What Do You Want to Trade For?

Four days passed in the blink of an eye.

The two precious mirrors hanging high in the sky proved that this was the Divine Chamber.

That morning, Chen Lingxi awoke from his breathing exercises and found that the spiritual qi in his dantian had grown a little stronger, coiled within like a docile green snake.

At the slightest stir of his mind, it could flow freely through his meridians.

"Today, I need to find the Candle of Time."

Chen Lingxi thought, That day, Lin Suri sank the Candle of Time into the Yuan River, then seemed to place seals on it with something akin to a spell...

At that thought, he instinctively tried to activate the Wandering Sight Divine Ability to see where Lin Suri was now, only to find that it could not be used, as though it lacked the strength.

"I forgot that I'm inside the Divine Chamber now."

Chen Lingxi realized, I am already in the Divine Chamber. How could I use Wandering Sight to see Lin Suri?

He pondered for a moment, then shook his head, a few more traces of anticipation appearing in his eyes.

"The Divine Chamber holds unfathomable mysteries. It may yet be possible in the future."

He thought no more of it. After washing up, he changed into the same old indigo short robe as before, then pushed open the door and stepped outside.

A steward of the marquis residence was already waiting before the corner rooms of the northern courtyard. He was over fifty, with a sallow, weathered face, his hands tucked into his sleeves as he huddled against the wall to escape the wind.

When he saw Chen Lingxi emerge, the steward merely raised his eyes and glanced at him. Without another word, he jerked his chin toward the row of low servants' rooms behind him.

"That medicine slave from your batch still hasn't come out. Could he have died in there?"

Chen Lingxi's heart sank.

He and Liu Changle had been sent into the Baosu Marquis Residence on the same day, and both had tested medicine under Zhao Yong. After living side by side for more than a year, they had long understood each other's temperaments completely.

Though Liu Changle occasionally spouted strange nonsense, he never dallied in his work, much less missed the routine roll call required of official slaves and servants for no reason.

If he truly failed to appear, once the Bureau of Officials investigated, according to the Great Li Commentary on the Statutes, all official slaves from the same batch would be jointly punished. At best, they would be caned; at worst, exiled to hard labor or even put to death.

He strode quickly toward the servants' rooms and pushed open the creaking wooden door.

The furnishings inside were as crude as ever.

Liu Changle's bed was empty. His thin quilt had been folded neatly, as if its owner had merely stepped out and would return at any moment.

Chen Lingxi reached out and felt the bedboard. It was icy cold, without the faintest trace of residual warmth.

His gaze swept over several coarse pottery bowls in the corner. Half a bowl of cold brown-rice porridge still remained at the bottom, its surface coated with a thin layer of dust. It had clearly been sitting there for quite some time.

"Liu Changle..." Chen Lingxi murmured the name once, his brows drawing together slightly.

He had vaguely guessed something.

When Wang Kong had attacked him in the garden a few days ago, he had called them "the only two medicine slaves who survived."

Even then, Chen Lingxi had felt there was something strange about Zhao Yong's medicine trials. Now that Liu Changle had suddenly vanished, he could all but conclude that this was inseparable from Steward Zhao.

He simply did not know whether Liu Changle was still alive.

He stood in the room for several breaths, but ultimately did not delay any longer.

The steward had already coughed impatiently twice outside. Chen Lingxi took a deep breath, turned, and left the servants' room. He said to the steward, "Liu Changle isn't in his room. I don't know where he went either."

The steward's brows twisted into a knot. He muttered a few words under his breath, then waved his hand. "Forget it, forget it. Go on your way. The Bureau of Officials won't ask too many questions about servants of the Baosu Marquis Residence."

Chen Lingxi nodded and said no more.

As he left the corner rooms of the northern courtyard, he looked back once toward the servants' rooms.

Those low houses appeared even more dilapidated in the morning light. The white-blossomed branch at the corner of the wall had long since withered, leaving only a few dead leaves shivering in the wind.

Chen Lingxi withdrew his gaze and stepped out through the side gate of the Baosu Marquis Residence into the biting spring wind.

