Duosheng Danyuan

"Hmm." Without turning around, I just gave a soft hum, which was my response to Zeng Yixi.

"What did you get?" Seeing me stop, Zeng Yixi immediately ran in front of me again, staring straight into my eyes, almost questioning me.

"Sigh..." I sighed and said, "Same as before. Same question, I want you to answer first."

"Answer what? I already told you everything I learned from Chen Yu."

You're lying.

"What lie am I telling? You're the one lying!" Zeng Yixi stomped her feet in frustration, almost angrily retorting.

"What did I say? If you keep acting so unreasonably, I'm not going to play along anymore." With that, I started to step past her.

"You're lying to me! Do you think I'm stupid? From the time I left Jingxi Lodge to this Mingling Residence, I haven't encountered you at all, yet you've appeared in front of Mingling Residence before me. That in itself is the biggest problem!"

"Maybe I set off earlier than you?" I replied casually.

"Impossible!" Zeng Yixi retorted immediately, with certainty. "I watched you and Lin Xu return to the thatched hut. After you got back, I went straight from Jingxi Lodge to Mingling Residence. Even if you're a boy and physically stronger than me, you would definitely have passed by me on your way to Mingling Residence!"

"You really went to great lengths." I rubbed my forehead and said, feeling a little embarrassed, as I listened to Zeng Yixi's words.

I never expected the woman in front of me to be so cunning. Before sneaking away, she even made sure that no one could escape faster than her.

"So, what did you get?" Zeng Yixi ignored my evaluation of her and stared at me intently, eager for my answer.

"Thanks to you, I found some things in the Quiet Abode."

"Thanks to me? What do you mean by 'thanks to me'? My clues have absolutely nothing to do with the Quiet Retreat... Never mind, that's not important. So what exactly did you discover?"

"Just some clues about cultivation in this world, just like you."

"Liar!" Zeng Yixi said angrily. "What makes you think I'm a fool? If you really discovered the secret of the Tranquil Abode thanks to me, then the time period when you found the clues must have been after you left Chen Yu! What you got couldn't just be clues about this world; you must have gotten something else... like a cheat code or something, am I right!?"

Seeing Zeng Yixi's eagerness, I was really struggling to keep up. Her personality was far more fiery than she appeared, even bordering on brash. And her mind worked incredibly fast; in just a few words, she grasped the crux of the matter and the issues in the timeline.

This person...

"It's not exactly a cheat code, but I did discover some things."

"really!"

"So what? Do you want me to share it with you?"

"Of course," Zeng Yixi said matter-of-factly.

"Why? Or rather, on what grounds?" I pursed my lips and smiled politely.

"Because you're a good person?" Zeng Yixi replied with a smile.

"Hehe... If you're joking, let's wait until we get back to the Quiet Abode."

"Yes," Zeng Yixi nodded, then said seriously, "because I can exchange the clues I have with you."

"Oh? What other clues did you get?" I admit, Zeng Yixi's words piqued my interest.

"In Qian Zhe's words, 'This is a different price,'" Zeng Yixi said, pursing her lips.

"Interesting, but unfortunately, your current actions won't make me willing to pay for your services. The reason you're so eager to cling to me is because you've discovered my unusual movements, right?"

"Um."

"Then it's simple. Similarly, the reason I treat you so casually is precisely because your behavior is so mediocre, so mediocre that I don't think you've discovered anything."

"Hehe..." Zeng Yixi twitched her lips and just looked at me without saying anything more.

A moment of silence.

"Let's go in first," Zeng Yixi said, gesturing to Mingling Residence behind her. "It'll be good to go in together, at least we can look out for each other. As for the deal on the clues, we can talk about it properly tonight or tomorrow. We can even talk while we're strolling around Mingling Residence."

"Whatever you want." Without giving a reply, I walked directly towards the gate of Mingling Residence.

Behind me, Zeng Yixi gave a soft hum and followed me up.

