Chapter 493

Li Zhuiyuan would not go to the Qin family's treasury.

Visible, touchable, un-takeable, unusable—no need to find trouble for himself.

But even if it was just the corridors, gardens, rockeries, and ponds in the ancestral residence, if you glanced at them, you could see heavenly materials and earthly treasures.

Back then, the Yu family was messed up by monster beasts, and later, evil spirits broke the seal and pushed the buildings into ruins.

Everything in the Qin family ancestral residence was kept in good order by the evil spirits.

They really valued this home, tidying it up all the time, looking forward to the day it could be filled again.

Not long after entering the door, while walking, Li Zhuiyuan stopped, took out the key, and manipulated the ancestral residence to raise clouds and mist.

Cover it all, hide it all—out of sight, out of mind.

"Hoo..."

"Hoo..."

Behind, Tan Wenbin and Lin Shu You also breathed a sigh of relief at the same time, both feeling that Brother Xiaoyuan did the right thing.

Just walking and looking like this was already a strong impact and distortion of one's own values and labor views.

It would seriously reduce your desire to struggle in the future, and would also greatly devalue the happiness of your future gains.

If you could lie down and wait until the day you could inherit, it wouldn't matter, but unfortunately, they didn't have the qualifications to stop and rest now, and still had to continue to struggle on the river.

Lin Shu You: "Brother Bin, today I finally experienced the feeling of Granny Liu entering the Grand View Garden."

Tan Wenbin pointed at Chen Xiyuan and said to A-You: "You are really good at gilding our faces. Granny Liu was at least a landlord in her hometown."

Lin Shu You nodded: "Oh yeah, our Brother Xiaoyuan's opening is all relying on picking up."

Tan Wenbin: "Including you, you were also picked up."

Lin Shu You: "..."

Chen Xiyuan actually really wanted to visit the Qin family treasury, but she also sensibly didn't make this request.

However, to be fair, the Qin family was indeed obviously one grade higher in foundation than their own. The path-leading flower beds outside were the gardens in their own ancestral residence, while the Qin family garden scene just seen would be a medicine garden specifically guarded and maintained in their own home.

By analogy... the treasures in their own treasury would probably be treated as decorations by the Qin family and placed in various rooms. It was estimated that not many would have the qualifications to enter the Qin family treasury.

Grandma didn't lie to me, and Grandpa indeed couldn't refute it.

After the clouds and mist covered it, the road was still clear. With the key in hand, there was no need to worry about getting lost.

The outer residence should be where the Qin family lived, but it wasn't absolute. Even in the outer residence area, there would be zero and fragmented evil spirit habitats here and there.

Moreover, near some functional areas in the ancestral residence, there were often powerful evil spirits attached, which meant that some specific evil spirits would also participate in the daily life and cultivation of the past Qin family members.

However, if it was mutual benefit, that would be fine, but all the evil spirits here were in a state of suppression and grinding, and they were being given extinction by time.

In other words, the evil spirits in the Qin family ancestral residence were watching the house while providing help to the Qin family members while committing suicide.

Perfectly avoiding the taboos of heaven.

Otherwise, its nature would only be more dangerous and vicious than the Yu family raising monster beasts.

Lin Shu You whispered: "Brother Bin, I'm a bit confused."

Tan Wenbin: "I don't know how to make a specific exposition about this state."

Chen Xiyuan: "It's like, Little Brother let Mu Qiuying transport all the big ladybugs to the Nantong Peach Forest and let Qing An help suppress them."

Lin Shu You's mouth opened, looking at Chen Xiyuan incredibly.

This metaphor was appropriately unbelievable.

Chen Xiyuan: "Why are you looking at me like that."

Lin Shu You: "How did you secretly become smart."

Chen Xiyuan: "Was I very stupid before?"

Lin Shu You: "I didn't mean that..."

Chen Xiyuan: "Then what did you mean? I always felt, aren't we about the same?"

Lin Shu You: "Thank you."

Returning to the ancestral residence for the first time, the first place to go was inevitably the ancestral temple.

