Tea and Earth Veins

"Ah... okay..."

Su Wanqing responded to Ling Ye's plain instruction like someone sleepwalking, but her body moved faster than her mind. She walked to the island counter, picked up the gleaming electric kettle, turned on the faucet, and filled it with clear tap water. Her movements were somewhat stiff, but extraordinarily precise.

Boil water.

This most ordinary of actions had become incomparably clear and wondrous to her newly awakened senses. She could "hear" the faint sounds of water molecules colliding inside the kettle, "feel" the subtle magnetic-field changes produced when the heating coil at the bottom was powered, and even "see" the water molecules moving more vigorously as the temperature rose, stirring the air above the water into miniature storm-like vortices!

Was this... the world after enlightenment?

She lowered her head and stared at her smooth, jade-like palms, which seemed to contain endless strength. The storm raging in her heart was far more violent than anything she had experienced last night! A complete transformation! This was by no means merely a figure of speech! She could clearly feel a warm yet magnificent power surging through her body, like a newly born stream nourishing every cell! Her five senses had sharpened enough to catch the paths of falling dust! Her thoughts had become clearer and more lucid than ever before!

And all of this... was merely because her palm had touched that tiny pinch of... "trash tea leaves"?!

Immense shock and an indescribable ecstasy, as if she had broken through the shackles of fate, instantly overwhelmed her! She abruptly raised her head and looked toward the man on the sofa. He held a tattered cloth bag, was barefoot, and wore an expression that plainly said, "Of course you're going to brew the tea now."

Awe! Unparalleled awe! It replaced the fear and anger she had felt before! How could he be a walking natural disaster? He was clearly... a walking opportunity! No! He was a walking... god!

"The... the water's boiling." Su Wanqing's voice carried a faint, barely perceptible tremor—not from fear, but excitement. She carefully unplugged the kettle and lifted it. To her newly transformed body, the temperature felt like warm water.

Ling Ye did not move. He merely raised his chin, signaling her to continue.

Su Wanqing took a deep breath and tried to calm her turbulent emotions. She picked up the unremarkable, crack-covered, dark Purple Clay Teapot. This time, when her fingers touched its cold surface, an indescribable, vast heaviness, as if she had touched the origin of the universe, traveled through her fingertips. Her mind shook violently! This teapot... was definitely no ordinary object! The strange fragrance that had made the withered tree bloom last night had merely been a trace of its leaking aura!

She held her breath and lifted the lid with extreme care and reverence. The inside of the teapot was empty. She picked it up and, imitating Ling Ye's actions from yesterday, poured the boiling water into it.

"Whoosh—"

The sound of the water striking the teapot walls was infinitely magnified in her ears. The instant the boiling water entered the teapot, Su Wanqing felt it give an extremely faint... "hum"! An invisible, gentle yet boundless fluctuation spread out in secret from the Purple Clay Teapot as its center, like a pebble dropped into a calm lake!

This fluctuation was silent and imperceptible. Ordinary people and even ordinary cultivators could not detect it at all. But Su Wanqing was now at the peak of spiritual perception after her enlightenment, and she was holding this Primordial treasure. Thus, she actually caught that nearly imperceptible ripple!

What shook her even more was that when the fluctuation swept over the massive load-bearing pillar on the eastern side of the living room and reached deep beneath the ground—

"Hum... rumble..."

A response clearer and more muffled than the one Ling Ye had triggered earlier came from deep underground, like the low growl of a sleeping giant disturbed from its rest! This time, it was not merely a spiritual sensation. Even the floor beneath their feet trembled ever so slightly!

A far denser surge of Primordial energy, carrying an ancient, savage aura and a sense of spatial tearing, erupted from deep underground in an instant, as if the boiling water poured into the Purple Clay Teapot had activated some kind of resonance! Though thick layers of rock and the building still blocked most of it, the aura was several times stronger than when Ling Ye had touched it accidentally!

The space throughout the villa seemed to warp ever so slightly under the impact of this Primordial Aura! The light outside the windows seemed to dim for an instant! A sense of insignificance and terror, born from the instinct of facing a Primordial behemoth, seized Su Wanqing's heart once more!

Her hand shook, and she nearly dropped the kettle! Her face instantly went deathly pale!

The instant the Purple Clay Teapot hummed and the ground answered, Ling Ye's gaze sharply swept toward the load-bearing pillar! His body, which had been lazily reclining on the sofa, straightened slightly. For the first time, his eyes revealed clear... surprise?

"Hm?" he uttered softly, his gaze moving back and forth between the Purple Clay Teapot in Su Wanqing's hands and the pillar, as if he had discovered an interesting connection.

Previously, he had only sensed remnants underground. When he had laid out Chaos Breathing Soil to sleep, the Origin Aura he had unconsciously released had caused them to revive faintly. But just now... this woman had merely boiled some ordinary water in this teapot and poured it inside, yet it had triggered such a powerful resonance?! This teapot... had some connection with the remnants underground?

Ling Ye instantly became somewhat interested. He lowered his crossed legs, planted his bare feet on the carpet, picked up the tattered cloth bag, and walked straight toward the load-bearing pillar.

As Su Wanqing watched Ling Ye approach, she sensed the increasingly clear Primordial Aura underground, which made even her soul tremble, and grew so tense that she scarcely dared to breathe.

Ling Ye extended his palm again. This time, he did not casually press it against the pillar. Instead, he spread his five fingers and held his palm suspended in the air about an inch from its surface.

No contact.

