Zhang Yuan pieced the three silk manuscripts together and studied their contents with a grave expression. After a moment's thought, he discovered something very important.
These Six Heavenly Demon Kings... really did sing their own praises with gusto.
They had gone out of their way to compose eulogies, making flowers rain from the heavens with their extravagant words. Anyone who knew no better would have taken them for sacred beings.
"These two copies of the Brief Account of the Six Heavenly Ancient Gods have considerable research value. As the academy's libationer, I'll take them away for further study."
Without the slightest qualm, Zhang Yuan used his position as the academy's libationer to pocket the two silk manuscripts as a matter of course, then swept his divine sense over the other texts on this floor.
Not all the texts on this floor concerned the Six Heavenly Demon Kings. There were also cultivation methods and key points of spells for the cavern-peering lamp-kindling path and the blood furnace lantern-lighting path. Fortunately, beyond the two silk manuscripts, there were still other clues.
With a cursory sweep of his divine sense, he searched for records of the Six Heavenly Demon Kings while incidentally memorizing several cultivation methods for the cavern-peering lamp-kindling path and the blood furnace lantern-lighting path. Finally, he pulled out an exquisitely bound, very thick volume.
The tome was extraordinarily heavy, with what must have been several thousand pages. Tossed onto the floor, it immediately kicked up a great cloud of dust. According to its contents, it was an encyclopedic compendium revised, corrected, and expanded by successive generations, recording many secrets unknown to the outside world. Those secrets were not necessarily all true, however, and readers had to judge for themselves.
With a slight stir of his will, Zhang Yuan opened the