Chapter 68: Peaks and Turns, Roads Twist and Turn

In a daze, his mind in turmoil, by the time Wu Chengyu came back to his senses, the small boat had already reached Yanzixu.

Yanzixu's area was nearly half larger than the Wang Family's small island, and there were many more buildings on the island, though they were all just ruins.

Wu Chengyu walked leisurely and silently across the island, repeating his old trick by reconstructing the three-dimensional image every hundred meters, measuring the entire small island bit by bit.

However, as he had walked over more than half of the small island and found nothing at all, Wu Chengyu's heart grew increasingly despondent; although he held three parts hope, when hope was about to become a luxury and fantasy, it was inevitable that he felt somewhat disheartened.

Along the way, he found nothing of value; occasionally he discovered a ruined kitchen, and though the utensils left inside were dilapidated, it was clear they had originally been neatly arranged, showing no sign of the panic of a sudden hurried departure.

The other rooms were the same; although some things remained, they were all useless items abandoned here, and everything useful had surely been taken away neatly.

Just as Wu Chengyu had initially imagined, the Murong Family people must have moved away according to a plan, taking everything they should take, and there was no point thinking about martial arts secret manuals.

It would have been better if they had encountered a strong enemy and left in a panic, but if that were truly the case, the good things would surely have been searched clean, so why wait for Wu Chengyu to pick up the leftovers?

After walking a few more steps, he suspected he had found Huanfushuge; this building was preserved quite well, at least the roof and walls were intact, the walls tall and thick, built from stacked basalt.

Presumably, the Murong Family had spent some money building this place back then, but unfortunately, looking in through the window, the inside was just empty shelves.

Wu Chengyu did not rush inside; he first generated the layout of Huanfushuge in his mind, observed for a moment, then bent down to pick up a few stones, firing them one by one with hidden weapon techniques. As the stones struck inside the water pavilion, more than ten sounds of machinery clicking rang out in succession.

The next moment, sharp arrows shot out from several directions inside the water pavilion, and some places creaked for a moment before falling silent; the mechanisms inside had already failed.

Only after all the mechanisms had been triggered did Wu Chengyu step inside.

He casually observed the surrounding corners, found nothing, and then found some clues from the three-dimensional image.

He walked to the bookshelf on the east side of the water pavilion, bent down to search for mechanisms around it, tried several with no effect, and finally looked at the support leg beneath the bookshelf.

This support leg was slightly thicker than the other three; he reached out to touch it, exerted force with his wrist, and after a struggle, the outer ring of the middle section of the support leg finally began to turn. Sounds of mechanisms turning came from somewhere inside the water pavilion, and immediately afterward, a hole large enough for one person to enter and exit appeared on the floor in the southeast corner of the water pavilion.

There was indeed a secret room here. Wu Chengyu stood at the entrance of the secret room, waited for the foul air inside to dissipate, then bent down and crawled in.

The secret room was not small; after probing, there were no mechanisms. There were no bookshelves here, only a table placed against the wall. Unfortunately, Wu Chengyu's last hope was finally dashed.

The table was empty; there was no wooden box that, once opened, contained the secret manual of Reversing the Stars and Shifting the Position. Everything in the secret room had long been emptied.

At this moment, the entire secret room contained nothing but dust and eight large characters carved on the wall: Use His Own Method to Return to Him.

The eight characters were written very domineeringly; this should be the last echo left behind by the Murong Family when they dominated the martial world back then, but it was of no use to Wu Chengyu.

Wu Chengyu crawled out of the secret room and left Huanfushuge. The only part of Yanzixu he had not set foot on was the northwest corner. He knew going there would be useless, but perhaps he was still unwilling to give up, and his feet unconsciously walked toward that direction.

This place had once been a cemetery. Back then, when Murong Bo faked his death, he had placed his tomb here. I don't know how many transmigrators had come here to dig up graves.

Romance is always blown away by wind and rain. This place originally should have buried countless generations of ambitious ancestors of the Murong Family. No matter how many grand ambitions and sinister plots, in the end, were they not all buried by the yellow earth?

