Chapter 1388 — Found It At Last! Elder Yu had not dared to go in at first; but seeing Wei Zhao stride in so brazenly and come to no harm, he followed him inside. What gnawed at him beyond all bearing, though, was that this single venture had not only left him without posterity but cost him an eye besides - a wretched loss, and no mistake!
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
The wounds on his hands and feet were easy enough to recover from; but with his manhood run through and his eyes poisoned blind, recovery would be another matter altogether.
There was nothing remarkable about this stone chamber. It seemed to be a bedchamber: a bed, a table, a small cabinet, and a few simple articles of daily use, as though it were the very place where its master had lived out his days.
If Wei Zhao's guess was right, these collection rooms and this stone chamber had all been fashioned after the places Zhang Lifeng had inhabited in life, the objects and furniture inside being just what they had been then. Zhang Lifeng had passed his entire life without son or daughter and without a disciple, alone to the very end; yet the number of people to whom he had shown kindness was beyond all counting, and naturally someone had stepped forward and paid to raise this ancient tomb for him.
On the wall of the room was written a single line: "A fellow devotee of the healing art can draw out the poison himself; a gentleman of the beam has no cure."
Reading the words on the wall, Wei Zhao could not help a bitter smile. Perhaps this was nothing more than Zhang Lifeng's small punishment dealt out to tomb robbers.
Or perhaps this little contrivance had always stood in Zhang Lifeng's own house. Fellow professionals and old friends who came to call were, naturally, his dearest intimates and knew how to set the poison right; but as for those gentlemen of the beam, they could only go blind, repent, and find themselves another trade.
Elder Yu stared at the writing on the wall, quivering with fury; but the master of the tomb had long been dead, and there was no one left to hold to account. How does one quarrel with a dead man?
Wei Zhao let his gaze travel once around the room, and at last it came to rest on a small box at the head of the little bed. He could not help but be amused: this Zhang Lifeng was truly a match for the old man back home.
At the head of the old man's bed there stood just such a little wooden box, holding a few odds and ends - paper, brushes, reading glasses and the like, the usual trifles. And, of course, the old man kept a set of medical practice notes too, right in that box!
So without a word Wei Zhao walked straight to the bed, took the box down and opened it. Sure enough, two books lay quietly inside, together with a few common little things. One supposed that brush, ink, paper and inkstone had not been so simple in ancient times and were not easy to stow away in a chest, which was why there were none here.
Of the two books in the box, one was thick and one was thin.
The thick one was the medical practice notes!
A flush of excitement rose across Wei Zhao's face. Found at last! The medical practice notes - and in them, surely, word of the Fire Spirit Sacred Fruit!
The whole purpose of this expedition had been Zhang Lifeng's medical practice notes, and now at last they were found; how could Wei Zhao not be thrilled!
He smiled to himself: at last there was hope!
Wei Zhao nearly could not keep himself from leaping up and shouting hurrah three times; even a man as capable of self-possession as Wei Zhao could not stop his body trembling with excitement!
Still, so as not to betray too obvious an emotional波动, Wei Zhao held himself in check for the time being.
The thinner volume, however, gave Wei Zhao a moment's blank start: Notes of an Alchemist's Experience? What was this?
At that very moment Elder Yu too caught sight of the two books in Wei Zhao's hands, and reached out to snatch them.
Elder Yu might be an expert of the Earth tier, but Wei Zhao's reflexes were quicker than his; and Wei Zhao had all along been watching Elder Yu's every movement. This was a book of incomparable importance to him - how could he possibly let Elder Yu wrest it away?
"What? You want to snatch it? Once I've copied it, I'll naturally hand it over," Wei Zhao said coolly.