113: Chapter 113 Tracing the Origins of the Fragments

He needed an absolutely quiet and absolutely safe environment to reproduce the mysterious rune that had nearly made him bleed from his seven orifices.

He wanted to see what kind of changes would happen to this fragment and the runes in his body when he voluntarily depicted it.

Once this thought arose, it was like a rapidly growing vine, instantly entangling all his thoughts.

"Fellow Daoist Liu, Ruowei," Lin Chen's voice broke the deathly silence in the room, carrying undeniable resolution, "I need a secret chamber where no one is allowed to disturb me."

Qin Ruowei and Liu Yuan exchanged a glance, both seeing the solemnity in each other's eyes.

Qin Ruowei didn't ask any more questions; she simply nodded, got up, walked to the wall, and tapped three times on an inconspicuous brick in a specific rhythm.

The wall slid open silently, revealing a deep passage that could only accommodate one person.

"This is the third underground level of the safe house, reinforced with Black Iron Rock, which can block all Divine Sense probing below the Nascent Soul Stage." She turned to the side, clearing the path, "What do you need us to do?"

"Protect me. Also, Fellow Daoist Liu, I need some... sandpaper."

"Sandpaper?" Liu Yuan was stunned, clearly failing to keep up with Lin Chen's train of thought.

Lin Chen's gaze fell on the metal fragment on the table, and he said in a low voice, "No, I mean specially made talisman paper mixed with 'Azure Nether Sand'. It needs to have a rough texture, the kind that can bear the inscription of spiritual power."

Although Liu Yuan didn't understand why, as a professional support staff, he immediately understood Lin Chen's needs.

He took a thick stack of pale cyan talisman paper from his Storage Pouch; the paper felt rough to the touch, almost like sandpaper.

The secret chamber was small, about three zhang square, with empty walls, and only a single lamp fueled by Spirit Stones, emitting a faint and steady light.

The air was filled with the smell of dry dust mixed with metal, cold and oppressive.

Lin Chen spread the specially made talisman paper mixed with Azure Nether Sand on the ground, one by one, until it covered the entire floor of the secret chamber.

He sat cross-legged in the center, closed his eyes, and the entire space instantly became quiet, leaving only the sound of his own steady heartbeat and breathing.

Qin Ruowei and Liu Yuan guarded outside the only entrance to the secret chamber, while Senior Sister Mo Xuan was half-forced by Qin Ruowei to stay in the outer room to rest.

She was severely injured, and her Divine Sense was damaged due to the backlash of the Formation; at this moment, she was unable to participate at all.

Lin Chen took a deep breath; the air, carrying the unique chill of Black Iron Rock, helped his chaotic thoughts settle down.

He didn't rush to start, but first mobilized his internal energy, feeling the scorching sensation left by the runes that had already faded beneath the skin of his right arm.

That was a dormant power that could erupt at any moment.

He raised his trembling right hand, his index finger hovering about half an inch above the rough sandpaper.

In his mind, he began to trace back the complex rune that had been enough to make him bleed from his seven orifices just by forcibly memorizing it.

The first stroke, the momentum was like a Dragon.

The spiritual power at his fingertips probed cautiously, like an invisible carving knife, sketching on the sandpaper.

Although there was no physical contact, as his fingertips moved, a shallow, glowing mark actually appeared on the sandpaper below.

This was the feeling!

Lin Chen's heart shook; he suppressed the excitement in his heart and continued to depict the second stroke.

The second stroke, the turn was like a mountain.

The difficulty of outputting spiritual power increased sharply, as if an invisible resistance was opposing his will.

Fine beads of sweat began to seep from his forehead, and the trembling of his fingertips became more intense.

Just as he gritted his teeth, preparing to make the third stroke, a sudden change occurred!

"Whoosh—"

The two strokes he had just finished depicting instantly ignited with a ghostly blue flame!

The flame was silent, yet carried a heart-palpitating heat, instantly spreading along the carved marks.