The long streets of Yuan River Prefecture had shed winter's bleak desolation. Shops on both sides of the bluestone road opened one after another—sellers of flatbread, noodle soup, firewood, and charcoal—and their cries rose and fell without pause.

Several old willows at the street corner had sprouted new buds, their tender yellow-green branches brushing in the wind like the dark hair of a maiden freshly combed.

Chen Lingxi followed the street and soon left the bustling market behind.

"Just as I thought. Under the Thorough Awakening Divine Ability, the Divine Chamber's range is not limited to an area five hundred zhang long and wide."

He pondered as he walked, and before long, the Yuan River lay before him.

In the third month, the spring waters of the Yuan River had just begun to rise.

The gaunt riverbed of the previous winter had been filled by the surging spring flood. The river was no longer the dull leaden gray of winter, but shimmered with a clear blue-green hue.

Sunlight fell upon the surface, kneaded by fine ripples into ten thousand flecks of shattered gold, dazzling enough to make one nearly unable to open one's eyes.

Willow embankments on both shores lay veiled in mist, their new greenery like smoke. Here and there, several peach trees leaned out over the water, their petals falling into the river on the wind, spinning as they drifted downstream.

Several white egrets waded along the shallows in search of food. Now and then, a small boat poled past, startling up a spray of water.

Chen Lingxi walked slowly along the riverbank, appearing to be no more than an ordinary traveler enjoying the spring.

His gaze seemed to wander carelessly across the water, but in his heart, he compared every inch against the location in his memories.

That night, Lin Suri had stood at the edge of the riverbank and thrown the Candle of Time into the river. Then, with two fingers held like a sword, he had traced three talismanic seals over the place where it sank.

Chen Lingxi remembered that stone bridge.

It was a three-arched stone bridge, its body covered in moss and old vines. The water beneath its arches was deep and dark, its color several shades heavier than elsewhere.

He walked to the bridgehead and paused as if admiring the view, while the corner of his eye had already swept over the water beneath the arches.

Several dead leaves floated there. Yet unlike those elsewhere, they did not drift with the current. Instead, they gathered in one spot and slowly circled, as though something beneath the water were drawing them in.

"This should be the place."

Chen Lingxi steadied himself and looked around.

It was nearing the end of the hour of the dragon. There were few pedestrians along the riverbank, and only several peddlers carrying shoulder poles hurried across the bridge. No one noticed him.

He circled to the side of the bridge and found a concealed stone stairway leading down to the water.

The river water was bone-piercingly cold. Though it was already the third month, the cold accumulated through winter still lay deep at the bottom.

Chen Lingxi removed his outer robe, shoes, and socks, leaving only a pair of thin trousers. Taking a deep breath, he circulated the spiritual qi and vital blood within his body.

In an instant, two powers flowed through his meridians at once—one warm and gentle as spring water, the other blazing like molten bronze—sealing out the biting cold.

He hesitated no longer and leaped in.

Splash—

Water sprayed upward, then was swiftly swallowed by the river current.

Chen Lingxi closed his eyes and sank toward the riverbed.

This stretch of river was not particularly deep, a little over one zhang or so, but the water was dark and visibility extremely poor.

By the faint daylight filtering down from the surface, he barely made out his direction, his fingers searching inch by inch through the mud and sand.

Fine sand slipped through his fingers, cold and slick.

He felt several pebbles, then a piece of rotten wood, and even a rust-covered iron anchor, yet never found any trace of the Candle of Time.

His breath was running out.

Chen Lingxi surfaced for a breath, readjusted his direction, and dove down again.

This time, he swam straight beneath the spot where the fallen leaves circled.

The instant his fingertips touched the soft mud, he finally felt something different.

It was an object less than half a foot long. Its texture was neither metal nor jade. It felt so cold to the touch that it did not seem as though it had been submerged in the river for months; instead, it possessed a strange dryness.

Chen Lingxi seized it in one hand, kicked off the riverbed, and burst from the water.

He clambered up the stone steps and returned to shore, drenched from head to toe, water dripping steadily from his hair.

