It was already late at night when they returned to Cold Moon Peak.
Long Yan'er was still reading in the Bamboo Hut. When she saw them return, she put down her book, yawned, and went back to her own room.
Lin Shisan returned to his simple little bamboo hut, shut the door, and lit the spirit lamp.
He opened the brocade pouch Gu Mengli had given him. Inside was a thin Beastskin Scroll, its edges worn and slightly frayed. He unrolled it to find densely packed lines of neat, tiny regular script. The handwriting was elegant and crisp, matching the cadence of Gu Mengli's speech exactly.
By the spirit lamp's light, Lin Shisan read it from beginning to end, then went over the key passages twice more.
When Tianjizi had laid the seal on the Nine Yang Cauldron all those years ago, he had indeed left a hidden door in its innermost layer.
Opening that hidden door required three streams of spiritual power to be injected simultaneously: one from the Danyang Sect's Nine Yang Wheel-Transferring Cultivation Manual, one carrying the aura of Tianjizi's bloodline, and one containing Demon Venerable Gai Jiuyou's Origin Power.
For the first two, there were Feng Xian'er and his Nine Yang Wheel-Transferring Cultivation Manual.
But the third, Gai Jiuyou's Origin Power, existed only inside the Nine Yang Cauldron.
Forcibly injecting it from outside would trigger the seal's backlash restrictions and raze the entire Nine Yang Pavilion to the ground.
No wonder the Danyang Sect had so vehemently opposed destroying it all these years, choosing instead to wear Gai Jiuyou down slowly, like boiling a frog in warm water.
"No wonder Aunt Mei insisted I send the Demon Seed inside..."
Lin Shisan rolled up the Beastskin Scroll, piecing Gu Mengli's words together with Aunt Mei's arrangements and