Starting as the heir of a marquis's mansion, I gained access to a summoning system.

A jade slip lay inside the box.

It was about the size of a palm, dark green all over, and covered with fine scratches. Dongfang Weiwo recognized the direction of those scratches at a glance—they were of the same origin as the ancient array patterns that the Dark Gold Giant Shadow used to dismantle itself, but they were rougher and more primitive, like the "draft" of this script.

Thirty years ago.

Lin Xiaoman said, "When my grandfather was still alive, one evening, a person fell from the sky and landed in the river outside the town. When he was pulled out, he was barely alive."

He stayed at the Lin family's house for over forty days, and left this behind before he left. He said, 'Someone will come up from below and give this to him later.'"

"What did that person look like?"

Lin Xiaoman frowned, thought for a moment, and said, "Grandpa said that person didn't have a left arm. The cut was fresh, like it had just been torn off by something. But he was in good spirits; he even smiled and carved a word on the boundary marker before he left."

The moment Dongfang Weiwu's fingers touched the dark green jade slip, the depths of the eighth arm bone fragment within his body suddenly throbbed—the arm that had flown back from the void was now embedded in his bones, resonating at the same frequency as the jade slip.

He looked down at the surface of the jade slip, and the draft-like array patterns began to move on their own in his field of vision, rearranging and combining into a complete pattern shape that he had never seen before.

The patterns pointed in one direction—southeast. Southeast of the Tianwu Continent.

"Thirty years ago, there was a man without a left arm," Dongfang Weiwo said softly, "the Demon God Lü."

Lin Xiaoman blinked: "You know him?"

"He guarded the gates of my homeland for a hundred years."

Dongfang Weiwo put the jade slip into his pocket. "This jade slip contains a map. In the southeast direction of the Tianwu Realm, something is waiting for him to 'return to retrieve'."

Before Lin Xiaoman could ask any further questions, a deep shout came from outside the bamboo forest: "Xiaoman—someone's coming to the town entrance! Eight or nine riders in iron armor, like sentries from Eagle Fortress!"

Lin Xiaoman's expression changed, and her silver bell jumped. She stood up abruptly, glanced outside the bamboo grove, and then spoke much faster as she turned back:

"We can't let the people from Eagle Fortress into Green Bamboo Town! Last time they came to 'borrow grain,' they took away three whole granaries full of grain, and they didn't even write a note!"

She grabbed Dongfang Weiwo's wrist and pulled him outside. "Hide inside and don't make a sound. The people from the upper realm will—"

"Will they capture him and sell him?" Dongfang Weiwo didn't move. His wrist remained motionless in Lin Xiaoman's palm, like a stone pillar that had taken root.

Lin Xiaoman was taken aback: "How did you know—"

"The same applies to people from other realms captured in the Tianxuan Continent."

Dongfang Weiwo broke free from her hand and took a step forward. After being "rejected" by the Heavenly Martial Qi all night, the divine and demonic skeleton within his body was now loosened slightly by the combined effects of the heat of the porridge and the resonance of the jade slip.

A faint glimmer of dark gold seeped from between the bones of the eighth arm fragment, flowing along the meridians of the right arm to the palm.

He looked down at his palm.

There was nothing there. That faint golden luster was too weak to solidify into anything substantial.

But the key seal in his dantian, which had been as still as a dead object, trembled slightly when he sensed that ray of light in the "emptiness" of his right palm.

The key imprint didn't wake up. But it moved.

The seven members of the Lin family had already gathered outside the bamboo grove.

Lin Xiaoman's father, Lin Tieshan, was a sturdy middle-aged man with half a carrying pole on his shoulder. Behind him stood two boys, a head shorter than him but equally robust—Lin Xiaoman's two older brothers.

Grandmother stood at the kitchen door, leaning on a green bamboo cane, but she didn't come out. She was already gripping the cane very tightly in her hand.

The sound of horses' hooves came from the town entrance, growing ever closer.

Eight or nine riders, the clanging of their armor clashing was particularly jarring in the morning light. At the head of the group, a scarred man in his early thirties rode on a black horse, a broad-bladed cleaver at his waist, the hilt inlaid with a dark red tiger's eye stone.

He reined in his horse and stopped outside the bamboo fence of the Lin family, looking down at the seven members of the Lin family.

His gaze passed over Lin Tieshan's shoulder and landed in the direction of the bamboo house, then he snorted.

"The night before last, strange light fell from the sky upon this area. The Grand Commander of Eagle Fortress has ordered all villages and sects within a hundred miles to cooperate in the search."

He pointed towards the bamboo house. "The light is falling in the direction of the backyard of this bamboo house. Move aside, I want to see the crater."

Lin Tieshan held the carrying pole horizontally in front of him: "The backyard is my family's vegetable garden, there are no pits."

"It's not up to you."

The scarred man gripped the hilt of his sword and spurred his horse forward. The two Lin family boys simultaneously took a half-step back, their knees trembling slightly.

At this moment, Dongfang Weiwo walked out of the bamboo forest.

He walked slowly. It was only the second day since he had just woken up, and the flow of his Tianwu Yuanqi in his meridians was still sluggish, making a slight rustling sound with each step.

But the moment he stepped out of the shadow of the bamboo house and into the sunlight, the black horse under the scarred man suddenly buckled, its knees bent, and it snorted.

The scarred man glanced down at his horse and frowned.

"Who are you?"

"Guests from the Lin family."

