Four days passed in the blink of an eye.
Two precious mirrors hung high in the sky, proving that this was the Divine Chamber.
Early that morning, Chen Lingxi woke from his breathing exercises. He felt the strand of spiritual qi in his dantian had grown just a bit stronger, dormant within him like a docile green snake.
With just a single thought, it would flow freely through his meridians.
'Today, I need to find the Time Candle.'
Chen Lingxi thought, 'That day, when Lin Suri sank the Time Candle into Yuanjiang, he seemed to cast some sort of spell to apply a seal...'
At this thought, he subconsciously tried to activate his Vision Wander Divine Ability to see where Lin Suri was, only to find he could not cast it. His strength seemed insufficient.
'I forgot I am currently inside the Divine Chamber.'
Chen Lingxi realized, 'I'm already in the Divine Chamber. How could I use Vision Wander to look at Lin Suri?'
He pondered for a moment before shaking his head, a glimmer of anticipation appearing in his eyes.'The Divine Chamber is profoundly mysterious. It might not be impossible in the future.'
Putting the matter aside, he washed up, changed into his worn indigo tunic, and pushed the door open.
A steward of the marquis residence was already waiting in front of the north courtyard's corner room. He was in his fifties with a sallow complexion, hands tucked into his sleeves as he huddled in the corner to escape the wind.
Seeing Chen Lingxi emerge, the steward merely glanced up without a word, gesturing with his chin toward the row of low, reverse-facing rooms behind him.
"That medicine slave from your batch still hasn't come out. Don't tell me he died in there?"
Chen Lingxi's heart sank.
He and Liu Changle had been drafted into the Baosu Marquis Residence on the exact same day, and both served as test subjects for Zhao Yong. Having spent every waking hour together for over a year, they knew each other's temperaments inside and out.
Though Liu Changle sometimes said strange things, he never dragged his feet, nor would he miss the government slaves' routine roll call without reason.
If he were truly absent and the Slave Bureau investigated, the Great Li Statutory Code dictated that the entire batch of official bondservants would face collective punishment. The lightest sentence would be a flogging; the heaviest, exile to hard labor or even death.
He hurried toward the reverse-facing rooms and pushed open the creaking wooden door.
The furnishings inside remained as sparse as ever.
Liu Changle's bed was entirely empty. The thin quilt was folded neatly, as if its owner had merely stepped out for a moment and would soon return.
Chen Lingxi reached out to feel the wooden bed board. It was icy cold, lacking even a trace of residual warmth.
His gaze swept over the coarse pottery bowls in the corner. Half a bowl of cold, coarse rice porridge remained at the bottom, a thin layer of dust settled over the congealed surface. It had clearly been sitting there for quite some time.
"Liu Changle..." Chen Lingxi muttered the name under his breath, his brow furrowing slightly.
He had a faint suspicion of what might have happened.
A few days ago, when Wang Kong had attacked him in the garden, he had called them the "only two surviving medicine slaves."
Even then, he had felt there was something deeply bizarre about Zhao Yong's medicine trials. With Liu Changle's sudden disappearance, he was almost certain that Chief Steward Zhao was involved.
He just didn't know if Liu Changle was still alive.
After standing in the room for a few breaths, he didn't delay any further.
The steward was already coughing impatiently outside. Taking a deep breath, Chen Lingxi turned and exited the room. "Liu Changle isn't in his quarters. I don't know where he went," he told the steward.
The steward's brow knit tightly. He muttered under his breath before waving his hand. "Forget it, forget it. Just go. The Slave Bureau won't ask too many questions about slaves from the Baosu Marquis Residence."
Chen Lingxi nodded and said no more.
As he walked out of the north courtyard, he glanced back toward the reverse-facing rooms.
The low buildings looked increasingly dilapidated in the morning light. The white plum blossoms in the corner had long withered, leaving only a few dead leaves shivering in the wind.
Retracting his gaze, Chen Lingxi stepped through the corner gate of the Baosu Marquis Residence, facing the biting spring wind.
The long streets of Yuanjiang Prefecture had shed their winter desolation. Shops flanking the bluestone road opened their doors one after another. The hawking cries of vendors selling flatbreads, noodle soup, and firewood rose and fell in endless waves.
