Did you like Chapter 46? (Bonus chapter for 900 nutrient solutions) (Bug fix) ^^
Li Chenjin: "..."
This is no longer slow; it's as if God sealed her off from the moment she was born.
Even an ordinary person with poor aptitude could eventually develop a Golden Core after being fed various spiritual herbs and immortal plants for more than ten years. However, that scholar, after being fed various spiritual herbs and immortal plants for more than ten years, only managed to reach the Foundation Establishment stage.
Li Chenjin: "Then what is that cultivator's current cultivation level...?"
Yun Mingyue said, "Cultivator Wen has been in the Pure Realm for two whole years, and he is only about to form his Golden Core. He is still in the Foundation Establishment stage. If he is to step into the Nascent Soul stage as the sect leader of the Weapon Cultivation world said, it will take him more than ten years."
Li Chenjin: "..."
This cultivation level is indeed a bit low. Although she could sense that the cultivator's cultivation level wasn't high, she couldn't tell what level it was. After all, she didn't know what the Foundation Establishment realm was like. When she was a child, she just casually cultivated and reached the Golden Core realm...
Li Chen smiled and said, "It doesn't matter. After all, your ancestor is idle anyway. It's a good thing to find him something to do."
Ideally, this literary cultivator would cause a ruckus in the Pure Realm. Shen Zhengyuan, out of respect for the weapon cultivators, would surely spare her life, allowing her to escape in the chaos.
Li Chen followed Yun Mingyue around the palace for a long time before finally arriving at the inner hall where Shen Zhengyuan usually rested.
Near the inner palace, there were no guards, and it was quiet and silent. The only sound that could be heard along the way was the sound of the two of them walking.
“Miss Li, this is the Ancestor’s bedroom. But we disciples are not allowed to enter without the Ancestor’s permission, so I can no longer accompany you,” Yun Mingyue said. “I will wait outside the door for you to come out.”
Li Chen nodded and said, "But this place looks quite big. If I go in and wander around, it will probably take a lot of time. Why don't you go back first? Anyway, this is your ancestor's territory, so I naturally wouldn't dare to run around. Or could you lend me this jade token? That way, it would be more convenient for me to go to other places later."
As Li Chen finished speaking, his gaze fell on the jade pendant at her waist.
Yun Mingyue took a step back imperceptibly and said, "Without the jade token in the Pure Realm, even if everyone knows I am a disciple of the Pure Realm, I cannot save my life. I am afraid I will not be able to lend the jade token to Miss Li. I hope Miss Li will forgive me."
Li Chen nodded and said, "Oh, I see. I was being presumptuous. Thank you for informing me, Miss Mingyue."
After Li Chen finished speaking, he smiled at her again, then turned and stepped into the palace.
Yun Mingyue smiled at her and closed the door behind her after she entered.
Shen Zhengyuan's bedroom was also quite large. Although it was called a bedroom, it had a main hall, a study, a library, and so on.
Li Chen strolled leisurely around Shen Zhengyuan's study and library, but found nothing special. He had no interest in the classics and secret techniques of the cultivation world, and finally wandered into Shen Zhengyuan's bedroom.
Shen Zhengyuan's usual sleeping room is much smaller than other parts of the palace, but it is also more elegant and exquisite.
A quick glance revealed that all the tables, chairs, and furniture in the room were made of white jade. It was a mystery where the cultivators in the world found so much jade. Even the bed was made of white jade; it was far too extravagant.
Li Chen explored the room for a while before sitting down at the table. He looked at the incense burner in front of him, where the incense was still burning slowly, filling the room with a faint sandalwood fragrance.
Only then did she take the envelope she had seen earlier by Shen Zhengyuan's bedside from her sleeve.
She naturally didn't have the habit of randomly reading other people's letters, but since this letter came from the Zen meditation community and the handwriting was that of the old monk Mingcun, she naturally had to take a look.
She took the letter out of the envelope, leisurely unfolded it, poured herself a cup of tea, and then began to carefully read the letter in front of her.
The words on the letter were indeed written by the Venerable Mingcun, but what was written in the letter made Li Chen lose his mood for tea and instead frown.
The letter read:
[Master Shen Qinglan:]
I have recently heard that demonic traces have appeared in Xicheng Town. I have asked a friend from the secular world to investigate. However, I am concerned that he is still young and has never fought against demons before. Moreover, the records in the cultivation world are incomplete, and I am afraid that he will not be able to make accurate judgments and will be unable to respond in time.
I deeply fear that the catastrophe of hundreds of years ago will once again descend upon the Three Realms, so I respectfully submit this letter to request the assistance of Sect Leader Shen.
Sect Leader Shen, this trip may present an opportunity; you might even encounter an old friend.
Ming Cun's handwritten letter
Perhaps by chance, we might run into an old friend...
