Stealing Heavenly Secrets

After searching through the Daoist sect ancestral grounds like Mount Longhu and Mount Zao Pavilion, he could only return disappointed.

For his third stop, he went to Mount Tai.

No major sects had settled on Mount Tai.

But Mount Tai in the World of Covering the Sky was extraordinary—perhaps he might encounter cultivators coming to pay homage there.

To attract the attention of cultivators, Li Zhi set up a small stall at the foot of the mountain, creating a word-recognition game of his own design.

He shuffled the already-translated Oracle Bone Script with the untranslated ones from Stealing Heavenly Secrets, offering a reward of one hundred per character to lure tourists into playing.

Ten yuan per round, with ten Oracle Bone Script characters randomly drawn each time.

Recognizing three or more triggered the one-hundred-per-character reward.

That meant each additional character recognized earned a hundred yuan.

Perhaps because the reward was generous enough, his game stall quickly became a hit.

From early spring all the way to midsummer, not a single unfamiliar Oracle Bone Script character from Stealing Heavenly Secrets was recognized by any tourist.

As for the other characters, they cost him over a hundred thousand yuan in prizes.

Until one day, a young man and woman came down the mountain.

As they passed Li Zhi's stall, the girl suddenly stopped and called out to the man, "Senior Apprentice-Brother, wait, there's a fun game here."

Neither of them had any trace of an Immortal-like Demeanor. Though decent-looking, they gave off an utterly ordinary vibe.

An Ordinary person's gaze wouldn't linger on them for a moment.

But Li Zhi noticed their extraordinariness.

Unlike ordinary people, they walked from the foot of the mountain to the stall without red faces or heavy breaths, and they carried no gear.

They didn't even seem to have phones in their pockets.

"Miss, want to give it a few rounds? If you're learned and talented, you might earn your entire trip expenses from me," Li Zhi said, hawking his game like a sly merchant.

The girl chuckled and said, "If I win, you won't welch on the deal, will you?"

Li Zhi replied, "Miss, you're pretty cocky. If you dare to win, I dare to pay. I'm just afraid you won't recognize the characters, get frustrated, and call the cops on me for fraud."

Earlier, someone had spent a few hundred yuan, seen hundreds of Oracle Bone Script characters without recognizing a single one, and called the police.

It took other tourists who had earned money from Li Zhi to explain to the cops before they let him off.

After all, Li Zhi's business counted as a cultural game, more highbrow than simple ring-toss games, and the scenic area staff were happy to see it.

The young man looked over the stall and the rules, then asked, "Boss, your game doesn't have a limit on rounds, does it?"

Li Zhi said, "No round limit, but the difficulty increases step by step. If you can clear it, you might even win a hundred thousand in prize money."

As he spoke, Li Zhi patted the iron box he was sitting on.

It seemed he had a hundred thousand in cash ready inside.

Hearing this, the young man said to the girl, "Junior Apprentice-Sister, if you want to play, go ahead and enjoy it. Let this clueless boss know there's always someone better."

Then the game began.

The girl seemed to recognize every character.

Li Zhi, who had been brimming with confidence, was already sweating on his forehead by the third round.

The young man asked with a smile, "Boss, how about it? Still dare to continue?"

The girl seemed to relish watching Li Zhi's increasingly panicked expression and said, "Senior Apprentice-Brother, I'm not done yet."

Li Zhi gritted his teeth and said, "Keep going. I don't believe it. You can't really be better than those professors in ancient script."

Then he secretly swapped in the Oracle Bone Script from Stealing Heavenly Secrets.

But the order was scrambled, and each character was on a separate card, so no one would connect them to a full article.

Sure enough, once the difficulty ramped up, the girl no longer blurted out answers.

She had to think, even asking her Senior Apprentice-Brother for help to recognize the characters.

Li Zhi, meanwhile, looked smugly at them, as if pleased with his cleverness.

The young man seemed provoked by Li Zhi's expression and stepped up to play himself.

Within half an hour, they had recognized every Oracle Bone Script character in Li Zhi's database.

Seeing the game cleared, Li Zhi felt like the sky was falling. His legs gave way, and he slumped to the ground.

The girl showed no pity, looking down at him and saying, "Boss, we cleared it. Pay up now. You're not going to play dirty, are you?"

The young man also stared at Li Zhi and said sarcastically, "Who was it just now saying, 'If you dare to win, I dare to pay'?"

Li Zhi seemed furious. He grabbed the box, stood up, glared at the pair, and said through clenched teeth, "I'm afraid you can't carry it."

Then he opened the box, pulled out a backpack stuffed with twenty bundles of hundred-yuan bills, and tossed it straight to them.

As if sulking, he said, "It's only two hundred thousand. I can afford it."

The girl took the backpack, saw the neatly bundled hundred-yuan bills inside, and immediately said to her senior apprentice-brother, "Senior Apprentice-Brother, this trip wasn't a waste after all. We even earned two months' pocket money."

Then, they turned to leave.

But Li Zhi called out, "Hold on."

The boy stared at him and said, "What, you want to back out?"

Li Zhi replied, "You can take the money, but leave my bag behind. That's a designer backpack I spent six hundred on."

"Haha, this boss is hilarious."

At that, the crowd of onlookers burst into loud laughter.

The girl looked at Li Zhi in disbelief, as if she couldn't fathom him fussing over such a cheap bag.

Without any visible movement from the boy, he simply took the bag, gave it a light shake, and tossed the backpack back to Li Zhi, saying, "Catch, here's your bag."

After catching the backpack, Li Zhi immediately noticed the money inside was gone, confirming even more that the two were cultivators.

He tossed the empty bag into the crate and said to the watching tourists, "Ladies and gentlemen, today Li has taken a loss. My Primal Qi is severely damaged, and I need some time to recover."

With that, he began packing up his stall under the crowd's mocking gazes.

Then, amid the cheers of the tourists, he left in disgrace.

But no one noticed the unusually bright gleam in his eyes.

Did he really care about that money?

No, he was putting on a live performance for everyone.

Li Zhi dared to say his acting just now had reached perfection, surpassing every drama school student.

This haul was enormous.

He hadn't exposed himself, and he'd solved his problem.

Spending just a little money, he left no karmic ties behind.

It was an incredible deal.

He couldn't wait to get back and translate the entire "Stealing Heavenly Secrets" manual.

Over a year later, Li Zhi returned to his hometown.

He went straight from Mount Tai back to Da Li Village.

He hadn't notified anyone along the way; even Zhou Mei, who called him almost daily, had no idea he'd left Mount Tai.

Deep in his heart, Li Zhi subconsciously felt that this home in Da Li Village was his true home—the place where he could study "Stealing Heavenly Secrets" without distraction.

The home in Da Li Village felt like his spiritual sanctuary.

Even though, since arriving in this world, Li Zhi had lived in Da Li Village for no more than three months total.

Yet when faced with a major life event, he still returned without hesitation.

Though no family remained in the house, home was still home—the root that raised and nurtured him.

Perhaps it was the soul imprint left in every cell from eating Da Li Village's grain and drinking its water as a child.

Though he hadn't been back in over a year, everything in the house was perfectly intact.

It didn't look like a place long uninhabited at all.

That was because Li Zhi had asked Li Zhong and his wife to clean it weekly.

Houses left empty for long periods often lack vitality.

But Li Zhi's home never lacked that.

Even the appliances were used regularly.