Imperial Treasure

Chapter 1431: Chapter 833: Are All Orphans in This World Not Human?

Huang Long crossed his hairy legs, picked his teeth with a toothpick. "Hey, Ye Zi, you’re already thinking about inheriting the Thousand Buddha Hands, how come you haven’t even read the ancestral teachings?"

If they weren’t really close, Huang Long wouldn’t be running his mouth like this.

Ye Zixu frowned. "The ancestral teachings got accidentally burned by my master when he was using them to start a cooking fire."

Ahem ahem ahem!

Huang Long started coughing, and Sui Yi and the other both fell silent.

"Okay, let’s not bring that up. Anyway, the Shen Family over there is hiding a Gu Sculpture, the danger factor’s way too high. You two better not keep digging into it, don’t drag me down with you."

The first part sounded nice enough; the second half was, well, not so much.

Ye Zixu glanced at him and didn’t push it. "I wasn’t planning to get you involved anyway..."

Huang Long saw Ye Zixu reaching for that gourd and panicked on the spot. "Hey, hey, what are you doing with that? It’s already been tested, it’s mine now!"

While Huang Long was scrambling to snatch the gourd back, Pu Qinghan stared at it, looking thoughtful. "That monster... does it eat people?"

"Of course. Eating a hundred people a day is nothing to it!"

"Then why, when it was underwater... didn’t it eat me?"

Pu Qinghan suddenly dropped that line, making both Ye Zixu and Huang Long freeze mid‑movement.

"It grabbed you too? Then how..." Huang Long had just started to ask.

"A true Gu Sculpture is born out of the water marsh, loves human flesh, extremely vicious. But in the Cherry Snow Forest, not a single one of the Shen Family or their servants seems worried about it."

Sui Yi’s words made Ye Zixu’s eyes light up. "Under normal circumstances that’s impossible. People are afraid of dying. For the Shen Family to be fearless, unless that Gu Sculpture simply can’t leave Life Dragon Long Lake."

"It’s also possible the thing hasn’t fully grown yet... Right, what exactly did it do to you? Drag you into the water? Tell us what happened."

Huang Long kept saying he didn’t want to get involved, but his body was very honest; he asked Pu Qinghan with obvious curiosity.

Pu Qinghan, being blissfully unafraid, saw how Ye Zixu and Huang Long were trading a few lines and basically nailing down the monster’s secret, so she said, "I only remember that I went to pick sakura with Li Luo, then we ran into some people in black doing something to the lake. Li Luo told me to wait where I was while she went to take a look... then a monster suddenly rushed out. Its tail hooked me and pulled me into the water. I only remember part of how it looked; as soon as I went under, my head buzzed and I blacked out... The way it looked is indeed pretty much how you described just now, something like a bird‑beast."

Huang Long was about to keep asking when he suddenly felt a chill all over and caught Sui Yi’s sidelong glance. A shiver ran through his heart, and he instantly understood.

This Pu Qinghan had issues, but it wasn’t his place to call her out.

Fine, I won’t ask, okay!

"Anyway, the Shen Family’s waters run deep. Ye Zi, handle it as you see fit. I’m beat, I’m going to bed~"

Night was already deep. Huang Long was getting ready to crawl into bed, when he heard Ye Zixu remind him: "The spirit of a Gu Sculpture is nothing like the usual. You’ve got too many Evil Spirit gourds in that darkroom of yours. If you put them together, something might go wrong."

"Relax, I know what I’m doing."

By seniority, Huang Long was even a generation above Ye Zixu, but he also knew that Ye Zixu was young with a vast future ahead of him and would surpass him one day. His reminder made sense.

Because there were many people staying the night, there weren’t enough rooms. Single rooms were out of the question. Ye Zixu and Huang Long shared one, and of course Sui Yi shared with Pu Qinghan. When they headed over to the rooms, the ones who had been soaking in the hot spring were coming out as well and also heading that way.

"Hey! You guys turning in already?"

"Yeah."

"Wanna come over and play cards together..."

"Mr. Huang Long, earlier at the bar we also got in touch with another climbing team. They set off around the same time we did. We were originally racing them, and now we’ve arrived earlier. We just called them; they said they’re almost here. If they get here later, I don’t know if there’ll still be rooms left..."

Huang Long glared. "They’re still climbing at this hour? You sure?"

"Can’t help it. They’ve got quite a few people with decent martial arts, and they like night climbing. They’re definitely coming up tonight."

"Whatever, I’ll open the door when they get here. Just don’t blame me if they wake you up."

"Of course."

Huang Long was easygoing, so they all laughed and went to their own rooms.

After Pu Qinghan shut the door, she let out a soft sigh. "It’s only because people have martial arts nowadays that they dare move around in deep mountains at night. Back in the day, no way."

"It’s a good thing too," Sui Yi said, seeing that there were already two sets of clean, soft cotton pajamas laid out on the bed, probably prepared by that girl from before.

She grabbed a set and went into the bathroom to wash up. When she came out, she saw Pu Qinghan watching TV.

"It’s kind of weird up here in the mountains, there’s actually TV signal... Is this Senior Huang Long connected to the authorities?"

Sui Yi had already heard about Huang Long’s situation from Ye Zixu, so she knew perfectly well the man couldn’t leave the mountain, let alone have ties with the government.

Later, Sui Yi messaged Ye Xiuling to say she wouldn’t be coming back. Pu Qinghan also called her own agent. The agent was very concerned, asked a bunch of detailed questions, and after learning that Sui Yi was with her, felt even more at ease.