Dongfang Weiwo walked up to Lin Tieshan and stood beside him.

At this moment, the eight bones inside his body are doing something subtle—the surface of the bones, which had been "rejected" by the Heavenly Martial Qi all night, has begun to slowly secrete a very thin layer of dark gold film.

The membrane was so thin that it was invisible to the naked eye, but it was extremely hard, like the fine dust on porcelain before it was glazed and fired.

His left hand was behind his back, and his right hand hung down at his side.

The scarred man glanced at him again.

This time I looked more closely, my gaze lingering on his face for a moment, as if appraising something whose price I wasn't sure about. Then he suddenly smiled.

"You came from the lower realm, didn't you?"

The scarred man said, "Such a powerful aura, bones as hard as untempered stone. Eagle Fortress specializes in this kind of thing; selling them to the arena can fetch thirty mid-grade spirit stones." He raised his hand, and eight or nine riders behind him simultaneously spread out, surrounding half of the Lin family's bamboo fence. "Take them down. Alive."

He drew his sword very quickly.

The moment the broadsword was drawn, a layer of dark red flames exploded on the blade, and the air smelled burnt. The sword slashed down towards Dongfang Weiwu's shoulder; to an ordinary person it was a blur, but to Dongfang Weiwu—it was very slow.

Very slow.

He was so slow that he even had time to glance at Lin Xiaoman's expression. The girl's mouth opened halfway, before the silver bells could even ring.

Then he extended his right hand.

With his index and middle fingers together, he precisely gripped the blade.

The dark red flame on the broadsword went out with a "hiss" between his fingers, and the blade began to crack from where he was holding it, with cracks spreading like a spider web towards the hilt.

The smile on the scarred man's face froze before it could fade—he looked down at the knife, which was shattering; he looked up at the person, who hadn't moved.

A very thin line of dark gold shimmered at the tips of Dongfang Weiwo's right index and middle fingers.

That sliver of light seeped from deep within the bones, reaching the surface of the skin, as thin as a needle tip.

But this one wisp of energy caused the concentrated primordial energy of the Tianwu Continent to churn like boiling water within a three-inch radius of his fingertips.

"Borrow grain?" Dongfang Wei asked calmly, "Or arrest people?"

The scarred man abruptly dropped the half-broken cleaver and turned his horse back three steps.

The eight or nine riders behind him simultaneously reined in their horses and retreated, the clanging of their armor disrupting their rhythm. The scarred man stared at the sliver of dark gold gleam at Dongfang Weiwo's fingertip for a moment, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

"……withdraw."

Eight or nine riders turned and charged out of the bamboo forest, their hooves pounding the cobblestones all the way to the town entrance. After the last hoofbeat faded, the bamboo forest returned to the stillness of the morning light.

All seven members of the Lin family stood still.

Lin Xiaoman was the first to come to her senses.

She rushed forward two steps, grabbed Dongfang Weiwo's right wrist and examined it from all angles—the dark gold line at the fingertips had disappeared, and the skin was as smooth as before, with nothing visible.

"What is that?"

She looked up at him, her eyes shining like two glowing embers. "That city in your bones—can it be used?"

Dongfang Weiwo withdrew his hand and glanced down at the fingertips of his right hand. After the dark gold faded, the skin on his fingertips felt slightly warm, like iron that had been heated by fire.

He could feel that the "rejection" of the divine and demonic skeleton had lessened slightly after this attack—the Heavenly Martial Yuan Qi was "refined" for a moment by the dark gold at his fingertips, and for the first time, there was an active interaction between the two, rather than a passive repulsion.

"Still learning," he said.

Lin Tieshan then put down his carrying pole. He walked up to Dongfang Weiwo, looked him up and down for a while, and then patted him heavily on the shoulder: "Good. Good. You stay. Stay until you've learned it."

Grandmother emerged from the kitchen doorway, leaning on her bamboo cane. Her voice, though aged, was clear: "Come in and eat. The porridge is cold. Xiaoman, put the jade slip away."

Lin Xiaoman responded and ran back to the main room with the sandalwood box in her arms.

All nine suns had risen above the horizon, and the shadows in the bamboo forest were stretched and cut into mottled fragments by the nine beams of light from nine directions.

Dongfang Weiwo stood in the bamboo shadows, the lingering warmth of the dark gold between his fingers not yet completely dissipated.

He looked up towards the southeast.

The jade slip left behind by the Demon God Lu thirty years ago points to a certain location in the southeast of the Tianwu Continent.

Something was waiting for him there. But something more pressing was something else—the Eagle's Watch wouldn't just come once.

After the scarred man returns to report, a larger force will arrive in Qingzhu Town within a few days.

He had a few days to further refine the divine and demonic skeleton and the celestial martial energy.

The bamboo house of the Lin family, Lin Xiaoman's porridge, the map hidden in the dark green jade slip, and the secret resonance of this world with the "city" within him—all the clues at this moment are twisted into one rope, pointing in the same direction.

As he walked toward the kitchen, a very faint cracking sound came from the depths of the bamboo forest behind him.

Like a bamboo shoot breaking through the soil, or like a bone cracking under heavy pressure.

He glanced back. He saw nothing.

But the eighth arm bone deep within the skeleton trembled slightly for a moment, as if responding to a sound that came from a distant direction, a sound that only the bones could hear.

Southeast.

He withdrew his gaze and pushed open the bamboo door to the kitchen.