Liu Xuande would never be a succubus of the Eastern Han Dynasty!

"Oh? Tell me, what exactly does it feel like?"

"I feel that the person who will cause chaos in the Han Dynasty in the future will definitely be this person."

Upon hearing this, Mrs. Lu's expression immediately grew serious. She was still very confident in Liu Bei's intuition and said, "In that case, you must be even more cautious in your contact with him."

She didn't say anything about whether Dong Zhuo should be killed now.

For Master Lu, simply killing someone outright was too much, and perhaps it was this behavior that forced the person to completely fall into evil.

"Disciple knows."

"If your intuition is correct, then this person must possess a very large amount of Heavenly Power. You must be careful."

"Disciple knows."

"Although the transfer order has been issued, the date is after the New Year." Master Lu looked at Mo Tong, who had not interrupted him the whole time, "You can go and have your tryst with him without any worries."

"..."

Liu Bei bowed without hesitation and asked, "What about Master? Do you have any reward?"

Master Lu glanced at him and replied unhappily, "Yes, I will give you a hundred ounces of gold, fifty pieces of satin, and the title of Governor of Yangzhou."

"Oh?"

"But I rejected them all."

Master Lu said lazily: "I am old and my body is useless. I plan to go home to celebrate the New Year."

"???"

But your behavior these past few nights doesn't seem like you're old and not in good health.

Liu Bei didn't dare to say this. After bowing, he pulled Mo Tong away.

Introduction: New Year: Chapter 3: Mohist Forbidden Land

The first snow of the fourth year of Xiping shattered the soul of the mountains and forests in Yangzhou.

Ice spikes weaved silver threads in Mo Tong's hair, and she would raise her hand to brush away the snowflakes on her bangs every two steps.

The stone path on the green cliff had long been buried into undulating cream. The bronze mechanical beast "Qingsi" they rode plowed deep trenches behind them, but the snow foam kicked up by the beast's claws always fell back onto the black-eyed crow-blue skirt.

When Liu Bei held her slipping deerskin boots for the third time, he finally couldn't help but untied the black cloak and covered her head with it.

"If a Mohist master breaks his leg beside me, the rest of the Mohists will have to come to me for an explanation."

The sound of his low laughter shook the snow off the pine branches and startled two or three tits that were as fat as fluffy balls.

Mo Tong peeked out from under the felt-trimmed cloak, his nose tip frozen like a porcelain doll dotted with cinnabar, his eyelashes gleaming with ice crystals, looking somewhat displeased.

"Who knew it would suddenly snow in the middle of our walk in this awful weather?!"

Before he could finish his words, he stumbled on the ice beneath the snow, causing the gilded copper chain around his waist to jingle loudly.

Liu Bei held her lower back with one hand, and the warmth of his palm penetrated through the triple layers of brocade, causing the girl's spine to stretch like a fully drawn crossbow.

She hurriedly slapped his hand away, but dropped the bronze compass in her arms into the snow pit. The twenty-eight constellations on the compass happened to reflect Liu Bei's eyes as he bent down to pick it up.

"Three of the seven stars of the Vermillion Bird are lit."

Liu Bei wiped the snow off the Kangxiu constellation and stroked the raised gears on the edge of the compass with his fingertips. "We're almost there. Miss Mo, are you worried about something bad happening inside?"

Mo Tong took back the compass with the movement of a startled squirrel, the ends of her hair swirling like arcs of light outlined by fine snow. "No! This is called... it's called calculating the coefficient of influence of wind and snow resistance on the mechanical kite!"

She pointed towards the top of the mountain with her neck stiffened. The aho-hair on her head shook away the snow, revealing a miniature crossbow bolt clip hidden in her hair. "Once we reach the top, we can enter it, a place I've never stepped into in the first half of my life... Woooo!"

The howling mountain wind cut off her voice and blew snowflakes into the back of her neck.

Liu Bei looked at the girl curled up into a ball and suddenly drew his sword to cut off a pine branch.

The sword wind swept away the umbrella-like snow crown, revealing a half-person-high tree hole below.