Li Chen clicked his tongue and pursed his lips helplessly, unsure whether the old friend of Shen Zhengyuan mentioned in the letter was her or someone else.
However, it must be her, since she hasn't seen Shen Zhengyuan bring anyone else back.
This was indeed as she had guessed earlier. This old monk Mingcun knew a lot of things. Not only had he already guessed what the things in Xicheng Town were, but he also intended to lure her and Shen Zhengyuan there. She just didn't know what his purpose was.
She knew absolutely nothing about the demon race. There were almost no records of demons in the cultivation world, and even in the Zen cultivation world, there were only a few words about them.
As she had read in the meditation texts before, it was said that the rumored demons liked to manipulate people's hearts and could sense the evil thoughts and wicked intentions in people's hearts. Therefore, they would use various methods to lure people to continuously nurture the evil thoughts and wicked intentions in their hearts.
This method, which fosters evil thoughts and wicked intentions in people, either makes them mistakenly believe that they have seen gods or Buddhas, or it is like feeding them, constantly fulfilling their wishes, thereby either absorbing their vital energy or devouring their souls, just like a very patient hunter.
etc……
It makes people mistakenly believe they have seen gods or Buddhas...
As Li Chen began to think more deeply, the statue of the deity she had seen earlier at Master Wu's house suddenly came to mind.
No wonder that Master Wu said that the deity was very effective, but the statue didn't look like a proper deity at all. It turned out that it was a demon.
But the demon race has been gone for hundreds of years, so why has it suddenly reappeared at this time?
What exactly happened in the cultivation world hundreds of years ago?
Speaking of which, the cultivation world was at its most prosperous period at that time. If the cultivators of that world had joined forces to fight against the enemy, they should have been able to subdue the demon race. So how could they have almost lost their lineage because of that demon race?
Moreover, if it is indeed the Demon Clan, the three places that suffered the most damage hundreds of years ago were the alchemy world, the magic world, and the sword world. If the Demon Clan were to make a comeback now, they would definitely deal with these three places first.
After all, if she were a demon, she would definitely try to deal with these three places first. If one of the most capable rescuers is gone, and two of the most capable fighters are gone, wouldn't it be much easier to deal with the rest?
She stroked the letter in her hand and sighed softly.
She couldn't worry about whether it was a demon or not for the time being, since if she really wanted to investigate, she would have to get out of this place first.
I wonder if there's anything else in this place besides this letter.
However, considering that Shen Zhengyuan cares so much about the Demon Clan, and this place is his usual residence where he rests and handles affairs, there must be plenty of "good stuff" here.
Since she's already here, it would be a shame not to search around and make the most of her visit.
With that thought in mind, she hummed a tune and began searching around the area.
She didn't know until she looked, and she actually found quite a few letters sent by disciples from various cultivation circles.
The letters did indeed mention some traces of demonic energy. The envelopes also contained small pieces of maps cut from the large map, suggesting that the locations on these small maps were related to those traces of demonic energy.
Unfortunately, after looking through them, she found that the letters placed in prominent positions were all about the same thing, and there was nothing worth investigating.
But since such things exist, what she's looking for will surely be available as well.
Given Shen Zhengyuan's personality, those important things would definitely be carefully packed and hidden away by him. If they weren't carried with him at all times, they would likely have been hidden in secret compartments or secret rooms in this bedroom.
She couldn't check what was in Shen Zhengyuan's storage bag, but couldn't she also check if there were any hidden compartments or secret rooms in this bedroom?
Without further ado, Li Chen began to explore Shen Zhengyuan's bedroom inch by inch, drawing on his experience in finding hidden compartments and secret rooms accumulated from his previous business trips.
Fortunately, she still had the skill to find hidden compartments and secret rooms, and it didn't take her long to find a hidden door behind the bookshelf next to the bed.
The mechanism of the hidden door was quite simple. It seems that Shen Zhengyuan never expected anyone to dare to come to his territory and search his things, so he didn't make those extremely complicated mechanisms, which made it convenient for her.
As she pressed the mechanism, the hidden door in front of her slowly opened, revealing a secret room that was usually hidden behind the bookshelves.
As soon as she stepped inside, the stone door behind her slowly closed automatically, sealing her in a dark chamber without windows or any external light source.
However, it wasn't completely dark. A little distance away, faint lights could be seen, like the faint glow emitted by spirit stones that had lost their spiritual energy.
Although the light couldn't illuminate the entire secret chamber, it was enough for her to vaguely see the path beneath her feet and follow it to the spirit stone.
Only then did she begin to lament that she had returned the spirit stones too early.
She had gotten so used to using spirit stones for lighting that she had forgotten to stock up on tinderboxes, which led to her current predicament of searching through her storage bag but finding nothing that could provide light.
