Siheyuan: tomb robbing? I am serious about hunting.

Chapter 1030 In Hand

The candlelight in the west wing was flickering due to the draft, stretching Shen Yan's shadow long, sticking to the mottled wall like a distorted ink painting. He unfolded the volume tied with a dark red silk ribbon, and the ink on the rice paper still had a moist sheen, obviously it had just been written. The tiny calligraphy was neat and almost rigid, but it trembled slightly when describing the bloody part, as if the writer was also trembling at the time. "Twenty years ago, the Shen family of the Soul-Separation Sect guarded the Soul-Separation Jade for generations, attracting the covetousness of the righteous..." Shen Yan's fingertips stroked the word "Shen Family", and the texture of the rice paper rubbed against his fingertips. He remembered the game character creation interface, where the surname column of "Shen Yan" was gray. At that time, he just thought it was an official setting that had not been filled in. He didn't expect that it contained such a shocking secret. The file said that his grandfather, Shen Canglan, was the last leader of the Soul-Separation Sect. Because he refused to hand over the Soul-Separation Jade, he was besieged by the seven major righteous sects, led by the Qingfeng Sword Sect. Of the 100 members of the Shen family, only a baby in swaddling clothes escaped in the end - that is, him. "So I am the descendant of villains?" He smiled bitterly and pulled the corner of his mouth. The cuffs of his brocade robe swept across the candlestick, and the air flow caused the candle flame to suddenly decrease, almost extinguishing it. There was also a yellowed portrait in the file. The man in the painting was wearing a moon-white long gown. His eyebrows and eyes were surprisingly similar to his own, but there was a sense of vicissitudes of life between his eyebrows. In the lower right corner of the portrait was written in small characters: "My grandson Yan'er, I hope you will never see the world of martial arts again in this life." These words were like a fine needle, piercing Shen Yan's heart unexpectedly. He recalled his livestream's slogan, "The Jianghu is my hometown." He remembered the tears he'd shed from playing dungeons, and the fan comments, "Brother Yan slays the Demon Cult!" It turned out the "remnants of the Demon Cult" he'd slain in the virtual world were actually members of his own clan. "Heh..." Shen Yan chuckled softly, his laughter echoing through the empty room, carrying an indescribable absurdity. He pressed the file onto the table, not noticing that the sweat from his fingertips had blurred the words "The Soul-Separating Jade can travel through time and space." Just then, a faint sob echoed from outside the door, like the whimpering of a wounded animal. The sound was muffled by the wind, and if Shen Yan hadn't had his hearing sharpened by these days of Jianghu experience, he wouldn't have heard it at all. He held his breath, his fingertips finding the jade pendant at his waist—his only real "weapon," even though he knew it only added ten points of defense in the game. The moment he opened the door, the cold wind sent a chill through him. Rainwater accumulated on the bluestone slabs under the corridor, reflecting the lanterns on the eaves, creating a blurry orange hue. The little girl with the twin buns during the day was squatting behind the pillar, her thin body huddled up in a ball, her shoulders shaking. Her light green cloth skirt was soaked and heavy, sticking to her back, outlining her bony frame. "Why are you here?" Shen Yan's voice was very low, not wanting to startle her. The little girl suddenly looked up, revealing a face covered in tear marks. Her eyes were red and swollen like two ripe peaches, and her lips were bitten white. When she saw Shen Yan, her tears fell even more violently, but she bit her lips tightly and refused to make a sound, only the slight sound of her nostrils flaring. Shen Yan then noticed that her left arm was curled up unnaturally, and the sleeve of her light green cloth skirt was soaked with blood, turning into a dark brown lump. His heart skipped a beat, and he quickly walked over, squatted down, and carefully lifted her sleeve - the sound of her gasping was particularly clear in the silent night. The wound ran from elbow to wrist, deep enough to reveal the bone. The flesh was turned inside out, revealing the pale veins beneath. Blood still oozed out, dripping from her fingertips onto the bluestone slab, creating tiny splashes that were quickly washed away by the rain. What alarmed Shen Yan most was the dark blue hue at the edge of the wound, as if it had been inflicted by a poisoned weapon. "Was it Ye Jingfeng who inflicted it?" He grabbed her wrist for a closer look, but the moment his fingertips touched the skin around the wound, he withdrew his hand due to the burn—the heat wasn't some in-game effect, but the inflamed, feverish sensation of living flesh. The girl bit her lip and nodded, tears falling heavily on the back of Shen Yan's hand, burning hot. "I, I heard him tell the cultists..." Her voice trembled, each word sounding soaked by rain. "He said he'd put 'Qian Ji Yin' in your wine, and when your powers are completely exhausted... he'd sacrifice you to the cult leader..." The three words "Qian Ji Yin" pierced Shen Yan's temple like ice spikes. It was the game's unique poison, a poisonous cult. Those struck would convulse like a leash, and eventually bleed to death from all seven orifices. He'd detailed the antidote formula in a walkthrough video. But now, speaking from this little girl's mouth, with the deep wound on her arm visible to the bone, the poison seemed to seep through the air into his internal organs, causing his stomach to churn. He suddenly thought of the NPCs in the game. Those monsters he'd casually slashed, those plot characters who had to sacrifice themselves to complete the quest, their "deaths" merely a flash of "mission accomplished" on the screen. But the trembling eyelashes before him, the blood dripping onto the bluestone, the faintly visible veins in the wound... all screamed to him: This wasn't a virtual world. "Don't move," Shen Yan's voice was surprisingly calm. He tugged at the hem of his moon-white brocade robe and bit through it with his teeth, creating a neat slit. The sound of the fabric tearing was particularly harsh in the rainy night. He tore the cloth into wide strips, and when he squatted down, he saw the little girl's toes sticking out from her wet straw sandals, and they were purple from the cold. "Bear with it." He lifted her arm, and just as he was about to wrap the cloth around her, when his fingertips touched her hot skin, the little girl suddenly shuddered, like a rabbit with its tail stepped on, her eyes became even redder, but she still bit her lip and didn't make a sound. Shen Yan paused. He remembered that when he was live streaming, in order to test the "pain feedback system", he deliberately let the monster hit him with a knife. At that time, he only felt like being snapped by a rubber band. But now, looking at the child who was trying hard not to cry, he suddenly realized that the "% immersion" in the game was not even one ten-thousandth of the real pain. "What's your name?" He slowed down the bandaging movement, trying to make the cloth strip as loose as possible. "A Tao." She sniffed, and the snot bubble on the tip of her nose trembled, and she wiped it away hurriedly, "You rescued her from the human traffickers three months ago. At that time, you said that Taohuawu was a nice name, and asked me to call her A Tao." Shen Yan was stunned. He did do this side quest. I remember that the live broadcast was about to end that day, and the system suddenly popped up a random task "Rescue the abducted girl", which was exactly the same as the game loading interface, but completely different. Because everything here has the breath of "life". The sound of Ye Jingfeng's horse hooves led the way in front, and Shen Yan's footsteps stepped on the bluestone slabs,