Chapter 468: The Authenticity Seal and the Ledgers

Zhongsun Mou paused at the entryway and glanced back. “And you?”

“I’m going to keep searching around here for additional leads, anyone suspicious,” He Lingchuan replied. “We split the work. You go after the killer; I’ll go after Mr. Mai.”

Zhongsun Mou gave a curt snort. He did not object. He simply opened the door and strode out.

But he had barely taken two steps before he stopped and thrust out a hand toward He Lingchuan.

“Give it to me.”

“What?” He Lingchuan blinked.

“The item you took from the display shelf,” Zhongsun Mou said coolly. “I’m taking it back for inspection.”

He Lingchuan produced the ivory sphere and turned it in his palm a few times, his expression hovering on the edge of reluctance. In the end, he still handed it over.

Zhongsun Mou took it without a second glance and failed to notice that along with the sphere, a tiny spider had also come along for the ride and quietly slipped into the folds of his sleeve.

Back in the courtyard, one of Zhongsun Mou’s guards leaned close and whispered a quick report. Zhongsun Mou flicked his gaze toward the battered study, then turned and left with his entire entourage.

General Ling deliberately stomped back through the study one more time. When it came back out, it looked almost offended on He Lingchuan’s behalf.

“That egg-hiding bastard used the opportunity to have his people clear the whole study out. He didn’t leave so much as a splinter!”

“Did they take the vase too?” He Lingchuan asked immediately.

“Huh? What vase?”

He Lingchuan paused, then waved it off. “Forget it.” He exhaled through his nose. “If they could leave calmly like that, they probably didn’t leave anything useful behind.”

Mr. Mai had fled early, yet the study had been neat and orderly. There was no sign of frantic rummaging.

So what had alarmed him?

He Lingchuan pushed the question aside for the moment and returned to something else. “By the way, why do you call him an egg-hiding bastard?”

General Ling bared its teeth in a grin that was all rough humor. “Mermen turn back into fish-tailed things when they hit water, and split into human legs when they come ashore. But that

part

stays hidden inside them. Totally different from landfolk like us. So what else would you call them?” It then tilted its head at He Lingchuan and asked, “So what now?”

Even though Zhongsun Mou was also an envoy, General Ling found He Lingchuan far easier to deal with, almost friendly. After a few days of running around together, it was already treating him like an acquaintance.

“This whole mess has contradictions that don’t line up,” He Lingchuan admitted, thinking hard. “Just now, when Zhongsun Mou heard your title, he seemed agitated. Do you know why?”

General Ling shook its head. “How would I know what’s in his skull? Besides, he’s not the only one who gets irritated just looking at me.”

That’s fair. With this old ram’s temper, it’s probably a thorn in plenty of people’s eyes.

He Lingchuan walked back into what was left of the study. He pulled a small mirror from his robe and angled it around the room, sweeping the walls and corners.

General Ling watched and remarked, “That mirror’s a pretty decent magical artifact.”

“You’ve seen it before?” He Lingchuan’s tone stayed casual, but his attention sharpened.

“The patterns on it, yeah. It’s a style specific to some Middle-Era immortal sect, I think?” General Ling squinted at the mirror, thinking. “I’ve seen it somewhere. Where was it? Ah, I can’t recall.”

He Lingchuan’s heart gave a small, sharp jolt. The Soul-Stealing Mirror had never had a clean origin story, and it had seemed tied to Lingxu City as well. Apparently, in Beijia, he really could not flash it around casually.

Outwardly, he only said, “It’s an imitation.”

After the Soul-Stealing Mirror did a full sweep, it reported back to him, “There are no lingering eavesdropping divine techniques or surveillance objects left behind.”

This mirror really is an excellent counter-surveillance tool.

As General Ling had said, the study had basically been looted. Even the entire bookcase was gone. The antique shelf had survived only because it had held few items to begin with. The desk drawers had been emptied too, most likely because Zhongsun Mou’s people had limited storage space and could not haul off the whole desk.