The ancestral temple was located in the center of the ancestral residence, in the middle of a lake, with four white jade corridors spanning the lake, leading to all directions.

When everyone was walking on the corridor, dense water bubbles turned up on the lake beside them, and a huge turtle head slowly emerged.

Nearly seventy percent of its body was decaying, and its physique was huge. Calculating from the volume of the turtle head, its main body happened to be able to fill this lake.

The turtle shell slowly rose, and the Qin family ancestral temple located on the turtle shell gradually moved upward. The four white jade corridors presented an upward tilt, giving people a feeling of paying homage to the Heavenly Palace.

Li Zhuiyuan nodded slightly at it.

The turtle head hung low, responding with respect.

Arriving at the entrance of the ancestral temple, one realized the size of the ancestral temple.

The ancestral temples of other Long Wang gates were towering and spacious because the Long Wang tablets were worshipped inside; the Qin family ancestral temple was like this because there were more tablets that the Qin family needed to place.

Li Zhuiyuan walked into the ancestral temple.

After looking at the cramped tablets on the offering table in the east room for a long time, seeing this formal one, he was not used to it.

The upper platform here could be described as "layer upon layer of mountains." The volume of each tablet was like a gate archway built by a family that got rich first in the village.

On it, the name was carved first, then the life was recorded, and the weapons used during life and a set of clothes and hats were placed below.

These were weapons used by Dragon Kings during their lifetime, placed so brightly in front of him.

Li Zhuiyuan, who had been avoiding stimulation along the way, could only close his eyes now.

After adjusting his state of mind, the young man stepped forward, preparing to offer incense.

Li Zhuiyuan was already the one who performed best besides A-Li.

Chen Xiyuan, Lin Shu You, and Tan Wenbin, their gazes were all searching hard on each Long Wang weapon.

This time, even Runsheng was no exception.

The Qin family Dragon Kings mainly walked the martial artist physique route. Even in the later period, their fists were the best weapons, but the things they wore in the early period were definitely not ordinary items.

Runsheng saw many blunt weapons that made his heart itch.

He unconsciously reached out to touch the Yellow River shovel disassembled and placed in the mountaineering bag.

Lin Shu You also subconsciously put his hands behind his back, rubbing his fingertips on the golden mace on his back.

Tan Wenbin was too embarrassed to throw out his rusty sword.

Compared to the weapons placed above, the weapons they obtained after going through hardships were like children's toys.

Li Zhuiyuan held the incense and performed the ceremony.

Everyone behind him woke up like a dream, following the ceremony one after another, and their restless and flying hearts finally gained tranquility.

After the sacrifice, Li Zhuiyuan held A-Li's hand and walked out of the ancestral temple.

The young man looked at the girl, and the girl nodded.

Back home, naturally, he should go to see the courtyard where A-Li lived before.

For A-Li, she didn't have the idea of going back to see, but she still led the way.

Outside the courtyard, formation barriers were densely covered. If Li Zhuiyuan didn't have the key in his hand, wanting to break the formation and enter would also take a lot of effort.

After walking into the courtyard, he found that it could be called quiet and elegant.

The door of the main room was open, and behind the threshold, a delicate wooden stool was placed.

Li Zhuiyuan could immediately imagine the scene of little A-Li sitting on the wooden stool and putting her feet on the threshold.

For the past A-Li, living in the Long Wang ancestral residence or living at Great-Grandpa's house made no difference.

Before meeting him, the girl's world had always been in absolute closure.

A house that hadn't been lived in for a long time, no matter how magnificent, ultimately couldn't keep human energy.

Li Zhuiyuan didn't linger here too much. After the ritualistic process was finished, next, it was time to "negotiate" with the evil spirits here.

To find, you have to find the evil spirit with the highest status here. Li Zhuiyuan had clarified the four corners when he used the formation in the ancestral residence earlier.

Just find these four, let them help him choose and arrange the evil spirits that could be sealed and taken out.

But just after walking out of the courtyard, he saw a black shadow wearing a white mask appear outside the courtyard. The black shadow held a red lantern in its hand.

