Chapter 140: The Good Luck of Sword Lai

"I don't know."

Ruan Xing looked at him with a suspicious gaze, "You don't look like someone who doesn't know."

Elder Wen gave a huff, "I said I don't know, so I don't know. Why would I lie to you?"

"Fine, if you don't want to say it, then forget it." Ruan Xing toyed with the key, letting it swing back and forth in her palm as her fingers turned.

She was just planning to activate the key to see if she could get out, when she suddenly discovered a very serious problem.

Activating the key required inputting a large amount of Spiritual Power.

She couldn't use it right now.

Ruan Xing:...

She had wanted to act all mysterious in front of Elder Wen, but now it was just embarrassing.

In a fit of pique, Ruan Xing threw the key hard onto the ground. Elder Wen, who had been pretending not to care while actually sneaking glances at Ruan Xing, immediately gave a start. With agility that didn't look like an old man's, he leaped over and caught the key in one go.

"What are you doing!!"

The old man Wen was both shocked and angry.

Ruan Xing curled her lips into a slight smile, "This thing isn't some mortal object, would it break so easily? What are you in such a rush for?"

"Who's in a rush?" The old man Wen refused to admit it, "I just saw you didn't have a firm grip, so I helped you catch it."

He handed the key back, but Ruan Xing didn't take it, "It's yours. I don't know what this thing is for either. Since you recognize it, you keep it."

The sound of the Juelin Chong was getting closer, and Ruan Xing's Illusion Technique had very little time left. She didn't wait for the old man to speak, turned around, picked up the box, and ran out with long strides.

The old man Wen held the key, his other hand scratching the back of his head, completely baffled, "What does this kid mean?"

Elder Wen pondered to himself. He had already told Qintai He the method to avoid the Juelin Chong. Since he was still so determined to leave, he must have his own place to hide, so why insist on keeping him? Thus, he carefully closed that teetering door.

And Ruan Xing hadn't even run for ten minutes before her figure rapidly shrank, becoming a young girl. Finding a random spot, she opened the box and crawled inside, curling her whole body up in the cramped space of the wooden box.

The Juelin Chong outside seemed to be searching for something; they hovered near her box for a while, then left.

Ruan Xing didn't know how long the night would last. The Juelin Chong came in wave after wave, until four hours later, when there was finally no more movement.

Ruan Xing waited patiently for another hour before coming out of the wooden box.

Under the gray, hazy sky, the surrounding environment looked a bit colder than it had yesterday.

Calculating by time, it should be the early morning of the second day. The footprints she had left behind yesterday were all gone, and the ground was still covered in a thick layer of ash. Even the box had a layer on it, which slowly tilted and slid off with Ruan Xing's movements.

If there was this much ash every day, it should have buried this place thousands of years ago.

But she didn't think too deeply about it; her first priority was to call out to Sword Lai through their mental link.

Hearing Sword Lai's response, she finally felt at ease.

That's great. Sword Lai's soul was in the Ink Marrow, which should count as a state of isolation for the Juelin Chong; they couldn't cause any harm to Sword Lai.

More importantly, Sword Lai had brought her new good news.

If she had known, she should have found a way to let Sword Lai out during the previous simulations. How was his luck so good? Ruan Xing had come in three times herself and hadn't encountered any useful information.

After thinking for a few seconds, Ruan Xing instructed Sword Lai, "You go over to my side, find that old man from yesterday, follow him, and see where he goes and what he does with the key."

Since the old man didn't want her to know what the key was, she would just leave the key with him and then leave herself. Perhaps the old man wouldn't be able to hold back and would do something with the key. Although Sword Lai couldn't use the Ghost Escape Technique right now, he was used to hiding things, and since he had no heartbeat and no breath, he was essentially a dead person. Since Spiritual Power couldn't be used here, the old man might not necessarily discover the Yin energy on him and realize he was being followed.

After Sword Lai responded, Ruan Xing went to the place Sword Lai had newly discovered.

According to Sword Lai's description, it was a low mountain peak with two large circular pits at the very center of the top, surrounded by many dead black trees and stone tablets.

On the stone tablets, there was writing.

This was a very significant discovery, because the only writing Ruan Xing had been able to identify so far were the plaques from street shops that were made of better materials and better preserved. Everything else—wooden tablets, books, paper, Jade Slips—that might have had writing on them had all turned into fragments and powder, impossible to identify.

Ruan Xing set off in the direction Sword Lai had mentioned.

After walking for over an hour, she saw two more skeletons on the road.

Ruan Xing leaned over to examine them. The clothing on the white bones was still relatively intact, and she could tell they were Xuanbing Sect disciple robes. One of the skeletons was still holding a rusted Sword in its hand.

Both of them were in a defensive posture against an outside threat. They likely died from the Juelin Chong, which had devoured their souls through their Divine Sense before they could even react, leading to their deaths.

These two were probably among the dozen or so missing disciples who had left Nanzhou...

It's just that, calculating by the time they went missing, they couldn't have been in the space-time rift for more than forty days. How could they have become white bones and their swords rusted?

Ruan Xing recalled what Elder Wen had said yesterday.

"The thing that takes away the most important part of life... forgetting that one is a Cultivator..."

The woman's dead son and the passing of youth.

The Cultivator's rusted sword.

Then, for Ruan Xing, what was her own most important thing?

She felt as if she had caught a thread of a clue, but she couldn't quite figure it out yet.

Further ahead was that forest of black, withered trees.

Every tree was thick and straight, towering into the clouds, but the bark peeling off their bodies and the branches without a single leaf kept them in that very moment of death.

Ruan Xing reached out to touch the uneven bark; the surface was brittle and fell off at a touch, but the tree heart inside, engraved with rings of growth, was still incredibly hard.

Unable to recognize what kind of spiritual plant they were before they died, Ruan Xing continued to walk deeper into the forest. The dirt path under her feet, covered in insect ash, was a gentle slope leading upward. This hillside was indeed as Sword Lai had described—not high. When she looked back at the ruins in the city, they were still clearly visible.

Finally seeing those sparse stone tablets, Ruan Xing let out a long, relieved breath.

At a rough glance, there were about a hundred stone tablets around these two sinkholes.

Hopefully, there would be some useful information on them.

She rested for a moment, then began to look from the first stone tablet.

"Two hundred years of seeking immortality, only today am I truly happy."

There was only this one sentence on the entire stone tablet, and Ruan Xing couldn't help but frown.

What does this mean? It's completely out of the blue.

It looks more like a casual note left behind by some Cultivator.

Thanks to Panda Jun for the tip~ Thanks to book friend 20220918175316618 for the monthly ticket~ Thanks to zoey you for the monthly ticket~ Thanks to sissid for the monthly ticket~ Thanks to Jishenzhu Yileijixukun for the monthly ticket~(End of this chapter)