Chapter 69: Deciphering

When he returned home it was already afternoon; the house was empty, and Wu Chengyu plunged straight into the bedroom, retrieving Mu Qingyin's legacy from the secret compartment.

Setting aside the other jewelry for the moment, he picked up the jade tablet and examined it closely; sure enough, the deer on the tablet was identical to the one on the back of the tombstone, and the guess in his heart was basically confirmed — Mu Qingyin was Murong Qingyin.

But the micro-carved numbers on the back of the jade tablet, dense and numerous, totaled nearly a thousand — the so-called cipher; were it not for Wu Chengyu's extraordinary vision, an ordinary person simply could not make out what was carved.

To decipher the cipher one must have a cipher book; he had not thought much of it before, but now it occurred to him that Mu Qingyin would certainly have left a cipher book behind.

He picked up the volumes Mu Qingyin had left, all hand-copied by her, a dozen or so in total; last time Wu Chengyu had only flipped through them cursorily, and they were basically all poetry and travelogues.

Only one was different: "Xining Chronicle," which dealt with the third year of Xining in the Northern Song and Wang Anshi's reforms.

Wu Chengyu turned to the first page and basically determined this book should be the cipher book, because the back of the first page also bore a drawing of a deer.

Wu Chengyu looked at the jade tablet: the number in the first column, first row on the right was "one," followed by a tiny space, then "twenty-eight" — presumably the eighth character of the second column on the first page of the Xining Chronicle; checking against the text it was exactly the character "Murong," and Wu Chengyu's spirits rose sharply as he hurried to continue deciphering.

The number in the first column, second row was again "one," followed by "thirty-six," but this time the corresponding character was "method" — "Murong method"? What could that mean?

Wu Chengyu continued searching downward; the first ten characters were respectively "Murong," "method," "chaos," "temple," "vast," "horse," "change," "bathe," "years," and "Hua"; whether taken at face value or scrambled, they made no sense at all, and he deciphered a few more characters but still could not discern any meaning.

Wu Chengyu now fell into deep doubt, suspecting the Xining Chronicle was not the cipher book at all; yet he tried swapping in several other volumes and still gained nothing, only leaving his mind in a tangled mess.

He picked up the jade tablet again, scrutinizing every number on it, and finally, in the very last line of these rows of numbers, discovered text that was strikingly different.

This line bore only four characters: Zi, Yin, Si, You. These four characters were even smaller than the preceding numbers; the slightest inattention would cause them to be overlooked.

What could this mean? Now it was truly pure guesswork; these characters appeared to be four contained within the Twelve Earthly Branches.

The so-called Zi-Rat, Yin-Tiger, Si-Snake, You-Rooster? Could it still be related to animals?

Wu Chengyu racked his brains but could not understand what connection these four animals had with the Murong family.

This was the moment for the bamboo slips to function; he posed his question to the bamboo slips, and after roughly three breaths, two characters appeared on the slips: "Sequence."

Wu Chengyu silently repeated those two characters over and over, then looked again at the Zi, Yin, Si, You on the jade tablet.

The Twelve Earthly Branches are respectively Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai; later generations all use the Gregorian calendar for dating, and at most remember the Twelve Zodiac in their heads, so Wu Chengyu's first reaction just now was the zodiac signs represented by these four characters — which was actually a wrong turn.

If we follow sequence, Zi is the first position among the Earthly Branches, Yin is the third position, with one position between them; Si is the sixth position, with Mao and Chen between it and Yin; and You is the tenth position, with three positions between it and Si.

So the "sequence" spoken of by the bamboo slips should mean the numbers on the jade tablet correspond to the first character — thus "Murong" is correct; the second number's corresponding character "method" shifted back two positions happens to be "Rong" — "Murong," and Wu Chengyu immediately knew he had finally found the correct deciphering method.

Following this rule, each corresponding character shifted back by its one-two-three order respectively, and the characters he had previously deciphered, placed together, finally formed the first sentence: "Murong's descendants are unworthy; they moved away from Gusu."

