Jinlun's Secret

After Allen recalled everything about this eccentric alchemist's past, he did not toss the book aside again. Perhaps he simply wanted to amuse himself and ease the anxiety of the past few days. He leafed through the biography, but the further he read, the stranger it seemed. Jinlun might have been an eccentric, but his biography was far too jumbled and chaotic. It felt like something written by a madman, with nothing connecting or flowing properly. At one point, Allen thought Jinlun's string of failures must have reduced him to this state.

Allen finally struggled through to the end, only to find that Jinlun had written, "Anyone who understands Jinlun will understand this book." That alone was not much, but more importantly, Jinlun had not finished this biography. There were still many later events he had not recorded, so why had he hurriedly written such a baffling sentence at the end?

Did that sentence mean he could not understand this book because he did not understand Jinlun? Allen thought back over the things this eccentric Jinlun had done. None of them was particularly unusual. He kept leafing through the biography without thinking, then suddenly noticed that Jinlun had not even included his most important invention: the only potion he had ever sold, one that could restore a man's virility. Generally speaking, an invention like that, his only success-even if it had ultimately failed-was surely important enough to include. After all, it had caused quite a stir at the time.

Allen went through the book again. Jinlun's biography recorded events chronologically, so he turned to the point in time closest to that invention. He examined it carefully, and sure enough, it was not there. His suspicions aroused, he searched through the entire book from beginning to end once more. He still found nothing.

In the end, he stared at the book and thought of all sorts of methods he could use to explore the secret Jinlun had hidden in it, but none worked. It was as though Jinlun really was simply a lunatic.

Half an hour passed, and Allen came to the page where the important invention was missing again. He carefully examined the events before and after that point in time, and this time he did find something wrong. Jinlun's accounts of those two events differed somewhat from what Allen had read in other books. According to the other books, before Jinlun invented the potion, he had accepted funding from nobles, then developed it with their support. Afterward, a fatal flaw in the potion had utterly ruined his reputation, and that incident had ultimately led to his later bankruptcy.

But Jinlun's book said that while he had indeed accepted commissions from nobles, they were not commissions to invent this potion. Moreover, long before that point in time, they had already withdrawn their commissions because he could not produce a finished product, leaving him deeply in debt. After that, the book abruptly skipped over this point in time, and somehow Jinlun came into a large sum of money. The book described how he suddenly moved and bought a large quantity of expensive materials. Even his previous debts were gone. Such a great change had taken place in just one week; something must have happened that suddenly brought Jinlun a great deal of money. Yet Jinlun had not mentioned it. He had mentioned everything else in this book. Apart from the later events he had not had time to write down, he had recorded everything in exhaustive detail, even things that other books had not recorded.

Besides, this had been one of the most important turning points in Jinlun's life. There was no reason not to include it.

Allen thought for a long time. Could it be that Jinlun had not wanted to write about his failure? But that did not make sense either. Jinlun's entire life could be called a complete failure. He had never succeeded, and even the only potion that might have succeeded had failed.

He felt that this potion was the key, so he immediately found the book recording that incident and took it to the counter along with Jinlun's book. He intended to borrow both books. Books on the first floor could be borrowed as long as one could afford it. The counter staff would first appraise the two books, and anyone wishing to borrow them had to pay three times that price. The longer the borrowing period, the larger the deposit. When the books were returned, ninety percent of the original deposit would be refunded, with the rest kept as the borrowing fee. There was a minimum deposit requirement to prevent people from exploiting loopholes in the rules. Allen paid one and a half gold coins and took the two books back with him for a two-week loan.

After returning to the inn, he did not rush to study Jinlun's book, but ate first. Only after spending half an hour eating and bathing did he pick up the two books and compare them carefully. At first, he found nothing wrong. Jinlun's book simply described things in greater detail, while the other gave a rough account of certain events from his life and was not written in the first person.

He read and reread them without finding anything, but he remained convinced that there was something wrong with Jinlun. He felt all over Jinlun's book, checking whether it had a hidden compartment in its cover, but both the cover and the pages were made from the cheapest paper, so thin they could slip through the crack of a door.

