From the fake emperor to the concubine

As he spoke, he carefully moved the short plaque with the character "镇" (zhen, meaning town) aside.

The moment the short card left the box, the string of bone beads inside trembled very slightly before settling back to stillness. There was no extraordinary phenomenon; on the contrary, it further indicated that what remained inside was not an evil object, but rather a fragment of some kind of preserved and suppressed inheritance.

Zheng Yi first picked up the old animal hide.

When unfolded, there are not many words on it.

Unlike a systematic set of techniques, it reads more like a few hastily written passages, the handwriting heavy and stiff, many parts not even written with a pen, but rather as if etched into the skin with fingers:
"Beneath the Cave of White Bones, the cold bones nourish the corpses; it is not advisable to remain there for long."

"I am seriously injured and exhausted. I am using this as a domino to suppress the situation and temporarily delay the change."

"If anyone sees this box, they must first repair their skin, flesh, muscles, and bones before touching the center of the lake, or they will surely die."

“When the black tide rises, one can follow the northwest snow-swallowing cave to find the old residence of ‘Fushan’.”

"My name is Yue Zhenyue."

In the last sentence, the marks on the writing were even deeper, almost piercing through the animal hide.

After reading it, Zheng Yi's eyes darkened.

Yan'ao asked, "What did they say up there?"

Zheng Yi didn't hide anything and explained the general idea.

When they heard "first repair the skin, flesh, tendons and bones, then touch the heart of the lake," Yan'ao and Wuchen both had solemn expressions; but when they heard "Northwest Snow-Swallowing Cave" and "Old Mansion of Overturned Mountain," their eyes changed at the same time.

Wu Chen spoke first: "Is there really something below the Snow-Swallowing Cave?"

Yan Ao was even more direct: "Is Yue Zhenyue a person's name?"

"It should be," Zheng Yi said, "and he's an extremely strong body cultivator."

Bone Granny had also approached at some point. Standing on the shore, she heard the three words "Yue Zhenyue" and her brows suddenly furrowed.

"This name... I feel like I've heard it somewhere before."

Everyone looked at her.

The old woman stared at the old animal hide and slowly said, "It's not that I remember it, it's that it was mentioned in an even older story. It says that in the very early days of the Northern Wilderness, there was a madman who practiced the physical path. He could shatter an ice canyon with a single punch, but later he disappeared without a trace. When the older generation tells stories, they sometimes use him to scare people, saying that if anyone dares to be so strong, they will be sent to 'Overturning Mountain Guest' to practice his fist techniques."

Zheng Yi looked down at the words "My name is Yue Zhenyue" written on the animal skin.

Fushan Guest.

It's most likely him.

Wu Chen asked, "His old residence is below the Snow-Swallowing Cave?"

“It seems so,” Zheng Yi said. “Moreover, he had already discovered the problem beneath White Bone Lake back then, and even left something here to suppress the gap. This indicates that the trouble in the lake didn’t just start recently.”

Yan Ao's expression darkened further: "So that thing we killed yesterday was just something we raised later?"

“Very likely,” Zheng Yi said. “The things that are truly deep within may not have fully awakened yet.”

After hearing this, even Chi Ya didn't dare to utter a sound.

The wind by the lake suddenly seemed even colder.

Instead of continuing to press the atmosphere down, Zheng Yi looked at the three items in the stone box.

"Let's see what works first."

He picked up the string of bone beads first.

The bone beads were very heavy, heavier than ordinary stone beads. There were nine in total, each with very faint wear marks on its surface, as if it had been rubbed for many years. Zheng Yi touched them with his divine sense and immediately felt an extremely pure physical vibration slowly emanating from the beads.

It's not spiritual power.

It is the residue of pure, extreme force and energy.

It is extremely valuable if used for studying or as an aid in cultivating bone strength.

Now look at that arm guard.

The gauntlet had a dark exterior, but the inner layer was engraved with very fine dark patterns. Zheng Yi raised the gauntlet to his left arm, and the size, which originally looked slightly large, shrank slightly just before he fastened it, fitting perfectly against his forearm and elbow.

The next instant, he felt his entire left arm suddenly sink.

It felt like a heavy iron weight was hanging on it.

Chiya, watching from the side, felt his arms ache just watching: "This thing is so heavy?"

Zheng Yi didn't say anything, but tried to raise his arm.

It was very slow at first.

But once he had truly steadied his arm, the dark patterns inside the arm guard seemed to be activated by something, and a thin, warm sensation spread along the seams of his forearm bones. It wasn't to save him effort, but rather to gradually "correct" the path of his exertion.

Zheng Yi's eyes lit up immediately.

nice one.

This is not simply a training tool that increases the burden, but an aid that can correct the body's power generation. For him, who has just developed the outline of bone strength but is still far from perfect, it couldn't be more useful.

Yan'ao watched with envy, but didn't say a word to argue.

Because he also knew that Zheng Yi had opened the box, and it seemed that only Zheng Yi could truly understand how to use it.

Wu Chen then asked, "Is there any danger?"

“Not for now,” Zheng Yi said. “I can use this arm guard. And those bone beads are useful too.”