A perfectly good martial world suddenly started playing spy games; Wu Chengyu could only shake his head with a wry smile, yet his mood could not calm, and even the Turtle Grandson Method Breathing he had maintained constantly fell out of rhythm, as if the Great Shift of the Stars had already become something in his pocket.

After composing himself, Wu Chengyu deciphered all the remaining content in one go — several hundred characters in total, a letter left by the Murong family head of that time for his descendants.

The gist was: after Murong Fu went mad, the Murong family withdrew from the martial world, but the Murong family's secret manuals aroused outsiders' covetousness; at that time Murong Fu's family stewards Deng Baichuan and Gongye Qian were still alive, and because Bao Butong had been killed, Feng Bo'e, who had left in a huff, also chose to return upon learning Murong Fu had gone mad.

These three men were incomparably loyal, still silently guarding the Murong family's safety.

Deng Baichuan, known as Second in Jiangnan Palm Strength, had even earned high praise from Xiao Feng back then; Gongye Qian's martial arts were slightly inferior to Deng Baichuan's, yet he was also a top-tier master in the Jiangnan region; adding a Feng Bo'e who fought with reckless abandon, they quickly drove back those outsiders harboring greedy intentions.

There was also Wang Yuyan, who had already become Empress of Dali; out of past affection she sent people to intimidate a batch of them; at this time Duan Yu was already a supreme master under heaven, and there was also a sworn brother Xu Zhu who was likewise a supreme master; the power represented by Wang Yuyan made many masters hesitate to advance.

Therefore, although Murong Fu was mad at the time, the Murong family in the Gusu region could still live in peace.

Murong Fu and A Bi gave birth to a son named Murong He, completely abandoning the dream of restoring Great Yan; Murong He was born with a frail constitution and could not practice martial arts, and A Bi also did not wish the Murong family to fall into martial strife again — thus two generations later the Murong family was no longer any martial clan.

Who would have thought that with the passing of the three family stewards, someone would again set their sights on the Murong family's secret manuals; the Murong family head of that time decided promptly to move the entire household, taking everything that could be carried, and vanished completely from the sight of martial world figures.

According to the letter, the place the Murong family moved to was actually not far — a case of "darkness under the lamp" — right in Changzhou near Gusu, less than a hundred kilometers away.

Thereafter the Murong family became the Mu family, passing down farming and scholarship, with no one practicing martial arts; those secret manuals became useless objects, until his mother Mu Qingyin's generation there was not a single male heir, and the Murong family was thus considered extinct.

This jade tablet was made by Mu Qingyin's father, left for descendants; if one day a descendant wishes to practice martial arts, they can follow the address in the letter to find the Mu Family Mausoleum, where the guardians of the tomb are descendants of the Mu family stewards, and with this jade tablet as a token they can obtain those old belongings of the Murong family that belong to the past.

Wu Chengyu now completely set his mind at ease; a search had yielded an ideal result, and most critically, Wu Chengyu was originally Mu Qingyin's only son — legally speaking, the sole inheritor of these Murong family things — so when the time comes to cultivate the Great Shift of the Stars, it will be with a clear conscience and entirely justified.

Once all the details were clarified, Wu Chengyu kept the jade tablet on his person, returned the remaining legacy to the secret compartment, and turned toward the Third House's Discussion Hall.

He informed Wu Zhengliang that he wished to make a trip to his mother's hometown Changzhou, to clean the Mu Family Mausoleum for his mother and fulfill filial piety.

Wu Zhengliang immediately replied that the Wu family happened to have a caravan going to Changzhou to deliver goods tomorrow; Wu Chengyu could simply set off with the caravan, and he even gave guidance on what to prepare for grave-sweeping — he even knew where the Mu Family Mausoleum was located.

It was said that back then it was he who led the team accompanying Wu Zhengkang to Changzhou to welcome the bride.

Truly, world affairs are unpredictable, fate toys with people; some things were already within easy reach for Wu Chengyu, but had it not been for this transmigration, the original body would have died at Gushan, and everything of the Murong family would have been buried in the dust of ages, ultimately extinguished without a trace.

(Chapter End)