52: An old pen from the Republican era, its ink like resentment.

The entrance to the Lin family's basement was located at the back of the kitchen, behind a heavy oak door secured with an old-fashioned brass padlock.

Lin Wenyuan pulled out a ring of keys and fumbled to open the lock by the dim light of the hallway. As the door swung open, a gust of stale, cool air hit them—not the cold of an air conditioner, but the unique, earthy chill of the deep underground.

"Watch your step," he cautioned, leading the way down.

Li Muchen followed behind. The steps were concrete, and the walls on both sides were whitewashed, though the paint had become mottled with age. After descending about twenty steps, the space suddenly opened up.

This basement was more spacious than expected.

It was about fifty or sixty square meters with a ceiling nearly three meters high. The walls were exposed red brick, and the floor was paved with bluestone slabs. Several tall bookshelves stood against the walls, neatly lined with books—mostly historical documents, local gazetteers, and photocopies of ancient texts. On the other side were several display racks showcasing pottery jars, porcelain shards, and bronze fragments, clearly part of Lin Wenyuan’s collection.

The air was thick with the scent of old paper mixed with a faint aroma of camphor—a few camphor wood chests were stacked in the corner.

Most eye-catching was the massive mahogany desk in the center of the basement, its surface cluttered with unfinished manuscripts, magnifying glasses, and drawing tools. An old-fashioned desk lamp with a green glass shade stood on the desk, its brass base featuring a primitive, elegant design.

"I usually organize my materials here," Lin Wenyuan explained. "It's quiet, and no one disturbs me."

His gaze involuntarily drifted toward the far corner of the basement—where an old-fashioned, dark green safe stood. It was about waist-high, covered in rust, its paint peeling to reveal dark red oxidation underneath.

"The pen... is in there." Su Wanhua's voice came from the top of the stairs. She hadn't dared to come all the way down, standing instead on the last few steps, her face pale.

Li Muchen walked toward the safe.

His Spiritual Sense spread out like water, instantly enveloping the entire basement. The aura here was very "clean"—unnervingly so. Yin Qi, filth, and stray energies seemed to be repelled by some force, leaving only a pure, near-vacuum of "emptiness."

Only around that safe did a faint, wispy black aura linger.

It wasn't Yin Qi, but... resentment.

A resentment so dense it had practically materialized.

"The key." Lin Wenyuan handed over a small copper key, his fingers trembling slightly.

Li Muchen took the key but didn't open the lock immediately. He reached out, his palm hovering an inch above the safe's surface.

True Essence circulated as his Spiritual Sense condensed.

The scene inside the safe gradually became clear within his Spiritual Sense—

There were no valuables inside, only a small sandalwood box about the size of a palm, with an interlocking lotus pattern carved on the lid. Dense, inseparable black mist swirled around the box, writhing slowly as if alive, sometimes gathering and sometimes dispersing.

Even stranger, light and shadows flickered within the black mist, as if playing a silent old movie.

Li Muchen "saw" fragments:

A pale hand holding a dark red fountain pen, writing on yellowed stationery. The handwriting was elegant but shaky.

The stationery was torn to shreds, the pieces falling like snowflakes.

A well opening, darkness, falling... then a long, boundless, icy darkness.

These fragments flashed by in an instant, yet they carried a powerful emotional impact—despair, resentment, indignation, and... a faint, lingering attachment.

"Temple Master?" Lin Wenyuan prompted softly, seeing him remain motionless for a long time.

Li Muchen withdrew his hand and inserted the key into the lock.

There was a soft click.

The lock opened.

He pulled open the heavy safe door.

That black mist, like a long-imprisoned beast, suddenly surged out!

It didn't rush toward Li Muchen, but instead... spread throughout the basement. In an instant, the temperature plummeted, fine beads of water condensed on the walls, and a faint scent of ink filled the air—not the chemical smell of modern ink, but the ancient fragrance of Pine Soot Ink mixed with Musk and Borneol.

The sandalwood box lay quietly inside the safe.

On the surface of the box, the carved lotus patterns seemed to come alive in the dim light, the petals slowly unfurling and the stems swaying slightly—of course, this was just an illusion caused by the resentment.