He took off his wrist guard and placed it on the edge of the cave, then took out the millet wine in the bamboo tube like a magic trick.

"We're still some distance away. Miss Mo, would you be so kind as to drink with me to ward off the cold?"

As the aroma of pine resin mixed with wine spread, Mo Tong was secretly using his toes to hook the bronze ring on the green rhinoceros' tail.

"Ow—"

A thunderous roar rolled out of the mechanical beast's throat, shaking the frozen stream beside the stone path into spider-web-like cracks.

She held the bamboo tube and took small sips of the drink, the white mist from her breath wet the patterns embroidered on Liu Bei's cuffs.

"Speaking of which, Master Xuande's health..." She suddenly stared at Liu Bei as he sheathed his sword, "seems to be seventy-three percent weaker than it was last month. What have you been through recently?"

Of course, it was because I was pressed on the bed by the teacher every night.

Liu Bei paused as he wiped his knuckles against the blade of his sword. A drop of snow fell on the old scar on his brow. He said in a solemn tone, "Heaven wills what is bestowed upon us; it cannot be forced by human power."

"Instead of talking about this, I'd rather paint here for entertainment."

Then, he smiled and used the tip of his sword to draw a map of the Wujun ditches on the snow, but Mo Tong suddenly took out a ruler from his sleeve and carefully added contour lines along the curve he drew.

The snow gradually became deeper like rice paper, and the two shadows were stretched into fine-brush rubbings with gold painting by the setting sun.

As the girl slid onto the ice for the umpteenth time, Liu Bei finally held her frozen wrist.

The faint light of the Chixiao fragment in his palm seeped into her bronze wristband, burning the old snow in the gaps between the gears and turning it into warm mist.

"Master Mo should add a non-slip footrest. How about I take care of it for you?"

"Master Xuande, why don't you focus on your mechanical engineering studies?"

The sound of the quarrel startled the snow from thousands of mountains, and the blue rhinoceros roared to the sky, shattering the thin ice on the stream.

As dusk approached, they finally caught sight of the overhanging eaves of the observatory on the mountaintop. The copper bells under the eaves were wrapped with chains carved from ice crystals, like the silver bracelets swinging on Mo Tong's wrist.

"finally reached."

Mo Tong controlled the mechanical beast and walked forward, then pulled Liu Bei onto its back and began to mobilize the mechanical technology.

As her fingers danced, the entire observatory began to fall.

My peripheral vision was shrouded in darkness, and I could feel myself slowly sliding down.

"Don't worry too much. This is the special mechanical technique that the Mo family master used... well, as long as you don't jump around too much, you won't fall out."

"Oh, isn't this the elevator?"

"What is an elevator?"

"It's a small, enclosed space where there's often a bunch of damned old wall lamps smoking."

"Ah, what is smoking?"

"Just take Wu Shi San."

"Then why don't they eat outside?"

"I don't know. Maybe I've lived too long."

This conversation did not last long, and they soon descended deep underground.

"Here we are."

Liu Bei looked up, and the first thing that caught his eye was a giant tree.

The sunlight leaked through the cracks in the rocks hundreds of feet high, as if a layer of moldy silver powder was poured on the giant bronze tree.

The bark is a scale armor made of millions of hexagonal copper nails. Crystal blue moss grows in every gap between the scales. The moss hangs down like a curtain, and in the shadow of the curtain are frozen blood beads from who knows how many years ago - the dark red color condensed on the tips of the moss, as if the whole tree is oozing agate juice.

The tree roots were like giant bronze pythons, crushing the floor tiles. A half-broken crossbow was inserted diagonally into the cracks between the turned-up bricks, and the rusted iron arrow in the crossbow groove was covered with frost.

The altar in the center of the open space was cracked into eight pieces, and the cracks were filled with dried blood, like residual ink spilled on an inkstone.

Someone once wrote on the tree with blood, and now only the lower half of the word "爱" in "兼爱" (universal love) remains, corroded by copper rust into a blue-black scar.