Finally, he picked up the short plaque with the character "镇" (zhen, meaning town/town).

The moment I held the short card, my entire arm trembled slightly.

It wasn't a rejection, but rather like a heavy mountain pressing down on his palm. Zheng Yi almost immediately understood that this thing was not an ordinary talisman, but more like a talisman specifically used to suppress the core of the formation and seal the cracks.

In other words, this strategy might be useful if we want to maintain our position at the lakeside for longer.

He looked up toward the southwest throat, a thought already forming in his mind.

The Bone Woman could tell from his expression that he was thinking about something again.

"Don't tell me you're going to use that card to plug the gap right now."

Zheng Yi smiled and said, "Not now."

The old woman snorted, "That doesn't sound like human speech."

Wu Chen then asked, "You want to go to the 'Old Mansion of Fushan' mentioned on that animal skin?"

Zheng Yi did not deny it.

"think."

Yan'ao immediately replied, "I want to too."

Chiya chimed in from afar, "And me too!"

This time, the old woman didn't even bother to lift her cane, and simply said, "Grow half a head taller first."

Zheng Yi rearranged the three items, putting the short tag away separately, hanging the bone bead on his wrist, and leaving the arm guards on.

He looked down at the bottom of the stone box again.

There was something else at the bottom of the box.

It wasn't a physical object, but a nearly disintegrated carving buried at the very bottom. Zheng Yi wiped away the bone paste with his fingers before he could make out the last line of small characters:
“The mountain is not a treasure land, but a furnace for grinding the body. The weak will be crushed if they enter.”

After reading it, Yan'ao grinned.

"Sounds like a nice place."

Wu Chen didn't laugh, but only asked Zheng Yi, "When do you plan to go?"

Zheng Yi looked up at the still gray ice area in the center of the lake.

“Not now,” he said. “First, let’s stabilize White Bone Lake, and then I’ll lift myself up a bit.”

He raised his left arm, which was covered by a black arm guard.

"Yue Zhenyue left this thing, not so that someone could pick it up and go to their death."

The old woman nodded: "At least she didn't go crazy as soon as she got the treasure." Zheng Yi didn't respond to that, but turned around and walked to the outside of the circle of large bones, looking back at the newly exposed bottom of the shore.

Today's trip yielded even greater results than he had anticipated.

It wasn't just about finding two things that we can use right now; more importantly, it confirmed three things.

The problem with White Bone Lake has been discovered before.

The troubles deep beneath the lake are older and greater than the dead things that are now surfacing.

Moreover, there really is a physical cultivation mansion nearby that can rapidly improve his physical body and bone strength.

This is enough.

Wu Chen followed his gaze to the center of the lake in the distance and whispered, "So what do we do now?"

Zheng Yi said, "Two things."

"explain."

“First, reseal this place, but don’t seal it completely. Don’t move the stone box and this ring of bones; let them continue to suppress this area.” He paused. “Second, I want to use this arm guard and bone beads to push the bone energy forward a bit more. At least until the next time it rushes up from its throat, I can cleave its core in two with a single strike.”

Flame Hound's eyes blazed with fury: "How long?"

"It depends on myself," Zheng Yi said, "and also on whether the lake will give us time."

Chiya finally couldn't help but run closer, staring at the black arm guards on Zheng Yi's hands with eyes full of envy.

"Is this the treasure left behind by a powerful being?"

Zheng Yi glanced at him: "Count it as half a piece."

"Half a piece?"

"The real big stuff is below the Snow-Swallowing Cave." Zheng Yi looked northwest, his voice low but steady, "In the old mansion of Fushan."

The wind blew in from that direction, carrying with it the chill of the old ice field from deeper within.

Although it was just one direction, everyone seemed to vaguely see another place—beneath the ice, deep in the cracks, lay a place for tempering the body and a method for refining bones left behind by a powerful body cultivator, and perhaps even a means to deal with the creatures deep within the White Bone Lake.

That's a backup plan.

This is the next leg of the journey.

Bone Granny suppressed these thoughts for the first time.

"Stop standing around dreaming." She tapped the ground with her cane. "First, clean up this place in front of you. Bury what needs to be buried, seal what needs to be sealed, and lift what needs to be lifted. If you really want to go to some old mansion in Fushan, you'll have to live to see that day."

Yan'ao shouldered the large chisel: "That's right."

Wu Chen has already started calling on people to move stones to seal the edges.

Zheng Yi then turned around one last time, put the black stone slab back on the stone box, leaving only a small gap that wasn't completely sealed, and then straightened the ring of large bones back to their original position.

It's not that he didn't want to take it all with him.

Since Yue Zhenyue left his things here and also left the phrase "the town's dominoes suppress a gap," it means that this place itself is also part of the town.

Take what you can, and don't touch what you can't touch.

Only after he finished doing all that did he get up.

Sunlight shone on the newly exposed riverbed, and amidst the gray and black, a faint, somber light, not of death, shimmered. It was the mark left by the strong of the old era, and also a path to survival.

Zheng Yi touched the bone bead on his wrist, then glanced down at the black arm guard on his left arm.

Shen.

But it's very stable.