Several old willows at the street corner had sprouted new buds. The tender yellow branches swayed in the wind like a young girl's freshly combed hair.
Chen Lingxi walked along the street, soon leaving the bustling market behind.
'As I thought. Under the Perceiving Clear Divine Ability, the Divine Chamber's scope isn't limited to a mere five hundred zhang across.'
Lost in thought as he walked, it wasn't long before Yuanjiang appeared before him.
In the third month, the spring waters of Yuanjiang were just beginning to swell.
The shriveled riverbed from last winter had been filled by the mighty spring floods. The water was no longer the murky lead-gray of winter, but rippled with a clear, translucent aquamarine.
Sunlight struck the surface, shattered by the rippling waves into tens of thousands of scattered golden fragments, shining so brightly it was almost blinding.
The willow-lined banks were shrouded in a misty haze, the fresh greenery hanging like smoke. Here and there, peach trees leaned diagonally over the water, their petals tumbling into the river with the breeze to swirl downstream.
A few white egrets waded through the shallows foraging for food, and an occasional small boat poled past, kicking up a spray of water.
Chen Lingxi strolled slowly along the riverbank, looking like nothing more than an ordinary pedestrian enjoying a spring outing.
His gaze swept casually across the water, but in his mind, he was carefully matching every inch against the location in his memory.
That night, Lin Suri had stood on the edge of the riverbank, tossed the Time Candle into the river, and formed his fingers into a sword shape to draw three Talismanic Seals over where it sank.
Chen Lingxi remembered that stone bridge.
It was a three-arched stone bridge, its body overgrown with moss and old vines. The river water flowing under its arches was deep and secluded, the color noticeably darker than elsewhere.
He stopped at the head of the bridge, pretending to admire the scenery, while the corner of his eye swept over the water beneath the arch.
A few dead leaves floated on the surface there. But instead of drifting with the current like the rest, they clustered together, slowly spinning in circles as if something underwater was pulling them in.
'This should be the place.'
With his heart settled, Chen Lingxi looked around.
It was late in the Chen hour, and pedestrians along the river were sparse. Only a few peddlers carrying shoulder poles hurried across the bridge; no one paid him any mind.
He circled to the side of the bridge and found a hidden set of stone steps leading down to the water.
The river water was bone-chillingly cold. Though it was already the third month, the biting frost gathered throughout winter still lingered deep below.
Chen Lingxi stripped off his outer robes, shoes, and socks, leaving only a pair of thin trousers. Taking a deep breath, he circulated the spiritual qi and vital blood within his body.
In an instant, the two forces flowed simultaneously through his meridians—one mild as spring water, the other blistering as molten copper—completely warding off the oppressive cold.
Hesitating no further, he leapt.
Splash!
Water plumed upward, rapidly swallowed again by the river's current.
With his eyes closed, Chen Lingxi sank toward the riverbed.
This stretch of the river wasn't particularly deep—only a little over a zhang—but the water was so dark and murky that visibility was extremely low.
Relying on the faint daylight filtering down from the surface, he struggled to orient himself, his fingers blindly groping through the silt inch by inch.
The fine river sand slipped through his fingers, icy and slick.
He found a few pebbles, a piece of rotting wood, and even a rust-mottled iron anchor, but there was no sign of the Time Candle.
His breath was running out.
Chen Lingxi floated back to the surface for a breath of air. He adjusted his bearings and dove back down.
This time, he swam straight down to the exact spot where those dead leaves were circling.
The moment his fingertips grazed the soft mud, he finally touched something different.
It was an object less than half a chi long. The texture was neither metal nor jade, and the icy surface didn't feel like it had been soaking in the river for months. Instead, it possessed a bizarre sense of dryness.
Chen Lingxi grabbed it tightly. Kicking off the riverbed, he surged up and broke the surface of the water.
He climbed the stone steps back to the shore, completely drenched, water steadily dripping from the tips of his hair.
As the spring wind blew past, even with his vital blood warming him, he couldn't help but shiver.
Chen Lingxi didn't bother drying off, simply looking down at his palm.