High in the treetops hung a honeycomb-shaped bronze cage, with shreds of fabric hanging from the broken bars.

A severely weathered mechanical beast fell at the edge of the tree's shadow. Fluorescent purple mushrooms grew in the eye sockets of the beast's head, and the mushroom caps covered the half of a five-zhu coin embedded in the center of its forehead.

The broken porcelain on the ground was shining with a faint light. The Mohist ruler pattern on the porcelain was soaked in blood, and the blood had long since solidified into a glass-like shell.

There was a dark green puddle in the hollow of the tree root, with a colorful oil film floating on the surface of the water, reflecting the half-rolled bamboo slip stuck in the crack of the tree trunk - the two words "non-attack" on the slip were being eaten away by the wriggling verdigris.

A dilapidated look.

“…Have you always been in a place like this before?”

"No...no."

Mo Tong was frowning at this moment, "This is completely different from what I remembered. It was a cozy and warm place..."

Liu Bei did not take over the conversation.

He suddenly thought of the various behaviors of the Mohist master in the last years of his life, and a question suddenly flashed through his mind.

According to Mo Tong, the goal of the Mohist master is to resurrect the founder of the Mohist school and build a world of great harmony. However, he becomes more and more crazy as time goes by, until he loses his mind.

But has she really lost her mind?

If there is any hidden secret in this... after all, human memory is the most easily deceived thing in the world.

Liu Bei caught a glimpse of something and said, "There seems to be something in that tree trunk. Let's go take a look first."

"it is good."

Mo Tong felt extremely heavy at this moment, but he finally mustered up the courage and took a step forward.

Maybe my real self is hiding and wants to give us a surprise?

Brief introduction: New Year: Chapter 4: Will you follow me, defeat foreign enemies, usher in a prosperous era, protect the people, and expand the territory?

"This is where the body of our ancestor is stored."

"Can you open it?"

"let me try."

When Mo Tong's fingertips slid across the cracks in the tree trunk, the bronze rust fell like blue snow.

The twenty-eight constellations mechanisms that were supposed to open the founder's coffin were now moving along her palm lines, like poisonous snakes licking the host's bones and blood.

The moment Liu Bei's sword tip lifted the last layer of copper moss, revealing the hollow heart of the tree, the gears on the ground suddenly began to rotate counterclockwise.

"Tian Zhiming ghost, open."

There was a buzzing tremor in the girl's voice as she chanted the incantation.

When the bronze tree cracked for the first time, she turned back with the joy of presenting a treasure:

"Master Xuande, look! This is the most exquisite preservation of the Mohist school..."

The last syllable suddenly got stuck in my throat and turned into ice.

The bark rolled up like dragon scales on a thousand-layer armor, but what emerged was not Mo Di's paulownia coffin, but a glazed coffin soaked in mercury liquid.

The person in the coffin was wearing the black-blue short jacket that Mo Tong often wore, and his appearance was 90% similar to his.

The glazed coffin that emerged from the mercury liquid reflected her suddenly frozen smile - the position of the cinnabar mole on the girl's temple in the coffin was exactly the same as the arc she practiced in front of the mirror yesterday.

She subconsciously touched the gold hairpin in her hair, but pulled out a strand of her black hair.

The hair ignited a green flame on the surface of the mercury liquid, illuminating the densely packed "black pupil" marks on the bottom of the coffin.

The only difference between them is that the skin of the body is extremely cold and white, with a hint of death.

"..."

Liu Bei suddenly reached out and supported Mo Tong's waist as she leaned back.

He leaned over to look at the inscription on the bottom of the coffin and found that the handwriting spanned a long period of time, from immature to neat, as if it had been copied for more than ten years.

The inside of the glass coffin even has the birthday engraved on it.

Mo Tong fell into a mysterious silence, and even when Liu Bei held her waist, she did not show the slightest shyness.

There was shock and disbelief between his brows, and his eyebrows were almost furrowed together.

"I...this..."

Liu Bei suddenly asked, "You said before that you have been here receiving instruction from the Mohist master ever since you became conscious, and have never left?"