If a person stays in that kind of environment for a long time, their own aura will also be tinged with that silvery-white hue.
Yin Wujou circled around the west wall to the north side of the main building. The north wall was only one story high, with several narrow windows. The wooden planks of the windows were old and loose. He picked up a dry twig, reached it through the crack in the window, and poked it a couple of times. The wooden bolt on the inside of the window panel slid open. He gently pushed open the window panel, climbed over, and landed on his toes first, bending his knees slightly to absorb the impact. He landed silently among a pile of dusty old wooden boxes and bamboo baskets.
This was a cluttered room. Baskets were filled with dried herbs and bundles of old talismans, and the air smelled of stale wood ash. A narrow staircase on the north side of the room led to the second floor. The wooden steps were old and blackened, creaking underfoot. Yin Wujou squatted at the top of the stairs and listened carefully for a while—there was no sound at all. The entire main building was as quiet as an empty shell in the early morning.
He gripped the handrail and slowly climbed the stairs, step by step. Each step landed on the outermost edge of the tread, where the sound was minimized. When he reached the second floor, he glanced through a half-open door at the top of the stairs towards the study—the hallway was covered with a faded red carpet, a thin layer of dust on it, and no footprints, indicating that no one had entered this floor at least last night and this morning. The wooden door to the study was closed, unlocked, only bolted shut.
Yin Wujou walked to the study door and gently pulled up the bolt. The door hinges made a very slight creak as they turned. He squeezed through the crack in the door, closed it behind him, and stood behind it for a few moments.
The study was small, about fifteen feet square, with a large window facing east. The morning light streamed in through the translucent window paper, bathing everything in a soft, grayish-blue glow. The furnishings were indeed simple—a large elmwood desk stood by the window, piled with several stacks of documents and two or three pen holders. The brushes inside were of varying lengths, some with ink dried and hardened. Behind the desk was a round-backed chair, its lacquer polished to a shine from years of sitting. The north wall was lined with bookshelves, stretching from floor to ceiling, filled with thread-bound books. Some titles on the spines were faded, while others were still clearly legible—most were related to astrology, calendars, and geomancy, with a few old books on Spiritual Power cultivation occasionally interspersed among them.
A landscape painting hung on the west wall, depicting distant mountains and a lone boat in the twilight. The brushstrokes were sparse and elegant, and a small red seal was affixed to the signature. Yin Wujou's gaze lingered on the painting for a moment—he noticed that the Spiritual Power density on the wall behind the painting was slightly higher than the surrounding area. A silvery-white mist gathered behind the scroll into an oval shape slightly larger than a palm, like a thinned cocoon.
He walked over and gently lifted the scroll. Behind the painting was a dark wooden board flush with the wall. The edges of the board were almost invisible, but when you touched it, you could feel an extremely narrow groove, just big enough for a fingertip to fit in. Yin Wujou dug his fingernail into the groove and pried it out. The board popped open with a click, revealing a shallow niche inside.
There was only one thing in the niche - a palm-sized bronze plaque. The copper was old and the surface was polished smooth and shiny. On the side facing upward, there were four regular characters engraved with "Qin Tian Jian Night Watch". The strokes were straight and powerful, and the background was a thin cirrus pattern. Yin Wujiu He reached out and picked up the bronze medal and turned it over to the back for a look. On the back were engraved two lines of small characters - "October 23, Yiyou year to the second day of winter" and "On duty: Zhou Huai". The writing was newer, and there was still a little trace of black paint left in the carved groove.
He weighed the bronze plaque in his palm; it was heavy and cold, just as Snow Empress had said. He tucked the plaque into his pocket, closed the hidden compartment again, reattached the wooden board, and then hung the scroll back up, restoring it to its original state. After doing all this, he retreated to the study doorway and peeked into each end of the corridor—still empty, still the stillness of the early morning.
He took out a piece of the thin rope from his pocket, tied a slipknot on the door frame as a mark, and then returned to the second-floor stairwell. When he reached the stairwell, he suddenly stopped—in the corner of his Spirit Vision, he saw a tiny disturbance in the distribution of Spiritual Power in the cluttered room downstairs, like something gently touching the surface of calm water, causing a very faint ripple to spread in the air.
He crouched motionless at the top of the stairs, his breathing almost still, his Spirit Vision scanning intently in that direction. Outside the cluttered window, a clump of low holly branches was swaying gently—but there was no wind. The branches swayed slightly, but with a distinct rhythm, as if some living thing had just passed by and brushed against the leaves.
Yin Wujou didn't go downstairs. He crouched down and retreated to the study door, slipped inside, closed the door, and leaned against it, listening intently to the sounds outside. With his Spirit Vision extended to its deepest level, he saw that the silvery-white spiritual energy in the second-floor corridor was still flowing steadily, but a disturbance was rising from the first floor—like a faint wisp of heat seeping from a crack in the floor, slowly climbing up the stairs. The energy wasn't silvery-white, but a very pale, almost invisible grayish-green, carrying a Spiritual Power texture he wasn't familiar with, like some kind of disguised spirit or extremely restrained artificial Spiritual Power.
The grayish-green mass stopped at the entrance to the second-floor corridor. It lingered there for about five or six breaths, seemingly sensing its surroundings. Yin Wujou held his breath, his heart pounding violently behind his ribs, but he kept every inch of his body firmly rooted to the spot, suppressing his Spirit Vision to an extremely low and faint level, maintaining only a sliver of light to observe the movement of the grayish-green mass.
The aura hesitated for a moment at the entrance of the corridor before beginning to move towards the study. It was very slow, like water climbing a slope; you could barely feel it moving, but it would advance a little bit every few breaths. Yin Wujou leaned against the door, his hand slowly touching the edge of the bronze plaque in his pocket. The cold, hard touch gave him a sense of security. He quickly calculated in his mind—if the other party pushed open this door, should he strike first or find an opportunity to climb out the window? Below the east-facing window on the west wall was a flower bed; jumping down would make some noise, but at least he wouldn't be directly injured.
The grayish-green aura lingered outside the study door. Through the door, Yin Wujou could feel a Sisi chill seeping in through the cracks in the wood. It lingered longer than it had at the corridor entrance, so long that Yin Wujou almost felt he should do something, but the next moment the aura suddenly dissipated—like a wisp of mist blown away by a gust of wind, vanishing cleanly and neatly. The Spiritual Power outside the door returned to its usual silvery-white state, leaving no trace of the grayish-green disturbance.