It was clearly standing in front of him, but in Li Zhuiyuan's perception, it was as if there was nothing in front of him.

This showed that this evil spirit's concealment ability had reached an astonishing level, as if walking between reality and illusion.

The lantern holder bent its knees slightly.

Immediately, the lantern holder turned around and led the way.

Li Zhuiyuan decided to follow.

During the march, the carved beams and painted rafters gradually disappeared, and the texture of the mountain forest spread over.

The lantern holder stopped.

Ahead was a courtyard that could be described as quiet and lonely.

This courtyard and its surrounding environment were clearly added later, an addition made to meet the specific living needs of a certain person.

Li Zhuiyuan guessed who would live in this courtyard.

The young man turned his head to look at the girl.

The girl's gaze was calm.

In the lantern held by the lantern holder, the red light was faint.

Pictures were transmitted into Li Zhuiyuan's sea of consciousness.

The young man didn't resist or reject, receiving all these pictures that were "side descriptions," piecing together a whole process.

A-Li's father was the same as Cuicui's; he left when her mother was pregnant with her. Her mother overdrawn and squeezed out the vitality that she and her father had saved and transitioned, only then giving birth to A-Li.

A-Li's birthday was the memorial day of her own mother.

For Liu Yumei, this was like a curse without end.

Her husband, her relatives, all left while she was sleeping;

Her son and future daughter-in-law sacrificed their vitality and talent when she opened her eyes;

She had to force herself to pull herself together and personally cultivate the family-born children with the best aptitude from the two family gates.

And her son, with that little girl, couldn't see the light, couldn't stand the wind, and at a young age, had already become withered wood, only able to live, rot, and survive in this courtyard.

It could be seen from the relationship between Qin Shu, Liu Yi, and Grandma Liu that Grandma Liu had never imposed her negative emotions on them.

But in fact, for her, watching Qin Shu and Liu Yi accept teaching and grow strongly while thinking of her own son who seemed to live in a withered tomb—what kind of cruelty was this?

Moreover, during that period, Grandma Liu also had to face various low-down malice from this Jianghu toward the declining Long Wang gates.

Li Zhuiyuan continued to walk forward. A-Li stopped and her hand slipped from the young man's fingertips.

She didn't want to continue approaching.

Li Zhuiyuan didn't force it, nor did he turn back to ask, but continued to walk forward.

Cuicui was a strong and optimistic little girl. Although she would envy other children having fathers when she was young, and had fantasized about the scene of having a father, life needed people to be optimistic. If she didn't want to indulge in meaningless waste, she had to walk out. Therefore, the current her didn't have an obsession with the role of father.

And A-Li, who had suffered suffering thousands of times heavier than Cuicui since childhood, was only more mature and profound than Cuicui in this regard.

You can't demand her with "you don't even care about your parents' affairs," just to satisfy a moral need you think is reasonable, letting the girl tear open her own blood scab and perform it for you bloody.

A-Li could not come over, but Li Zhuiyuan had to come over.

If he didn't come into close contact with these, how could he empathize with the resentment in Liu Yi's account book that was enough to torture the "Evil Book" crazy? And how could he understand and substitute the grievances and anger accumulated over decades in the depths of these two Long Wang gates?

Li Zhuiyuan passed a slightly flat area, as if it was a trace left by someone sitting there for a long time.

In the pictures given by the lantern holder, Qin Shu often sat here for half the night without saying a word.

And every time Qin Shu came over, a man of nearly the same age as Qin Shu in the courtyard separated by a wall would also move a stool, smile, and sit opposite Qin Shu across the wall.

Qin Shu was his substitute. In other words, the life Qin Shu was living now was the one that should have belonged to him.

As an orthodox Qin family member, able to be left behind to inherit the hope of the Qin family's revival, and also the Qin family young master commonly recognized by the evil spirits in the ancestral residence, he should have had a magnificent and wonderful life.

He could light the lamp and walk the river, suppress his peers, strive for Long Wang, could share worries for his mother, recreate the gate, and could write a story of a tiger father without a dog son in the Jianghu.

