122: A mysterious old man questions the heavens in an ancient alley!

Morning light washed over the glazed tiles of Kunlun Academy as Lu Chen leaned against a ginkgo tree, watching the girls frolic.

It had been some time since they returned to the academy.

From the beginning, it was just him and Ning Xiwei.

Now, they had actually formed a small team.

As the only male in the group...

Though he was a skeleton, Lu Chen felt in a good mood; it was a pleasing sight.

Ning Xiwei quietly held her newly acquired Necromantic Score, her slender fingers brushing the corners of the pages, startling several Nether Butterflies;

This was a secret necromancy tome found in the academy library.

Ning Xiwei studied it meticulously.

If there was anything she didn't understand, she would ask Lu Chen.

As an undead, though Lu Chen had never studied it, he was naturally adept at necromantic magic.

Thus, he could offer a pointer or two.

Ignis was chasing Sun Feifei, demanding the lava cake she had lost in a bet yesterday; wherever her fiery red hair swept, the fallen maple leaves burned into golden butterflies;

Shelley was fiddling with a newly purchased North Star Astrolabe on a stone table; where her ice crystal fingertips passed, Morning Dew was using Holy Light to perform photosynthesis on the Wailing Vine in a potted plant.

"Little Skeleton!" Sun Feifei suddenly placed a cup of iced plum soup gently against his forehead. "If you keep spacing out, you'll grow mushrooms! It's very cold, right? Ehehe!"

Droplets condensed on the rim of the glazed cup slid down, reflecting the drifting clouds in the sky that suddenly froze in place.

Lu Chen's skeletal fingertips caught a falling ice grain, noticing starlight swirling within it. "Is it raining from the heavens?"

Tomorrow was the weekend.

Lu Chen planned to go down the mountain to find some things.

Early the next morning.

Lu Chen took advantage of the weekend.

He went to wander around the area at the foot of Kunlun Academy's mountain.

Deep within Antique Alley on Xuanwu Street, the bluestone pavement was soaked from the previous night's rain.

Ignis kicked aside a fragment of a Bronze Tripod blocking the way, her lava tattoos flickering like candles in the damp air. "Does this dump really have Xu Fu's relics?"

"Shh—" Ning Xiwei suddenly pressed her hand against the nether moon pendant at her waist.

She seemed to have sensed something!

A strange crane's cry drifted from the distance.

Sun Feifei leaned over and asked curiously, "Is someone ahead raising immortal cranes?"

On the eaves of the seventh shop ahead, a hanging bronze wind chime was ringing in resonance with the crane's cry.

Lu Chen's expression tightened as he looked at this shop.

His gaze fell upon the powerful magic emanating from the shop's backyard.

He understood in his heart.

Perhaps what he was looking for was here.

Some ancient artifacts left over from the primordial era.

"Let's go, let's check out this shop."

...The shopkeeper was an old man in hemp clothing, his white hair cascading like a snowy waterfall, fiddling with a tortoise shell with fingers like withered branches.

Scattered on the table were: a broken sword engraved with the words "Heaven's Punishment," a Twelve-Winged Angel statue with peeling gold leaf, and an ice-crackle ceramic jar—specifically, a Northern Abyss wine vessel unearthed from the Arctic permafrost.

"Does the customer recognize this item?" The old man didn't look up, his raspy voice grinding over the cracks in the tortoise shell. "This jar once brewed Immortal-Slaying Wine and intoxicated a Star Herder."

The ghostly fire in Lu Chen's pupils suddenly contracted.

A memory surfaced in his mind, feeling like it happened yesterday, yet also a long time ago.

One hundred thousand years ago, a person identical to him was drinking heavily with the Ice Emperor of the Northern Abyss.

At the bottom of that jar, the phrase "And leave the stars to accompany the wine" was engraved.

What the old man's fingertips were rubbing right now was precisely that inscription, half-worn away by time!

"Old sir, do you know..." Lu Chen's fingers traced the cracks of the ceramic jar, and ice frost actually condensed into seal script poetry. "Why is this wine named 'Immortal-Slaying'?"

The old man finally looked up, his eyes seeming to contain an overturning galaxy. "Because when this wine was brewed, the heavens wept for three months, and blood rain soaked the Arctic ice fields."

His withered palm covered the tortoise shell, and the cracks suddenly shifted into the pattern of the Luo Shu. "Just like that day, Your Excellency, when you stood by the seashore and pointed your sword at the sky, those false gods of the Western Holy See fell like rain."

