Chapter 90: Chapter 90
Shen Xiuhan finished the last few bamboo slips, shook his head with a touch of disappointment, and snapped the ancient scroll shut.
The Tongbei Stance didn’t fit into his current combat system. Keeping it served little purpose.
He stood and walked to the bed, reaching into a hidden compartment beneath it to pull out a small grey cloth bundle.
Inside lay the treasures he had accumulated over the past weeks.
Silver.
An origin stone.
The mysterious Jade Mirror he had taken from Gao Fu’s hiding place — supposedly a key to the Blessed Land.
As for the Sea-Overturning Pearl, Shen Xiuhan had strung it on a few threads of silk and hung it around his neck. Anyone who didn’t know better would take it for an ornament.
He tossed the old bamboo scroll into the bundle alongside the other treasures, grabbed the corners of the cloth, and tied them into a dead knot.
He was about to stuff it back into the compartment when his hands froze.
“Hm?”
Shen Xiuhan’s brow furrowed. His gaze locked on the grey bundle in his hands.
From inside the wrapping — which should have been opaque — a deep blue glow was bleeding through.
The light was faint yet strangely penetrating, pulsing in and out like the breath of a living thing, alternating bright and dim.
“What’s going on…”
A chill of alertness ran through him. He yanked the bundle open.
The sight that met his eyes stopped his breath.
Several slips of the old bamboo scroll had come loose at some point. And the gold wire that strung them together had somehow coiled itself around the mysterious Jade Mirror — like a serpent.
The moment the two objects touched, it was as though dry tinder had met open flame — as though two halves of a broken puzzle had found each other at last.
Two things that had no business being related were now twined together in an eerie embrace.
A deep blue radiance — dense enough to seem solid — flowed and surged between the Jade Mirror and the gold wire, growing more intense by the second.
Three breaths…
Five breaths…
After roughly ten breaths —
FLASH!
Without warning, the light blazed to blinding brilliance, flooding the entire bamboo room as bright as day.
Then.
Thousands upon thousands of tiny, fingernail-sized characters in pale blue materialized from the luminous halo where the Jade Mirror and scroll intertwined. They spilled outward in a dense swarm, hovering silently in midair.
A pressure — icy, vast, and oceanic — settled heavily into the small bamboo room.
Shen Xiuhan’s pupils contracted sharply.
His gaze found the large characters at the very top. His throat bobbed. The words left his lips before he could stop them.
“Scripture of the Divine General Who Gazes into the Void and Illuminates the Heavens…”
Below that heading, thousands of tiny luminescent water-characters cascaded downward like a waterfall — dense beyond measure. These were clearly the cultivation method itself.
Shen Xiuhan’s heart gave a thump.
In his mind flashed the name he had glimpsed when he examined the Sea-Overturning Pearl: the Abyssal Frost-Fiend Sea-Overturning True Scripture.
The naming conventions were identical…
And it had only manifested when bound to that Jade Mirror…
Could this art also be part of Diaohailou’s inheritance?
Shen Xiuhan’s thoughts raced.
He happened to have a sliver of intelligence remaining. Without hesitation, he spent it.
【Today’s Intelligence has refreshed!】
【Intelligence 1: The Tongbei Stance you obtained was originally called the Through-Arm Fist. This art is a lower-tier introductory method derived from the Scripture of the Divine General Who Gazes into the Void and Illuminates the Heavens.】
【Note: The Through-Arm Fist’s stance circulation path was tampered with by human hands at the thirty-ninth line and the seventy-first line. Anyone who cultivates this method will never, in their entire life, break through to Transforming Strength!】
‘Sss…’
Reading this intelligence, Shen Xiuhan felt cold sweat break out along his spine.
‘The Tongbei Stance… was secretly sabotaged? Its cultivation path deliberately altered to seal off any chance of reaching Transforming Strength forever?’
Shen Xiuhan’s expression darkened.
What a vicious, bloodline-severing scheme…
Song Huatang and Madam Han had been tortured to the brink of death by Yan Xiao over this very manual.
Yan Xiao and his wife had practically torn the hall apart searching for it…
And in the end, every last one of them had been killing themselves for a crippled art that could never reach its destination.
The person who had tampered with the manual behind the scenes —
Who were they?
And what conspiracy were they running in Changyun County with a scheme this vast?