Passing over the gate with the three large characters "Minglingju" inscribed on it, we walked side by side into this courtyard hidden among half a pine tree.

From its appearance, Mingling Residence is essentially a courtyard, surrounded by trees and bamboo groves whose names I don't know, giving it the atmosphere of an ancient poet's secluded dwelling. If it weren't for the faint smell of decay in the air, I might really think I was in some kind of ancestral hall or tourist attraction.

When I reached the actual entrance of Mingling Residence, I looked up slightly and examined the plaque above the gate.

Aside from the three large characters "螟蛉居" (Mingling Residence), there was also a line of smaller characters clearly engraved in the lower right corner of the plaque. Whether it was due to the benefits of my cultivation or something else, my eyesight was exceptionally good, and I could see the line of smaller characters on the plaque with perfect clarity—"Entry is prohibited for the entire class; no more than two people may enter together."

"It really suits you, doesn't it?" Zeng Yixi, who was also reading the small print behind me, said to me.

"Hmm." I nodded, pulled on the door ring, but found it wouldn't open, so I bent down to push open the door of Mingling Residence.

"Wait a minute." Zeng Yixi said, pulling me back as I tried to push open the door. "Before we go in, I want to confirm something with you."

"What?"

"You have a way to save your life, right? If danger arises."

"No, I hope you can save me then." I shook my head and pushed open the door of Mingling Residence.

"Damn it! Why did you just push the door open? If something really happened to you, I definitely wouldn't save you!" Zeng Yixi complained angrily, her voice low.

"random."

The door opened with a thud, and a smell of damp grass and wood, along with a humid and sticky odor, wafted out.

Before Zeng Yixi and me, the true face of Mingling Residence began to slowly emerge.

"So this is what a 'Mingling Residence' looks like?" Zeng Yixi said in surprise from behind me.

From the outside, it looks like an ordinary old, dilapidated courtyard house, but once inside, it turns out to be a circular pavilion nestled against the mountain and beside the water. This contrast is enough to startle anyone.

"Wasn't this Mingling Residence a one-story building when we were outside?" I said.

"Like Lianxin Hall and Yangyuanzhai, the space here should also have problems," Zeng Yixi said tentatively.

"That's possible."

While talking with Zeng Yixi, I was also taking in the entire view of Mingling Residence.

This is a nine-story circular pavilion, with winding corridors spiraling upwards. The abrupt ends of the eaves are cleverly concealed among the mist and pine trees. At the very center of the pavilion, several hills, each about a person's height, are accompanied by a babbling brook, seemingly a real landscape rather than mere decoration.

"These faint blue ripples... are they spiritual energy?" Zeng Yixi asked.

"I don't know, but if we follow the settings of a fantasy world, it should be." Looking at the faint blue halo emanating from the mountains and rivers, I nodded, thinking the same thing as Zeng Yixi.

Through the mountains and rivers, I can vaguely see that beneath the half-buried soil covered by vegetation, there seem to be some regular patterns.

Perhaps it's runes, perhaps it's an array, perhaps it's something else entirely; in any case, these abrupt patterns are definitely the product of someone's deliberate actions.

"Now, what do we say?" Zeng Yixi asked.

"Find the rules. Based on our experience at Yangyuanzhai, Lianxintang, and Jingxilu, there must be rules here as well."

"That makes sense." Zeng Yixi nodded and started to walk towards me.

"You want to come with me?"

"Otherwise what?"

I glanced at the setting sun in the circular sky, then turned to Zeng Yixi and said, "Let's split up; it's getting late. If we search in opposite directions with our backs to each other, we can halve the time spent exploring each floor."

"That's true... but wouldn't that increase the chances of something going wrong many times over? Even though we're here to find clues, we should still prioritize safety..."

"Safety? In this godforsaken place, is there any safety left for us?"

"At least under the protection of the rules, those guys didn't attack us, did they?"

