Chapter 1704: Hidden Past

Next, He Lingchuan read the 《Dafeng Side Examination》 left by Lu Yanhe. This is basically a documentary literature left by him after traveling to various countries, not only recording the social appearance of Does Bailie, but also the customs, strange news, and strange things of the surrounding countries, detailed and meticulous, which can be used as historical documents.

But these are not what He Lingchuan wants to see.

Dong Rui was also disappointed: "What kind of stuff, writing these trivial things on gold-skinned paper worth fifty taels?"

What is the use for them right now, what is the use? Worth sending thousands of miles from Does Bailie to the Flash Gold Plain, and then to He Lingchuan's hands? He Lingchuan has been thinking: "Rebellious, which shows that this person is willing to do extraordinary things. And Lu Yanhe's first trip out was because he accidentally killed the grandson of a high official in the court—that person drowned several little girls in the suburbs just to watch them panic and take pleasure in it. So Lu Yanhe still has three points of chivalry."

He quickly flipped through the gold-skinned paper from beginning to end, and then flipped a page to show Dong Rui: "Did you notice that there are too many blanks in this book?"

This page only has two sentences, and the rest is blank.

Flipping over a page, Lu Yanhe went to write the next thing.

He Lingchuan said so, Dong Rui flipped continuously, and sure enough, he saw a semi-blank page every few pages, and then another one every few pages...

"Is this guy so wasteful with gold-skinned paper?" It seems that this prince is really rich, Dong Rui laughed, "What mystery is hidden in these pages? Don't sell it, say it quickly!"

"I heard—" Actually, Master Sun not only said it, but also demonstrated it to him on the spot, "If you use materials like Xuanhu and Baizhu to make special ink, the words written on gold-skinned paper will become invisible after the ink dries. It is very easy to make it appear, you only need—"

He snapped his fingers, and a small wisp of red flame emerged from his fingertip.

Such minor supernatural abilities were all second nature to him.

Then, he carefully brought the paper page close to the flame and toasted it thoroughly.

Under the watchful eyes of everyone, lines of indigo-blue characters slowly emerged from the blank space on the page! "As expected!"

Dong Rui let out an "aha": "This old fellow Lu Yanhe is quite something. What kind of unspeakable content did he hide in the book?"

Once the flame was taken away, the words on the paper would slowly disappear again after about half a cup of tea's time.

Lu Yanhe used this method to preserve what he truly wanted to write.

He Lingchuan casually lit a candle, found the blank pages of "Side Records of Great Feng," and toasted them one by one.

Almost every page was filled with tiny, fly-head-sized characters.

Dong Rui had been all smiles, but as he read on, his smile vanished.

"No wonder he had to use invisible ink to write the book. With content like this, if he had written it plainly, this book would probably have been gone long ago, right? It would even have implicated the Lu family." Dong Rui clicked his tongue twice, "He was a member of the Lu family, and the Lu family has served Ling Mountain for three thousand years. To think they produced a rebel like Lu Yanhe."

"The old Lu family has always produced talented people. And talented people, well, they all have tempers." He Lingchuan flipped through the clan history again, "Lu Yanhe saw things clearly, which is why he lived so unrestrainedly. But he wasn't willing to let the truth be buried by history, so he wrote this hidden book."

A few words and phrases were a history stained with blood. And every blank page on the gold-leaf paper was crammed with such passages.

This was even before Beijia appeared.

Lu Yanhe didn't draw any conclusions; he simply organized the historical materials he understood and heard about. These events were full of conquest and bloodshed, mostly occurring around the Does Bailie Nation, though some were inside information he only learned due to his special status.

The Medieval period was so important, yet the historical books left behind were few and far between; this notebook of Lu Yanhe's was therefore extremely precious.

He Lingchuan and Dong Rui carefully flipped through it and discovered that the most prominent feature of the area around Does Bailie during the Medieval period—or rather, where Beijia is located today—was "chaos."

Of course, the human world has always been chaotic, but the "chaos" of the Medieval period was mainly reflected in the intersecting collisions between the three forces of immortals, demons, and humans.

At this time, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth had not yet withered as it would in later generations, but it was already far from enough to satisfy the needs of the High Immortals. In order to conserve spiritual power, practitioners at this time no longer used high-flying magic; High Immortals usually remained hidden, instead directing their subordinates to collect and fight over resources.

The fewer the resources, the more intense the competition—an eternal truth.

Consequently, the relationship between the Immortal Sects and mortals became increasingly tense. According to Lu Yanhe's records, the Kuai Nation was a small country, but a rich vein of profound crystals was suddenly discovered within its borders, with huge reserves. After the immortal gate "Hunyuan Sect" learned of this, they "requested to purchase" it from the Kuai Nation three times, but the terms of purchase were no different from open robbery. By this time, the strength of the Immortal Sects was far inferior to that of the Ancient and early Medieval periods, and their deterrent power over human nations was greatly reduced, so the Kuai Nation naturally refused. The Hunyuan Sect then destroyed the Kuai Nation, occupied the profound crystal vein and the mountains and rivers, and demoted the citizens to sect slaves, treating them no differently than oxen or horses.

Eight hundred li from this place, a lone immortal raided a city in the middle of the night, taking the blood of two hundred small children for alchemy; children under three years old still retained a bit of innate spiritual energy, which was just right for refining pills. Lu Yanhe later discovered that this fellow had been injured and fled during a fight, and with insufficient pills on hand, he set his sights on living people. Mortals had very little spiritual energy, but at that time, it was better than nothing, so the lone immortal had to make do.

During the same period, the Immortal Sects were also capturing the demon race on a massive scale.

He Lingchuan knew that after the cataclysm of heaven and earth, instigated by the Heavenly Demons, the conflict between the immortal gates and the demon race intensified, leading to a brutal war that lasted for several hundred years. The demon race had already suffered heavy losses in the Ancient Great War, with great demons either falling or being severely wounded, leaving few in existence; by the Medieval period, they were even more diminished.

The claws, teeth, fur, and horns of demon beasts were raw materials for refining weapons, and their inner cores, blood, and flesh were rich in spiritual energy, all of which were needed by the Immortal Sects. Moreover, the demon race was naturally scattered and loosely structured, either living in tribes or wandering alone, rarely gathering in large numbers like humans, which made it convenient for the Immortal Sects to defeat them one by one.

Lu Yanhe had calculated that during the Great Feng era, the Does Bailie Nation took action to "punish" demon beasts within its borders and in the surrounding areas 137 times, citing reasons that they harmed the people or hindered farming. In reality, a large number of these were demon beasts harmless to humans, such as the Jade Smelting Deer demon clan, which possessed the bloodline of ancient spiritual deer. They had only moved from a foreign land to the Hidden Cloud Mountain beside Does Bailie for three years before being besieged twice by Does Bailie, on the grounds that they destroyed royal medicinal fields, devoured heavenly treasures, and kicked Does Bailie nobles to death.

The deer herd stained the mountains and forests with blood; of the more than three hundred large and small deer demons in the entire clan, only ten escaped in the end.

But Lu Yanhe, as a member of the Does Bailie royal family, knew that these deer demons had never stepped foot into Does Bailie once, not even leaving the big mountain; it was only because their antlers and inner sacs had special effects that they were coveted by the immortals and suffered this catastrophe.

In the end, they just craved their bodies.