When she got to the spirit stone, she realized that it looked quite unusual.
Not only was it placed on a special stone platform half the height of a person, but it was also placed in a brocade box, which was lined with delicate and soft silk, as if afraid that the spirit stone would be bumped or damaged. It looked even more precious than Shen Zhengyuan.
Moreover, the spirit stone was polished very smoothly all over, and there was a strange rune engraved on the stone, which looked somewhat like the memory stone she had heard of before.
However, although these memory stones are rare, requiring special spirit stones to make and extremely expensive, they are still quite common in the world of magic cultivation.
Any disciple in the cultivation world with some savings could barely afford one by spending eight or nine hundred taels of silver. But for Shen Zhengyuan, it was hardly a treasure.
But that's precisely why it's even stranger.
How could Shen Zhengyuan treat something like an ordinary rock to play with, and yet he protects it so much?
Could it be that there are some secrets about the cultivation world or Shen Zhengyuan hidden here?
Wouldn't it be inappropriate for her, a guest, to just greet it without touching it?
Li Chen hesitated for a moment, then reached out his hand toward the memory stone.
As she lightly touched the memory stone with her index finger, a stream of spiritual energy was injected into it. The memory stone, awakened by her spiritual energy, immediately shone brighter, and soon an image appeared on the memory stone.
Li Chen looked up at the image that appeared, but the moment he saw it clearly, he froze, because...
She saw herself.
In the picture, she is wearing a light blue dress. The dress is not made of any good material. It seems to be the cheapest one she bought on the street. Although it feels a bit rough, she is used to wearing it and does not feel uncomfortable.
At that time, they would always stop to rest during their journey.
Once she stopped, she always had to find something to do. Otherwise, even if she didn't find it boring, Shen Zhengyuan would keep asking all sorts of questions, and then listen to her answers, observe her expression and tone, and judge how much of what she said was true and how much was false. It was really difficult to deal with.
So, over time, she started taking Shen Zhengyuan to tinker with things she would enjoy playing with hundreds of years later.
One moment, I'll teach him how to make lotus lanterns, let him write his wishes on them, and together we'll place the lanterns on the lake. Watching the lanterns, with their faint light, drift away with the current, carrying their wishes, into the distance.
Then she asked Shen Zhengyuan to dig up some wildflowers and find some flowerpots to plant in the flowers and put them in the house, hoping that he would look at the flowers and appreciate the sun and moon every day and talk less and ask fewer questions.
Although Shen Zhengyuan seemed unwilling, he did as she asked. However, after he moved the flowerpots with wildflowers into the house, he slowly moved to her side, where she was drying herbs, and watched her humming a tune as she turned over the herbs.
Actually, the herbs had already been turned over; they just needed to be dried in the sun.
But seeing Shen Zhengyuan standing beside her, looking hesitant and wanting to say something, Li Chen figured that the guy must have nothing better to do and was thinking of some tricks to get back at her.
Without caring whether the herbs were properly turned over, he stood there and turned the herbs in front of him over and over again a hundred or eighty times, pretending not to have noticed Shen Zhengyuan coming over.
At that time, Shen Zhengyuan was not as calm as he is now. After waiting for about half an hour, he lost his temper and said some sarcastic things to Li Chenjin, forcing her to turn around and face him.
Unexpectedly, just as she was preparing to deal with people, Shen Zhengyuan's hand, which had been behind his back, suddenly reached out in front of her.
When Li Chen looked closely, he saw that Shen Zhengyuan was holding a bunch of wildflowers. They looked more beautiful than the flowers he had brought into the house, and it was obvious that he had carefully selected them.
Looking back now, Shen Zhengyuan must have had some unusual thoughts in his heart at that time. However, Shen Zhengyuan was not good at speaking back then, and it was even more obvious that he liked her. So she didn't take it to heart. She could even laugh and accept the bouquet of flowers from his hand, praising him for being "filial," which made Shen Zhengyuan angry and turn away. This scene in her memory disappeared and was replaced by another scene.
In this picture, she is holding an umbrella and humming a tune as she walks through a sudden downpour.
She remembered that the reason she went out was because she had sent Shen Zhengyuan out to dig for wild vegetables, but not long after he left, a torrential downpour began.
The rain looked heavy and fierce, and she was worried that Shen Zhengyuan would get soaked, so she went out with an umbrella to look for him. Not far away, she saw him holding a vegetable basket, huddled under a tree, looking very pitiful.
When Li Chenjin stood in front of him, he looked up at her.
I don’t know what he was thinking when he was alone. His eyes were like a flame extinguished by rain, dim and empty, as if they had been completely eroded by the cold around him, without a trace of life.
