Chapter 548: The Secret Report from Many Years Ago
Even when it looked like no one else was around, it was still better to be cautious. He had already noticed that Bai Ziqi’s attention on him was unusual, though the exact reason remained unclear.
“How can you be so sure?!” The mirror was astonished. Only after several breaths did it react. “Oh! When did you make your move on him?” It had been with He Lingchuan the whole time, yet even it had failed to notice.
This master of theirs was becoming harder and harder for it to keep up with.
“Last night.”
He Lingchuan offered that small hint and did not elaborate further.
Last night, he had joined Bai Ziqi in capturing the fugitives. Cheng Yu had been brought back by He Lingchuan’s own hand.
At the time, Cheng Yu had been blasted unconscious by the lamp spirit. As He Lingchuan carried him in his grip, he had actually faced two choices: he could have used the mirror to suck away Cheng Yu’s soul, or he could have used the nightmare.
Using the Soul-Stealing Mirror would have been the cleanest and quickest option, but afterward, it would have been too easy for Bai Ziqi to grow suspicious. After all, the last person to touch Cheng Yu would have been He Lingchuan himself.
Sending out the nightmare, on the other hand, meant added complications and greater uncertainty. The nightmare would have to infiltrate Cheng Yu’s dream and set a trap before it could kill him. But the advantage was that, after Cheng Yu was brought back to Baishajue, he could still wake up and say a few words—
Yes, that had been He Lingchuan’s precise instruction to the nightmare.
Only after Cheng Yu fell unconscious a second time would the nightmare make its move. Naturally, Bai Ziqi would then recalculate the timing of the attack on Cheng Yu, and that would clear He Lingchuan of suspicion.
So He Lingchuan had all but settled on the second option in an instant. He took the juluo tree branch carrying the nightmare and brushed it once beneath Cheng Yu’s nose.
At that point, Cheng Yu was already unconscious, so there could hardly have been a more convenient moment for the nightmare to enter his dream.
Looking at it now, that risky move had once again been the right one.
After Bai Ziqi brought Cheng Yu back, he had set eternal lamps all around him. If any evil yin spirit drew near, an alarm would be triggered.
But the nightmare had already hidden itself inside Cheng Yu’s dream one step earlier, so how could it possibly trigger any warning?
Bai Ziqi had only arrived in Baishajue yesterday, yet he had already tried to put He Lingchuan in his place.
What he did not know was that he, too, had been played by He Lingchuan.
When He Lingchuan finished his tune, Jiao Yu came padding over with a cloth bundle in its mouth. Looking up at him, it said, “The Crown Prince has sent you something.”
He Lingchuan’s spirits lifted at once. He jumped down from the roof and took the bundle. “Many thanks.”
Jiao Yu said, “The Crown Prince said this is confidential. I’ll take my leave first.”
Even it did not dare look.
He Lingchuan patted the tiger’s head, then turned and went back into his room, shut the door, and cast up a barrier before finally opening the bundle.
“Oh-ho, you finally got it!” the mirror whistled. He Lingchuan still had no idea how it even managed to make that sound.
Inside the cloth bundle was a box. Inside the box was a stack of letters and papers.
This was the last item Fushan Yue had promised him: documents pertaining to the black flood dragon design.
He Lingchuan had helped him capture Cen Boqing, and even thrown in Zhongsun Mou’s death as a bonus. That meant he had more than fulfilled the task Fushan Yue had entrusted to him, so naturally, he was entitled to the full reward.
These papers had all been stored in the ruler of the State of Chiyan’s private study. For any ordinary person, even entering the place would have resulted in death, much less leisurely gathering up relevant materials. It was only after being elevated to crown prince that Fushan Yue had gained the authority to go in and out of the royal study.
Looking at the things in his hands, He Lingchuan gave a rueful smile. “Miserly. He didn’t let me take the slightest extra advantage.”
There were more than ten sheets here, all on different paper stock and in different formats. Some were letters, while others had clearly been torn from different books.
Naturally, He Lingchuan would have preferred to read the entire books. But Fushan Yue had only torn out the sections that contained records of the black flood dragon design, likely for the sake of confidentiality.
After all, these had been taken from the ruler’s private study. They were not meant for others’ eyes.
On top lay a silk scroll. When opened, it spread into a single long strip. Because it had clearly undergone special preservation treatment, the silk only looked slightly old. There was no moth damage, nor any crumbling powder.
It was the first time He Lingchuan had seen so many black flood dragon designs gathered together at once.
He counted them casually. There were a full eighteen.
Each design had been hand-drawn, and the artist’s brushwork was exceptional. Every stroke was full of spirit, and even the black flood dragon’s eyes had been rendered vividly.
Beside each design, the location and collection period had been noted.
The earliest entry could actually be traced back over 2,100 years, to the Yangxing Tribe in the Sha River Basin.
Where’s the Sha River Basin? He Lingchuan thought about it for a while, then gave up.
He would just remember the name of the place for now and investigate it later.
He had no impression of the next several locations either. They were all from rather distant eras.
Then, his eye fell upon the black flood dragon designs of the State of Yuān. There were two of them in total.
And right after that, He Lingchuan was shocked all over again, because the words Panlong City leaped straight into view!
The final five designs on the silk all came from Panlong City.
More importantly, the artist had specially noted that all five had been copied from one and the same black flood dragon design of Panlong City, merely at different points in time.
He Lingchuan quickly worked out the dates. These five designs had been recorded in Panlong Calendar Year 3, Year 11, Year 17, Year 24, and... Year 31!
Panlong City had existed for only 32 years, so the periods the artist chose spanned almost the entire Panlong Calendar from beginning to end.
It was like a compressed image of an entire time.
Why would he do that?
He Lingchuan pulled the silk all the way to the end to check the signature.
