Chapter 314: Precious Raft

"I will mess around!"

Li Piaoqing gave a giggle and pressed even closer to him.

The youth had always been a figure radiating light in her eyes, but starting from the Yi family ancestral grounds just now, she suddenly discovered this cute and clumsy side of him and couldn't help but want to tease him like this.

Then she suddenly discovered that the youth's strength was much greater than hers. The hand on her shoulder pressed her to stand straight with a single exertion. She was still tilting her head, somewhat stunned, but this angle was exactly facing the youth's slowly lowering head.

Their two faces were pressed so close that she could almost feel the hot air he exhaled.

Now it was her turn to feel hot-faced and flustered, but at the same time, another soft emotion bubbled up from her heart. She couldn't help but purse her lips, then hurriedly let go, not daring to look at the youth's eyes.

Then she felt a hand cupping the back of her head, steadying her head. The youth's shadow covered her, and he gave her forehead a "smack" kiss.

"..."

Pei Ye had already turned his head away somewhat embarrassedly; this action made his heartbeat somewhat fast: "Let's see what kind of place this is."

Li Piaoqing secretly rolled her eyes, still following his words: "It feels like we are in the belly of a mountain."

"Right." The flame moved first, and Pei Ye turned and moved his steps: "There is another place over here."

He came to the circular open space where they had fallen before. This was the part burned through by the sword pearl. Now that the Purple Bamboo Secret Realm had disappeared, this place remained unchanged.

Behind him, Li Piaoqing slowly widened her eyes: "This..."

"The place where the Candle-World Sect entrenched themselves before going to Bowang," Pei Ye said, telling her about the sword pearl in the mind-spirit realm. "This is the shadow it cast."

"..." Li Piaoqing did not speak for a while.

Pei Ye walked in front: "What's wrong?"

"... Nothing." Li Piaoqing came back to her senses and smiled: "It just feels like your description is a bit strange... Since the sword is so powerful, why is what it left behind a circular burn?"

Pei Ye was stunned.

Indeed, he noticed this circle once again, and his thinking began to have some turns.

—Just now in the mind-spirit realm, that heaven-cast sword had pierced through the dragon beard with one strike, leaving a world-destroying mark on the entire giant painting, and also holding all of Pei Ye's attention. Pei Ye therefore had not doubted at all that it was the protagonist in suppressing the painting.

But... if this burned circular hole was the final battle result, then the true protagonist should actually be that pearl. This sword was just a means.

The small sword was just studded within the pearl.

This was a very common logic.

Pei Ye did not know if his thinking was right. He had no knowledge of this thing at all right now and could only wait until he saw Miss Ming to ask.

Li Piaoqing's eyes had already turned to the other side—the black dragon still had not turned into a cat form.

Its body was handsome, its scales like jade. She somewhat wanted to reach out and touch it, but the atmosphere around the black dragon was completely different from theirs. Since Pei Ye came out, it had been in a cold and serious state, as if that deep suppression had never disappeared.

"The matter of this dragon descendant is not over yet," the black dragon whispered.

Pei Ye looked toward it.

"Their purpose has not been figured out yet."

"Isn't it to avoid the Immortal Platform's inspection and change their roots?"

"But Yi Duanzhi is not here," the black dragon said, quietly surveying the surroundings, as if the man who had always lingered like a shadow but never appeared would suddenly walk out of the darkness.

"His existence was meant to guard the dragon descendants. Such a thing as the transfer of the painting... yet we have never seen his shadow," the black dragon said calmly. "It can't be that he really died of illness."

Yes, a person who had reached the Master realm at the age of twenty-something was the true mountain that was difficult to cross on this trip, but he had vanished without a trace, letting them obtain one of the most important holy objects of the Candle-World Sect.

No matter how one thought about it, one knew that there could not be many things the Candle-World Sect could use to connect with the Xianjun.

"Unless... he has more important things to do."

"... What else could be more important than the painting?" Pei Ye asked in a daze.

But the black dragon did not answer, only looking at him with a pair of green eyes.

In fact, when this question was asked from Pei Ye's mouth, an answer also floated into his mind at the same time.

Naturally, it could only be the thing the Candle-World Sect exhausted everything for—the Xianjun's Edict.

The Xianjun passed down an Edict of 【Descent】, and they could persistently plot for twenty-eight years. In the night of the Xincang Forest, facing the awakened Xianjun, the purple-robed man who bowed down to be eaten without hesitation was still fresh in Pei Ye's memory.

They exhausted their hearts and strength, breaking through death and forgetting life to devote themselves to it. The painting was their holy object connecting to the Xianjun above. What could make Yi Duanzhi not follow in person could naturally only be the Edict passed down by the Xianjun.

But Pei Ye remembered the two Edicts he saw at the altar: 【Descent】... 【Punish Sword】.

He also remembered the large amount of Heart-Amber recorded in the Huan Si Lou records, mobilized back and forth, just like a giant salamander under a dark river, only occasionally seeing its swimming shadow, but never knowing its origin or destination.