"Not good!" Liu Yuan, outside the secret chamber, noticed the abnormal fluctuation of spiritual power at the first moment. He slammed open the stone door and saw the strange blue flame at a glance.

He didn't have time to think, took out a jade bottle from his Storage Pouch, and splashed it onto the flames.

"Sizzle—"

The pale green spiritual liquid came into contact with the blue flame, but it didn't extinguish it as expected; instead, it was like adding fuel to the fire, and the flames suddenly jumped up half a foot high!

In the rising flames, the two strokes were twisted and stretched, finally forming an extremely strange, yet incredibly familiar, twisted pattern to Lin Chen!

"This... this is..." Lin Chen's pupils shrank suddenly, and he shouted out, "The stone ring!"

The outline of the pattern that appeared in the flames was exactly the same as the hair-thin lines on the inside of the stone ring on his thumb that he had never been able to see clearly!

Before he could think about it carefully, an even more astonishing scene occurred.

The stone ring on his thumb seemed to have received some kind of fatal attraction; the ring surface suddenly heated up, producing an overbearing suction force.

The ball of blue flame burning on the sandpaper, along with the rune information contained within it, was actually stripped from the sandpaper, pulled into a blue stream of light, and all of it disappeared into the small stone ring!

"Ah!"

Lin Chen let out a short cry of pain.

The temperature of the stone ring soared to a terrifying level in an instant, like a red-hot branding iron, tightly clamped onto his thumb.

He could clearly smell the burnt odor produced by his own skin being scorched, and the pain was heart-wrenching.

"Lin Chen!" Qin Ruowei rushed forward in one step. Looking at his flushed thumb, she did not hesitate to take out the roll of ice silkworm silk that had wrapped Lin Chen's body from her Storage Pouch and quickly wound it around the stone ring.

"Sss—"

The extremely cold ice silkworm silk came into contact with the scorching ring surface, and a burst of white smoke immediately rose.

Qin Ruowei gritted her teeth, ignoring the coldness that could conduct into her bone marrow, and wrapped the stone ring tightly, circle after circle.

Just as the ice silkworm silk completely covered the stone ring, two charred ancient seal characters clearly appeared on the silk thread branded by the high temperature—

"Guihai".

These two characters were like a mysterious brand, lying quietly on the ice silkworm silk, exuding an unspeakable ancient and stern aura.

"'Guihai'?" Qin Ruowei whispered, her brows locked, "This looks like some kind of serial number... The Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches ordering method, this is the numbering rule for the internal secret archives of Tianji Academy!"

Just at this moment, Liu Yuan walked in hurriedly from outside. His face was solemn, and he lowered his voice: "There is news."

He had just used this time to change his outfit, disguised as an antique merchant collecting broken Magical Artifacts, and wandered around a market where Cultivators gathered outside Tianji Academy.

"I used half a fake ancient Formation Plate as bait to get the information from an Outer Sect Disciple of Tianji Academy who was eager to exchange for Spirit Stones." Liu Yuan spread his palm, and in his palm was an inconspicuous Spirit-Measuring Plate; the pointer was trembling slightly, pointing in a clear direction, "He said, 'Senior Sister Mo Xuan went to the Geothermal Chamber alone with a black jade box in the middle of the night last night, and never came out again'."

Liu Yuan pointed to the Spirit-Measuring Plate: "What this pointer senses is the residual energy of the blue flame just now. The direction it points to... completely coincides with the Geothermal Chamber mentioned by that Disciple."

All clues were connected at this moment.

Lin Chen endured the severe pain in his thumb and slowly clenched his fist.

Senior Sister Mo Xuan self-destructed while holding the fragment, the Grey Shadow pursued in the dark river; the source of all this points directly to Tianji Academy and that mysterious fragment.

"I must try again." Lin Chen's voice was hoarse, but his eyes were unusually firm.