The artist was named Song Wei, pen name or alias Perfected Hill.
According to the man himself, the first ten designs on the silk had either been copied from ancient books or recorded from ruins. Only the black flood dragon designs of the State of Yuān and Panlong City had been personally surveyed and copied on site while the cities still stood and their people still lived in peace, leaving almost no room for error.
In other words, Song Wei had personally visited both the State of Yuān and Panlong City, and then later gathered the designs in his possession together into this silk compilation.
Aside from the black flood dragon relief by Panlong City’s southern gate, He Lingchuan had also seen black flood dragon designs in its streets and alleys. The neighbor’s little fatty of a boy had even scribbled the black flood dragon on the wall a few times, though with such miserable skill that he had somehow turned the dragon’s head into a dog’s.
He Lingchuan studied the five Panlong City designs carefully. At first glance, they all seemed the same.
Well, of course they did. They were all depictions of the same design.
But Song Wei had hardly been so bored that he would spend thirty years drawing five identical copies just to turn in an assignment.
When He Lingchuan calmed himself and looked closer, he saw that there really were subtle differences between the five dragon heads.
The design from Panlong Calendar Year 11 had horns just a little longer than in Year 3, and two additional whiskers.
The change was that slight. He Lingchuan felt as though he had nearly needed a magnifying glass to find it.
But by the design of Panlong Calendar Year 24, the changes were much more obvious. The dragon head looked larger than in earlier versions, with a longer face, more imposing whiskers, and more pronounced brow ridges.
Most importantly of all, the pointed horns on its head had actually started to branch!
Every black flood dragon design He Lingchuan had seen before this, whether it be in the silk scroll, in Panlong City, or in the State of Yuān, had possessed only a pair of bare pointed horns on its brow.
Now they had begun to branch like a stag’s antlers.
Or rather, like a genuine dragon’s.
He Lingchuan drew in a quiet breath and moved on to the final design.
But to his disappointment, the dragon’s head had not evolved any further. Instead, it had regressed. The branched horns had reverted to pointed ones again, and several whiskers had disappeared.
It looked roughly the same as the Year 11 version.
Twenty years of change, only for it all to come to nothing in the end. Just when it seemed on the verge of something more, it had changed right back again.
He Lingchuan then turned to the two black flood dragon designs from the State of Yuān.
The time between these two was not long, only about half a year to two years.
After the King of Yuān inherited the throne by abdication from the previous monster king, the State of Yuān had existed for only four years in total, and three of those had been spent at war. Wartime border control would have been extremely strict. It must have been very difficult for Song Wei to slip into the State of Yuān, and the State of Yuān was probably not nearly as welcoming to outsiders as Panlong City had been. That likely explained why he produced only two drawings there.
Yet even those two displayed slight differences. The second dragon head also showed signs of growth compared to the first.
That was what made the whole thing so interesting. Especially those five Panlong City designs. They were like a time-lapse sequence, displaying the changes undergone by the same design at different points in time.
What exactly was the use of the black flood dragon design? Why did it change?
Like Song Wei, He Lingchuan did not think the changes were caused by human hands. They must have originated within the design itself.
In the State of Yuān, in Panlong City, and even earlier among ancient ruins, what had caused the dragon head to grow?
Song Wei offered his own conjecture.
Perhaps the design was a totem used to gather the faith of a city’s people, much like the temples of Beijia that could be found everywhere.
The dragon head’s growth, then, would reflect whether the people were devout toward it.
Or perhaps this dragon head was the symbol of some secret immortal organization. Through it, a city could receive unending support from immortals. After all, every place where the dragon head design had appeared had been relatively prosperous, as though blessed by something unseen.
Blessed? He Lingchuan thought on that.
He did not know the full circumstances of the old State of Yuān, but Panlong City’s Chipa Highland backdrop had indeed been rich beyond measure. Grain, minerals, timber, medicines, hides, furs, fish, everything was there. Otherwise, it never could have supported Panlong’s soldiers and civilians for so many years.
Beijia had sabotaged it in secret more than once but had never succeeded.
So did the black flood dragon designs appear only in fertile and prosperous places, or did such places become prosperous because the design existed there?
Which was the cause, and which was the effect?
That was very hard to say.
Seeing that even Song Wei had failed to reach a conclusion, He Lingchuan felt slightly disappointed and moved on to the other materials.
The rest consisted of letters, book pages, and handwritten notes. The paper was generally yellowed and brittle, some of it shedding powder, so he had to turn the pages with the utmost care.
They were all old items, with many years on them.
The more He Lingchuan read, the tighter his eyebrows drew. The fact that Fushan Yue could only find these old materials showed that research on the black flood dragon had seen no new progress at all.
One theory even asserted with full confidence that the dragon head might have been left behind by some immortal sect, meant to serve as a channel through which immortals could communicate with mortals and direct them in schemes to seize the world.
Among the papers, He Lingchuan also found a battle report sent years ago by a spy embedded within the State of Yuān. It contained quite a bit of information on Qianxing City, detailing recent events in the city, decrees issued by the royal court, salaries and prices inside the city, and so forth. Everything was summarized in one or two short lines, extremely concise.
And unexpectedly, it also mentioned the black flood dragon designs.
The spy wrote that directly across from where he was staying was a black flood dragon design. He had watched it day after day, yet had never once seen it glow or display any kind of power, except on one occasion.
A horse pulling a cart in the street lost control, and the horse and cart crashed straight into the wall.
The wall itself was not particularly solid. Ordinarily, it should have been smashed clean through. Yet when the horse struck the black flood dragon design, the horse itself suffered shattered tendons and broken bones, the cart splintered apart, and the black flood dragon design remained utterly intact.
Only then did the spy realize that there had actually been an incredibly subtle hidden barrier around the design.
