166: Chapter 166 The Qian Family's Past...

Lu Cheng continued to walk down the stone steps.

The further down he went, the fainter the smell of lamp oil in the air became, replaced by a damp, fishy-sweet scent mixed with the smell of metallic rust.

The stone walls were covered with deep and shallow scratch marks, as if someone had used their fingernails to gouge the images right off.

Lu Cheng took an extra look at those scratch marks.

The edges of the marks were dark brown, looking like blood that had dried a long time ago.

He reached out a finger and rubbed it against the surface, his fingertip picking up a layer of fine powder.

He continued downward.

The stone steps came to an end.

Before him was a large underground space, visually estimated to be at least half the size of a basketball court.

The rock on the vaulted ceiling had been chiseled into an arch, embedded with a few dim Source Power lamps.

The light was very dim, barely enough to reveal the outlines of the room.

Then Lu Cheng saw people.

In the very center of the room, two middle-aged men were tied to two thick stone pillars.

The one on the left was around fifty, with graying hair, his face covered in blood and grime, his clothes torn in several places, revealing skin bruised with black and purple marks.

The one on the right was slightly younger, looking about forty-five or forty-six, with dried blood hanging from the corner of his mouth, and his left eye swollen shut to a mere slit.

Both men were bound to the stone pillars by thumb-thick Source Power chains wrapped around their wrists, ankles, and waists. Embedded on the surface of the chains were dark golden sealing inscriptions that were slowly extracting the remaining Source Power from their bodies.

Lu Cheng's gaze first fell upon the face of the one on the left.

The curve of the eyebrows, the shape of the bridge of the nose, and the outline of the lips bore a resemblance to Qian Shuying.

However, both men looked at least ninety percent similar to Qian Duoduo...

These two people also looked like they had been cast from the same mold.

Lu Cheng had seen portraits of these two and had a judgment in his mind.

The one on the left was Qian Fuyun, the head of the Qian Family.

The one on the right was his younger brother.

In front of each of the two uncles was a chain extending from the stone pillars, hooking into a glittering golden pool in front of them.

That pool was about two meters long and wide, and about one meter high, cast entirely from golden metal.

At each of the four corners crouched a toad; each toad held a copper coin in its mouth, with the square hole in the center of the coin facing the interior of the pool.

The four large seal-script characters "Pool of Ten Thousand Wishes" were carved onto the wall of the pool.

It was exactly the same as the pool that Qian Congrong had brought up in the banquet hall.

The difference was that the pool in the banquet hall was empty, while this one already contained something: a thin layer of golden liquid covered the bottom of the pool, looking like molten gold and emitting a very faint light.

The ground around the pool was covered with dense Source Power patterns, each line slowly flowing with a dark golden light, extending from the pool and leading deeper underground.

Lu Cheng took two steps forward.

Just then, the heads of the two middle-aged men moved.

Qian Fuyun opened his eyes first.

His pupils were unfocused for quite a while before they regained focus; the whites of his eyes were bloodshot, his eye sockets were sunken, and his cheekbones protruded, clearly showing he had been imprisoned here for more than a day or two.

He saw Lu Cheng.

To be precise, he saw "Supervisor Lin".

Qian Fuyun did not speak, but a very low, muffled sound came from his throat, and his muscles tensed up in an instant.

The remaining Source Power burst out from his body, forming a very thin, pale golden halo covering the surface of his skin.

Then, that Source Power was immediately drained away by the chains.

The sealing inscriptions lit up, the chains tightened, and the Source Power flowed along the chains into the pool.

The layer of golden liquid at the bottom of the pool rose a tiny bit.

The whole process took less than two seconds.

The Source Power halo on Qian Fuyun disappeared completely, his whole body went limp again, his head lolled to one side, his lips moved a few times, and the voice that came out was hoarsely unrecognizable.

"You dead gay bastard..."

The middle-aged man on the right also opened his eyes, which were reduced to mere slits.

His condition was even worse than Qian Fuyun's; there was almost no color in his face, and his lips were so chapped that the skin was peeling.

"Go f*** yourself!"

Lu Cheng stood in place, looking at these two... these two old men, tied to stone pillars and unable to move, yet still able to muster the strength to curse when they saw him.

What did that mean?

It meant that Supervisor Lin's reputation within the Qian Family was so rotten that even those locked in the dungeon knew of him.

Lu Cheng suddenly had a bit of a perverse sense of humor.

He licked his tongue.

The movement was very slow, his tongue tip sliding across the corner of his mouth, his eyes falling on the two middle-aged men.

"Slurp, slurp."

The sound was exceptionally loud in the quiet underground space.

The bodies of the two middle-aged men stiffened simultaneously.

Lu Cheng took a step forward.

He imitated Supervisor Lin's viscous tone, with an upward inflection at the end, carrying a kind of eagerness that made one's skin crawl.

"Qian Family Head..."

Qian Fuyun's eyes widened slightly, the corner of his mouth twitched, and the expression of disgust and nausea on his face was almost overflowing.

Lu Cheng tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over Qian Fuyun from top to bottom, stopping at a certain position.

"You see, I'm the type of person..."

"Who... towards old men..."

He paused.

"...is not without interest."

