Vanishing into Thin Air

"The bronze tortoise has four legs, which are connected by golden threads of fortune. The bronze bowl held in its mouth is the gathering place of fortune!"

The bronze tortoise was taken by Prince Mo, who carried it out of the deep pit dug by the excavator and finally placed it on a wooden tray.

Zhang Xuezhou did not rashly attempt to touch it again, but instead continued to watch.

He considered taking the bronze tortoise away from the Eastern Mountain Imperial Mausoleum and attempting to sever the golden threads of fortune binding it, but he worried that the bronze tortoise was just one of the objects placed under the Luo Zhong Imperial Mausoleum, and it would be inconvenient to leave for the time being.

"Find me a box; I need a tightly sealed box!"

Zhang Xuezhou watched for a while but couldn't figure out how to control it.

He couldn't very well order anyone to destroy this precious treasure, lest he be tainted with bad luck.

After careful consideration, Zhang Xuezhou decided to temporarily seal it off and conduct research after the Luo Zhong imperial tomb area was fully excavated.

He made a request to Feng Ziqiang, which made Feng Ziqiang wipe the cold sweat from his forehead and nod repeatedly to indicate that he 'understood'.

"Committee Member Zhang, what's the background of this bronze tortoise?"

Zhang Xuezhou's gloves melted instantly as he held the bronze tortoise, and Feng Ziqiang felt he could understand such a thing.

Afterwards, Wang Zimo did not feel any temperature when he retrieved the bronze tortoise, and Feng Ziqiang assumed that the high temperature generated by the explosives on the bronze tortoise disappeared in just a few seconds.

However, excluding these two things, Wang Zimo developed a fever and fell into a coma after placing the bronze tortoise on the tray, which is clearly abnormal.

Watching Zhang Xuezhou carefully place the bronze tortoise from the tray into a makeshift toolbox and then seal the toolbox tightly, Feng Ziqiang felt that Zhang Xuezhou might know something.

"It's not a bad thing that Wang Zimo has a fever and fainted. You don't need to worry that I was trying to harm you before," Zhang Xuezhou said casually.

"Well!"

Feng Ziqiang gave an awkward reply.

Zhang Xuezhou did not respond to the origin of the bronze tortoise, but instead directly pointed out Feng Ziqiang's ulterior motives. This made Feng Ziqiang too embarrassed to ask any further questions, and he instead shuttled back and forth between Jin Shixue, Min Ziyan, Wang Zimo, and Zhang Xuezhou.

Doctors from the Dongshan Imperial Mausoleum were urgently dispatched. Besides Min Ziyan, who was diagnosed with mental stress, and Jin Shixue, whose physical strength was greatly depleted, Wang Zimo was in excellent health and normal condition. He was not infected with germs or possessed by Evil Qi as Feng Ziqiang had imagined. He had simply fallen asleep after having a fever.

Feng Ziqiang kept checking back and forth until Jin Shixue, who had been injected with a sedative, got up and started panting. Only then did he hurriedly recount everything he had seen.

"Committee Member Zhang has an extremely high awareness of risk and is also observant of subtle details. If he says he won't harm you, he definitely won't!"

Although it was only based on Feng Ziqiang's one-sided account, the history of the Jin dynasty was still corrected.

"You mean I'm supposed to lift that bronze tortoise statue, and then I'll fall into a coma?" Feng Ziqiang asked.

"Your and Wang Zimo's sequence strengths are different. If you were the one to touch it, you might not have fainted," Jin Shixue said, shaking his head.

"What's the background of that bronze tortoise?" Feng Ziqiang pressed.

"I don't know either!"

Jin historians shook their heads.

The bronze tortoise was not a burial object of Emperor Luoli's tomb, but was excavated from the underground layer of Emperor Luoli's tomb.

These items, hidden deep within the tomb, must have been buried in advance. In feudal superstition, they might be considered for blessings or curses, but they are more of a way to bury beliefs and do not serve any special purpose.

In the past, the Qin Household of Western Capital City was in charge of supervising the construction of imperial tombs, and only the Qin Household had the ability to bury bronze tortoises deep inside the tombs.

