferent to destruction the next moment.
Yan Dan returned to her room with a heavy heart. Qin Qi was still sleeping soundly, but she tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep. One moment she was thinking about the Palace Master of Shenxiao Palace, the next she was wondering who the somewhat familiar figure she had seen earlier was, and then she was thinking about the identity of the mysterious person who had enlightened her. She drifted in and out of sleep, and when she finally opened her eyes, it was already dawn.
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