"Right, they never actually intended to drive you away." Zhou You changed tack and explained it to Nuomi from another angle.
"They took money from the school administration. If they drove you away, how would they keep using you as an excuse to collect more?"
That explanation convinced Nuomi, but she was still furious. "Every time I saw them burning money for me, I thought they had it rough too, so I stayed quiet for a month without scaring anyone and pretended they'd driven me away."
"Those fake Taoists are awful! They have no sincerity toward us dead people. They're even worse than that rotten rice thrower!"
"Absolutely awful! Scamming ghosts, even! They have no decency!" Nuomi kept grumbling angrily. She had saved that money for ages.
She also looked deeply dejected. She had thought she held assets worth quadrillions. Even if the exchange rate between Underworld Currency and yuan was a hundred thousand to one, she would still have tens of thousands of yuan.
Who could have known that Underworld Currency was nothing but paper, completely worthless?
"There, there. We're all pretty much in the same boat now." Zhou You used himself as an example to comfort Nuomi.
Zhou You and Chu Xiaoyao mainly relied on the meal money their families gave them and had little to spare. Nuomi had no money, but she didn't need to eat either. Viewed that way, all three were on the same financial footing: broke.
Seeing that Nuomi felt a little better, Zhou You breathed a sigh of relief. Being a Sect Master really wasn't easy. He even had to look after his subordinates' mental well-being.
"What on earth did I fish out?" Holding the Jade Seal, Zhou You tossed it up like a ball. It had a satisfying heft, and a missing corner had been patched with brass.
"Do you recognize the characters on it?" Chu Xiaoyao asked.
Zhou You shook his head. That was asking far too much of him. It wasn't as though he was a historian.
"Well, they're neither simplified nor traditional Chinese characters."
Chu Xiaoyao rolled her eyes. No kidding. Did I need you to tell me that? I also know it isn't English.
"Oh, right! We can use Taobao's image search." Chu Xiaoyao suddenly remembered that Taobao had that feature. She rarely used it.
She opened Taobao, took a picture, and searched.
A whole pile of products soon appeared. The results weren't very accurate. They were all different styles of jade seals, none quite like the one they were holding.
"This one looks pretty similar to ours." Zhou You pointed to one of the listings and tapped it.
"It really does." The style wasn't quite the same, and the shape differed somewhat, but the characters on it were identical.
Chu Xiaoyao read out the product description. "This item is... the Imperial Seal. The inscription says, 'Mandated by Heaven, may you enjoy everlasting life and prosperity'?"
"So someone bought an Imperial Seal on Taobao and then threw it into the lake?"
Zhou You felt that the past two days had been a complete waste of effort. To find Nuomi's Little Treasury, he had trained his body while getting bitten by mosquitoes, searched the forum for help requests, fought people from the Demon Alliance, and even secretly jumped into the lake at night. In the end, all he had fished out was a fake Imperial Seal.
With no manufacturer, certification, or proper labeling, surely no one would buy this thing even if he tried to sell it?
As for the possibility that it was genuine, Zhou You found the thought laughable the instant it occurred to him. Everyone knew the Imperial Seal had been missing for a thousand years. And it had just been buried at the bottom of their school lake?
If this thing was real, he might as well claim that the mineral water bottle he had picked up while collecting trash on the lakebed was the Jade Purity Bottle.
"Our Carefree Sect happens to need an official seal, so let's keep it." Chu Xiaoyao thought the Jade Seal looked pretty cool. After all the effort they had put into fishing it out, throwing it away would be a shame. They might as well keep it. It suited the Carefree Sect's character perfectly.
How could a sect not have a seal?
"Nuomi, put it on a desk in our classroom." Chu Xiaoyao casually handed the Jade Seal to Nuomi. It was heavy, and carrying it home in her schoolbag only to bring it back tomorrow would be too much trouble. Having Nuomi take it straight to the classroom was much easier.
"Mission accepted!"
"Wait, you can see Nuomi?" Zhou You suddenly caught on. His attention had been entirely on the Jade Seal, so he hadn't noticed how smoothly the two were talking. They could speak directly now, without using him as an intermediary?
