pjbooks Chapter 1017 The Return Journey
Chapter 1017 The Return Journey
His plan was actually quite meticulous—first, he would use his near-death, loyal, and selfless demeanor to lower Lin Qiye's guard. Then, he would point out the location of the memory core to Lin Qiye, letting Lin Qiye retrieve it willingly—the memory core was covered with a carefully crafted curse seal. As soon as Lin Qiye's fingers touched the surface of the core, the curse seal would instantly activate, invading Lin Qiye's sea of consciousness and devouring and assimilating his soul. He could then occupy Lin Qiye's body, carrying this young, powerful, and vibrant husk, along with the memory core, leaving the bone tower that had imprisoned him for countless years, to go to a place where no one could find him, slowly digesting those secrets, and becoming a new—
It wasn't because he revealed any flaws. His near-death experience was real—his body was indeed near death, clinging to life only through his connection with the Bone Tower. His loyalty was real—at least for most of those long years, he had been loyal to the Candle. His dedication was real—he had indeed stood guard here for countless years, waiting for a successor. All of this was real, so real that there wasn't a single flaw.
But Lin Qiye never believed him from the moment he entered the cave.
It wasn't that I saw through any flaws, but rather it was intuition—the kind of intuition about the aura of a traitor inherited from the Candle.
Before his death, Zhu's deepest hatred wasn't for the supreme beings who surrounded and killed him, but for the three servants he had personally created, nurtured, and treated like his own children. That hatred penetrated his soul, his bones, and his blood; even a single drop of his bloodline carried that instinctive aversion. Although Yin He hadn't betrayed him, he harbored the thought of betrayal and acted upon it—a thought that, in Zhu's bloodline perception, was more glaring than that of a true traitor.
It was like a piece of pure white jade that, though not broken, had developed internal cracks. These cracks were invisible to ordinary people, but to Zhu's bloodline perception, they were like a lightning bolt in the night, so dazzling that they could not be ignored.
Lin Qiye looked down at the pile of grayish-white powder on the ground, his voice so calm it betrayed no emotion: "You wanted to be the second Candle. But you didn't even get past the first hurdle—you don't even have the patience to wait for a successor."
He crouched down, reached out, and dabbed at the grayish-white powder.
Beneath the powder lay the original cave floor, now a dark brown complex. Lin Qiye's fingers touched something hard within the powder, which he picked out.
It was a dark gold crystal, about the size of a fingernail. Its shape was irregular, with sharp edges, like a shard of broken porcelain. But its surface was incredibly smooth, so smooth that it reflected Lin Qiye's image. Inside the crystal was an extremely complex structure of light patterns, layered upon layered within it, as if the text of an entire library had been compressed into this tiny fragment.
This is the memory core.
Yin He wasn't lying; the core truly existed. He had hidden it in the grass mat beneath him, and the location he was pointing to was indeed where the core was. But what he didn't say was—the core's surface was covered with a carefully crafted curse mark; touching it would trigger a soul-devouring attack.
Lin Qiye picked up the dark gold crystal, turned it over and examined it, then wrapped it up and put it in his inner bag. He wasn't in a hurry to look at the contents of the core—Yin He's soul memories had already given him a lot of information, which needed time to digest. The secret sealed in the core was something that required more thorough preparation, a safer place, and a clearer state of mind to be qualified to view.
He stood up and took one last look at the pile of grayish-white powder on the ground.
"Your loyalty was real, and so was your betrayal. But the person Zhu made you wait for was never you."
After saying this, he turned around, bent down and crawled out of the cave, descending layer by layer along the spiral bone beams, leaving the silent bone tower behind.
When he stood once more on the black rock formations outside the tower's base, dusk was approaching. The western clouds were tinged a dark red by the setting sun, like a wound slowly bleeding on the horizon. The distant mountain outlines blurred in the twilight, and the clusters of stars that had once glowed with a fluorescent blue light at night had mostly gone out, leaving only a few scattered remnants of extremely faint afterglow, like the final sighs of dead stars in the darkness.
He stood there, silent for a moment.
One thing in Yin He's memory particularly bothered him.
The second-ranked of the Seven Attendants, the "Shadow Attendant," was the only one who neither participated in the rebellion nor remained in the position assigned by Candle. After Candle was dragged into the void rift, the Shadow Attendant disappeared. Not killed in battle, not escaped, but utterly vanished—even the imprint Candle left in the souls of the Seven Attendants could not trace his location. During the long years of waiting, Yin He repeatedly tried to contact the Shadow Attendant through the imprint, but each time it was to no avail, with no response.
According to Yin He's speculation, Shadow Servant might already be dead. But it's also possible—Shadow Servant was the only one among the Seven Servant who truly understood Candle's plan. He might have gone somewhere to do something, something even the other Servants didn't know about.
Lin Qiye looked up at the darkening sky, his gaze seemingly piercing through the clouds and the mountains, looking towards a distant place, a place he himself did not know.
"Shadow Servant..." he murmured the name, his voice drifting into the twilight, "Where have you gone?"
No one answered.
Only the wind, blowing from the depths of the mountains, carrying the scent of ashes and dried crystal powder, rustled the hem of his tattered robes.
He stood in front of the tower for about the time it takes to brew a cup of tea, then turned away, turned around, and walked back the way he came.
He didn't turn around.
Behind him, the spiraling bone tower that once soared into the sky cast a long, lonely shadow in the twilight. The peeling crystal fragments rustled softly in the wind, like some ancient sigh, finally fading into complete silence in this tranquil mountain range.
Lin Qiye walked for a day and a night in the Canggu Mountains.
He didn't rush. After leaving the Bone Tower, he didn't follow the route Mo Yuan and A Jiu had taken, but instead chose a more secluded route—heading south along the western edge of the mountain range, avoiding the mountain passes and ridges that might have been monitored. He needed this journey to process the information he had gleaned from Yin He's soul, and also to get himself into peak condition before completely leaving the Canggu Mountains.