But accompanied by that sacrifice in his youth, all of this moved away from him.

For a genius in the true sense, this was simply a kind of torture.

But when "sitting opposite" Qin Shu, his face always hung a gentle smile, without any resentment, more like encouragement.

Even, vaguely, one could feel a touch of guilt, guilt that Qin Shu had to take his place to shoulder the responsibility and pressure of gate inheritance.

Li Zhuiyuan walked to the courtyard gate, and a rusty copper lock hung on the door, not locked, just put on the door ring to mean it.

The young man put his hand on the door lock.

Li Zhuiyuan didn't know if the two who once lived in the courtyard regretted that move in their youth?

Perhaps yes, perhaps no, perhaps... there was no room for regret.

Because in that battle back then, the Qin family Duke and the elders and disciples of the Qin and Liu families didn't return a single one.

They undoubtedly succeeded, but they undoubtedly also exhausted all their strength, not only the bones, blood, and spirits of the two families, but even among them, the talent and vitality contributed by the two children were the last two small pieces to complete that puzzle.

But one thing was certain: the life of the two in the courtyard had always been in a state of being better off dead.

The reason they kept holding on was probably also because they knew that their existence... was a kind of sustenance for the mother that was mutually torturing but couldn't be cut off.

Li Zhuiyuan's gaze looked at a stone platform outside the courtyard gate, where a bronze lamp was still placed to this day.

The night before Qin Shu lit the lamp and walked the river, he had come here and finished lighting this lamp; after Qin Shu failed to walk the river and admitted defeat after lighting the lamp for the second time, seriously injured and dying, he should have crawled here and pinched out the lamp he had personally lit here.

With these pictures constantly flickering in the young man's sea of consciousness, Li Zhuiyuan's brows frowned slightly.

Having grown human skin and cultivated certain emotions, he gradually empathized into this atmosphere.

Qin Shu's self-blame was very deep. In his view, he failed not only the mistress but also the one in the courtyard.

Qin Shu's failure to walk the river was equivalent to the funeral bell of collapse for these two Long Wang gates.

The inheritance of the Qin and Liu families and the evil spirits in the two family ancestral residences all started counting the lifespan remaining for Liu Yumei.

The two in the courtyard looked at each other and, like in their youth, set up a formation again.

They were actually not a couple, but the relationship between the two of them transcended the traditional meaning of a couple.

The grand sacrifice in their youth made the two souls and lives connected, two bodies co-existing, inseparable.

The man cut his palm again, squeezed out the last bit of blood and vitality, showed an apologetic smile to the woman, and closed his eyes forever.

The woman's fingertips led, not only actively accepting this share of vitality but also introducing the last trace of the Qin family's bones and blood into her body with Feng Shui techniques.

The meaning of their two lives seemed to be to complete a mission.

In childhood, they made the final contribution to that great battle, and in the final period, they left the last bloodline for the two Long Wang gates in this world.

However, the curse continued, falling on A-Li, and had been continuing until his appearance.

The young man's hand ultimately didn't take off this copper lock.

Li Zhuiyuan didn't enter the house but turned around and sat down on these steps, facing the door.

Before, he felt Grandma Liu was an old lady who had suffered too much grievance and anger and couldn't wait to let go and perish together. Now, the young man felt Grandma Liu was still too kind.

Looking up, looking toward the sky, although blocked by clouds and mist, the young man's gaze was still locked toward a void above his head.

Everyone says you are clear about rewards and punishments, and merit is added, but why didn't it fall on these two families?

If the Qin and Liu predecessors and Long Wang spirits knew that after they sacrificed themselves for righteousness, the orphans and widows left behind lived such days, what would they think?

It's really bullying people for dying cleanly, and not living in the world for a long time like the Great Emperor who disobeyed your will, right?

On the young man, cold and indifferent aura constantly overflowed; he was having an episode.

But this time, no pain was revealed on Li Zhuiyuan's face; he was even indulging.

In his memory, he started flipping through Liu Yi's account book.