Translated by: Hypersheep325
Edited by: Michyrr
Though Wang Chong’s mind was seething, he didn’t lose himself and remained calm and collected.
Wang Chong once more sorted through all the details in his mind.
Buzz!
Wang Chong’s eyes passed over the Xuanyuan Sword on his waist, and his body suddenly trembled in shock.
Luo Supreme’s parting words suddenly appeared in his mind. ‘Since the Origin Immortal Lord gave you the Xuanyuan Sword, I trust that he told you much more, including how to deal with this crisis.’
Wang Chong hadn’t paid much attention to those words at the time, but now, Wang Chong recalled something.
The Origin Immortal Lord was a master of divination, and before his death, he had told Wang Chong several prophecies, including the third lunar eclipse and the matter of the Celestial Palace. But he had not told him any specific solution to them. However, Wang Chong did recall that before their final parting, the Origin Immortal Lord had given him a silk bag and told him that when the final danger came, at the moment when light and shadow intersected, he should open the bag.
“Is now the moment when light and shadow intersect?” Wang Chong muttered, his brows creasing.
Wang Chong didn’t know if now was that moment the Origin Immortal Lord spoke of, but his mother could not wait any longer. Moreover, the Celestial Palace’s power wasn’t just wiping away memories regarding him, it was wiping away their souls. On the streets, there were already many people with slack and unfocused gazes, though they themselves had not realized it yet.
If it were not stopped now, then he wouldn’t even be able to reach that moment where light and shadow intersected.
Moreover, Heaven was growing stronger by the day. Once he repaired the Pantheon Pearl and created another perfect avatar, he would not be as easily defeated as he had been back at the steppe.
Buzz!
Wang Chong quickly took out the Origin Immortal Lord’s silk bag.
The bag was about the size of a palm and had been exquisitely woven, with even strands of gold woven in.
As he took out the silk bag, Wang Chong also spotted the image of a black Xuan Bird atop it, the same as it had been back in the Origin Immortal Palace.
The silk bag pulsed with strange energy, and there was also a seal left by the Origin Immortal Lord. In normal circumstances, even Wang Chong would have found it hard to ‘see’ what was inside.
Of course, if Wang Chong really wanted to, with his level of cultivation, he could do it.
However, Wang Chong had always respected the Origin Immortal Lord’s orders and had not lightly touched this bag.
Now, however, Wang Chong felt a strong impulse as he gazed at the bag.
He sensed that the Origin Immortal Lord had predicted Heaven’s use of the Celestial Palace and predicted that he would be in this situation. Although the Origin Immortal Lord had not possessed the cultivation or strength to resolve this crisis, he had undoubtedly left behind clues.
More importantly, the Origin Immortal Lord had predicted his arrival in the Origin Immortal Cave more than one thousand years before the actual event. Perhaps he had even predicted when he would open this silk bag.
If that was so, opening the silk bag was actually the correct decision.
These thoughts rapidly ran through his mind, and Wang Chong soon focused his mind.
He would know whether it was right or not very soon.
Swish!
Wang Chong swiftly removed the binding thread on the bag, the sound almost inaudible. At this moment, his heart was thumping with curiosity.
The Origin Immortal Lord’s divinations were flawless, but nobody knew what would be inside the bag until it was opened.
Buzz!
As the silk bag opened up, so was the secret the Origin Immortal Lord had left within it revealed.
Even before Wang Chong could fully open the bag and see what was inside, a golden pillar of light that was the width of two fingers erupted from the bag, almost hitting Wang Chong in the face.
The beam of light focused and condensed, quickly transforming in the air until it formed into a line of words.
“This!”
Upon seeing that line of words, Wang Chong was left speechless.
Wang Chong had originally believed that the Origin Immortal Lord had left a slip of paper or something similar in the bag, or at least something that would be related to his current situation. But Wang Chong had never expected this.
‘Do not divulge the secrets of the heavens. It can be done once, but not twice.’
These were the words that the golden light from the bag had condensed into.
The words continued to slowly circle in the air, lingering like a warning.
Buzz!
After a few moments, the words turned back into a beam of light and disappeared into Wang Chong’s forehead, traveling through his meridians and into his dantian, eventually becoming a seal that floated over his dantian.
“So… now is not the time where light and shadow intersect that the Origin Immortal Lord spoke of? I opened it early?” Wang Chong muttered, somewhat disappointed.
Those words the Origin Immortal Lord had left seemed to indicate that the Origin Immortal Lord had predicted he would open the silk bag. This was what the ‘it can be done once, but not twice’ line had meant.
The secrets of heaven were infinite and were not unchanging. Though Wang Chong didn’t understand divination, he did understand the principle that they could not be lightly divulged.
“Mm? Wait!”
