Luring the Snake from Its Hole

"My Kong Family was merely fortunate enough to copy down a few fragments."

"The ancestors regarded these few surviving pages of the Indra Scripture as treasures and kept them locked deep in the library. If Han Sushu's master hadn't come up today, I wouldn't have stolen them out." Kong Zhao continued writing in midair to communicate with Li Shun.

"The Indra Scripture is unfathomably wondrous. At first glance, its writing looks no different from the script used throughout Great Qian. But if you limit yourself to copying a few stray phrases, you'll be lost in a bank of clouds, unable to discern their true meaning. Only by taking a complete rubbing of an entire passage can you glimpse the whole."

"What's more, everything recorded on it concerns forbidden events from before Great Qian's founding. Speak of them carelessly, and an unseen backlash will bring down a calamity vast enough to blot out the sky. That's why you and I can only communicate by this silent means."

"After all, any written words or phrases concerning that past are erased by a mysterious power."

Kong Zhao's fingertip flew, inscribing a long string of characters in midair in one breath.

Li Shun studied the fleeting characters and nodded in deep agreement.

Then he wrote a question: "In that case, could the old man under the bridge be the mighty figure who used heaven-defying means yesterday to blind the eyes and ears of the entire Sacred Capital?"

Kong Zhao immediately rejected the idea. "Probably not. The Old Man Under the Bridge reached the Creation Realm long ago, and the depths of his cultivation are impossible to fathom. He was suspected of having attained the Heaven and Earth Realm even before Great Qian was founded. Rumor has it that when construction of the Imperial Tomb