In the following days, the area around White Bone Lake experienced a brief period of "stability".

The throat was no longer subjected to direct impact. Occasionally, the bone bells would ring erratically at night, but these were merely attempts by something underwater to probe the edge. The two sections of the rubble pit gradually found their uses: the front section collected water, while the back section held the bones. The three layers of coarse netting caught a batch of grayish-white bone fragments and debris every day. Wu Chen and Yan Ao took turns leading guards, while the Bone Granny kept an eye on the wounded, the medicinal soup, and the short plaque with the character "镇" (zhen, meaning "suppress" or "control") that she increasingly kept close at hand.

Zheng Yi was instead captured by Wu Chen and forced to do something else—

“You can’t just stare at the lake all day,” Wu Chen said. “You have to see how we usually live.”

Zheng Yi glanced at him: "What do you want me to see?"

Wu Chen slung the bone spear over his shoulder and said calmly, "Look at what we eat, what we wear, and what we use to survive the winter. If you really want to help the Black Rock Tribe, you can't just kill things in the lake."

That's a very straightforward statement.

Zheng Yi nodded.

"Makes sense."

So the next morning, before dawn, he went out with a small hunting team from the Black Rock tribe.

……

The morning light in the north is different from that in the south.

In the south, dawn usually breaks through with a hint of white before slowly warming up; but here, it's as if someone has sliced ​​open the night with a knife, and a cold, grayish light presses down from the edge of the icy plain, along with the wind, which blows painfully against one's face.

Zheng Yi was wearing a thick leather robe that the Bone Granny had temporarily altered for him, with a coarse fur cloak over it, but his shoulders still felt stiff.

It's not that it's not thick enough, it's just that the "cold" here is too biting.

Moreover, these leather jackets are really not that good.

He glanced down at his cuffs and hem. The fur robe was coarsely pieced together from several different colored animal hides, with rough stitches and the seams stuffed with dry grass and lint. It was good at blocking the wind, but it was heavy and would be even more troublesome once it got wet, far less comfortable than the quilted, padded, tightly layered winter coats he remembered.

Wu Chen walked ahead and, seeing him looking down at his clothes, said indifferently, "You think they're ugly?"

Zheng Yi said, "It's not that it's ugly, it's that it's stupid."

Red Fang, carrying a short bow, followed beside him, his ears perking up immediately: "These are the best fur coats we have for winter."

“I know,” Zheng Yi said. “That’s why I said it was stupid, not that I was being blunt.”

Yan'ao was also in the team today. Upon hearing this, he snorted and said, "As long as it can withstand the wind and snow, why be so particular?"

Zheng Yi didn't argue with him, but just raised his hand and pinched the lining inside his sleeve.

“It’s heavy, gets damp easily, and isn’t sewn tightly enough. If there’s snow and wind, the heat will escape through the seams first, and once the sweat comes out from the inside, it will be even colder. If you had lighter, denser, and warmer fabrics here, children and the elderly would be able to live much longer.”

Yan'ao wanted to retort, but Wu Chen, who was walking in front, did not say anything in response.

Because those words really hit the nail on the head.

Today's hunting party's target is a flock of horned sheep that often roams the leeward slope to the west.

This creature isn't a truly ferocious beast, but it's much larger than an ordinary goat, with its shoulder height almost reaching a person's chest. Its two curved horns on its forehead resemble polished white stones, and its winter fur is incredibly thick, making it one of the common materials used by the Black Rock tribe for wintering. Besides that, its meat is edible, its tendons can be used to make bows, its bones can be used to make nails, and its horns can be used to grind medicine or make handles—there's practically nothing wasted.

As Zheng Yi walked along, he finally saw how these tribal hunters made a living on a daily basis.

Darkness settles as one observes the snow's imprint.

The Flame Mastiff listens to the wind direction.

Red Tooth was responsible for running around the foot of the slope, looking for the tiny hoofprints that had been made the night before.

The oldest hunter in the team would occasionally crouch down, lift the snow, and check the condition of the frozen grass underneath—whether it was broken or not, the hardness or softness of the animal droppings, or if the ice shell had been broken open. Everyone had a task, and they were all very skilled at it.

Zheng Yi followed for half an hour, and then suddenly understood.

The people of the Black Rock Tribe are not necessarily weaker than some cultivators from sects in the south.

Their strength lies not in fancy moves, but in the "way of life" they've learned through trials and tribulations in the face of wind and snow.

When we reached the bottom of the windward slope, we indeed saw the flock of Icehorn sheep.

There were seven or eight sheep in total, rooting around and feeding on lichens between the thin snow and black rocks. The lead sheep was particularly large, with its horn tips worn blue. When it pawed through the snow with one hoof, it revealed the yellowish grass roots underneath.

Wu Chen raised his hand, and the crowd immediately dispersed.

No one shouted, and no one rushed to show off.

Yan'ao and two men from the Firemane tribe pressed forward from the left, while Chiya led two men to flank from behind, and Wuchen guarded the front line. Zheng Yi had originally planned to just watch, but when the sheep was forced to turn around suddenly and charge straight towards Chiya, he still took a step forward. (End of Chapter)