Wild cultivation begins with wielding the Taiyin talisman.

Ning Che did not answer.

They had arrived at the gate of the two mountain guards' post.

The door was far more exquisite and sturdy than the doors of ordinary houses, and it was slightly ajar at the moment. He raised his hand and gently pushed it open.

The room wasn't big. There was a wooden table, two chairs, and a bed against the wall. On the table lay an unfinished tea set, with two cups, one overturned and the other still standing. The tea had long since dried up, and dark brown sediment had formed at the bottom of the cup, covered with a layer of grayish-white fuzz.

The place looked like it had been simply cleaned up. There were no bodies, only unusual dark red spots in the corners and other places. Those were bloodstains.

The two of them had tea.

Then one died, and the other disappeared.

Ning Che frowned. The scene was severely damaged, and too much time had passed, making it difficult to discern anything further.

Lin Ye remained unusually silent and did not step forward. Zhong Hongyao, on the other hand, looked somewhat anxious and went up to search.

What is important about Zhong Siqi?

Ning Che's gaze swept across the room, finally landing on a locked wooden box under the bed. There was a symbol that looked like it was printed on the box.

He didn't act immediately, but waited for Zhong Hongyao to take the box out before asking, "Are all his things there?"

Zhong Hongyao didn't understand, but still replied, "Apart from gold, silver, and food, everything is probably still there."

Sure enough.

He watched as Zhong Hongyao opened the box. Inside were some clothes and an iron box buried inside.

The tin box wasn't large, about the size of a palm. There was no lock, but a thin layer of wax sealed the gap between the lid and the body. There was a mark stamped on the wax.

It's that symbol too.

Zhong Hongyao took the tin box, ran her fingertips over the mark, and her expression changed slightly.

Ning Che glanced at Lin Ye by the door, making sure he didn't do anything unusual, and then asked, "Are these your things?"

"This is my cousin's storage box. It's a type of talisman crafted by the Zhong family, resistant to detection spells and impervious to water and fire, used to store important items. The wax seal is intact, indicating that he didn't open it before he died."

"What treasure did he carry?"

"No. More likely, he wants to keep some information hidden," Zhong Hongyao said, flicking her finger across the box. A faint bluish-red light flashed from her fingertip. The wax seal melted, and the box opened by itself.

She lifted the lid of the box.

There was only one book inside. It was a light blue thread-bound book with no words on the cover.

Ning Che tidied the table and asked her to bring the book to the table so they could open it together.

It's a handwritten storybook. A very common kind, telling the love story between a young master from a noble family and a fox spirit. The writing is crude, and the plot is explicit.

Zhong Hongyao flipped through a few pages, her brows furrowing, seemingly puzzled as to why her cousin would so solemnly hide such a thing in a storage box.

"That's not right," Ning Che said.

He took the book and turned to the middle. Suddenly, a page of the story broke off.

Afterwards, the story was resumed as if nothing had happened. The torn section was rebound with fine stitches, using the same silk thread as the original spine. Unless you looked closely, you couldn't tell that the book had been taken apart and then sewn back together.

Ning Che laid the book flat, his fingertips slowly gliding along the seam of the spine. The stitching had a slight curve, and he used his fingernail to pick up a nearby thread and gently tug it.

The thread was loose, and a corner of extremely thin paper was visible in the spine.

Ning Che pulled out the paper. The paper was very thin, almost transparent, and folded into a narrow strip, obviously to be tucked into the spine of a book. When unfolded, it was no bigger than the palm of his hand, and both sides were covered with writing.

The characters are extremely small, the strokes are clearly compressed, and the structure of some characters is distorted.

But this was just an ordinary record, recording the changes in yin energy concentration at different times. Ning Che didn't recognize the units used, and thought to himself that he would have to brush up on his knowledge when he got back.

He handed the paper to Zhong Hongyao: "Can you see anything in it?"

Zhong Hongyao took it and her expression changed drastically: "This is the password my cousin told me."

Ning Che struggled almost to hide his shock; he hadn't expected to hear that word here. After a noticeable pause, he feigned deep thought and asked, "Password? What's that?"

"Well, um... a series of codes, each code corresponding to a single character."

"I see..." Ning Che's mind raced, then he paused for a considerable moment: "What did he say?"

"If nothing unexpected happens, the three numbers in each row will represent the page number, row, and column of the book, respectively."

The two immediately began flipping through the book, and after a long while, they finally wrote down the message that Zhong Siqi had conveyed.

"The village of Muyi served as a cauldron, and the blood-forged ghosts still remain within its walls."

The room was quiet for a few moments.

Ning Che carefully put the storybook and notes away and placed them in his pocket.

Zhong Hongyao looked up at him: "Those are my family's things."

"I'll keep it for you, and I'll return it to you once things are settled." Ning Che met her gaze calmly.

After a moment, Zhong Hongyao withdrew her gaze, which could be considered as tacit approval.

Ning Che didn't look at them again; his gaze returned to the ground near the doorway.

If we consider bloodstains and drag marks as the same thing, used to describe the traces left by the victim.

So...

He crouched down and looked out along the trail of blood. The blood trail left the doorway, leaving a faint scratch on the threshold, and then turned into the village alley.

His gaze followed the trail, moving forward little by little. The bloodstain didn't extend beyond the village, nor did it end at any ordinary house. It twisted and turned several times in the village lanes, ultimately leading in the same direction.

Lin Xiuer's house.

"Mu Yi Village served as the cauldron, and the blood-forged withered ghost still resides within the village." Zhong Siqi's secret letter only stated this much. However, the remaining traces revealed more, repeatedly moving between the outpost and the house, hinting at the connection between Ning Che and these two locations.

There are only three people in the village now. If the withered ghost is still in the village, he is very likely one of the three of them.

The girl named Lin Caiwei was the most suspicious; she had been staring at me intently.

Under what circumstances would someone stare intently at another person?

"What are you looking at?" Lin Ye seemed to have recovered a bit and asked in a loud voice, "What did you find just now? Why are you being so mysterious?"

So he didn't listen at all.

Ning Che withdrew his gaze, stood up, and said, "Let's first check if there are any other people in the village. We must save everyone who needs to be saved."

His tone was flat, without the slightest hint of emotion, as if none of the shocking speculations had ever happened.

Zhong Hongyao pursed her lips and looked at Ning Che. She suddenly felt that this young man was different. He was clearly from the countryside, but he seemed to be a lotus that grew out of a muddy pond, with a unique radiance of his own.

She couldn't quite describe what that radiance was until the two of them walked out the door, at which point she snapped out of her daze and quickly followed.

Lin Ye remained oblivious, treating it as a normal search. He rubbed his fist, his anger still simmering: "Fine, search. If I stumble upon that scourge, I'll chop it in half."

Ning Che walked ahead, his pace neither hurried nor slow.

The direction was exactly where Lin Xiuer and her two companions were.