"So,"
"what is the price?"
The ghost saint with crimson hair and horns lowered his hoarse voice.
He raised his eyes.
Yin and yang turned amid vastness, forms perishing and life and death arising.
They flickered faintly.
Tu Shan Jun sometimes lent others a hand, yet he still demanded payment.
Even if it was only a jug of cloudy wine.
Or a single copper coin.
Whether it was valuable or not, he would accept it.
This had always been his principle.
Thus, he never expected others to help him without conditions.
Help from fate, priceless as it was, often demanded an enormous price in the future.
A jug of cloudy wine was enough to sever the taint of karma.
The figure stood unmoving, like an insurmountable mountain. With his back to the chessboard, he extended a finger.
No words, no divine sense. It was as though, at the instant he pointed, Tu Shan Jun understood what he should do—or rather, where he should go to fulfill the instructions of the Primordial Saint Spirit Devil.
Tu Shan Jun murmured, "Central Origin Domain, the Land of Divine Prohibition."
There was only that place name, and nothing else.
The figure held out a mist-shrouded palm. An ancient scripture appeared in the air, written in an instant before becoming an aged, simple book.
A breeze passed by.
The ancient book landed atop the chessboard.
Tu Shan Jun snatched up the ancient book and opened it.
It was entirely blank.
"Wordless?"
He closed it and looked at the golden lettering inscribed upon it: 'Divine Medicine Canon.'
A horrifying thought surfaced in Tu Shan Jun's mind.
Could this ancient book contain the scripture on how to raise that divine medicine plant he had sealed within the world inside his body?
But why did this scripture have