Torrential rain lashed the courtyard, cold and merciless, striking the Ancient Orchid that had instantly revived and bloomed across every branch. The jade-white flowers stubbornly blossomed through the curtain of rain, while the rich orchid fragrance mingled with the overpowering aroma of Chaos Tea, spreading and colliding in the damp, chilly air to create an atmosphere that was almost miraculous.
Su Wanqing clutched the cold doorframe, her fingertips digging so deeply into the oak grain from exertion that they had turned bloodlessly white. Half of the expensive face mask on her face had peeled away, revealing half a face as pale as paper. Her exquisite features twisted under the extreme shock, and her lips trembled violently, yet she could not utter a single complete syllable. Her ink-jade eyes held nothing but pure, boundless fear and bewilderment after her entire understanding of reality had been crushed to pieces.
Absurd! The scent of a single pot of tea could revive and make bloom an Ancient Orchid that had been dead for a century? This was a myth!
The immense questions and instinctive sense of danger nearly made her scream, slam the door, and call the police!
However...
With every breath, that domineering, life-filled tea fragrance surged into her lungs, instantly cleansing away the damp chill and smoothing the stormy terror in her heart. An indescribable warmth and fullness rose through every limb, dispelling her fatigue and clearing her mind as never before. Every cell in her body cheered wildly, eagerly and greedily absorbing the power of life contained in the fragrance—something far beyond the limits of her understanding. It was a desire originating from the deepest level of life, an irresistible instinctive attraction.
The urge to close the door was forcibly suppressed by the overwhelming desire rising from the depths of her body. The heavy oak door seemed to be held in place by an invisible force, leaving only that narrow gap.
"You... you just said you only wanted to stay for one night?" Su Wanqing's voice was terribly hoarse, carrying a cautious probe. Her gaze wandered between the strange, soaked robe on me and the cloth bundle. The fear had not faded, but the icy coldness that kept people at a distance had vanished without a trace.
The rain continued to roar. I stood at the boundary between the curtain of rain and the light, water still dripping from my hemp robe. Facing her gaze, which held both immense doubt and wavering uncertainty, I merely raised my chin slightly, the gesture casual and detached from the eons of primordial time.
"Yes." My voice passed through the rain, as calm as if we were discussing the weather. My gaze lightly swept over her stiff shoulders before landing on the Ancient Orchid blooming in the rain, its radiance flowing. "While I'm at it, I'll wait for the rain to ease so I can water my flower." My tone was matter-of-fact, as if it were merely a Pothos she had just bought for her windowsill.
"Water... it?" Su Wanqing repeated instinctively, her voice full of incomprehensible absurdity. Her gaze involuntarily fell once more upon the miraculous Ancient Orchid—it still needed watering? It had just revived from complete death and bloomed across every branch! Every word this man spoke challenged the limits of her sanity!
Just as the outrageous remark sent her thoughts into further chaos, the hand holding my worn cloth bundle moved with extreme naturalness. It was as if the strap had become uncomfortable, and I had casually adjusted my grip.
The opening of the cloth bundle widened slightly more than before, when the Purple Clay Teapot had been inadvertently revealed.
This time, it was no longer the Purple Clay Teapot that appeared.
For an instant, the light seemed to be swallowed by something within the opening of the bundle.
That object lay quietly at the bottom, pressed beneath several gray, dusty garments.
It was only about a foot long, its entire body a profound blackness so heavy it seemed to embody the deepest darkness from the birth of the universe. Countless fine, naturally formed, strangely twisting patterns covered its surface, deep and unfathomable. The mere leakage of a trace of its aura made the surrounding air instantly viscous and stagnant, as if even time and space were about to be crushed beneath its weight!
It looked like... an extremely ancient, exceedingly heavy stone rod?
Beside it, in the corner of the cloth bundle, rested a small fragment of something.
It looked like a... basin? Its edge formed an extremely irregular circle, and its material was neither metal nor jade. It possessed a strange, chaotic state that seemed to contain every color in the world while also seeming to have no color at all. Its edge curled naturally like a newly born lotus leaf, while an extremely faint chaotic radiance flowed across its surface, containing the principles governing the birth and destruction of the universe. That radiance warped the surrounding light strangely, as if space itself were faintly collapsing into the little basin's opening.