He looked at the sandpaper on the ground, "I only drew two strokes of that rune... there is more to come."

"Your hand!" Qin Ruowei shouted to stop him.

"It's fine." Lin Chen shook his head. He could feel that after the stone ring absorbed the flame rune, although the temperature was terrifying, it seemed that some shackles had been opened a little gap.

He tried to recall again, and the stinging pain in his mind was actually reduced a lot.

This time, he held his breath and focused, skipping the previous strokes directly, and forcibly recalled the structure of the seventh group of runes.

That was a structure ten times more complex than before, with countless lines intertwined and rotating in his mind, constructing a three-dimensional, dizzying pattern.

Just as he was about to capture the core of the pattern, a fishy, sweet, warm current suddenly gushed out from his nasal cavity.

"Drip."

A drop of bright red blood fell on the table in front of him.

The blood did not spread, but squirmed and outlined itself on the desktop at a speed visible to the naked eye, and in just one breath, it automatically formed an extremely small, yet incomparably complex, teleportation Formation pattern!

The pattern flickered with eerie red light, maintained for just three breaths, then with a "pfft" sound, the energy was exhausted, and it collapsed into a pool of ordinary bloodstains.

Lin Chen's face turned pale instantly.

Qin Ruowei supported his swaying body, her voice trembling: "The stone ring is overdrawing your Divine Sense! It is using your Origin essence blood to deduce!"

The aftereffects of the forced deduction made Lin Chen's vision go black, and he leaned against the wall, gasping for breath.

Qin Ruowei wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with heartache, while searching for something in the Storage Pouch, and whispered about the discovery just now: "When I was organizing the auction footage jade talismans brought out from the Cui Family, I found something wrong."

She activated a jade talisman, and a light screen was projected on the wall.

The picture froze in an inconspicuous corner of the auction.

"Look here." She pointed to a shadow in the corner, "According to the position of the candlelight at that time, the area of this shadow shouldn't be so large. It has... half an inch more than a normal shadow."

She kept zooming in on the picture until the extra half-inch of shadow became clear.

On the edge of the shadow, half a hook-shaped weapon outline flickering with metallic cold light was hidden!

Lin Chen's gaze instantly became as sharp as a knife.

The style of that hook-shaped weapon was from the same source as the Grey Shadow's weapon, as well as the mysterious marks they found on the rock wall deep in the Black Wind Valley!

The Grey Shadow had been lurking in the dark since the auction!

Late at night, everything was silent.

Lin Chen sat cross-legged on the bed adjusting his breath, and Qin Ruowei and Liu Yuan were also seizing the time to recover in their respective rooms.

Suddenly, the stone ring on Lin Chen's thumb, which was wrapped in layers of ice silkworm silk, heated up again without warning, but this time the temperature was very gentle.

Following that, a faint light penetrated through the gaps of the ice silkworm silk, projecting a fragmented three-dimensional map composed of countless light points in the air in front of him.

The structure of the map was complex, but the core was exceptionally clear—it clearly marked an underground dark river leading to the direction of the Zangtian Abyss, and an important entrance to the dark river was located directly below the Geothermal Chamber of Tianji Academy, at a vertical distance of about three hundred zhang!

The stone ring was issuing a warning!

It connected all the clues together, forming a complete closed loop.

The chaos in Tianji Academy, the explosion in the Geothermal Chamber, the pursuit of the Grey Shadow, the disappearance of Senior Sister Mo Xuan, all ultimately pointed to this secret waterway that could lead directly to the outside world.

Lin Chen opened his eyes slowly, and a cold light flashed in his eyes.

Since the center of all the whirlpools was in Tianji Academy, he had to go back again.

But this time, he couldn't be as passive as before.

He looked at the deep night outside the window, and a bold plan had already taken shape in his heart.

He needed to create a greater chaos, a chaos sufficient to make all the high-level officials of Tianji Academy exhausted, to create a unique opportunity for himself to sneak into that dark river.