But what surprised Wu Chengyu was that all the tombs before his eyes had long been dug open by someone at some unknown time.

All the tombs were empty. Judging from the scene, they should not have been maliciously dug open; there were no scattered bones, and it looked more like a relocation of graves.

Wu Chengyu shook his head and sighed. When the Murong Family moved away back then, they truly moved away clean and tidy, leaving not a trace of attachment. This treasure-hunting journey ultimately ended in vain.

He placed the failed scholar in his hand before a tomb. Since he had come to someone's cemetery, he should pay some respects.

It seemed that back then, the Murong Family must have moved away according to a plan for some reason, completely leaving Yanzixu, and even Gusu. For a hundred years afterward, the name of the Murong clan was not seen; presumably, they had changed their names and surnames.

By now, the clues were completely cut off. Wu Chengyu harbored no illusions about Reversing the Stars and Shifting the Position. In such a vast world, where could he go to find the traces of the Murong Family? Unless a master suddenly appeared in the martial world today and used another move of Use His Own Method to Return to Him.

Things had come to this; staying longer was meaningless. Wu Chengyu bid farewell to the remaining tombstones here and turned to leave, but the corner of his eye caught something, and his footsteps stopped again.

These tombstones were all placed face down. There were dozens of people buried here. Wu Chengyu had no mind to check which tombstone was Murong Bo's and which was Murong Fu's. Only the tombstone to his left was facing upward with its back side up, but what was carved on the tombstone made Wu Chengyu extremely familiar.

He walked a few steps closer, reached out and swept the dust off the tombstone. A deer appeared before Wu Chengyu's eyes. The same shape, the same antlers like tree branches, even the posture and the direction its eyes were looking were the same, exactly like the jade tablet left by his mother Mu Qingyin.

Wu Chengyu pondered for a moment, then turned and flipped over the other tombstones beside him one by one. Indeed, every tombstone had the same deer carved on its back.

At this moment, Wu Chengyu's heart was like thunder and lightning, shocking him on the spot.

The Murong Family were descendants of the Xianbei, a nomadic people of old.

In ancient Hua Guo, every nomadic people had its own totem. If Wu Chengyu remembered correctly, the totem of the Xianbei seemed to be precisely the deer.

When he saw Mu Qingyin's jade tablet back then, Wu Chengyu had not thought much of it, only feeling it was somewhat strange that a deer appeared on the jade tablet. Generally, when carving jade ornaments, most were sika deer, which were more auspicious. But now he had to think about it.

Could it be that... or perhaps the Mu of Mu Qingyin was the Mu of Murong, and the mother of this body he inhabited was the Murong descendant he had been searching for all along?

So Wu Chengyu could also be considered a Murong descendant, with Xianbei blood in his body?

Just now he had entered a treasure mountain and returned empty-handed; now it had become being in a treasure mountain without knowing it?

At this moment, Wu Chengyu suddenly hated those transmigrators who had run to Yanzixu to search for secret manuals. It turned out that what you took were all things from my family.

From the time he received Mu Qingyin's legacy, Wu Chengyu knew his mother's family was definitely not ordinary, but there was no other evidence. He only thought that since the person was dead, investigation was useless.

Now it seemed that if Mu Qingyin was a descendant of the Murong Family, and according to Wu Chengyu's memory, the entire Mu Family had no descendants left, then that jade tablet was the only clue to finding the Murong Family's martial arts.

What is "peaks and turns, roads twist and turn"? What is "heaven does not cut off man's path"? At this moment, Wu Chengyu could not think of these descriptions at all. He only wanted to go home immediately and study Mu Qingyin's legacy again, or rather, Murong Qingyin's legacy.

Actually, I really admire the readers. When I wrote about Mu Qingyin, some readers left messages asking if the Mu of Mu was the Mu of Murong. At that time, I deliberately did not reply to him. I didn't want to deceive him, but I couldn't tell the truth, because I had already planned this in my heart. I gave Wu Chengyu two major sources of martial arts: one is Quanquan, and the other is the Murong Family. After all, others are too far away, with too many variables.

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(Chapter End)