Stealing Heavenly Secrets

In truth, the main issue was that Li Zhi and Ye Fan had no magical power to speak of, leaving them unable to use it to dissolve the karmic ties between the living and the dead within the nether.

If they were strong enough, none of these flashy and ostentatious rituals would be necessary.

At the end of the day, it was their current weakness that made them cautious.

This wasn't just a rule Li Zhi had brought from his past life; it was also an insight he'd gained from studying "Stealing Heavenly Secrets."

Before the white bones in the main outer coffin chamber, Li Zhi lined up the bags of horseshoe gold and bronze ritual vessels in a row.

Then, from somewhere, he produced a handful of dark red candles, each as thick as a chopstick.

Under Ye Fan's curious gaze, Li Zhi handed him the candles and said, "Since we have no magic power, we'll have to use this crude method. Line them up, one candle for each bag or bronze vessel."

Ye Fan did as told, quickly lighting the candles one by one and fixing them in front of the gold bags and bronze vessels.

Seeing no issues, Li Zhi said to Ye Fan, "Step back."

Then, Ye Fan watched as Li Zhi lit three sticks of incense, bowed toward the skeleton, and muttered under his breath, "The Lingbao Heavenly Lord has spoken: humans and ghosts walk separate paths, yin and yang are divided. Matters have three completions, named the five directions..."

The more Ye Fan listened, the more puzzled he became. He had studied many Daoist classics, yet he'd never heard of the Lingbao Heavenly Lord leaving behind such a spell.

Li Zhi chanted the unfamiliar scripture for a full five minutes.

Then, he asked, "Karma cycles, birth and ceaseless destruction. Peace without disturbance, goods and wealth settled?"

As his words fell, the row of twenty-three burning candles began to extinguish one by one.

Thirteen went out before it stopped.

Seeing this, Li Zhi said to Ye Fan, "The master here has agreed to let us take the goods. Little Leaf, move out the things whose candles went out."

There were six bags of horseshoe gold and seven bronze items.

The horseshoe gold was unremarkable, each bag weighing about thirty to forty jin.

The seven bronze pieces, however, were all different: a bronze sword, a bronze horse, a bronze crane, a bronze qilin, a bronze tiger, a bronze tripod, and a bronze chariot.

Though the bronze items were exquisitely crafted, none were large—none exceeded a meter in length, width, or height.

Even the largest, the bronze chariot, was only about ninety centimeters wide, sixty centimeters tall, and a meter long.

Though these items were heavy, for the immensely strong Ye Fan, moving them out posed no problem.

Li Zhi and Ye Fan quickly hauled everything out.

Then, Li Zhi handled the cleanup.

Before leaving the coffin chamber, he removed the memory card from the digital camera on the Scholar's body.

After that, he used the excavated wooden planks to seal the large hole in the chamber's wooden wall.

Back on the surface, Li Zhi said to Ye Fan, "We probably can't leave tonight."

Ye Fan asked, "Is there more to do?"

Li Zhi pointed at the well and said, "We need to fill it in."

Ye Fan's mouth dropped open in shock, unsure how to respond.

A well a meter wide and over ten meters deep—could they really fill it in one night?

From digging up soil to filling it in, Ye Fan felt a single night wouldn't be enough.

He pulled out his phone to check the time—it was already 1:30 AM, less than five hours until dawn.

When he voiced his doubts, Li Zhi laughed and said, "Have you forgotten the truck blocking the road?"

"That truck missing a tire?" Ye Fan said.

Li Zhi pointed toward the base's entrance and said, "I noticed earlier—the tire is leaning against the back of the gate."

"Even with a truck, we don't have soil," Ye Fan said.

Li Zhi replied, "Remember those construction sites we passed during the day that were shut down? If I'm not mistaken, they should be doing earthwork at night."

Under Ye Fan's skeptical gaze, Li Zhi led him to the site in the repaired truck.

With just two packs of cigarettes, they traded for a full truckload of soil.

By the time the sky began to lighten, they had finally filled the shaft and even transplanted a few tomato seedlings at the mouth.