Li Muchen reached in and took out the wooden box.

It felt icy to the touch, not just a low temperature, but a bone-chilling cold. The box was very light, too light to contain a metal fountain pen.

He opened the lid.

The inside was lined with faded red velvet, and in the center indentation lay a fountain pen.

The body of the pen was dark red, made of a material that seemed like neither jade nor wood, with natural grain as fine as hair. The cap was made of copper, oxidized to black, with a tiny, rice-sized dark red gemstone embedded at the top—not a ruby, but something darker, like congealed blood.

The nib was gold, but with a blackish tint, clearly very old.

The entire pen gave off a sense of being "asleep."

But Li Muchen knew it had never truly slept.

As his Spiritual Sense swept over the pen, the wood grain magnified and became clear in his perception—those weren't natural grains, but extremely tiny runes! Densely packed and layered, they formed a complex Seal Formation. However, with the passage of time, the Formation had been damaged, and resentment was leaking through the cracks.

"That's it..." Su Wanhua said tremulously from the stairs. "Shiyu used that to play spirit of the pen."

Li Muchen didn't touch the pen, merely observing it quietly.

His Spiritual Sense delved deep into the interior of the pen.

There, a wisp of lingering thought was sealed—no, not just one, but countless wisps. Like a tangled mess of silk threads, chaotic and broken, yet all pointing toward the same core: a woman's resentment.

The resentment at the core was the densest and the most lucid.

Li Muchen attempted to communicate with it.

"Who are you?" he asked, transmitting his intent through Spiritual Sense.

There was no answer.

Only a more turbulent surge of resentment came, carrying fragmented images:

A schoolhouse of gray bricks and tiles, a female student with braided hair.

A courtyard under the moonlight, stationery spread out on a stone table.

Heart-wrenching screams, the crying of a baby.

Then darkness, eternal darkness.

But throughout these images, there was never a clear face.

Only that pen, always held in that pale hand.

"Why are you here?" Li Muchen asked again.

This time, there was a response.

Not in words, but a fragment of "memory"—

Autumn, the 26th year of the republic of china.

Provincial No. 1 Girls Middle School, library basement.

A female student wearing an Indanthrene blue cheongsam knelt before a dim kerosene lamp, her hand holding the pen trembling.

She was writing a letter to a man.

Before the letter was finished, tears had already fallen, blurring the ink on the paper.

Then, the door opened.

Several dark figures entered and dragged her outside.

The pen fell to the floor, rolling under a bookshelf.

The female student's cries grew distant... the vision came to an abrupt end.

Li Muchen withdrew his Spiritual Sense, his brow furrowed slightly.

The resentment in this pen was more complex than he had imagined. It wasn't just a vessel for resentment; it was more like... a witness. It had witnessed its owner's tragedy and sealed that despair within its body, remaining for a hundred years without dissipating.

"Temple Master, did you see anything?" Lin Wenyuan asked cautiously.

Li Muchen closed the lid, and the scent of ink and the chill instantly weakened.

"This pen is indeed ominous," he said slowly. "It contains the resentment of its original owner, and... more than one kind of resentment."

"More than one?" Su Wanhua was puzzled.

"The spirit of the pen game is essentially a form of mediumship," Li Muchen explained. "Using the pen as a medium and the participants' minds as a guide to bridge Yin and Yang. If the participants' thoughts are pure and without malice, it usually only attracts wandering spirits who disperse after some play."

He looked at the wooden box. "But this pen is different. It carries a powerful resentment field of its own, like a... beacon. Playing spirit of the pen with it is equivalent to actively activating this beacon and drawing the resentment toward oneself."

Lin Wenyuan turned pale. "Then Shiyu..."

"She has been haunted by the resentment," Li Muchen said bluntly. "Moreover, this resentment is already eroding her mind. If it's not resolved, at best, her sanity will be damaged; at worst... her life will be in danger."

Su Wanhua's legs gave way, and she nearly fell from the steps, but Li Shiyu caught her.

"Temple Master, I beg you to save Shiyu!" she cried out. "We'll pay whatever it takes!"