Shen Xiuhan suppressed the chill in his chest and read on.
【Intelligence 2: The Scripture of the Divine General Who Gazes into the Void and Illuminates the Heavens is the inheritance art of the Divine General Peak — one of Diaohailou’s four great main peaks! This peak is ranked alongside Abyssal Peak, Ape God Peak, and Old Man Peak. At the highest level of mastery, this scripture enables the cultivation of the divine power Void-Gazing Eye! Once opened, this eye can perceive the flaws in all things and replicate any technique under heaven!】
Perceive all flaws. Replicate all techniques.
“This is… a divine power!”
Shen Xiuhan’s eyelids twitched violently.
He had never dreamed that the old bamboo scroll and the Jade Mirror, joined by sheer chance, concealed within them a divine power pointing straight to the great Dao.
“Just like the Stream-Side Elder — both are inheritance divine powers from Diaohailou!”
Shen Xiuhan let out a long breath of turbid air, forcing down the thundering in his chest.
Staring at the intelligence, his mind raced, and in that moment, a flood of scattered clues assembled into a complete, coherent web.
‘So that’s how it is… Diaohailou had four great main peaks. And each peak must correspond to one scripture pointing to the great Dao — each capable of cultivating a divine power!’
‘The Divine General Peak corresponds to this Scripture of the Divine General Who Gazes into the Void and Illuminates the Heavens, which yields the divine power Void-Gazing Eye.’
‘The Abyssal Peak… must correspond to the Abyssal Frost-Fiend Sea-Overturning True Scripture.’
‘The Old Man Peak is surely linked to the Stream-Side Elder! The Thousand Lakes Fishing I Deduced from its fragment is essentially a lower-tier derivative of the Stream-Side Elder art!’
‘Only the Ape God Peak remains… I haven’t encountered anything tied to it yet.’
‘Four main peaks. Four divine powers. And four great spirit artifacts — the Sea-Overturning Pearl among them…’
Shen Xiuhan’s gaze deepened.
‘A sect this vast, this deeply rooted — yet in today’s martial world, not so much as a whisper of its name can be found. It’s as though someone erased it from the history books entirely.’
At this thought, a final piece of certainty crystallized in Shen Xiuhan’s mind.
‘Diaohailou… was almost certainly annihilated in the distant past.’
‘And that so-called Blessed Land is, in all likelihood, nothing other than Diaohailou’s ruins.’
Shen Xiuhan lowered his gaze to the mysterious Jade Mirror, still entangled with the ancient gold wire.
‘As for this Jade Mirror, it must be one of the keys to entering that sect’s ruins.’
In his mind, an old piece of intelligence surfaced unbidden.
【Intelligence 3: The mysterious Jade Mirror you obtained from the hidden compartment appears to be a key for opening a “Blessed Land”… Countdown to the Blessed Land’s opening: 349 days…】
‘It’s been over fifty days since I got the Jade Mirror. By now, there are fewer than three hundred days left before the Diaohailou Blessed Land reveals itself.’
Urgency flashed through Shen Xiuhan’s eyes.
‘The moment an ancient ruin holding fortune of this magnitude opens, the great powers will take notice. If I want my share of that inheritance — if I want to seize the opportunities that are rightfully mine — I must raise my strength at all costs!’
His resolve set, Shen Xiuhan drew a deep breath. He reached out with both hands, gripping the Jade Mirror in one and the gold wire in the other, and gently pulled them apart.
HUMMM…
In midair, the thousands of water-condensed characters lost their anchor in an instant.
WHOOSH!
The text disintegrated — each character dissolving into a crystalline, translucent droplet — and drifted downward in a gentle shower.
Patter… patter… patter…
Inside the bamboo room, it was as though a soft spring rain had materialized from nowhere — the kind that barely dampens a sleeve.
Water beads struck the green bamboo floorboards, splashing into tiny blossoms, trailing coolness.
Shen Xiuhan let the drops fall on his cheeks. Wonder stirred in his gaze, and he couldn’t help but murmur in admiration.
“Condensing water from the void, scattering text into rain… Truly worthy of a divine-power scripture. Remarkable beyond words.”
He carefully stowed the Jade Mirror and the bamboo scroll, then turned his gaze to the final two pieces of intelligence.