—The Time Candle.
The body of the candle was pitch-black and antique in design. He couldn't tell what it was made of, nor could he make out any of its patterns.
It lay quietly in his palm, completely unremarkable, like a piece of deadwood that had been washed by the river for an unknown number of years.
Yet, where it touched his skin, Chen Lingxi distinctly felt a faint, phantom pulsation. It was as if something long-slumbering was sensing his own heartbeat through the wall of the candle.
He quickly put his clothes back on, tucked the Time Candle securely inside his robes against his chest, and hurriedly stepped into the shadows beneath the bridge.
The light under the arch was dim, with only a few shattered beams reflecting off the water to dance across the stone walls.
The spot was perfectly concealed. Even if someone passed overhead, they would never be able to see what was happening beneath the bridge.
Chen Lingxi sat down with his back against the stone wall. Cradling the Time Candle in both hands, he calmed his mind and steadied his breathing.
He remembered the scene he had witnessed that night in the Divine Chamber.
Lin Suri had poured his spiritual qi into the Time Candle to awaken the Venerable Cauldron within.
Now, although he didn't know why Lin Suri would sink such a treasure into the river, let alone what kind of entity this Venerable Cauldron was, he felt absolutely no fear, all because...
Chen Lingxi looked up at the sky, where the two bright mirrors hung high like the sun and moon.
'Within this Divine Chamber, it wouldn't even matter if I died.'
Shaking his head slightly, he willed the faint green strand of spiritual qi in his dantian into motion. It flowed slowly outward, finally condensing in his palm.
The moment the spiritual qi touched the Time Candle—
A sudden transformation occurred.
That black, deadwood-like candle abruptly flared with light.
A dark crimson gleam rippled out from the very center of the candle. Initially no larger than a pinprick, it soon slowly opened like a vertical pupil. The red light surged like a tide of blood, instantly swallowing the space beneath the bridge.
The illumination made the archway look as though it had plunged into a sea of blood.
The red glow reflected on the water flickered on and off, stretching Chen Lingxi's shadow against the stone wall until it twisted like a demon.
"Candle shadow sways the light of time, / An inch of ash trades rivers and peaks. / A wisp of azure smoke departs, / A thousand years of white bones sing."
The familiar verse exploded in his mind like the tolling of a massive bronze bell.
The voice seemed to pierce through the barriers of time, every single word carrying an indescribable sense of ancient sorrow and immense weight.
The Time Candle rose into the air, hovering steadily between his palms.
The vertical pupil in the center of the candle tore completely open. Deep within its iris, a patchwork face slowly surfaced.
The tender softness of an infant, the high-spirited pride of a youth, the steady calm of a middle-aged man, the withered decay of an elder... The features of countless ages were all simultaneously displayed on this single face, shifting endlessly. It was as if, in just a few short breaths, Chen Lingxi had witnessed a person's entire lifetime.
The vertical pupil locked its gaze onto him.
In that instant, Chen Lingxi felt as if he had been cleaved open from head to toe.
The spiritual qi in his dantian, the vital blood in his meridians, every single thought running through his mind—everything seemed utterly exposed beneath this gaze.
"A Qi Circulation 2nd Floor cultivator."
The Venerable Cauldron spoke.
The lips on that patchwork face slowly parted. Its voice was as deep as the trembling of the earth's veins; every syllable smashed directly against Chen Lingxi's heart, jarring him so violently that his vital blood churned.
"Lifespan..." The vertical pupil narrowed slightly, as if carefully savoring something. "Fifty-one years remaining."
Its voice paused, then took on a teasing, playful edge.
"You woke me with your spiritual qi, which means you seek to strike a bargain with me."
"There are thousands of treasures and wondrous methods here, and ten thousand kinds of good fortune. As long as you are willing to pay the price, anything can be exchanged."
It paused. The light within the vertical pupil flickered unsteadily, and a half-smile surfaced on that human face—savage, hideous, and bizarre.
"Qi Circulation 2nd Floor..." the Venerable Cauldron dragged its voice out, much like it was teasing prey that had just fallen into its net. "What do you want to exchange?"