It was also at this time that Li Piaoqing beside him said in a somewhat dry voice: "Hey, look, what is this?"

The man and the dragon turned to look.

In fact, while talking, they had already finished turning around this not-so-large open space. It was indeed the place where the Candle-World Sect had once entrenched themselves. The piled-up blood clothes were the victims who had been used as sacrifices; the twenty or thirty people who were restricted were the Gu-insects after the ceremony, mixed with outsiders like Zihuang and Pei Ye who had entered by mistake. All the traces left here had been buried in the mountains deep in Xincang, just adding another touch of reality to the tragedies that had happened in the past.

Except for the stone tablet Pei Ye had seen before.

In the center of the open space, it was built about a zhang high. On the side facing the high platform, there was a circular, mirror-like depression, about seven feet in diameter, as if something had once been embedded on it, but now it was gone.

Pei Ye had not seen this thing in Xincang Mountain; it did not belong to the 【Descent】 side.

But what Li Piaoqing was talking about was still not this stone tablet, but under the tablet, there were actually two round depressions. Connected together, they were exactly a straight horizontal line, with an interval of no more than a span, and the depth was just enough to be like a pear.

No one spoke, but the same association floated into everyone's mind at the same time—this was the trace of a person kneeling.

Day after day, year after year... kneeling here like a stone statue, only then could such a depression be left.

This trace was far older than the Candle-World Sect that had come here to stay seven months ago.

The black dragon whispered: "Edict-Guard."

"..."

Pei Ye was stunned and speechless. Just as the Edict-Listening Divine Child had listened to the Edict sound here for thirty years as if it were one day, its Edict-Guard had also been here all along. In all the time without external affairs, he had guarded this Edict-Listening Platform here.

But if Yi Nandai was Yi Chengxin's Edict-Guard, then who was Yi Danjun's Edict-Guard?

The young girl beside him suddenly gave a start and gripped his wrist: "Yi Duanzhi!"

Li Piaoqing looked at the two depressions on the ground: "This trace... is what Yi Duanzhi left behind!"

The man and the dragon looked at her. The girl's gaze still could not leave this trace: "I have seen him in Yi Danjun's mind."

"But I didn't pay attention at the time," she looked at the two, her throat somewhat tight. "I actually saw his two appearances."

"One was in the *New Year's Eve Record of Wine* painted by Xi Xi Fang Tian. That was exactly what he looked like back then, his figure slender and upright, the whole person just like the long spear in his hand. Although he was already over forty, his face was still stern and his temples black, looking like a more majestic Yi Nandai," the girl recalled in a daze. "The second was in Yi Chengxin's mind."

"Yi Chengxin's heart-poison was a family reunion, but the growth characteristics of the dragon descendants made that scene impossible to exist in reality—she shouldn't even have seen her mother and sister," the girl whispered. "In that scene, Yi Danjun and Yang Zhao were still the way they were in the *New Year's Eve Record of Wine*, but Yi Nandai was in his current appearance, playing chess in the courtyard with his sister."

"And Yi Duanzhi's posture was still upright, but his power was deep, vast as the mountains and seas, his temples star-white."

The girl looked at Pei Ye and the black dragon: "His image in Yi Chengxin's heart was somewhat hazy, precisely because Yi Chengxin hadn't seen him many times after she grew up."

—But she had indeed seen him.

So the image of her father in Yi Chengxin's heart-poison did not come from the *New Year's Eve Record of Wine*, but from her own memory.

Pei Ye understood the girl's meaning: "What you saw in Yi Danjun's heart-poison..."

Li Piaoqing looked at him: "... was this seventy-year-old Yi Duanzhi with star-white temples."

"..."

"So she still saw this father thirty years later," the girl said. "Yi Duanzhi has always been the Edict-Guard of Yang Zhao and Yi Danjun."

"Then why did he leave?" Pei Ye frowned and whispered, looking at the stone tablet in front of him.

Li Piaoqing was silent for a while, then suddenly said: "I have an idea."

The man and the dragon looked at her.

"Actually... Yi Danjun's recorded heart-poison decaying is also very abnormal," Li Piaoqing raised her head and whispered. "After entering that building, being unable to ignite Yi Danjun's heart-poison was truly too far beyond my expectations. I thought of the reason at the time, but now that I think about it... that actually looks more like a result and a form of expression, rather than a cause."

Li Piaoqing looked at them: "In other words, it wasn't that her heart-poison decayed because she lost her heart-strength due to the Xi Xi Fang Tian matter; it was precisely because the heart-poison decayed first that her heart fell in this direction, trapped in a cage, unable to struggle free."

The black dragon looked at her seriously: "What is the reason?"

"The latter part of 'Heart-Candle Transmission' records a method for cultivating a type of heart-poison," Li Piaoqing said. "'Heart-Candle Core-Extraction Technique' uses the heart-poison of a Heart-Candle cultivator to refine it, which can then be implanted into another person's heart to draw out their own heart-poison. They call it a 'Heart-Candle Lead,' which can be used to help beginners cultivate heart-poison, or to plant an obsession in an enemy."

