"Pah, pah, pah!" Master said. "You're still a child, yet you talk so big! Big talk invites trouble!
How old are you to claim you lack nothing?
What would the gods think if they heard you? Spit those words out! What a thing to joke about!"
Master looked stern as he patted Xu Feng's back. "Children speak without thinking. Children speak without thinking."
Xu Feng quickly patted his own face, then spat downwind to show he hadn't meant it.
Only then did Master let the matter drop. Xu Feng pointed at the skin. "Master, does this feel like a living person's skin?"
"It's far smoother and softer than the rough hides you and I have!"
Xu Feng: "..."
You could've just described the skin. Why insult both of us while you were at it?
But Xu Feng did not dwell on that.
"Master, this was enshrined in the temple that once stood at the Qian Family Mansion. It was also what the River Ox suppressed back then."
Xu Feng told him the whole story.
He recounted it from beginning to end, including Shen Jicheng's extraordinary experiences.
Without Shen Jicheng's painstaking investigation, who would have guessed that a human skin lay beneath the temple where the Dragon-Slaying Sword had been enshrined?
And that the skin had been held down by the Golden Urn and sealed by the Treasure Coffer?
When Master heard this, he interrupted at an awkward moment.
"Then where's the rest of the skin? Surely it wasn't just this little piece?"
"Of course not. It was a whole skin that had been shed. Shen Jicheng said it was split along the spine.
"But no one knows where the rest went.
"Shen Jicheng reckons the Earth-Fire Cult took it.
"That's why I suspect seeing the remaining skin made them all