"Old gentleman, you know me?"

"I'm afraid there is no one in the world who doesn't know Your Excellency by now, right?"

The old man chuckled.

Lu Chen froze slightly.

He couldn't help but give a wry smile.

True.

He was famous enough now!

The air suddenly became thick, and the wind chimes on the eaves fell silent.

The astrolabe Shelley was holding clicked and spun rapidly, and Morning Dew's Divine Staff automatically deployed a Holy Light Barrier.

They used a Formation barrier to cut this place off from the outside world.

The two girls looked at each other and nodded slightly.

The old man seemed indifferent, yet he slid half a bronze divination slip from his sleeve—it was the God-Slaying Nail that had been driven into the heart of the First Pope one hundred thousand years ago!

Lu Chen recognized this thing as well!

Along with the powerful Divine Power upon it.

Just as recorded in the ancient texts.

"Who exactly are you, Your Excellency?"

An illusory phantom of the Skeleton King emerged around Lu Chen!

That was the imperial majesty witnessed by the Heavenly Dao.

The old man threw the divination slip into the ceramic jar, and the murky wine instantly became as clear as a galaxy. "This old man is but a remnant of ash, but as for you..."

He ladled a spoonful of starlight and splashed it into the Void Realm, reflecting the scene of twelve giant gates trembling deep within Guixu. "Your Excellency met this old man one hundred thousand years ago. Back then, I even asked you—do you truly believe it is the heavens you are slaying?"

Rumble!

Thunder suddenly roared outside the alley.

In the livestream on the phone Sun Feifei was holding, fans were flooding the screen asking why the picture had frozen.

Ignis's lava twin blades were unsheathed by three inches, but her wrist was locked by Ning Xiwei's Nether Butterflies. "Don't move. Little Skeleton has his own plans. He seems to be debating the Dao with this old man."

Another tortoise shell slid from the old man's sleeve, its cracks matching the fragments of the experts Lu Chen had slain a few days ago.

"Back then, Your Excellency used the galaxy as a chain to suppress the heavens in Guixu. Your Excellency, do you know..." He flicked his finger against the ice-cracked jar. "...whether this chain binds a prisoner or a jailer?"

Lu Chen's hand hovered over a non-existent sword hilt at his waist, and a mirage of a primordial battlefield appeared behind him!

That was after he bore several Divine Artifacts.

The powerful pressure he carried himself!

Lu Chen said coldly, "The Heavenly Dao is heartless, treating all things as straw dogs! Even if it is a jailer—"

A Manjusaka flower bloomed in his skeletal palm. "—I shall simply slay it!"

"Good!" The old man suddenly clapped and sang, his raspy voice belting out the Song of Beating the Earth. "Work when the sun rises, rest when the sun sets..."

When the old man sang "What does the Emperor's power have to do with me?", the Twelve-Winged Angel statue nearby shattered, revealing a rust-covered bronze key inside.

A bolt of heavenly thunder exploded.

A flash of lightning streaked through the room.

The lights in the room suddenly went out!

When they lit up again...

As the rainbow on the horizon dyed the ancient alley red, the old man had vanished without a trace.

Only a bamboo scroll remained on the table, written in seal script:

"Heaven is not heaven, the Dao is not the Dao,"

"The fires of calamity once burned the edicts of old."

"If you wish to melt the snow before the gates of Guixu,"

"Then listen to the first flute of Longhan."

When Ning Xiwei picked up the bamboo scroll, the heirloom nether moon pendant her mother left her grew burning hot against her chest.

Lu Chen stared at the bronze key floating in the ceramic jar, suddenly hearing a voice from the night the wine was buried one hundred thousand years ago.

That expert from the Northern Abyss seemed to say in his ear, "When it is unsealed in the future, an old friend will present the key."

Ignis kicked over a bench. "That old man was so mysterious! Give me the key, I'll melt it down for a large earring..."

"It cannot be melted." Shelley's ice crystal fingertips brushed the patterns on the key. "This is carved from an Arctic Black Ice Core and matches the diagrams in the final chapter of the Mystic Canon of the Ice Soul."

Morning Dew's Divine Staff suddenly pointed East. "Little Skeleton, the compass you gave me seems to be giving a warning! There are fluctuations coming from the direction of the Chu Clan Building!"

Before her voice could fade, the mournful wail of the State-Stabilizing Tripod echoed from a thousand miles away.