Last Testament, Spatial Ring

As he pondered, his brow suddenly furrowed.

He was already at the Body Tempering Second Layer. His eyesight was far keener than an ordinary person's.

Even from this distance, he could clearly see that the old house's door stood half-open. Something seemed to be hanging from the roof beam inside, swaying faintly in the morning wind pouring through the doorway.

His heart sank sharply.

It had the shape of a person, suspended in midair, its toes more than a foot above the ground.

"Not good."

Feng Chen moved, and the Perfection-level Basic Movement Technique erupted instantly. He shot toward the house like an arrow loosed from the bowstring.

In just a few steps, he reached the small courtyard, flipped over the low mud wall, landed on both feet, and rushed over to shove open the half-closed door.

The door slammed against the wall with a dull bang, stirring up a cloud of fine dust.

Feng Chen stood in the doorway, his pupils abruptly shrinking.

The person hanging inside was exactly as he had feared—Aunt Li.

She was still wearing the dull gray old shirt she had worn the night they brought her money. Her loose hair covered half her face, while a coarse hemp rope bit deeply into her neck. The other end was tied to the beam, its surface frayed in several places.

A crooked little stool had fallen beside her feet. One shoe had slipped off, while the other remained on her foot.

Feng Chen hurried over, supporting Aunt Li's legs with one hand while drawing his short blade with the other. He cut the rope and lowered her gently onto the ground.

He reached beneath her nose to feel for breath. There was none.

He pressed his fingers against the side of her neck. Her skin was icy and stiff, already hardened. She had been dead for quite some time.

Judging by the degree of rigor mortis, she had likely died in the latter half of last night.

Feng Chen's hand lingered at Aunt Li's neck for a long while before he slowly withdrew it.

He let out a long sigh, as though something heavy had pressed down on his chest.

Why had Aunt Li come to this?

He slowly laid Aunt Li's body straight, picked up her fallen shoe and placed it by her feet, then rose and headed toward the inner room.

When he lifted the curtain, the inner room was dimly lit. A tiny figure still lay on the little wooden bed.

It was Aunt Li's daughter, that adorable little girl with the round face.

The last time he had seen her, her face had been flushed red with fever. Later, Lin Qing'er had said that after taking two doses of medicine, she could sit up and drink porridge. Aunt Li had been so happy that her eyes had reddened.

But now, the little girl lay quietly in bed beneath a thin quilt covered in patches. Her face was pale as paper, her lips held not a trace of color, and her small chest did not rise or fall.

He stepped closer and reached out to check!

Her body was ice-cold. She had stopped breathing.

Feng Chen turned and carried Aunt Li's body into the room as well, laying her gently beside the little girl.

Mother and daughter lay quietly side by side, as though asleep.

Feng Chen stood beside the bed, looking down at the two cold bodies, unable to describe what he felt.

He had never imagined that just a few days later, Aunt Li—who had clutched the silver that night with reddened eyes and said her daughter could live—and that little girl, who had been able to sit up and drink porridge, would both be gone.

He had clearly lent them three taels of silver, enough to buy medicine, and the little girl truly had improved.

How had this happened?

He stood there for a long time. Morning light leaked in through the crack in the door and holes in the window paper, scattering pale white patches across the floor.

Then he went outside to the small kitchen beside it, his gaze carefully sweeping over the stove.

He noticed something pressed down on the stove, held beneath a broken roof tile, with the yellowed corner of a piece of paper peeking out.

He walked over, moved the tile aside, and picked it up. It was a sheet of white paper, folded neatly into a square.

Some crooked words were written on it in charred stick. The strokes were rough and forceful, and several horizontal turns nearly pierced the paper.

Aunt Li had left it behind.

"My life is so bitter. Living is so exhausting."

"I thought that with money to buy medicine, my little girl would get better, and life would become a little easier for me too!"

"I never expected to run into Liu Heigou and the others. They came looking for me and forced me to tell them who had given me the money. When I refused, they smashed things and even wanted to take my little girl away."

"I knelt and begged them."

"They still refused to leave!"

"I was afraid that if they did not leave, my little girl would lose her life."

"I had no choice but to tell them. But I never expected that they would still snatch away the silver. My little girl developed a fever again last night. Without money to buy medicine, she stopped breathing before dawn. I regret it so much. I should never have gone to buy medicine and let them see me."