Chu Xiaoyao gave a couple of smug little hums and adjusted her Ghost-Seeing Glasses.
Zhou You had noticed the glasses, but hadn't thought much of them. Chu Xiaoyao often brought out little accessories to decorate herself.
Once, Chu Xiaoyao had even worn an eyepatch to school and solemnly told Zhou You that it sealed the Black Dragon's power. Otherwise, she feared the Black Dragon would emerge from her eye.
The Homeroom Teacher had soon made her remove it for violating the dress code.
"Look, these are the Ghost-Seeing Glasses I found. They let me see Nuomi."
"They're that amazing?" Zhou You was astonished. He had asked Su Tingxue before, and even she had no way to let ordinary people see vengeful ghosts.
How had Chu Xiaoyao managed it just by picking up a random pair of glasses?
"My fortune is beyond the comprehension of mere mortals like you." Chu Xiaoyao grew even smugger, looking as though she might float right up into the sky.
"Yes, yes, you're the luckiest of us all."
The Ghost King Zhenyue, watching from the shadows, witnessed the entire exchange. His pupils contracted, and shock shook him to his core.
Never mind how painfully eye-searing it had been to watch Zhou You and the Red King, two naked men, take turns entering the water over the past two nights.
The biggest question was: how had the Seal on the box been opened?!
That was the Seal of Humanity's Supreme Treasure. Only a supreme figure in the human realm could undo it!
"This is bad. Humanity's Supreme Treasure really has fallen into Nuomi's hands. What am I supposed to do?"
The main purpose of the Seal on the wooden box was to keep Nuomi from approaching it.
It should have been a foolproof plan. The Ghost King Zhenyue had never expected someone of unknown identity to appear and simply open the wooden box.
Where had this schoolgirl come from?!
"This is Humanity's Supreme Treasure?"
The professor closed the box and opened it again. The Underworld Currency still lay quietly inside, proving that the box wasn't the problem.
After a moment's thought, he put on medical gloves and solemnly took out the bundle of Underworld Currency. His brows knitted tightly in confusion. Something felt wrong.
"Wasn't Humanity's Supreme Treasure supposed to be the Imperial Seal?" the Red King couldn't help asking. No matter how he looked at it, this pile of Underworld Currency had nothing to do with a jade seal.
Although their headquarters were in the United States, most members of the organization were from Huaxia. All three people in the room were from Huaxia. Who among them wouldn't recognize Underworld Currency? The Red King burned several stacks every year when he returned to his hometown to honor his ancestors.
At that moment, the professor displayed the qualities of a professional scholar. Keeping a cool head, he calmly shook his head.
"We can't jump to conclusions like that. This is the legendary Imperial Seal, not merely an ordinary object with symbolic significance, as most people believe. Obtaining it can make someone one of the world's supreme experts. A divine artifact of this caliber cannot be judged by common sense. The ability to change its form would hardly be surprising."
The professor drew out one of the notes and speculated, "For example, this fifty-million-denomination note might be money for buying lives. Perhaps it can purchase fifty million human lives and determine whether they live or die. This bundle would be enough to buy the lives of everyone in the world."
"Of course, that's only an example. My main point is that we don't yet know how to use Humanity's Supreme Treasure. We can study it at our leisure."
The Red King lowered his head in self-reflection. The professor truly was in a class of his own, remaining composed and analyzing problems calmly. In his place, the Red King would already have panicked and assumed he had taken the wrong box and that this was just ordinary Underworld Currency.
"Besides, you saw the Seal on the box. Breaking it was extremely difficult. Without the Top-Tier Enhancement Serum, Revealing Truth would have exhausted himself right at the start. With a Seal like that protecting it, whatever is inside the box certainly cannot be ordinary!"
"The professor makes a good point. This thing is definitely extraordinary. It should indeed be Humanity's Supreme Treasure." Revealing Truth, still slumped on the floor and not yet recovered, voiced his agreement with the professor.
With two leading experts in the field saying so, the Red King, a mere layman, had no further objections.
Before you continue