In the blink of an eye, another night passed.
The floor of the quiet room was now covered with open ancient books.
There were three scattered clues in the unofficial histories and miscellaneous accounts. One told of a villager in Shuzhong who went up a mountain to gather herbs and encountered a tiger. He thought he would die in its jaws, but unexpectedly encountered an immortal, whose mighty roar drove the vicious beast away with a single shout.
Another also took place in the mountains, where someone accidentally witnessed an extraordinary person sitting alone atop a summit, breathing in and out beneath the moon, seemingly an immortal.
The clue in the local gazetteers was even clearer.
In the late Ming dynasty, a flood struck an area, and a coffin was actually washed out of the mountains. Strangely, the corpse inside looked alive, but soon blood flowed from its seven orifices, its muscles and bones cracked explosively, and its body shrank to the size of a monkey in just a few breaths. It was suspected to be an ill omen of a heaven-sent calamity.
Aside from clues related to the Wenxiang Sect, the rest were exaggerated rumors whose truth was difficult to determine.
By now, Lian Youming had gained a thorough understanding of the Wenxiang Sect.
Over more than two hundred years, the sect had staged uprisings in various regions, with followers across the Six Provinces. It had once been the largest offshoot of the White Lotus Sect. Like the Heavenly Principle Sect, the Eight Trigrams Faith, and the Clear Water Sect, it was not subordinate to the White Lotus Sect, but its teachings shared the same origins. Both the Ming and Qing dynasties had regarded it as an evil, heterodox sect.
But none of that was what mattered most.
What