But the flame that had been extinguished flickered back to life when it saw Li Chenjin laughing and reaching out her hand to him. Without hesitation, it grasped Li Chenjin's hand, stood up with her help, and squeezed together under an umbrella, slowly walking towards the small building.
Although she could vaguely recall some details from those images, she couldn't remember anything about what she had said or what Shen Zhengyuan had said.
This photographic stone can indeed record the figures of people and objects, but it has a major drawback: it cannot record sound.
Therefore, Li Chen looked up for a long time, but could only see figures moving inside, their mouths opening and closing, but could not hear a sound.
However, the recording stone is not the most important thing now. It is also not important to find out how Shen Zhengyuan used the recording stone when she was not paying attention. What is important is that she can see clearly those corners that were originally shrouded in darkness by using the light emitted by the recording stone.
The surrounding walls were covered with various portraits.
The people in those portraits are making various different gestures, and the gorgeous clothes and jewelry they wear are also different, but the only thing that remains unchanged is that the faces of the people in those paintings all look exactly the same, they are all her faces.
However, she did not recall wearing the clothes and jewelry depicted in those portraits.
If it weren't for the fact that there was someone in Shen Zhengyuan's heart who looked exactly like her, then the clothes worn by the people in these paintings were all drawn by him through his imagination.
For example, the person in the painting directly in front of her is wearing the same clothes and jewelry as she is wearing today.
But these portraits, just because they all depicted her, did not make her feel relaxed or familiar. On the contrary, after seeing the images in the memorial stone, and then seeing those portraits that looked exactly like her but had particularly empty eyes, she only felt oppressed and gloomy.
It was as if these figures in the paintings, who had the exact same faces as her, were spying on her, making her feel a chill run down her spine.
She wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, but as if sensing something, she looked up and saw a roof covered with pictures.
And whether it was her imagination or not, she felt as if the figures in the paintings were winking at her. The corners of their originally smiling lips deepened, looking somewhat sinister and eerie, not like they were smiling, but like...
Shen Zhengyuan was smiling.
Do you like it?
A sudden voice rang out from behind her, making her heart skip a beat.
She immediately turned around and saw Shen Zhengyuan standing not far from her by the wall, next to a portrait. He and the portrait were smiling at her, and then slowly opened their lips, asking her in unison, along with the figures in the painting who seemed to have suddenly come to life: "Do you like it?"
"How do you like it?"
Li Chenjin: "..."
The sounds came from all directions, relentlessly drilling into her mind, like an invisible wall gradually closing in, trapping her inside, making it impossible for her to move, and even breathing became increasingly difficult.
She vowed that for a long time to come, she probably wouldn't want to look in the mirror.
She watched Shen Zhengyuan slowly walk towards her. She subconsciously wanted to back away, but then she thought that backing away at this time would be like showing weakness, which would be too embarrassing. If the old monk Mingcun heard about it, he would definitely laugh at her.
Therefore, she stared at her slightly numb scalp as Shen Zhengyuan slowly walked up to her, then turned to look at the portraits around her, and smiled as she said, "Look, these are all portraits I painted. Don't they look a lot like you?"
"For more than 730 years, I have relied on looking at this memorial stone and drawing your portrait to prevent myself from forgetting your appearance, just as I have forgotten my relatives and fellow disciples."
But as he spoke, his voice grew lower and lower, and even the smile on his face became fainter, making his eyes appear even more empty and deep, like an abyss that could not be seen.
"Unfortunately, the recording stone cannot preserve the sound. It has been more than 730 years... I have not heard your voice. Even though I tried hard to remember, in less than ten years, I have completely forgotten what your voice is like, just like... I have forgotten my parents, relatives, friends, master, and fellow disciples."
"But thankfully, although I couldn't find them, I found you. You can still talk to me, and I can still hear your voice, unlike in my dreams when I can only see you smiling at me, but no matter how much I beg you, you won't say a word to me, let alone let me remember your voice."
As he spoke, he raised his hand and slowly stroked Li Chenjin's cheek, his fingertips caressing the corner of her lips, as if waiting for her to speak a few words to him.
Li Chen felt the touch on his face and couldn't help but turn his face away, avoiding Shen Zhengyuan's hand.
But the next second, Shen Zhengyuan turned her face back to him. This time, Shen Zhengyuan's fingertips caressed her lower lip without any restraint, causing her to frown. She brushed his hand away and said in a light tone, "Cultivator Shen, a gentleman uses words, not fists. Talking is one thing, but it's no fun to get physical."
Shen Zhengyuan seemed not to hear what she said. He grabbed one of her hands and pressed it against his chest. Through the skin and clothes on his chest, she could vaguely feel his heart beating inside.
"Actually, I have another gift for you." Shen Zhengyuan's smile returned as he spoke softly to her, "I know you probably want to kill me right now, don't you?"
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