"The heart-poison of the person whose core is extracted..."

"Then it will wither away," Li Piaoqing said in a low voice. "Before Lady Yi Dan entered the forest, she must have received three hundred years of Heart-Candle cultivation, and she herself spent thirty years nurturing the candle while agonizing over the thoughts of the Western Tian. A Heart-Candle refined through such a process—its core lead must be a piece rarely seen in this world."

Pei Ye's brows furrowed tightly: "Then what does that have to do with Yi Duanzhi?"

"This is my idea—Yi Duanzhi was the one who took this thing away," the girl looked at them and raised her hand to lightly point to the circular depression on the stone tablet. "Here... was once a piece of Heart-Amber."

Pei Ye's pupils constricted violently.

Li Piaoqing remembered the niches and cages in the Yi family ancestral grounds, and also remembered that they perfectly stored the Heart-Candle cultivation of past Edict-Children. So when all this appeared before her eyes, a fine hidden thread connected in her heart.

She immediately grasped it keenly.

Pei Ye looked at this stone tablet without moving, his expression somewhat vacant.

"We don't know what it is at all. Anyway, it was bought with real gold and silver, packed in a big box—I'm not bragging, little brother, that box alone, I estimate, must be worth several dozen taels!"

"When the boat arrived, they didn't want us to move it, nor did they check the accounts—they brought some of their own servants and moved it away that very night. Later, rumors spread that a family head died in Yinyang, and this thing was taken for burial."

"August the first: Heart-Amber, one hundred and twenty catties."

In other words, Yi Duanzhi had been guarding the edict here for several years. One month before Lady Yi Dan was about to have her mind and spirit annihilated, he used a round mirror cast from one hundred and twenty catties of heart-amber to take this core lead, though it is unknown where he took it.

One hundred and twenty catties of Heart-Amber.

Pei Ye had seen traces of it passing through Xiangzhou long ago, but he had never thought that it was not a batch of goods, but cast into the same thing!

Inspector Sui had said that the more Heart-Amber, the deeper it enters the heart—a Sword-Heart Mirror only uses seven taels of material!

Pei Ye remembered those small Soul-Taking Beads one by one. If they were in the hands of the same group of people as this large Heart-Amber mirror... Pei Ye suddenly had some "all rivers return to the sea" associations.

But everything could only be an association. Deep in Xincang Mountain, they had nowhere to find any corroboration now.

The black dragon left for the time being.

The salary could supply the continuous burning of the dragon fire, but Li Piaoqing still picked up the firewood left by the Candle-World Sect and piled it up in the dark cavern to make a bonfire.

The two sat side by side in front of the fire, and only then could their long-tense minds and bodies fully relax. However, this was limited to Pei Ye himself; the girl was still enduring the trial of that unformed Heart-Candle.

"Did you hear clearly what that was?" Pei Ye whispered.

"No," the girl frowned, her voice muffled. "... I could never hear it clearly, it always made my heart panic."

The girl had already lit up one side of the Heart-Candle, and with the youth's warm appearance before her heart, she truly could not do anything but choose him.

It was just that there was always a vague voice lingering behind her.

Pei Ye looked at the somewhat troubled girl, moved past this topic, and smiled as his eyes turned: "This Divine Child can be considered 'you killed half, I killed half'."

Li Piaoqing was stunned, remembered the early morning at the Changdao Martial Arts Hall, and gave a hum: "That person was also... fine, you just refuse to admit it."

"That one was killed by my own Seven Lives," Pei Ye emphasized again. "Don't try to freeload."

"I already know, Yang Yan clearly helped you fight, and you were using the Sword Master Ming's sword!"

The girl rolled her eyes beautifully: "And you're shameless enough to say you killed it yourself."

"Anyway, it has nothing to do with you," Pei Ye said very seriously. "Don't try to freeload half of it from me."

Li Piaoqing laughed in anger: "Who wants to freeload from you."

"..." Pei Ye was silent for a while.

The girl suddenly realized something and looked at his eyes threateningly. Pei Ye rose to the challenge and still spat out those four words.

"The little dog freeloaded."

The girl was immediately so angry that she raised her arm to hit him.

Pei Ye, who was already at the Sixth Life, had long since had the experience to dodge it.

In front of the bonfire, the shadows of the youth and the girl playing were chaotic and joyful. Gradually, the fire and shadows quieted down, and the two did not speak again. Their elongated shadows snuggled together, just like the Shicui and Shanyu side by side beside them.

A night was about to pass, and it was at its thickest. Soon, the time would be like that early morning at the martial arts hall, with the golden morning sun sprinkling on the mountains of Lengcang.

The black dragon swam back at this time, its voice cool: "That Yuke formation is still there. I took a look, it can be used."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 315 =====