He Lingchuan deliberately glanced at the place where the vase had been.

Empty.

Only a ring of dust remained on the floor, like a pale halo marking where it had stood.

Is Lord Zhongsun some kind of locust?

He Lingchuan had two drillwind beast guards stand watch at the doorway, then pulled several scrolls from his storage ring and laid them out on the desk.

General Ling stared. “Where’d those come from?”

“From a vase on the antique shelf.” He Lingchuan rubbed his hands together. “I was about to inspect the shelf when Zhongsun Mou barged in.”

Jiao Yu padded closer, curious as well. “Why only these scrolls?”

“The vase was shoved into the darkest corner. It was dusty all over, but these scrolls...” He Lingchuan held up one of them. “Strictly speaking, it was this one. The end-cap of its roller was smooth as new, and there was no dust on it at all, which means Mr. Mai opened it often.”

There were three scrolls in total, and he had taken them all in one grab. There was no reason to make two trips. He untied the cord and slowly unfurled the first scroll.

It was not large, roughly a thousand square centimeters or a square foot.

It was a painting. However, it was not the usual flowers and birds, insects and fish, landscapes and pines. Instead, it depicted a round jar with no lid.

And the jar looked almost transparent, because inside it were a red jade thumb ring, several booklets, and a few round beads.

Red beads.

Who painted something like this?

The longer General Ling stared at the beads, the more familiar it looked. “That bead looks an awful lot like a blood bead.”

He Lingchuan, however, was studying the red seal stamped along the edge of the painting.

Honestly, it did not look like a normal seal stamp. It looked more like a talisman painted onto the paper.

He pressed a fingertip to the painted surface.

Everything felt like soft paper, except—

The jar.

Both the tiger and the ram made small sounds of surprise.

The moment He Lingchuan’s finger reached the jar, it sank in.

It was not just pressing paper anymore. His finger vanished into the image as if the painting had turned into a window.

And now the painting contained something new: a hand, hovering above the jar.

It even looked oddly lifelike.

“Well, would you look at that. There’s a whole world hidden in the painting.” He Lingchuan’s eyes narrowed. He did not hesitate to slide his hand farther in and simply scoop the red beads out of the jar.

When he withdrew his palm from the scroll, everyone stared at the several bright red beads that now lay in his hand.

“It really is blood beads!” General Ling did not need to taste it to know. The scent was unmistakable. “So what the hell are these used for?”

Jiao Yu’s voice was low. “Take the booklets too.”

He Lingchuan reached in again, pulled out the booklets, and flipped one open.

Inside were line after line of entries, detailing year, month, and day, how many jiang beads were received, and where each batch was harvested from.

“It’s a ledger.”

He Lingchuan flipped further and found the same thing all the way through. There were no blank pages.

“The ink’s even a little faded. These are old account books.”

Jiao Yu sucked in a sharp breath. “They’ve killed this many monster civilians?” Even a rough skim showed that a single ledger recorded over two hundred monster kills, and there were seven ledgers here.

That meant at least 1,400 monsters had vanished.

Beijia called itself a monster state, but monsterfolk were still fewer than a tenth of the human population. More than a thousand monsters disappearing without a ripple, even Jiao Yu felt a sting of sympathy.

General Ling grabbed one ledger in its mouth and spat it onto the desk. “This one’s new.”

He Lingchuan opened it. The ink was indeed fresh, the last entry written boldly and clearly: “Mount Niutou, drillwind beast, two.”

From the date and location, this was the record of General Ling’s younger kin being killed.

General Ling muttered a curse under its breath, then abruptly fixated on something completely different. “Why only two?!”

He Lingchuan shot it a look. “Are you sure that’s the part you should be focusing on?”

“My younger kin are bursting with qi! They’re strong, vigorous, and in their prime!” General Ling’s eyes burned. “How can seven or eight of them only yield two red beads? Even in that nest of weak, useless porcupine monsters, every few of them could make a bead.” It paused, confused by its own words. “Wait, what are they called again? Is it jiang beads or blood beads?”

