What?!

He slowly walked around the courtyard, thinking carefully. At last, he recalled that when Qin Bo had turned around and glanced behind the courtyard wall, his emotions had instantly become abnormal.

At the wall, Xu Yunfan slowly crouched down and used both hands to pry apart the shattered blue bricks on the ground one by one.

When he saw the soil beneath them, his brows rose slightly. With his Mining Technique at the minor mastery stage, he could tell at a glance that this patch of soil was much newer than the surrounding ground and had clearly been dug up before.

It had merely been buried for a long time, leaving it neither fresh nor old. The traces suggested it had been covered up around three years ago. Though some effort had been made to conceal it, the work was far too crude in his eyes.

Xu Yunfan turned around, quickly found an iron shovel, and began digging.

With the effects of minor mastery in Mining Technique, the iron shovel sliced into the dirt as easily as tofu, swiftly excavating a hole.

"Ding!"

A crisp sound rang out as the descending shovel struck something hard.

Xu Yunfan's heart stirred, and a hint of anticipation rose within him. Qin Bo had valued this thing so highly—perhaps it was some divine martial arts manual, or perhaps Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. With that thought, he reached in and pulled an iron box from the earth.

He impatiently opened the box. The moment he saw what was inside, his expression became incomparably complicated, shock, confusion, and disbelief intertwining.

"What the hell?!"

Half an hour later, Qin Bo slowly woke up.

He tried to move, only to discover that his hands and feet were tightly bound by iron chains. No matter how hard he struggled, the chains did not budge.

"Is this yours?"

Xu Yunfan's voice carried a strange edge as it reached Qin Bo's ears.

Qin Bo looked up and saw a transparent glass bottle at Xu Yunfan's feet. Inside, soaked in liquid, was something utterly unimaginable.

"Give it back to me!!"

Qin Bo's eyes nearly split apart. His eyes bulged wide as his body twisted frantically, veins protruding across his skin like writhing earthworms. The astonishing force he unleashed even rubbed the chains around him with a sizzling sound.

"It really is yours?!"

Seeing Qin Bo like this, Xu Yunfan's face was filled with bizarre disbelief. At last, he understood why Qin Bo had been so determined to return to this ancestral residence, why he had broken down after seeing the shattered blue bricks, and why he had even suddenly pulled a knife and stabbed him, leaving a small cut at Xu Yunfan's waist even now.

The line of blood had already dried. If he delayed treatment any longer, it would practically scab over.

But it had still left him with a certain psychological shadow.

If the other man had stabbed him like that with a sharp weapon, wouldn't he have truly been done for?

A sense of urgency rose in his heart. He had to speed up his cultivation until it reached completion. Perhaps then he could find an even more advanced body-tempering art, one that would let him fear no sharp weapons.

As for the small thing soaking in the glass bottle, it was the most important thing to a man...

The moment Xu Yunfan understood, his expression became spectacular. His hand nearly shook hard enough to fling the glass bottle away.

He lightly nudged the bottle with his foot. The liquid inside sloshed, and the thing soaking within swayed along with it.

"Where did this glass bottle come from?"

Though he had spent most of the past few days immersed in rising proficiency, he had also gone out for strolls.

Without exception, the windows in the city's houses and buildings were covered with paper. This was the first time he had seen a glass bottle resembling glazed crystal.

"Don't touch it! Touch it again and I'll kill you!!! You beast worse than pigs and dogs! If you have the guts, let me go, and we'll have a real fight with real blades!"

Provoked by that nudge, Qin Bo roared madly and cursed Xu Yunfan without stopping.

Xu Yunfan acted as though he had not heard him and took a yellowed booklet from the box.

When he had opened this booklet earlier, the contents had shocked him into standing frozen on the spot.

Qin Bo had actually tried to reconnect what had been cut off, conducting experiments again and again in a frenzy. The booklet detailed nearly a hundred human experiments.

In other words, Qin Bo had killed at least a hundred people over the past several years.

The test subjects ranged from children as young as eight to elderly people as old as eighty. None had been spared.

As Xu Yunfan read through those records and all the bloody details within, he felt a chill shoot from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head, leaving his heart ice-cold.

He had always thought that after transmigrating here, his state of mind had become cold enough. Yet compared to the deranged Qin Bo before him, he was practically an upright and kind-hearted young man.

Xu Yunfan slowly closed the experiment records in his hand and looked at Qin Bo with pity and disgust.

Under Xu Yunfan's gaze, Qin Bo nearly went mad, his face twisting grotesquely.

"You're not allowed, absolutely not allowed to look at me like that! Why did you rummage through my things? Why?!"

Xu Yunfan sighed helplessly. "Brother, I don't blame you for wanting to imitate the Wheel Turning King. You could've just told me. It's not like I wouldn't have allowed it. Why hide it so carefully? You made me think it was something incredible. Why create an irreconcilable grudge over this?"

What grudge? What hatred?

He truly did not discriminate against eunuchs.

At this moment, Qin Bo had calmed down slightly. He stared fixedly at Xu Yunfan, his eyes bloodshot and crimson.

Though he did not know what this Wheel Turning King Xu Yunfan mentioned was, Qin Bo naturally understood that it was definitely not a compliment. But anyone who knew about his thing absolutely could not be allowed to live.

Seeing Qin Bo's expression, Xu Yunfan's face also turned cold. He knew that this man was extremely twisted and could not be reasoned with no matter what.

He said flatly, "You're a fine young man. Why become a eunuch? Once martial arts reach the later stages, under the power of Celestial Human Transformation, regrowing what was cut off would be effortless."

The sight of Li Haomiao regrowing his hands and feet still deeply shocked him.

Human power could actually reach such heights.

It was beyond imagination.

Qin Bo nearly broke down again upon hearing this. He stared at Xu Yunfan, then suddenly let out a cold laugh.

"The power of Celestial Human Transformation—you think it's so easy to attain? Externally train Tendons, Bones, and Skin, combine the three and forge them into perfection. From the outside inward, train flesh, blood, marrow, and qi. Of the Eight Martial Realms, starting from the Flesh Refining Realm, every step is a new heaven. To gain the power of Celestial Human Transformation, one must at least become a Qi Refining Grandmaster. You make it sound so easy, but how many people in this world can truly reach it?"

Perhaps because Xu Yunfan had seen his deepest secret, Qin Bo simply stopped hiding it.

His voice was low. "I was raised by a eunuch from the palace. That eunuch had three adopted sons. He said there was one spot to enter the palace, but someone had to be castrated. When the three of us drew lots, whoever drew the longest had to be castrated and enter the palace. I had clearly marked mine and drawn the shortest one, but that damned eunuch forcibly shoved me in to be castrated. Just as he was preparing to send me into the palace, he suffered a stroke on the way and died twitching like that."

Qin Bo raised his head, his face seeming to cry and laugh at once.

"He died halfway through, and with no connections left, who cared whether you'd been castrated or not? You went back where you came from. Of course I wasn't willing to accept that. Since ancient legends spoke of immortals restoring spring with dew, naturally I took it to heart. But in the end, it was all for nothing!"

(Please keep reading, please vote, please favorite, please invest. Thank you, everyone!)