Chapter 374

Chapter 374: Linking the Clues

Yu Sheng finally understood. Xuan Che’s elder senior uncle truly deserved the title of exploration master. He could always pull weird objects out of weird places—right from his pocket. In a way, he was basically a kind of immortal Doraemon.

“Thinking back now,” Immortal Yuan Hao said, holding the strange mask as he recalled, “that outpost should have been an abnormal spatial node—not an Otherworld, because there was no depth difference separating it from reality. That black-robed cultivator probably entered while searching for something, got trapped in the endlessly looping abnormal space, and died inside.”

Yu Sheng listened in a daze, his eyes fixed on the mask. When Immortal Yuan Hao finished, he asked without thinking, “Where is that outpost? Can we still find it?”

“That asteroid belt isn’t hard to find,” Immortal Yuan Hao said, shaking his head with regret. “But the outpost is gone. The next year I went back to look for it, and there was nothing at the original location. It must have been swallowed completely by the abnormal space. That kind of space can’t last long. A year is enough for it to collapse and disappear. It’s just hard to say how it formed—maybe the outpost’s equipment malfunctioned, maybe it encountered a natural phenomenon. Hard to tell.”

The grand hall fell quiet as everyone considered the implications. After a moment, Immortal Yuan Ling broke the silence.

“Anything else? Senior Brother—did you examine the black-clothed man? Trace his origin?”

“I couldn’t.” Immortal Yuan Hao sighed. “He was clean as a whistle. Nothing on him could prove his identity. He looked like someone prepared to die before leaking secrets. On top of that, the corpse had heavy body-tempering traces, making it hard to infer any background. But… while I couldn’t identify where he came from, I did notice something else.”

Yu Sheng and Immortal Yuan Ling spoke at the same time. “Something else?”

“He had a jade fragment in his mouth. He likely put it there in his final moments, when he knew he couldn’t survive.”

Yu Sheng blinked, turning to the thoughtful look on Immortal Yuan Ling’s face. “What does that mean?”

“It suggests he was a frontier-descended settler from Cold Spike or Shu Ji,” Immortal Yuan Ling explained. “Holding a stone in the mouth at death is a habit among many groups living at the border. In the early days, when barren-star environments were harsh, pioneers often couldn’t even preserve a body after disaster—or they’d vanish into void anomalies and never return home. So there was a saying: the dead hold a stone of home in their mouth so the soul can return. Over time, it became tradition.

“And because frontier planets are far apart and their materials differ, the stones differ as well—purple gold, crystal stone, white stone, long rock. But those who hold jade… that’s unique to frontier descendants from Cold Spike or Shu Ji.”

Yu Sheng listened, fascinated by this local folklore only people in the Featherwing-13B region would know. Then it clicked.

“That matches our earlier judgment,” he said. “Those black-robed cultivators really did come from the frontier—from pioneer worlds…”

“Exactly.” Immortal Yuan Ling nodded, grave. “And if they truly came from Shu Ji, that also matches another clue.”

“What clue?”

“That old senior Yun Qing Zi,” Immortal Yuan Ling said, voice low. “A thousand years ago, the place where we observed him fighting an unknown powerful enemy—and then vanishing—was on a barren planet near Shu Ji.”

Yu Sheng’s eyes widened. In his mind, scattered fragments suddenly found the same thread and snapped into alignment.

A thousand years ago, Yun Qing Zi fought something near Shu Ji and seemingly fell, leaving only fragments behind—then vanished for a millennium. A thousand years later, an eerie Otherworld appeared near Grand Void Spiritual Axis. A group of black-robed cultivators suspected to be from Shu Ji surfaced, searching for the Emperor Lord’s legacy. At the same time, the missing Yun Qing Zi appeared in an illusion-dream, also reaching for the Emperor Lord’s legacy.

And Yun Qing Zi’s temperament seemed to have changed—from refined and gentle in old records to twitchy and unstable now.

Immortal Yuan Hao stared, stunned. “Yun Qing Zi? The Exiled Immortal of the Frontier who vanished a thousand years ago? Why are you bringing up that senior?”

“This matter likely involves him,” Immortal Yuan Ling said carefully. “Yu Sheng saw someone calling himself Yun Qing Zi in an illusion-dream, and he was also pursuing the Emperor Lord’s legacy.”

He explained everything. Yu Sheng filled in details. By the time it was all clear, both Yuan Hao and Yuan He were silent in the hall.

After holding it in for a long while, the tall, thin Immortal Yuan He suddenly blurted, “Maybe I should go back and check my Rare Beast Pavilion. I’ve been gone for many days. Who knows what the disciples have been doing with their lessons…”

“Don’t rush to leave,” Immortal Yuan Ling said at once. “If you go back now, you’ll see them refining amphibious cockroaches and ten-year-lifespan mosquitoes, and you’ll get an even bigger headache. If this truly involves an ancient powerhouse—and even drags the old world into it—none of us can stay idle.”

Immortal Yuan He let out a long sigh. “I only want to focus on scholarship. Why is it so hard…”

Irene, perched on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, suddenly brightened. “So those black-robed cultivators might’ve been sent by Yun Qing Zi? He sent them to find the Emperor Lord’s legacy?”

“We can’t rule it out,” Yu Sheng said. Then he looked up at Immortal Yuan Ling and Xuan Che. “How’s the black-robed cultivator we caught? Can we interrogate him now?”

Immortal Yuan Ling thought briefly, then nodded. “…Logically, it would be safer to keep working him over for another day or two. But now we have two breakthrough points—Yun Qing Zi and Shu Ji. We can go ask.”

“Good.” Yu Sheng didn’t hesitate. “Interrogate him now. See if he’ll cough up anything useful.”

Not long after, led by Immortal Yuan Ling and Xuan Che, Yu Sheng and the others arrived at a secluded place some distance from the main hall of the Parted Clouds Palace.

High stone walls rose around it. A dark grove pressed in from all sides. A lingering chill seemed to hover between the trees and the walls, as if countless vigilant eyes were hidden in the cold, watching everything. Inside the gray-white walls stood only a plain, unremarkable building.

The moment Yu Sheng stepped into the courtyard, a heavy pressure rose in his chest for no reason, like whispering voices brushing at his ears.

Irene straightened instantly, irritation flashing across her face. She shoved at the air beside her.

“What are you yapping about?”

A sharp tearing sound split the air. A black glow flickered at her fingertips, and the entire courtyard fell instantly silent.

With a smack, a pitch-black shadowspawn slapped onto the outer wall of the plain building. The shadow twitched, slid down, and resolved into a woman dressed in black, her face hidden behind a veil.

Everyone went still.

Yu Sheng jumped. “…Who is that?”

“A guard disciple of the Heart Questioning Pavilion,” Immortal Yuan Ling said, looking awkward. “She likely used the heart-inquiry mantra out of habit to check whether anyone entering had ill intent. This child is a bit rigid. Ever since she took this duty, she has questioned me as well. She has offended you two guests.”

“Ah…” Yu Sheng was more embarrassed than anyone. He poked Irene. “Hurry and apologize. You hit too hard.”

As he spoke, Xuan Che had already rushed over to help the veiled woman up. She looked dizzy and confused, glanced around, then finally focused on Immortal Yuan Ling. A beat late, she stepped forward to salute.

“Master, I was just attacked—”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Immortal Yuan Ling cut in. “We’re here to interrogate that demonic-path cultivator. How is his condition?”

“He’s still muddled and dazed,” the guard disciple said. “This disciple feared he would wake up and try to take his own life, so I fed him more divine heart-locking and soul-calming, mind-clearing elixir…”