"You're right," I affirmed Zeng Yixi's words, patted her shoulder, and smiled, "Similarly, so far, the worst outcome for those who broke the rules or encountered danger was simply an increase in their cultivation progress, wasn't it?"

"..." Zeng Yixi listened to my words and remained silent without replying.

"Alright, let's begin." I turned around, my back to Zeng Yixi, and said, "If we hadn't met, we would have explored on our own anyway, wouldn't we?"

"...Hmm." After a long silence, Zeng Yixi finally responded.

So we split into two groups and began searching the first floor of the Cicada's Abode.

Pale blue spiritual energy rippled slowly outwards from the central landscape. This ethereal, mist-like energy passed through my body, making me feel only a slight coolness, nothing more. It was as if it were just ordinary water mist.

I walked slowly along the left-hand corridor of the attic, the hollow wooden planks of the floorboards creaking under my feet from time to time, making my steps unsettling. Of course, I hadn't felt secure since arriving at Shengdan Academy.

If we consider the landscape at the center of this circular pavilion as the inner side, then I am currently walking along the outer wall. The inner landscape is separated from the outer circular pavilion only by a fence.

On the wall, there was a closed door every five or six steps. I looked across and saw that the doors were the same shape, and my door was directly opposite the door of the furthest room on the same floor of the circular attic, showing a clear axial symmetry.

"Door to door? But if that's the case, what does the front door we came in from correspond to? Hmm... it just looks like an ordinary wall."

Turning my gaze away, I continued to ponder the connections between the doors. Strangely, apart from the doors and the room numbers next to them, there were no other decorations separating or distinguishing the rooms. The doors themselves were also identical, except for the different room numbers.

"Is it a caterpillar's dwelling? Caterpillar... The only thing I can think of about this species is that line from my high school biology class... 'The caterpillar has offspring, and the wasp carries them.'" My fingers lightly brushed against the wall next to the door in front of me, and for some reason, the profound meaning of the word "caterpillar" in "caterpillar's dwelling" began to come to mind.

After all, if we interpret the literal meaning and consider the internal structure and shape of the Mingling Residence, the architectural style of this place does resemble an insect's nest, densely packed and monotonous, like a honeycomb or an anthill.

However, my associations end there. After all, I'm just a junior college student, and I took the adult college entrance examination as a non-academic candidate. For someone like me, being able to recall the phrase "The caterpillar has offspring, but the wasp carries them" at this moment is already the limit.

"I wonder if Lin Xu knows about this. Su Wanqing, yes, she definitely knows. She's in high school. Su Wanqing... Sigh, why think so much? Taking care of the present is the most important thing."

Shaking my head, I forcibly stopped my random thoughts and began to carefully search for clues again.

However, the corridors of the Mingling Residence were excessively tidy; there was practically nothing there at all.

When I passed halfway, that is, a quarter of the way through the circular corridor, the corridor in front of me split into two parts. The right half, along the outer wall, is the same corridor as the section I just passed through; the left half, along the inner side with its landscape view, has a spiral staircase leading directly to the second-floor attic of Mingling Residence.

I stood at the fork in the road, straining to peer towards the second-floor attic. Confirming I couldn't see anything useful, I continued towards the right-side wall. I wasn't in a hurry to go upstairs; meeting up with Zeng Yixi first was more important.

The second half of the journey was the same as the first half—regular, repetitive, and without any clues.

"Did you find anything?" Zeng Yixi asked me from not far away, and slowly walked towards me.

"No, what about you?" I slowly walked towards her.

There was nothing there, not even a trace of the rules.

"I think so too."

"Shall we continue up to the second floor?"

"Of course, we're pretty fast, so finishing exploring the nine-story attic before dark shouldn't be a problem," I nodded and said.

"Fine." Zeng Yixi walked up to me and shrugged helplessly.

At the very moment we met, rules began to emerge from the wall in front of us.