"As long as she’s with you, I’m not worried. Anyway, it’s fine if you skip work."

"What are you talking about!"

Pu Qinghan scolded lightly, sneaking a look at Sui Yi talking on the phone out on the balcony, then lowered her voice. "Bad‑mouthing your boss’s boss’s boss—careful you don’t get fired~~"

"Heh, sure, stir things up, stir things up. Anyway, our Qing Yuan the female knight-errant is all grown up and can’t be kept at home... Oh right, there’s an exclusive interview in a few days, that show I mentioned before. They’ve already decided to invite you, but since there’ll be some questions involved, the people from the show are actually pretty tactful—they asked me in advance. Like about your background... They want to confirm first, so it won’t be too awkward when the time comes."

Hearing this out of the blue, the smile on Pu Qinghan’s face faded a little. "I’m just an orphan, parents unknown, I don’t know anything else either. Later on when my career took off, I did have people look into it, but there were no traces. Just tell them that."

"Okay."

The call was hung up on the other side.

Pu Qinghan held the phone, let out a breath, closed her eyes, a bit exhausted.

Sui Yi, who came in, looked up and saw that Pu Qinghan had already fallen into a deep sleep.

Through her Magnetic Sensation, she could clearly see deep in Pu Qinghan’s spine a mass of substance that even her own Magnetic Sensation couldn’t easily touch. This substance was like a seed, wrapped round and round by a strange, chilling force, spreading through the whole skeletal system, and brazenly trying to seep into her flesh and blood...

Every night was when it went the most berserk.

Pu Qinghan seemed to be trapped in a nightmare haunted dream, her brows tightly knitted, extremely ill at ease...

Sui Yi’s palm landed on her forehead.

Faint, gentle Jin Guang spread from between her brows, flooding through her entire body.

No one knew how long it took before Sui Yi withdrew her hand, her face slightly pale.

Ever since she returned from the Lost Lands and then checked Pu Qinghan’s body again, she had discovered the anomaly in her. What that seed in the bone marrow was, she still didn’t know, but it was definitely no baleful thing. The power that bound and wrapped it, however, was extremely vicious and ferocious—on the one hand wanting to devour it, on the other wanting to kill Pu Qinghan. Especially as the years went by, this tug-of-war would rapidly consume Pu Qinghan’s life force. To say she’d die young was indeed inevitable. If Sui Yi hadn’t later secretly helped Pu Qinghan every night, using Magnetic Sensation to erase that force, Pu Qinghan probably would have already...

The wisp of energy pulled from Sui Yi’s palm was extracted from Pu Qinghan’s bones, coiling and swirling above her hand, baring its fangs and brandishing its claws, trying to escape and at the same time trying to devour Sui Yi.

The Beak of the Golden Crow tapped down on it, swallowing it clean. Taking out a bit every night, added up it was no small amount, enough to make the Golden Crow’s eyes redden and grow even more savage.

Sui Yi murmured softly, "Shura... what exactly are you trying to do?"

It was only a soft murmur. Sui Yi turned her head and saw that a certain someone’s sleeping face had already relaxed. She couldn’t help but smile silently.

"Silly girl, it’s not that the Gu Sculpture doesn’t want to eat you, it doesn’t dare eat you."

After tucking the blanket around her, Sui Yi glanced at the TV. Coincidentally, the female lead was also an orphan... A dog-blood idol drama.

But put on them, it wasn’t an idol drama anymore.

It was a xuanhuan drama.

"Are all the orphans under heaven non-human or what?"

Sui Yi muttered under her breath. She thought of Yi, thought of herself, and now added a Pu Qinghan—none of them really counted as human anymore.

——————－

Late at night.

Out in the corridor, footsteps suddenly thudded by, thump thump thump.

Sui Yi opened her eyes, flicked a talisman casually onto Pu Qinghan’s body, and got up.

The rooms next door were in an uproar. Huang Long and Ye Zixu were also woken up.

"What’s going on? Your friends are in trouble?"

One relatively composed person stepped forward and said that just now they’d played several rounds of cards. Before going to sleep they wanted to contact that other group, only to find that among that group of ten or twenty people, none of their phones were off, but there was just no signal.

"Could it be that in this mountain there are some areas with weak signal, so they couldn’t pick up?"

"Impossible. You can stream online dramas on this mountain, not laggy at all. Even if calls don’t go through, they should at least be able to see WeChat, QQ, and MSN."

This explanation was also confirmed by the look on Huang Long’s face.

Those people had definitely run into something.

Everyone was flustered; some had already changed clothes, ready to go down and look for them.

"If something really happened, you going down there won’t help. All of you stay here. Huang Long, the two of us will go."

Huang Long nodded. With Sui Yi here, that was more than enough.

The two of them were just about to head down when the door opened. Sui Yi looked toward those backpackers.

"Their route up the mountain."

"Oh, oh, here, here. But we took the set route. That group was more chaotic—they picked between two paths earlier, and we don’t know which one they ended up taking."

The map on the phone was pulled up. There were several routes. This group walked one of them, and the two winding ones beside it were the other team’s options.

Sui Yi took a glance, and her Magnetic Sensation was already spreading out, sweeping down from the mountaintop at high speed. After a while, she drew her Magnetic Sensation back and handed the phone to Ye Zixu.

"The aura there is a bit dirty. Go check the one on the right."

"Got it."

From the faint pallor on Sui Yi’s face, Ye Zixu had already picked up on something.