“This ledger says jiang beads, but Wan Xiannneng called them blood beads.”

If there was a discrepancy, Mr. Mai’s written records were more likely to be accurate.

Still, General Ling’s complaint—bizarre as it sounded—was not irrational. Could the ledger be wrong?

He Lingchuan had never met Mr. Mai, but he had the sense that the man was cautious enough to flee at the first whiff of danger, to run ahead of He Lingchuan and even Zhongsun Mou.

Would someone that careful botch the name of the very product he was trading?

If the ledger was not wrong, then was Wan Xianneng secretly skimming extra pearls for himself?

He Lingchuan pulled out the red jade thumb ring as well.

The jade was of excellent quality, with faint fine lines running through it like capillaries. However, it was not a storage ring, but rather just an ordinary thumb ring meant to look good on a hand.

General Ling, following an old ram’s habit, stuck out its tongue and licked at the scroll. Rams licked paper and grass the same way.

And something actually came off under its tongue.

The bright red seal stamp.

“Huh?”

He Lingchuan picked it up and realized it was not ink at all. It was a thin layer of soft, tough paper, flexible and hard to tear.

It turned out that the seal was detachable.

He pressed the painting again.

This time, it did not let his hand in.

The painting was just a painting. The hidden space was gone. The items inside were frozen in place again, reduced to a still-life drawing.

So the painting’s realness depends on the strange red seal.

He Lingchuan studied it closely. On it was a word in the ancient immortal language: authentic.

Interesting.

𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

He Lingchuan stuck the seal back onto the painting.

The hidden space returned. The items could be retrieved again.

This thing is very interesting.

On a whim, He Lingchuan grabbed a blank sheet of paper and drew a crude little “chick pecking rice” sketch, then slapped the red seal onto it.

Could he pull the chick out?

He tested it.

The answer was no.

A painting was still a painting. Things you created on paper could not just be “taken out.”

But then, they had just pulled out blood pearls and ledgers.

He Lingchuan’s mind sparked.

He went to the kitchen, grabbed a handful of rice, came back, and pressed his hand onto the little chick drawing.

The rice vanished.

The group of one man and two monsters stared at the paper. Around the chick in the drawing, a scattering of rice grains had appeared.

Before He Lingchuan could reach in, a tiger paw stretched over and began rummaging inside the painting.

He Lingchuan and General Ling watched as the tiger’s paw appeared inside the paper, clawing and poking at the simplified little chick like it had become a real nuisance.

When Jiao Yu withdrew its paw, a dozen rice grains lay on its pads.

“So only external objects can be placed in and taken out,” He Lingchuan concluded. He peeled the red seal off again. “And once you rip this off, whatever’s inside gets sealed in. Interesting.”

Even in this era of weakened magic, there were still all kinds of strange little tools floating around.

But back to the main point, the ledgers.

Jiao Yu’s eyes scanned rapidly. Suddenly, it said, “These account books include time, quantity, and harvest location, but they don’t list a delivery location.”

“Good eye.” He Lingchuan nodded. “That’s because the delivery location doesn’t need to be recorded. In other words, they trade only here.”

Jiao Yu stared, almost disbelieving. “Are you saying there’s only one hunting team? Otherwise, the ledgers would record which team delivered which batch.”

“They must have an exceptional magical artifact,” He Lingchuan said quietly. “Something that lets them move quickly across all of Chiyan and strike wherever they please.”

General Ling blinked. “That can’t be. Didn’t that old caretaker say people came to see Mr. Mai often?”

“Maybe that’s part of the disguise,” He Lingchuan replied after a moment. “Mr. Mai also runs an ordinary business.” Then he looked between the two monsters and said firmly, “For now, we don’t share any of this with Zhongsun Mou. I can’t shake the feeling that his sudden appearance here is far too suspicious.”