"Money is of no use," Li Muchen shook his head. "To save your daughter, we must first resolve the resentment within this pen. And to do that, we need to know where the resentment comes from."

He placed the wooden box back in the safe but did not lock it.

"Layman Lin," he looked at Lin Wenyuan, "you are a history professor. Have you heard of the origin of this pen? Or... did anything special happen at this school during the Republican era?"

Lin Wenyuan frowned in thought. "This pen was found when the school was cleaning out the old library basement. The administrator said it was in a metal box with a Seal that read: 'Sealed in the 26th year of the republic of china, do not move.'"

He paused. "As for anything special... the predecessor of Provincial No. 1 Girls Middle School was the 'Qingfeng Academy' of the late Qing Dynasty. It was converted into a girls' school during the Republican era and temporarily moved to the rear during the War of Resistance. If I were to mention something special..."

He suddenly remembered something, walked quickly to a bookshelf, and pulled out a thick, thread-bound book from the top shelf.

The book was very old, with a dark blue cover that read Annals of Provincial Capital Education: Republican Volume.

He quickly flipped through the yellowed pages, finally stopping at one and pointing to a few lines of small text. "Here it is! In the autumn of the 26th year of the republic of china, a student disappearance occurred at Provincial No. 1 Girls Middle School. A senior girl named... Chen Shuyi went missing under mysterious circumstances on campus. The school reported it, but after months of searching, the police found nothing, and the case was eventually dropped."

Chen Shuyi.

Li Muchen's heart stirred.

This name faintly resonated with the lingering thoughts he had sensed within the pen.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"The records are very brief." Lin Wenyuan flipped a few more pages. "It only says the student had excellent grades and conduct, with no abnormalities before her disappearance. Oh, there's also this line—'It is rumored that the student was involved with a certain instructor and was suspected of eloping, though this was never confirmed.'"

Eloping?

Li Muchen recalled the memory in the pen: the female student writing a letter, tears dripping on the paper, and then being dragged away by dark figures.

It didn't look like an elopement.

It looked more like... persecution.

"Anything else?" he pressed.

Lin Wenyuan flipped through again and shook his head. "No more. Archives from the Republican era are incomplete; it's already not easy to have found this much."

Li Muchen was silent for a moment.

There were too few clues, but he had a direction.

Chen Shuyi, the 26th year of the republic of china, a female student, a disappearance, and a pen filled with deep resentment.

These fragments weren't enough to piece together the full truth yet.

But at least he knew where to start looking.

"Layman Lin," he turned, "I want to visit the school—the old library and the basement where this pen was found."

Lin Wenyuan looked hesitant. "It's the holidays now, so the library isn't open. Besides... that place is eerie; even the administrators are reluctant to go there."

"No matter," Li Muchen said calmly. "I have my ways."

He glanced at the pale Su Wanhua on the stairs and added, "Before the truth is uncovered, leave this pen here and do not touch it. Do not lock the safe either—resentment needs to 'breathe'; locking it in might cause it to erupt instead."

"And Shiyu..." Su Wanhua asked anxiously.

"I will temporarily suppress the resentment in her body with a Talisman to buy some time." Li Muchen took a piece of yellow paper from his robe—it was a blank Talisman paper he had prepared before coming down the mountain for emergencies.

He bit his fingertip and quickly sketched on the paper with his essence blood.

It wasn't a complex rune, but a simplified "Heart-Clearing Talisman." The blood spread on the paper, turning into a faint golden light before sinking into the paper.

"Stick this Talisman on the inside of your daughter's bedroom door." He handed the Talisman to Lin Wenyuan. "It will ensure her safety for three days. Within three days, I will uncover the truth and resolve the resentment."

Lin Wenyuan took the paper with both hands. It felt warm to the touch, and his heart eased slightly.

"The Temple Master's great kindness is something the Lin family will never forget."

Li Muchen nodded slightly and said no more.

His gaze fell once more on the open safe, on that dark red pen from the republic of china inside the box.

Resentment like ink, undissipated for a hundred years.

And what kind of past was hidden within that ink?

Only by going to that old library and the basement where the pen was found would he be able to find the answer.