After that, they drove Li Zhi's off-road vehicle, loaded with the gold and bronze items, and left.

It was as if they had never been there.

As for the seven dead men forever buried underground, there was nothing worth remembering.

In this regard, Li Zhi and Ye Fan were very alike.

As long as they were certain someone deserved to die, they felt not a shred of pity.

Just as Ye Fan felt no discomfort watching Li Zhi smash Jia Xiaowu's head with a hammer, Li Zhi's heart remained utterly calm in the presence of the dead.

What Ye Fan cared about more was the scripture Li Zhi had chanted in the main outer coffin chamber.

It seemed to truly allow communication with the dead—far too mysterious for words.

On the way back to the city, Ye Fan asked Li Zhi several times about the origin of that scripture, but Li Zhi just smiled without answering.

In truth, Li Zhi had fabricated the scripture based on the sacrificial chapter of "Stealing Heavenly Secrets."

He hadn't expected it to work so well.

Two days later, the two returned to the city laden with rich spoils.

What followed was the much-anticipated division of the loot.

Li Zhi had assumed Ye Fan would take the initiative to propose terms for splitting the haul.

But to his utter surprise, as soon as they were back in the city, Ye Fan rushed over with a laptop.

Then, with an eager look, he said to Li Zhi, "Brother Li, hurry up and take out that memory card. Let's see if they captured any fragments about ancient cultivators."

Only then did Li Zhi realize that Ye Fan, like himself, didn't care much for the valuables they'd brought back.

Instead, they were far more interested in what was on the memory card.

He'd thought Ye Fan hadn't noticed he'd pocketed the card, since the topic never came up on the road.

Now it was clear that wasn't the case.

Li Zhi couldn't help but think to himself: with such deep cunning, no wonder Ye Fan would one day manage to trick those Forbidden Zone Supremes.

Logically speaking, Forbidden Zone Supremes were figures who'd crawled through mountains of corpses and seas of blood—ordinary tricks like faking injury would never fool them.

Yet Ye Fan pulled it off.

His depth of scheming was enough to make even those Supremes want to curse.

Indeed, anyone who lumps Ye Fan together with a mindless brute swinging his fists is the real fool.

Li Zhi calmly took the memory card from his pocket and handed it to Ye Fan.

The contents did not disappoint.

They quickly found photos of a Jade Scroll that Xu the Scholar had taken before his death.

The text on the Jade Scroll was written in Clerical Script, so the two had no trouble reading it.

It was a cultivation method called "Longevity Art."

Once mastered, it could grant a lifespan of a hundred years and eternal youth.

Ye Fan exclaimed excitedly, "The ancients lived to a hundred without their vigor fading—could it be because they practiced similar methods?"

Li Zhi was also studying the method closely.

The more he read, the more he felt something was off about this "Longevity Art."

It didn't seem like a true cultivation scripture, but rather the opening chapter of a technique.

Just like the Dao Scripture Beginning Chapter they'd learned upon arriving at the Spirit Void Grotto-Heaven on Beidou—it didn't truly involve cultivating the body's secret realms, only serving as a foundation-building method.

After opening the Bitter Sea, one would need to choose another complete cultivation method to continue progressing.

Though this "Longevity Art" didn't teach how to sense one's own Wheel of Life or guide essence to strike the Bitter Sea, the method it recorded for preserving eternal youth was irresistible.

The value of this method far exceeded the spoils they'd brought back.

Fortunately, cultivation methods could be copied, so there was no issue with distribution.

Otherwise, dividing the loot would have been tricky.

But after studying it several times, Li Zhi suddenly realized that while this Longevity Art was wondrous, it might be like the breathing technique recorded in "Stealing Heavenly Secrets"—impossible to truly master.

Because Earth was now in the Era of Dharma Decline, the Heaven and Earth Essence was far too thin, leaving no spare spiritual energy for them to consume.

When Li Zhi shared his guess with Ye Fan, the excited Ye Fan finally calmed down.

He looked at the computer screen with regret.

Then, he copied the contents of the memory card.

The two also agreed on how to handle the other items.

Based on Li Zhi's estimate,