The spring wind of the third month brushed past him. Even with his vital blood warming his body, he could not help but shiver.

Chen Lingxi did not bother to dry himself. He merely lowered his head and looked into his palm.

—The Candle of Time.

The candle's body was entirely black, ancient in form. Neither its material nor its patterns could be discerned.

It lay quietly in his palm, like a piece of deadwood washed by the river for countless years, utterly unremarkable.

Yet Chen Lingxi could distinctly feel a faint, intermittent pulse where it touched his palm. It seemed both present and absent, as if something that had slept for ages was sensing his heartbeat through the candle's wall.

He swiftly dressed, tucked the Candle of Time close against his body inside his robe, then hurried into the shadow beneath the bridge arch.

The light beneath the arch was dim. Only a few shards of reflected light from the water swayed across the stone walls.

It was a concealed spot. Even if someone crossed the bridge overhead, they would never see what lay beneath the arch.

Chen Lingxi sat with his back against the stone wall, holding the Candle of Time in both hands as he calmed his mind and steadied his breath.

He remembered what he had seen in the Divine Chamber that night.

Only after Lin Suri poured spiritual qi into the Candle of Time had he awakened the Cauldron Venerable within it.

Though Chen Lingxi did not know why Lin Suri had sunk such a treasure into the river, nor what kind of existence the Cauldron Venerable truly was, he was utterly unafraid now, for...

Chen Lingxi raised his eyes to the sky. The two bright mirrors hung high above, like the sun and moon.

"Inside this Divine Chamber, even death does not matter."

He shook his head slightly. The misty green spiritual qi in his dantian slowly flowed under the urging of his mind, emerging from his dantian and finally gathering in his palm.

The instant the spiritual qi touched the Candle of Time—

A sudden change erupted.

That section of candle, black as rotten wood, abruptly lit up.

A dim scarlet glow rippled out from the very center of the candle. At first, it was no larger than the tip of a needle. Then it slowly opened like a vertical eye, crimson light surging like a tide of blood and instantly swallowing the entire bridge arch.

It made the bridge arch seem as though it had sunk into a sea of blood.

The red light reflected upon the water flickered in and out. Chen Lingxi's shadow stretched across the stone wall, twisted like a ghost.

"Candle shadows sway through time; an inch of ash trades for rivers and mountains. A wisp of green smoke fades; white bones sing for a thousand years."

The familiar verse exploded in his mind like great bells and grand chimes.

That voice seemed to pierce the barrier of time itself. Every word bore an indescribable weight of age and desolation.

The Candle of Time rose into the air, floating between his upturned palms.

The vertical eye at the candle's center opened completely. Deep within its pupil, a pieced-together face slowly emerged.

An infant's innocence, a youth's high spirits, a middle-aged man's composure, an elder's decay... the traits of countless ages appeared upon that face at once, endlessly shifting, as if within only a few breaths, Chen Lingxi had witnessed a person's entire life.

The vertical eye stared at him.

In that instant, Chen Lingxi felt as though he had been split open from head to toe.

The spiritual qi in his dantian, the vital blood in his meridians, every wisp of thought in his mind—all seemed laid bare beneath that gaze.

"A cultivator at the second level of Qi Circulation."

The Cauldron Venerable spoke.

The lips on that face slowly opened and closed. Its voice was low as the rumbling of earth veins, every syllable striking Chen Lingxi's chest and making his vital blood churn.

"Lifespan..." The vertical eye narrowed slightly, as though savoring something carefully. "Fifty-one years remain."

Its voice paused, then took on a trace of amusement.

"You have summoned me with spiritual qi. You seek to make a trade with me."

"Here are a thousand kinds of treasures and wondrous methods, ten thousand kinds of fortune and creation. So long as you are willing to pay the price, all can be exchanged for."

It paused. The light in its vertical eye flickered uncertainly, while a half-smiling expression surfaced on the human face—ferocious and bizarre.

"Second level of Qi Circulation..." The Cauldron Venerable drew out the words, as though teasing prey that had only just fallen into its net. "What do you want to trade for?"