Allen then wondered whether Jinlun had written something in the book that ordinary people could not see, using something like starch. But where could he get iodine solution here? After thinking it over, he still felt that was not right.

With no other options, Allen could only read the book over and over. By his fourth reading, he could almost recite its contents. "Huh?" Allen noticed with surprise that one phrase seemed to appear frequently throughout the book. He would not have realized it without reading it so many times. Jinlun repeatedly mentioned "Greenwood Forest," which lay on the edge of Silverpine Forest east of Dalaran. Hardly anyone went there, and there was nothing particularly special about it.

Allen found nothing strange about Greenwood Forest, but he noted down the place name anyway. Then he continued looking through the book for any other frequently occurring phrases. This careful search really did reveal the book's secret.

He already knew that the book omitted a crucial incident involving the potion. Before that point in time, every dated account Jinlun wrote contained "Greenwood Forest," and it appeared only once in each entry. After that point, the same pattern continued, but each dated account contained the phrase "the little cabin to the south," also only once.

Allen never believed in coincidences. Moreover, to squeeze these two phrases into the text, Jinlun had twisted almost every sentence out of shape, and some did not even form complete sentences. It seemed these two phrases were the secret Jinlun wanted to reveal.

Putting them together, Allen read, "The little cabin to the south of Greenwood Forest." After unraveling the secret, he could hardly wait to go there. But it was already night, so he could only wait until tomorrow.

He could not sleep at all that night and could only get up and practice his cultivation formula until dawn. He immediately packed his things and headed for the little cabin to the south of Greenwood Forest with the two books.

Once he reached Greenwood Forest, he began searching immediately. An hour later, he still could not find the little cabin, no matter how he looked. Just as he was at a loss, he encountered a local villager and immediately asked whether there were any little cabins nearby. The villager thought for a long time before telling him, "Sir, I don't think there are any little cabins nearby, just a house built by a hunter. But it was abandoned many years ago. Do you really intend to go there?"

Hearing that there really was a cabin nearby, Allen hurriedly pressed a few silver coins into the villager's hand and asked him to lead the way. Delighted with the money, the villager took him there. Fifteen minutes later, Allen found the cabin. It was old and dilapidated, looking as though it was about to collapse. He went inside to inspect it and discovered that the hunter's cabin was exceedingly simple. Apart from a wooden bed and a table, even the chair was nowhere to be found.

He searched the cabin carefully, but it was tiny, with less than thirty square meters of space, and everything was covered in thick dust. He was not sure whether Jinlun had hidden anything here. There was basically nowhere in the entire cabin to hide anything. At first, he had wondered whether something might be hidden inside the walls, but the cabin's wooden walls were only a thin layer, with no room to conceal anything at all.

He looked around and found that there were only two places in the cabin where something could be hidden: the wooden bed and underground. As for the bed, he had already turned it upside down as soon as he came in and found nothing inside it. Finally, Allen turned his attention to the floor. The cabin did not actually have a floor at all, just the earth already beneath it, so it would be difficult for anyone to notice anything.

But there was a problem. Small as the cabin was, it still covered twenty or thirty square meters. Where would he find the time to dig through all of it? He sat on the bed and began carefully studying the cabin's layout. Suddenly, he noticed a strange design carved into the table. Although the tabletop was covered in children's scribbles, that design still stood out. It looked like a potion bottle. He immediately caught on. Could it be right beneath this table?

He immediately began looking for tools and started digging. Soon, he unearthed a square iron box measuring over thirty centimeters across. Long exposure to weathering and corrosion had left it covered in rust, but that did nothing to dampen his excitement. He began muttering to himself, "Good heavens, there really is treasure. That damned Goblin really made me hunt for it."

Next, he quickly hauled the iron box out, but did not open it immediately. Instead, he examined it carefully for traps, afraid that the Goblin might have poisoned it or fitted it with some special mechanism.