Freezing Cold Curse

"Buzz!"

The Jade Seal trembled lightly. Lu Zheng probed it with his mind and found that the four men had shared a total of five strands of Light of Luck with him.

Not bad! Besides...

"Good heavens, this corpse-dissolving powder is pretty potent. It really is the perfect remedy for destroying corpses and erasing all traces. Which great master invented this?"

Lu Zheng used the corpse-dissolving powder again, reducing the other three corpses completely.

Under the powder's powerful corrosion, their bones, organs, sinews, flesh, and blood all turned into pools of filthy water that seeped into the earth and vanished without a trace.

He dug a deep pit and buried the four men's remaining clothes and weapons together. The only proof they had ever existed was the two large bundles before him.

Opening the bundles, he found them filled with clumps of coarse burlap. By the scattered moonlight filtering through the trees, Lu Zheng saw all manner of objects separated by the cloth.

Gold ornaments, agate, white jade, pearls...

Every item gave off a faint trace of Yin Qi.

Funerary goods! So they really had been a gang of tomb robbers. He wondered whose grave they had dug up.

"Every grievance has its debtor, every debt its creditor. I've already avenged you. Shouldn't you show me a little gratitude?"

Lu Zheng muttered to himself. "There's no victim to claim these things, and none of them can see the light of day. If I handed them over to the authorities, never mind not knowing who they should be returned to, how much of it would be swallowed up? More importantly, I'd expose myself, and might even draw retaliation from that Golden Severing Hall.

"Since that's the case, I can only reluctantly accept these gifts of thanks. Look, I have a big house here, but back in my hometown, I'm still renting a place. How pitiful."

Lu Zheng first took out an Evil Expelling Talisman. After activating it, he tossed it into the two bundles. The Yin Qi lingering on the objects was extracted thread by thread, vanishing soundlessly.

Funerary goods sat in tombs for years, absorbing Yin Qi and cold air. If they were worn immediately after being unearthed, the Yin Qi would enter the body and surely cause illness. They had to be left in the sun for dozens of days before they could be carried on one's person.

An Evil Expelling Talisman was naturally not the blazing sun that gave life to all things, but when it came to driving away evil qi, it was no less effective. The cost of one talisman was enough to remove all the faint Yin Qi tainting these ordinary objects.

After transferring everything to the modern world and erasing all traces from the forest, Lu Zheng took out another Breath Concealing Talisman, replacing the previous talisman whose effect was about to run out.

Ever since learning that Golden Severing Hall also had cultivators, Lu Zheng had remained extremely cautious.

Having settled everything, Lu Zheng silently returned to Tong Yi Alley.

But as soon as he turned into the alley, he saw a delicate figure standing at the entrance to his next-door neighbor's home. She held a lantern and looked toward the alley mouth.

Their gazes met. Liu Qingyan smiled in relief, then her face flushed red and she hurried back inside.

The next day, sunlight filtered through the paper window, dimly illuminating the bedroom.

Looking down at the quilt covering him, Lu Zheng sighed helplessly.

"Brimming with energy, blood and qi like a furnace—what can I do about it?"

"Big brother Lu! Big brother Lu!" Liu Qingquan's voice rang out from the front courtyard. "Father told me to invite you over for breakfast!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!"

Lu Zheng hastily threw on his clothes. Before he had even washed up, Liu Qingquan had dragged him away.

Aunt Liu was smiling so broadly her mouth would not close, though she sighed helplessly. "Well then, there's no need to make breakfast for Young Master anymore."

When Lu Zheng arrived at the Liu residence, he looked bleary-eyed, clearly having just woken up.

Liu Qingyan shot her younger sister a glare, then went to fetch water. She returned with soapberries and a towel, attending to Lu Zheng as he washed up.

"I'll do it myself! I'll do it myself!"

Old Man Liu and Madam Liu watched from the side with beaming smiles.

"As you should, as you should. You saved our family of four. Isn't Qingyan washing your face and freshening you up the least she can do?"

Once he had washed up, Lu Zheng was invited into the front hall. Madam Liu had prepared a lavish breakfast: porridge and pickles, steamed buns and vegetable pancakes, as well as a bowl of thin noodles in sour soup.

Great kindness needed no words of thanks. Everyone tacitly understood what would come next, so the Liu family did not mention the events of the previous night. They merely urged Lu Zheng to eat more, treating him completely like one of their own.

"Burp... Well, I definitely won't need lunch today."

After breakfast, Lu Zheng went home to inform Uncle Li and the others, then crossed back to the modern world.

First, he sorted through the spoils.

Lu Zheng separated the various objects, wrapping each in cloth before placing them into a large rolling suitcase, intending to deal with them another day.

"Put the gold together, the jade together. These are agates, these are rubies, and these are pearls. They're all so large. Oh? This is jadeite, isn't it? What grade is it?"

As he sorted, Lu Zheng muttered to himself, "Looks like my wish to move into a bigger house will come true very soon."

"Hm?" Lu Zheng's eyes narrowed.

He was holding a sheet of gold foil covered in densely packed tiny writing. Without close inspection, one might have taken it for mere decorative patterns.

"What is this?"

Lu Zheng read it carefully and discovered that the words recorded a spell—the Freezing Cold Curse! Using special runes supplemented by true qi, it could absorb and store cold qi, then ultimately release it upon a target.

It could be cast out of thin air, drawn into talismans, or inscribed onto objects. Once infused with true qi, it could absorb cold qi and then release it.

Lu Zheng immediately recalled how the four men had gone to Renxin Hall during the day. Their bodies had been full of cold qi, mixed with death qi, Yin Qi, and other energies.

From this, it could be inferred that the owner of the tomb had buried a talisman or Magical Artifact bearing the Freezing Cold Curse within the tomb, and it had been triggered when they robbed the grave.

Though they had been seriously injured, they had not died at once. Instead, they had persevered in carrying the items out of the tomb and even made it all the way to Renxin Hall.

At the end of the gold foil, it specifically noted that this Curse Spell was most suitable for cultivators who practiced cold-attribute techniques. It could also be used in winter, or amid the frozen, snowbound lands of the northern frontier. Its power was immense; neither humans nor ghosts could withstand it.

"Good stuff!"

Lu Zheng did not practice a cold-attribute cultivation technique, and it was still summer, but he had a refrigerator in the modern world!

How much cold qi do you need? Name a number! I won't bargain!

Without another word, he set the gold foil aside. Lu Zheng became even more energized in his work.

Even after finishing the sorting, Lu Zheng found nothing else related to cultivation.

Judging from the explanation on the gold foil, the tomb's owner had likely been a wealthy ordinary man. He had merely acquired the Freezing Cold Curse by chance and did not understand cultivation methods.

The object capable of releasing the Freezing Cold Curse had probably been made by blindly copying the form of a tiger from a cat. Over countless years, it had undergone a slight transformation and injured those four tomb robbers.

"That makes sense. If he had been a cultivator, he probably wouldn't have had his tomb robbed by four people who hadn't even entered the Martial Dao."

"And in the end, it benefited me!"

Lu Zheng happily opened his computer and transcribed the words from the gold foil one by one. Then he tucked the gold foil separately into a book.

It was nearly ten o'clock by the time he had finished sorting everything.

Thanks to fellow daoist Aoyougen, fellow daoist Observer in Time and Space, and fellow reader 20200512190307488 for the hundred-reward gifts.