Xiao Fan pondered for a moment, then made an extremely bold and dangerous attempt.
He slowly drew out a thread of pure spiritual energy from within his body and cautiously infused it into the dagger in his hand.
Generally speaking, injecting one's own spiritual energy into an unknown artifact of uncertain origin was an extremely dangerous act!
It could awaken some slumbering evil thing, or trigger restrictions with corrosive, backlash, or defensive properties.
If he had any other choice, he would not have rashly tried it... but since he was already here and the clue lay right before his eyes, he had to get to the bottom of it.
Sure enough, as spiritual energy flowed in, a tiny, intricate mark suddenly surfaced upon the dagger's once smooth and dim blade.
It flickered with a faint, ghostly blood-red glow—an eerie sigil!
Almost at the same instant!
From deep beneath the roots of the withered locust tree beside him came an extremely faint yet unmistakable pulse of spiritual energy.
That pulse resonated with the blood-red sigil appearing on the dagger, as though they were calling out to one another!
Xiao Fan immediately understood!
This was... a [Sensing Talisman]!
He had seen an introduction to [Sensing Talismans] in the "Black-Clad Guard Duty Manual"... they were a special technique used to secretly hide and transfer intelligence.
[Sensing Talismans] usually appeared in pairs. One was the "lock," placed at the hidden location; the other was the "key," carried by the person making the exchange.
By simply injecting spiritual energy into the "key" to activate the sigil, one could sense the location of the "lock" and undo its protective or concealment restrictions.
It gave Xiao Fan a strange sense of familiarity from his previous life... like "keyless ignition."
So the question was... dig, or not dig?