The instant Su Wanqing's gaze touched those two objects in the bundle—
"Ghk!"
A short gasp, almost impossible to catch, was suddenly forced from deep in her throat. It was filled with extreme shock and the terrifying tremor born from the instinct of life itself!
Her pupils contracted to pinpoints in that instant, as if she had seen the manifestation of the universe's deepest nightmare!
With only an inadvertent glance, the pitch-black short rod sent an indescribably oppressive weight through her retinas and slammed into the depths of her soul. An icy hand seized her heart, her blood froze, her limbs stiffened like stone sculptures, and her breathing stopped completely. It was the primal fear and awe of a tiny life facing the vast starry sky, facing an ancient pillar that held up heaven! She had no doubt that if the rod released even the slightest trace of its true power, it would be enough to crush her, this villa, and even the entire mountain range into cosmic dust!
And the little chaos-colored basin beside it... its aura was even stranger! Was it a void that embraced everything? The chaotic origin from which all things arose and to which they would ultimately return? With only an unconscious glance, Su Wanqing felt that her thoughts and consciousness were about to be sucked into that faint radiance, completely broken down and dissolved, returning to the most primordial "nothingness"! It was an annihilation more complete than death!
The auras of those two objects were billions of times more terrifying than that of the Purple Clay Teapot! They utterly crushed it on an essential level!
"Hrk... hrk..."
Su Wanqing's body began to tremble violently, like the most fragile withered leaf in an autumn wind. The hand supporting the doorframe could no longer hold her up. Her entire body staggered backward uncontrollably, and her back slammed heavily into the cold wall of the entryway with a muffled thud.
Beneath the peeled-away half of the face mask, her deathly pale face twisted and distorted in extreme terror. Her lips trembled violently, yet she could not utter a single complete syllable. Her beautiful eyes held nothing but pure, boundless fear and bewilderment after her entire understanding of reality had been crushed to pieces. She stared fixedly at my worn cloth bundle, as if it concealed a ferocious beast capable of devouring the world.
At that moment, my brows creased almost imperceptibly.
It was not because of Su Wanqing's near-collapse, nor because of the Fragment of Buzhou Mountain in the bundle, which I had temporarily used as a fire poker for several hundred eons, nor because of the Chaos Green Lotus Scrap Basin, which worked rather well for soaking my feet.
My gaze pierced through the curtain of rain, passed over the blooming Ancient Orchid and the terrified Su Wanqing, and focused on the depths of the city below the mountain, where lights glimmered hazily through the downpour.
A faint, almost illusory fluctuation of icy energy flashed and vanished in some corner of the city. It carried a distorted sensation that was both familiar and utterly strange, like a dying wail, or perhaps... some kind of greedy "sniffing"?
At the same time, deep inside an unremarkable old building at the other end of the city, in a dim room filled with complex instruments...
On an electronic screen, the curve representing energy fluctuations suddenly spiked violently! It instantly broke through every preset warning threshold! The ear-piercing alarm had just begun to sound when a pale hand quickly silenced it.
A middle-aged man in a white coat, his hair disheveled, lunged toward the screen. His bloodshot eyes locked onto the terrifying peak that had appeared and vanished in an instant, his face filled with extreme shock and a trace of feverish excitement.
"What... what level of energy is this?! It was annihilated and vanished in the same instant... The coordinates... Hurry! Lock onto the source of that fluctuation! The margin of error must be within a hundred meters!" His voice was hoarse and trembling with excitement as his fingers flew across the keyboard. "Impossible... This absolutely cannot be a natural phenomenon! Could one of the 'Sources' have awakened ahead of time?! Or... has an 'Anomaly' descended?!"
He abruptly raised his head and looked toward the city outside, where torrential rain poured from the sky. His gaze was as sharp as an eagle's, filled with indescribable urgency and a trace of barely perceptible fear.
"Find it! Find it at all costs!"
Before you continue