The Search

Shen Luo cast a cold look at the speaker but said nothing more.

The three of them were not much more talented than Shen Luo. They merely enjoyed others' courtesy because of their connection to Ding Hua. Seeing Shen Luo's expression now, they found themselves at a loss and did not know what to do.

"What are you all gathered here for?" At that moment, an icy voice suddenly sounded from nearby.

Shen Luo turned toward the sound and saw a thin young man with a sallow face, dressed in a blue robe, approaching slowly with one hand behind his back and a cold expression on his face.

"Senior Brother Ding..."

Everyone's expressions grew slightly solemn at the sight of him, and they all bowed in greeting. Even Ding Yuan was no exception. This man was none other than Ding Hua.

Though he and Ding Yuan were biological brothers, they looked completely different, and their aptitudes were worlds apart. Anyone unaware of their relationship would never have linked them together.

When Ding Hua asked, Shen Luo briefly recounted what had happened, without the slightest trace of resentment in his words.

"A wager..." Ding Hua drew out the final word and frowned slightly.

Cold sweat immediately ran down Ding Yuan's cheeks. His face was full of anxiety, as though he feared being reprimanded.

Though he was the older brother, he did not dare put on any airs before his younger brother. He did not even dare refer to himself as "your elder brother." Ever since childhood, Ding Hua had simply been someone he could not afford to provoke.

"Bai Xiaotian must have been bored out of his mind to wager with you over something like this." Ding Hua finally snorted and said coldly.

Shen Luo's gaze flickered.

This Senior Brother Ding, the temple master's direct disciple, did not care in the least about the dispute between Shen Luo and Ding Yuan. The only one he cared about was Bai Xiaotian, who was likewise an Inner Disciple.

As for people like them, Ding Yuan included, they did not even merit a glance from him.

With that thought, Shen Luo bid farewell and turned to leave.

Before he had gone far, he vaguely heard Ding Hua's icy voice behind him. "Competing with a piece of trash? What lofty ambition you have. You've disgraced me completely..."

The words "piece of trash" reached Shen Luo's ears, and his gaze gradually turned cold, but his steps did not pause in the slightest.

The fact that a Registered Disciple like him could cultivate the Minor Transforming Yang Art had never sat well with others.

Moreover, among the disciples, he was considered a "rich man," the only "fat sheep" who had entered the temple by relying on gold and silver. So it was only natural that people gossiped about him behind his back.

But how could they know that what he spent was money, while what he cultivated was not an art, but his life?

When it came to money, he was quite open-minded. He often let his senior brothers take small advantages from him, so he generally got along fairly well with nearly all the disciples.

Still, aside from Bai Xiaotian, the only person he could truly call a friend was Tian Tiesheng, who was also Daoist Luo's disciple.

The thought that he might truly not have much longer to live put Shen Luo in a terrible mood. A faint chill rose from deep within him, and his pace unconsciously quickened.

Heading down from the Jade Emperor Hall, Shen Luo encountered quite a few senior brothers along the way. Whenever he met one, he took the initiative to greet him, sometimes even exchanging a few jokes with those he knew well.

About half an hour later, he arrived at Bluestone Terrace near the Divine Official Hall, where his meditation chamber was located.

However, Shen Luo did not immediately return to his chamber. He raised his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then left Bluestone Terrace and headed down a crosswise mountain path on the other side.

The path here was narrower than those elsewhere on the mountain. Few people used it, and fewer still cleaned it. Dead leaves had piled up thickly along the road, some already rotten and soft beneath the feet. From time to time, one could see individual rooms on either side, built either from stone or wood, most of them extremely dilapidated.

Shen Luo seemed quite familiar with the area. After walking for some time, he finally spotted an old house by the roadside, surrounded by waist-high wild grass.

The old house had clearly been abandoned for a long time and had not been repaired in years. Much of the dried red paint on its walls had peeled away, leaving them mottled. More than half the white paper pasted over the doors and windows had torn apart, and even the window lattice bore signs of insect damage.

Shen Luo examined the house for a moment, nodded, then parted the wild grass and walked beneath the eaves. He pushed open the drafty wooden door. With a creak, a damp, moldy stench rushed straight at him.

He turned sideways, covering his nose with one hand while waving the other through the air.

Only after adjusting to the smell did he shift his gaze and inspect the room.

The room was not large to begin with, and it was crammed with broken tables and chairs, along with old brooms, buckets, and other odds and ends, all piled haphazardly in corners around the walls.

"Going by this moldy smell, I'm afraid there's... no way anything in here can still be read." Shen Luo muttered softly.

Though there was disgust in his voice, his hands did not hesitate in the least.

Shen Luo stepped forward and removed the old chairs and stools piled atop the tables one by one, sorting them slightly before stacking them on the other side of the room.

About fifteen minutes later, he had finally cleared most of the ruined tables and broken chairs to the other side.

By then, Shen Luo's chest was rising and falling. Seeing that the tables buried underneath had all been exposed again, he finally let out a long breath.

Since entering the Minor Transforming Yang Art, he could feel that his constitution had improved considerably. Yet after only this much work, his back was already soaked with sweat.

After resting briefly, Shen Luo stepped forward, pulled open the drawers of the tables, and searched through them one by one.

"Nothing..." The first drawer was completely empty.

"Nothing..." The second was empty as well.

"Nothing..."

After searching through seven or eight tables, Shen Luo was beginning to feel frustrated and thought he had wasted his efforts when he finally found something.

"Found it!"

When he pulled open the drawer of the ninth table, which had only two legs left, he finally found an old book with a blue cover inside.

He had not painstakingly sorted through all those broken tables and chairs merely to clean the room. His purpose was to search for books left behind by the previous occupant.

Spring Autumn Temple did not possess many books beyond basic Daoist classics such as the Dao De Jing. Most of its books were private collections belonging to senior members of the sect, making them very difficult to borrow.

Ever since childhood, Shen Luo had enjoyed reading all manner of miscellaneous writings and strange records. Later, in his search for a way to save himself, he had read even more such books. Several remarkable medicines in his family's pharmacy had been formulated by him after he extensively studied various medical texts, weighed the strengths and weaknesses of different prescriptions, and prepared them himself.

Those years had given him the habit of reading at night. Spring Autumn Temple had been sealed off from the outside world for a long time, and he could not very well ask his family to send books over, so he had no choice but to search for reading material throughout the temple.

He had previously found some magazines, travel journals, and similar books in several other abandoned empty houses, and they had been quite useful to him. That was why he had come here to try his luck again. He had not expected to find another one.

"Records of Zhang Tianshi's Demon-Slaying Adventures..." Shen Luo picked up the slightly damp old book, carefully examined the vertical characters on its cover, and read them aloud.