Shilin Relic

"Lin Xue... is this the mysterious old man you were talking about?"

"When did I ever say he was a mysterious old man?" Lin Xue rolled her eyes. "I just said he had something unusual."

"Even if he's just an NPC guarding a mysterious item, he should have something special about him... this appearance..."

In front of us, a dark-skinned old man with a dirty shirt on his upper body and gray pants with the cuffs rolled up to his knees on his lower body was holding a large bowl, slurping noodles as if he hadn't eaten in his entire life. He would occasionally reach out and scratch his hairy calves, seemingly completely immersed in his noodle world and not noticing our arrival at all.

"Don't underestimate this old man," Lin Xue said in a low voice. "Gu Zhengfeng, once the most famous tomb raider in China. He's raided more tombs than you've been to supermarkets, and he's almost never come back empty-handed. Unfortunately, during his last tomb raid, he touched something he shouldn't have, which led to him being hunted down by someone he absolutely couldn't afford to offend. He had no choice but to hide in this place to escape."

"Is that so..." I seriously examined the scruffy old man in front of me who was battling his noodles. I couldn't imagine that he was such a formidable figure.

Lin Feng leaned over mysteriously and said, "Not only that, but it's said that the day after he hid in this Exile Town, the enemy who was hunting him down was choked to death by a Four Joy Meatball..."

"You little brat, did you come here today just to annoy me!" The scruffy old man had finished slurping the last noodle into his mouth at some point. He glared at Lin Feng and shouted. It turned out he had heard our conversation all along, but was just too lazy to bother with us.

"Wouldn't dare, wouldn't dare!" Lin Feng cupped his hands and chuckled. "Today we came to see you, old sir, for an important matter. May we come in and discuss it in detail?"

"Cut the nonsense," the old man picked up the large bowl, gulped down the noodle soup inside, wiped his mouth, and said, "Anyway, you won't let me leave. What can I object to on your territory?"

Following the old man, we entered the adobe house which looked ordinary from the outside.

The scene inside greatly exceeded my expectations.

The small room was filled with old bottles, jars, and tools whose purpose was unclear, leaving almost no space to step. Even the walls were covered with dirty things that looked like artifacts. The already dim room was made even darker by these relics of previous generations, polished black and shiny by the long river of history. As soon as I entered the room, I even felt like I had stepped into a newly excavated tomb chamber.

"These are the things that ruined me," the old tomb raider navigated through the "junk" on the floor with practiced ease. "But I still can't bear to throw them away."

"Any of these things taken out and sold should be priceless, right?" Qian Qian carefully stepped over an old pottery jar that looked like it would turn into a pile of fragments if touched, and said softly.

"Don't even think about these things," Lin Xue said in a low voice. "Otherwise, Old Gu will definitely fight you to the death. When he first came to this town, he donated two hundred and twenty-seven artifacts and all of his family property, and he made one request: that no one is allowed to touch the remaining things here until he dies."

The old tomb raider's hearing was clearly excellent. Even Lin Xue's soft voice didn't escape his ears. He chuckled and said, "After I die, you can naturally do whatever you want with these things. But when that day truly comes, I hope to lie among this pile of treasures – Old Gu has dug up countless tombs of kings and nobles in his life, and when I die, I want to be like them, lying in this pile of treasures!"

Hearing the old man's words, all of us could only roll our eyes towards the sky, completely helpless.

"Alright, sit down." After a difficult trek, we finally reached the only empty space in the room. The old man casually pulled out a few chairs that looked like they were about to fall apart and motioned for us to sit down.

Sitting among these treasures of our ancestors, we suddenly felt like we were having a meeting in a tomb...

"Speak, did you come to see me about that thing?" The old man seemed to have known our purpose long ago.

"That's right," Lin Xue answered straightforwardly.

"It's not impossible to give you that thing," a glint flashed in the old man's eyes. His previous scruffy demeanor seemed to disappear without a trace, as if he had regained the spirit of the shrewd and capable tomb raider he once was. "If I hadn't been greedy and taken it out back then, I wouldn't have ended up in this state. To me, it's a jinx. But I can't just give it to you so easily – you know my rules."

At this point, I finally understood that the thing Lin Xue was asking the old tomb raider for was the very thing that had almost cost him his life back then. Even I became intensely curious about that mysterious item.

Lin Xue seemed completely unconcerned about the rules the old man mentioned. She pushed Qian Qian, who was curiously observing the antiques on the side, forward and said, "This is Xu Feng's daughter, Xu Qianqian. If your statement is correct, then this girl has the qualification to activate that thing – how about it, let's take it out and try?"

"Hey—" I thought Lin Xue was going to make Qian Qian do something dangerous and couldn't help but speak up to stop her.

"Don't worry, I won't harm your sweetheart. I just need her cooperation for an experiment."

The old tomb raider looked Qian Qian up and down for a while, then chuckled and said, "Heh, the daughter of that missing man? Her dad was a staunch materialist, he didn't even believe in your Esper abilities, and he even cursed me out. What, his daughter is willing to believe in these messy things? Wait, I'll go get it for you..."

While the old man got up to search for the mysterious item in the back, Qian Qian and I asked together, "Uncle Xu (Dad) has been here too?"

"Yes," this time it was Zheng Yiming who answered us. "Because the ruins they were going to investigate were somewhat special, we arranged for the main members of the expedition team to come here before they set off, hoping they could obtain that important item from Gu Zhengfeng. Fortunately, Mr. Xu successfully resonated with that thing. However, what we didn't expect was that Mr. Xu not only completely disbelieved our words, but also dismissed our suggestions as pseudoscience and severely criticized Old Gu, who came from a tomb raiding background..."

Qian Qian glanced at us sheepishly, seemingly having expected her father's stubbornness.

Hearing Zheng Yiming's description, I became even more curious about the mysterious item they were talking about: "You said that thing can 'resonate' with Uncle Xu, and that Qian Qian, as Uncle Xu's daughter, can also produce that 'resonance' you mentioned? What exactly is it?"

"You'll know when you see it yourself. One thing is certain, it's a magical item that is even harder to explain than our Esper powers."

Just then, I heard a sound from behind me. The old tomb raider had brought the item over.

"Is this it?" I looked in surprise at the unremarkable thing in the old man's hand. It was a palm-sized hexagonal metal plate, made of some unknown material. Its surface was covered in a layer of black and red grime that looked like rust, and some incomplete symbols could be vaguely seen on the surface of the metal plate. Other than that, this thing was no different from scrap metal in a junkyard.

This thing that looked like a piece of broken iron was the mysterious item that had been hyped up so much?

Just as I was thinking I had been tricked by an old man who liked to play tricks, Pandora's voice came through the mental link: "This is a Null Beacon!"

"What?!" I was shocked. "Pandora, you know this thing?"

"A Null Beacon, something used by members of the Empire Legion for emergency teleportation to evacuate the battlefield in critical situations. It can also be used as a navigator for small-scale spatial jumps. I have a similar device. For a Shilin Warrior, a Null Beacon is a very important thing... How could there be one in this world..."

Just then, the events happening on the scene interrupted my mental conversation with Pandora.

Following Gu Zhengfeng's instructions, Qian Qian placed her left hand on the black metal plate that Pandora called a "Null Beacon." Immediately, the metal plate emitted a faint humming sound.

"How is this possible!" Pandora's voice, full of surprise, came from my mental world. I had never seen her have such intense emotional fluctuations. "How could a Shilin Relic resonate with a Carbon-Based Lifeform?"