Wang Chong turned his attention back to the bag in his palm.
The Origin Immortal Lord’s words had seemingly indicated that the bag should be empty after the golden light had shot out, but Wang Chong could tell that there was something else in the bag.
Wang Chong quickly opened the bag fully.
At the bottom of the bag was a square object bundled in white cloth.
“This is…”
Wang Chong took the white bundle, confusion in his eyes. The bundle was very light—three or four grams. Moreover, he could not sense any energy pulses, so it wasn’t a ritual tool or something related to martial arts.
Wang Chong instinctively raised the bundle to his nose and sniffed.
“Tea leaves?”
Wang Chong’s body trembled, his face in disbelief.
Through the white cloth, Wang Chong had smelled the faint aroma of tea leaves.
The Wang Clan was a great clan, and it normally consumed all kinds of top-class tea leaves, even those used by the imperial household. But Wang Chong couldn’t match the aroma of the tea leaves to any he had smelled before. There was an indescribable sense of age to it…
The Origin Immortal Lord had been sleeping deep beneath the earth for nearly one thousand years. The tea he had placed in the bag couldn’t be from the West Lake or Longjing. It was probably some ancient tea from ages ago.
“What does the Origin Immortal Lord mean with this?”
Wang Chong lightly kneaded the bundle, feeling the tea leaves shift around within it as clouds of confusion engulfed his mind.
He had already used Psychic Energy and Stellar Energy to inspect them, and there was nothing strange about them. The Origin Immortal Lord had left him nothing more than ordinary tea leaves.
Was this intentional or an accident?
Wang Chong truly couldn’t think of how some tea leaves could help him out of his predicament.
“Let’s just try it out.”
After thinking it over for a long while, Wang Chong still failed to understand.
Tea leaves were meant to brew tea. Perhaps the tea leaves the Origin Immortal Lord had left had some ability to focus or clear the mind, or maybe some other power.
Swoosh!
Wang Chong quickly disappeared, and when he next appeared, he had a pot of piping hot water, several tea cups, and a tray.
After washing the tea and filtering it, he filled the tea cups with hot water. He watched the sword-shaped tea leaves in the cups slowly open up, and a cup of tea began to take shape.
In this quiet night, Wang Chong sat on the roof, his brow furrowed. He reached out with his right hand and took a cup of tea. He first lightly sniffed it and then took a sip. The tea leaves were bitter, and when it entered his mouth, it had a taste that was a mixture of light and bitter. It was completely different from the tea enjoyed in the current era, and it wasn’t particularly pleasing.
There was simply nothing special about the tea, and it was more fitting for the taste of the ancients.
“Such fragrant tea!”
As Wang Chong’s brows were locked together, he heard an elderly voice. Before he could react, a thin hand suddenly appeared and snatched a cup of tea from the tray.
Wang Chong raised his head in shock and saw that a thin old man in a gray robe had appeared on the roof. He had taken the cup of tea as if no one else was around and put it up to his nose. He breathed in the scent and half-closed his eyes, a contented look on his face.
“So fragrant! I didn’t think that I would be able to smell such a familiar scent after so long,” the man said to himself, as if Wang Chong didn’t even exist.
Wang Chong was flabbergasted. He carefully examined the elder, but this elder didn’t seem to have intense pulses of Stellar Energy. He didn’t seem like any sort of peerless expert that Wang Chong had imagined, but despite this, he had appeared on the roof without Wang Chong realizing.
It was late at night and Wang Chong had already checked that no one was around. For this gray-robed elder to appear out of nowhere was truly bizarre.
Most importantly, though this elder didn’t seem very strong, even with Wang Chong’s Grotto Heaven realm cultivation, he couldn’t see what was going on in this old man’s body.
His person seemed gloomy and unfathomable, as if some energy was keeping Wang Chong out.
Suspicious!
Very suspicious!
Numerous thoughts ran through Wang Chong’s mind, but rather than questioning the elder on his origins, he lightly pushed over the remaining half-bundle of tea leaves to the old man.
“If Senior likes it, then Senior may take the rest of the tea leaves.”
But the elder’s reaction took Wang Chong completely by surprise.
The man simply held the cup to his nose, his head tilted slightly upward with a contented look, but he seemingly had no intention of drinking the tea.
Moreover, the old man was utterly unmoved by Wang Chong’s gift of tea leaves. He appeared to be in his own world, and his eyes never even once glanced in Wang Chong’s direction.
“To smell this aroma again in the apocalyptic era, I have no more regrets.”
The gray-robed elder once more took in the scent and sighed.
Before Wang Chong could react, there was a gust of wind. Thump! The tea cup returned to the tray in front of Wang Chong.
The tea within was untouched, and the gray-robed elder had vanished without a trace.