Thinking of the destroyed Luofu Dynasty, and pondering Qin Zhong, Qin Wenhan, and others who occupied high positions in the Scarlet Alliance State, Jin Shixue dared not speak recklessly, much less speculate wildly.

He shook his head repeatedly, looked at the faint white light on the horizon, and then sat up with great effort.

"Brother Feng, you need to understand that it was Committee Member Zhang who gave us a way out. If you said he spent hundreds of millions of yuan just to harm us, no one would believe it, and we ourselves wouldn't believe it either!"

As if to simply emphasize the reasons for his judgment, Jin Shixue gave Feng Ziqiang a few words of advice.

Although both visits to the imperial tombs were unlucky and he even contracted symptoms, Jin Shixue knew very well that Zhang Xuezhou had probably saved his life both times.

They had always believed in the Luofu Imperial Family, but Jin Shixue found that even with his extensive knowledge of history, he couldn't quite understand this human dynasty that had stood for over seven hundred years.

Behind this dynasty lies not just simple grudges and feuds, but something else entirely unknown.

During the decades of the absence of the Luofu Dynasty, the Scarlet Alliance State took up the mantle of driving society forward. Jin Shixue, who focused on history and archaeology, obviously couldn't keep up and found it difficult to understand all of this.

"The sun is out!"

Jin Shixue stepped toward the Luo Li Emperor's Mausoleum, where the sound of excavators was constantly deafening. He moved forward through the piles of waste soil, feeling a touch of warmth on his body.

Looking up, Jin Shixue could only see a red sun rising in the distance over the eastern mountains.

The morning light brought a touch of chill to dispel the night's cold, and also brought countless signs of life.

In the brief moment bathed in sunlight, Jin Shixue felt refreshed. His body seemed to be cleansed by the rising sun, and the various pains in his mind gradually subsided.

He stretched out his right hand and felt the light in it ripple like waves, as if it were covered with layers of fish scales.

This was the first time Jin Shixue had ever seen such shimmering morning light. He was about to take a few more glances when he felt the light from the fish-scale pattern on his hand vanish completely in an instant, as if stirred by waves.

The feeling of lightness and comfort quickly dissipated, and Jin Shixue felt the chill of the morning return to his body, the previous warmth gone.

He even felt as if something in his heart had snapped, as if he had experienced a sense of loss.

"Brother Feng, how are you feeling?"

Jin Shixue looked at Feng Ziqiang, who had been busy all night, and saw Feng Ziqiang reach out and touch himself several times.

"My body should be perfectly normal," Feng Ziqiang said.

"Didn't you feel anything?" Kim Historic asked.

"I feel... Didn't you say Committee Member Zhang wouldn't harm us? Did you sense something was off about him? History, I've known that for a long time..."

"No, don't say it!"

Seeing Feng Ziqiang acting suspiciously, Jin Shixue wisely stopped talking and also signaled to the other party not to say anything out of turn.

Clearly, the situation that Jin historians of the Fifth Sequence could perceive was something that others might not be able to experience.

However, the fact that Jin Shixue couldn't get a clear answer from Feng Ziqiang doesn't mean he was clueless about the situation.

"Hey, Xiao Luo, Min Ziyan's awake, right? Give him another thorough checkup. What about Wang Zimo? Since he woke up, where's he been jumping around doing arm exercises?"

As the sun rose, the sickness of the crowd seemed to be dispelled, just as the darkness was dispelled.

Even if that feeling was brief, all the symptoms disappeared, and Wang Zimo even became more active than usual.

Jin Shixue hung up the communicator, becoming increasingly certain that everything he had experienced was not an illusion, but rather an incredible change that had truly occurred.

Looking at the ruins of the Luo Li Emperor's Mausoleum, and then gazing at the rising sun, he felt that the mysteries of the world were beyond his current understanding.

"Committee Member Zhang's perception far surpasses mine; he may have also sensed this incredible change!" Jin Shixue looked at Feng Ziqiang, whose face still held a hint of doubt, and for the first time, he felt the backwardness and antiquity represented by the phrase "old-fashioned remnant."

As if awakened by this ray of light, Jin Shixue felt that even his own stubborn, conservative mindset was beginning to crumble.