Qian Fuyun's lips tightened.

The expression on his brother's face next to him had already changed from anger to some indescribable distortion.

"An old thing like you, with such a distinct flavor..."

Lu Cheng's mouth pulled upward, his smile appearing particularly creepy on Supervisor Lin's face.

"Should taste quite unique..."

Qian Fuyun shivered all over.

The chains rattled with a clatter.

His brother's reaction was more direct; he retched, and a garbled curse squeezed out from his throat.

These two old men had lived for so many years; what kind of storms and waves hadn't they seen?

The Qian Family's punishments, the organization's interrogations, the pain of having their Source Power forcibly extracted... they could endure all of these!

Even if the chains dug into their bones, even if the Source Power in their bodies was extracted inch by inch, they hadn't uttered a single word of weakness!

But this current situation was truly the first time they had ever encountered it...

Pain could be endured, but something like nausea... they couldn't endure that...

Lu Cheng saw their reactions and was amused inside.

Alright, they were scared enough.

The two guards at the door had just been sent away by him using Supervisor Lin's identity, so no one would come in for a short time.

Lu Cheng put away the nauseating smile on his face, walked quickly to Qian Fuyun's side, and leaned into his ear.

He mobilized the Source Qi from within his body, covering the air vibrations around his lips to form a tiny sound-insulating field.

He spoke in a voice that only the two of them could hear.

"I am a friend of Shuying."

"What is the situation now?"

After speaking, Lu Cheng pretended to collect data, needing to monitor the fluctuations of Source Qi/blood, as well as a special value called the 'Divine Valve'.

The value of this so-called 'Divine Valve' was already on the edge of the safety line...

Qian Fuyun's pupils shrank violently.

He turned his head to look at Lu Cheng.

A series of emotions flashed rapidly through his cloudy eyes.

There were only two possibilities for Qian Shuying's name to be spoken by this "Supervisor Lin" before him.

One was that this Supervisor Lin had already been killed and replaced by Lu Cheng, and the second was that he was someone sent by Qian Congrong to fish for information.

Qian Fuyun stared at Lu Cheng for a full three seconds.

He chose to test him first, picking things that at least they both knew to talk about.

"Qian Congrong and the other four branch families, along with a certain organization, have tied up everyone in our main Qian Family line and separated them beneath the Qian Family Manor," his voice was still hoarse, but his tone had leveled out. "The locations are all at the very bottom of every building in the manor."

Lu Cheng nodded, waiting for him to continue.

Qian Fuyun paused, then spoke again.

The ancestors of the Qian Family signed a contract with an ancient Swallowing Wish Golden Toad.

In ancient times, the Qian Family was just a small clan in the Southern Lands that was on the verge of extinction.

When the Black Tide, famines, and strange beast disasters erupted all at once, and the clansmen were nearly wiped out, they discovered a sleeping toad in an ancient underground well.

It was called the Swallowing Wish Golden Toad.

It consumed people's wishes, greed, obsessions, lifespan, and bloodline, and then spat out a kind of golden spring water.

This golden spring water could generate wealth, accelerate cultivation, heal injuries, boost industrial fortunes, and even influence the financial flow of a city.

The Qian Family relied on this thing to build their fortune step by step.

But the problem was, the things given by the Swallowing Wish Golden Toad were not free.

The more it gave, the more ruthless it was when it took it back.

Later, the Qian Family discovered that the so-called "fortune" was, in essence, a loan.

Borrowing money from an ancient god...

Repaying with the lives of their descendants.

The ancestors of the Qian Family realized something was wrong.

They found a way to counteract the Swallowing Wish Golden Toad, finding a piece of ancient White Tiger divine bone.

In this matter, the White Tiger represented slaughter, severing contracts, suppressing evil, and breaking wealth curses.

The Golden Toad represented gathering wealth, swallowing wishes, and borrowing luck.

The Qian Family ancestors inscribed the White Tiger seal onto the Swallowing Wish Golden Toad, suppressed this ancient god with chains, and locked its authority within a controllable range.

However, things regarding the Golden Toad could not be spoken of too much; too many obsessive wishes would increase the Golden Toad's power, so the branch families did not know these things.

The branch families had always believed that the main line had been able to control the Qian Family's core resources for so many years because the main line monopolized the "Ancestral God's Gift".

They did not know that what the main line monopolized was not a benefit, but a curse.

These past few days, some unknown organization had seized upon this point.

They told the branch families: "The Golden Toad is not an evil god, but the true Ancestral God of the Qian Family.

The White Tiger seal is the shackle that later usurped the Golden Toad's authority.

As long as the White Tiger Wealth-Suppressing Seal is unlocked, the Qian Family can completely break free from the shackles of the old era and become the true uncrowned king of South District 7."

Qian Congrong and the other branch families were persuaded.

They allied with that organization and tied up the entire Qian Family main line underground. For the sake of sacrifices, for the sake of the ritual, and to let the ancient god fully awaken.

Qian Fuyun paused here, his chapped lips moving, his throat bobbing as if enduring some intense pain.

"Qian Duoduo and Qian Shuying are locked at the very bottom of the main courtyard."

"If every golden pool is activated..."

"The Golden Toad will be resurrected..."