"Received it," he said, his voice rough and thick with the smell of dry tobacco. "I have the key to the warehouse. Go in, but don't touch anything. The register is on the third shelf of that row of wooden shelves on the east wall. Find it yourself."
"Thank you." Snow Empress took the wooden plaque and put it back in her bosom, then walked towards the tin-covered side door next to the duty room. Yin Wujou quickly followed. As he passed the man, he felt the man's gaze linger on his back for a moment, not intensely, but like a very fine needle lightly touching his back.
The side door opened, its hinges heavily rusted, creaking jarringly as it was pushed, like cast iron scraping against each other. Inside was a narrow alley, at the end of which was another door, taller and thicker than the outer one. A single iron plate covered the door, with a fist-sized copper lock plate embedded in its center. The lock plate was engraved with dense runes, the grooves of which were filled with dark red lacquer. Spiritual Power flowed slowly within the strokes, emitting a faint warmth.
Snow Empress took out the night watch copper badge from her bosom and pressed it into the groove in the center of the lock plate. The moment the badge made contact with the lock plate, the dark red runes suddenly lit up, like charcoal embers being blown by the wind, turning red for a moment before dimming. Then, a heavy creaking sound came from inside the door—it clattered seven or eight times before stopping. Snow Empress pushed the door, and it opened heavily inward, releasing a pungent smell of accumulated dust and old metal.
The storeroom was much larger than Yin Wujou had imagined. Looking inside from the doorway, he saw a dark yet spacious area—a two-zhang-high vaulted ceiling made of blue bricks, with grayish-white Spiritual Power seeping from the brick seams, spreading across the ceiling like a spiderweb, enveloping the entire storeroom in a faint, grayish-white halo without any obvious light source. The storeroom was divided into rows of tall wooden shelves, extending from the ground to near the ceiling. Each shelf was densely packed with various objects—bronze astrolabes and armillary spheres, jade tablets and ivory scepters engraved with runes and incantations, bundles of scrolls and books stuffed into the gaps in the shelves, and some strangely shaped cast iron utensils covered with a greasy, dark patina, obscuring their original material and purpose.
A layer of extremely fine dust floated in the air, slowly swirling under the grayish-white light of the warehouse itself. These dust particles presented a peculiar sight in Yin Wujou's Spirit Vision —each particle was covered with an extremely thin shell of Spiritual Power, like thousands of tiny fireflies slowly drifting in the air. He waved his hand in front of him, and as his wrist stirred the airflow, the luminous dust particles were dispersed and then slowly gathered back.
"Where is Pei Yuan?" Yin Wujou asked in a low voice.
"I don't know." Snow Empress stood at the door and scanned the depths of the warehouse. "But he's been in the warehouse for ten years. The Spiritual Power of the entire warehouse should have been permeated by the aura of his daily activities. Use your Spirit Vision to find the area with the thickest dust and the least trampling, and vice versa."
Yin Wujou pushed his Spirit Vision to its deepest level for the day. He closed his eyes for a few breaths to adjust, and when he opened them again, the distribution of Spiritual Power throughout the warehouse appeared in his field of vision as Zhang Ming and shadow—the grayish-white residual spiritual energy between the wooden shelves flowed like thin streams through the gaps at the bottom of the shelves, gathering at the top to form a uniform halo under the dome. He followed the direction of those spiritual vein branches and slowly walked towards the depths of the warehouse, his feet stepping on a soft, thick layer of dust, the soles of his shoes making almost no sound.
He stopped abruptly as he passed the third row of wooden shelves. About five or six steps to his right, the pattern of dust accumulation became unusual—the ground there was cleaner than the surrounding area. Although it still looked dusty, the dust layer was noticeably thinner, forming a narrow path that could only allow one person to pass at a time. The path meandered between the wooden shelves, leading all the way to the deepest part of the warehouse, near the north wall.
Yin Wujou followed the path, and as he turned past the last wooden frame, a small table under the north wall came into view. The tabletop was only two feet square, made of several old wooden planks pieced together. On the tabletop sat an oil lamp, a half-open old book, and a rough porcelain teacup. A person sat on a low stool next to the table, his back to Yin Wujou, his shoulders slightly hunched, looking down at a scroll in his hands. He wore a faded gray long robe, the back of his neck appearing pale as paper in the cold light of the storeroom. The meridians on the side of his neck showed a faint but steady flowing light trace in his Spirit Vision —different from the clear bluish-white of the Snow Empress's water spiritual veins, and also different from the yellowish warm light of Yin Wujou himself. It was a cold, almost silvery-gray pulse, slow and steady.
" Pei Yuan?" Yin Wujou stopped two steps away.
The man's shoulder twitched. He slowly put down the book in his hand and turned his head. Yin Wujou saw a thin face covered with deep wrinkles, the forehead and corners of his eyes etched with the lines of years, his cheeks slightly sunken, and the corners of his mouth pursed with a tight line formed by a long silence. His gaze slowly rose from below, landing on Yin Wujou's face, and his cloudy eyes lit up for a moment when they came into contact with the Spiritual Power around Yin Wujou, like an old wick being ignited by a dark flame.
"You..." Pei Yuan spoke, his voice hoarse and low, like the strained, tense tone of someone who hadn't spoken in a long time. "You're the one who broke the Cloud Tracing Formation?"
Yin Wujou was stunned for a moment. Cloud Tracing Formation —was that the name of the formation on the stack of mugwort paper that Daoist Yun written? He had never heard anyone mention this name before, not even the Snow Empress. But Pei Yuan's tone when he said those three words was certain, as certain as if the person he had been waiting for for ten years should know this name.
"I deciphered Daoist Yun's array diagram," Yin Wujou said.
Pei Yuan stared at him for a few more breaths. He sat on the low stool, turning slightly to let the light of the oil lamp shine on Yin Wujou. His cloudy eyes slowly swept over the contours of Yin Wujiu's face and shoulders, finally settling on his hands. He looked at the back of Yin Wujou's hands for a long time, so long that Yin Wujou almost wanted to hide his hands behind his back before Pei Yuan finally looked away.
"Hold out your hand," he said.
Yin Wujou hesitated for a moment, then extended his right hand. Pei Yuan's withered fingers gently rested on the back of his hand, his fingertips pressing on the shallowest meridian lines in the middle of his hand. The touch was as light as a feather, but Yin Wujou could feel a faint yet precise Spiritual Power seeping into the surface of his meridians along the tips of those fingers, like a small stream of cool water slowly flowing through a tube. The Spiritual Power circled in his meridians before retreating, and Pei Yuan withdrew his hand and placed it back on his lap.