Yet a stream of Chaos Origin Qi, purer and more immense than what Su Wanqing had sensed, carrying a will that stood above all laws, quietly extended from his palm like an invisible tentacle. It ignored the physical barrier and instantly sank deep into the load-bearing pillar, precisely linking with the Primordial energy source activated by the Purple Clay Teapot beneath the ground!

"BOOM—!!!"

A massive roar from deep within the earth veins, one that only Ling Ye could clearly "hear," exploded in his perception!

Countless fragmented and chaotic streams of information, carrying fragments of ancient Primordial laws, surged into his consciousness through the link formed by the Chaos Origin Qi like a flood bursting through a breached dam!

Broken images flashed rapidly through Ling Ye's mind:

—An endless chaotic void, with the phantom of a massive light gate spanning a river of stars!

—Around the light gate floated countless stone formation-base fragments, so enormous they were impossible to imagine, covered in profound runes!

—A terrifying attack that pierced through time and space and carried supreme will struck the core of the light gate like a blade tearing through a painting! The light gate shattered! Countless fragments, wrapped in violent spatial turbulence, shot in every direction!

—One relatively intact formation-base fragment, engraved with the core Spatial Beacon, pierced through layer upon layer of dimensional barriers like a burning meteor. Dragging a long trail of light, it slammed into a blue planet! The location... was precisely this land beneath their feet!

—The fragment plunged into the planet's core. The immense power of spatial laws forcibly merged with the planet's earth veins, eroding one another and forming an extremely unstable region of spatial distortion... the so-called "Kunlun Mountain Death Valley"!

—Another, smaller fragment, carrying the faint aura of a spatial anchor, fell like a spark from the explosion into... the depths beneath the former site of this ancestral home!

The flow of information abruptly ceased.

Ling Ye withdrew his palm, releasing the suspended gesture. The phantom of a starry river flowing through his eyes slowly settled, returning them to the calm of an ancient well.

So that was it.

He understood instantly.

Buried beneath this villa was not a complete teleportation array, but a small fragment of an anchor that had splintered off when the super teleportation gate that once connected the Primordial world to some greater cosmos—perhaps a node of the Origin Universe—"Guixu Heavenly Gate" shattered!

The Sign-in System had exhausted its final strength to "transport" him precisely back to this coordinate. It was probably not merely because this was the "ancestral home," but because this was the only place on the entire planet capable of sensing the remaining Spatial Beacon of the "Guixu Heavenly Gate"! A potential keyhole for returning to the Primordial world!

As for the supposed precursor to the "Spiritual Energy Revival"... it was merely the chain reaction caused by this fragment, after countless years, being accidentally activated by the aura of Chaos Spirit Tea, his return, and the resonance from the Purple Clay Teapot just now. The fragment's incomplete Primordial laws, which had been eroded and fused with the planet's earth veins for billions of years, had begun to leak out slowly, contaminating the laws of this world.

Troublesome.

Ling Ye mentally gave this anchor fragment a third label. A label more troublesome than "a small insect peeking in" and "an abandoned campfire." It was a hot potato that might attract old enemies from the Primordial world, or be coveted by certain beings in this world.

He turned his head and looked at Su Wanqing, who was still holding the Purple Clay Teapot. Her face was deathly pale, and she was swaying on the verge of collapse after being struck by the Primordial Aura underground.

This woman... could actually resonate with the anchor fragment through the Purple Clay Teapot? Could it be because... she was the owner of this house? Her bloodline? Or something else?

For the first time, a trace of scrutiny and... barely perceptible calculation appeared in Ling Ye's eyes.

He needed to learn more.

"Hey." Ling Ye's voice broke through the suffocating Primordial pressure in the living room and called back Su Wanqing's soul, which had nearly left her body. "Is the tea ready?"

Su Wanqing jolted like a startled rabbit and nearly threw away the Purple Clay Teapot! She looked at Ling Ye's eyes, which seemed capable of seeing through everything, and felt the terrifying aura underground slowly calming. Her heart was still pounding wildly.

"R-right away!" She hurriedly poured the hot water into the teapot and put on the lid, her movements somewhat frantic from the lingering fear.

Ling Ye said nothing more. He turned and went back to sit on the sofa. He picked up the tattered cloth bag beside his feet, casually opened it, and reached inside to rummage around.

Su Wanqing carefully held the Purple Clay Teapot while nervously peeking at him from the corner of her eye. What terrifying thing was he going to take out this time?

A few seconds later, the object Ling Ye pulled from the cloth bag made Su Wanqing's eyes widen instantly, and she nearly dropped the teapot again!

It was a... steamed bun?

An extremely ordinary, even somewhat dry and yellowed, plain white steamed bun that looked as if it had been left there for a long time?!

Ling Ye pinched the shriveled steamed bun and looked it over, seemingly fairly satisfied. Then, under Su Wanqing's stunned gaze, he naturally... broke the steamed bun in half.

He casually stuffed one half back into the cloth bag, then held the other half in his hand and weighed it.

Next, under Su Wanqing's even more stunned gaze, Ling Ye took the half of the dry steamed bun and casually tossed it, as if throwing a stone, toward the junction between the floor and wall beneath the load-bearing pillar on the eastern side of the living room, which had just radiated terrifying Primordial Aura.

"Plop."

The half of the shriveled steamed bun rolled onto the carpet and stopped in the corner, completely inconspicuous.

Su Wanqing: "???"

What... was this supposed to be?! Using... a steamed bun... to ward off evil and protect the house?!