"I'm sorry. I can only atone with my death."

"If someone comes to collect my body, please give the ring on my hand to Feng Chen. I don't know whether it is worth anything. It was passed down by my ancestors, and they said this ring is very miraculous."

"Consider it repayment for the silver he lent me. I also hope Feng Chen can forgive Aunt Li. Aunt Li truly has no other way left."

The crooked handwriting ended there. The final stroke of the last word dragged on for a long distance, as though the writer had exhausted all her strength.

Several blurred fingerprints remained at the corner of the paper, stained with charcoal ash.

When Feng Chen read this, he slowly clenched his fists, his knuckles cracking.

He read the letter from beginning to end once more, folded it carefully, and tucked it into his clothes.

He now understood the whole course of events.

Before Liu Heigou and the other two had come to find him last night, they had already come to Aunt Li's home. They had forced her to reveal where the silver came from, then stolen the last few scraps of life-saving silver from her.

The little girl had already been improving, but after being frightened and harassed like that, and with no money left to buy medicine, she died in the latter half of the night.

Aunt Li had watched over her daughter's cooling body, then hanged herself from the roof beam before dawn.

All he could say was that evil people truly deserved to die.

Feng Chen tucked the letter close to his body and returned to the inner room to look at Aunt Li's body.

On a finger of her left hand was a thick, dark brown ring. Its face was broad, and it was clearly old.

According to Aunt Li's last letter, the ring had been passed down through her ancestors and was extremely miraculous.

Feng Chen crouched down, intending to take a look.

After all, Aunt Li had specifically left it to him. It was written in her last letter; it was her final wish.

Looking closer, he noticed that the dark brown ring was a size larger than an ordinary ring band.

Aunt Li's fingers were withered and thin, and the ring hung loosely on her hand. It was clearly not originally her size. She had wrapped several loops of old thread around the inside of the band to thicken it, barely allowing it to stay on her finger.

If not for the thread, it would likely have fallen off long ago.

Feng Chen then knew that the ring's original owner must have been a man. It had probably been passed down from some male elder among Aunt Li's ancestors.

He slowly removed the ring from Aunt Li's finger.

The ring felt heavy in his hand, cool yet smooth. It did not have the cold hardness of ordinary metal; rather, it was like a pebble polished by a river for a thousand years.

He placed the ring face in his palm and turned it over several times. No patterns or words were carved upon it. Under the light, a faint texture seemed to glimmer across its dark brown surface, as though it were made from some unrecognizable material.

He focused intently on the ring!

Immediately afterward, his consciousness was drawn inside by a gentle force!

Then he saw a pitch-black place, like a small dark room with no doors, windows, or lamps, yet the space inside was much larger than he had imagined.

The dark space was completely empty!

Feng Chen's heart stirred. He tried pulling his consciousness back out, and the dark space vanished at once.

He placed the ring back in his palm, turned his gaze toward a small stool nearby, and concentrated his thoughts, attempting to store the stool inside the ring!

The stool vanished into thin air before his eyes. When he sent his consciousness into the ring again, the stool was indeed sitting quietly in a corner of the dark space.

He tried taking the stool out again. With a thought, it reappeared on the ground before him.

After experimenting for a while, Feng Chen stared at the ring in his hand in shock.

This seemed to be a Spatial Ring.

He tried several more times, storing the stool and taking it out, storing bowls and dishes and taking them out, until he finally confirmed it without a doubt!

This was a Spatial Ring. It contained an independent space capable of storing inanimate objects.

He focused once more to inspect the ring's internal capacity. By rough estimate, it was around fifty cubic meters, equivalent to a fairly large storeroom.

A Spatial Ring like this would be a treasure that could only be encountered by chance, never sought, not just in Green Mountain Town but likely even among the great martial sects.

Good heavens—a Spatial Ring. Aunt Li had actually possessed a Spatial Ring.

Feng Chen looked at Aunt Li's body in disbelief. All he could say was that Aunt Li's ancestors were probably no ordinary people. Perhaps they had belonged to some fallen martial family, or perhaps one of them had been an expert living under a hidden name.

But as the years tossed and turned, by Aunt Li's generation the family had fallen into decline. All that remained was a widowed mother struggling to raise her child, unaware even of the ring's origins and value.