Chapter 1780: Clues
Nine-layered Dragon Cloud, Northern Domain, Murong City!
This great city of the Dragon Cloud Northern Domain had no small origin; it was once the headquarters of the Murong Family, one of the four great clans back then, and at that time it was an extremely renowned city in this Dragon Cloud Northern Domain.
It was a pity that the once flourishing Murong Family, because they failed to read the tides of the world and blindly stood up for that Human Clan traitor, the Long Xiao Battle God, was in the end uprooted entirely by Emperor Canglong, never again to regain its former glory.
A hundred years later, Murong City was no longer the prosperous scene of those years; many people had already moved out of this great city, for fear of being implicated by the Murong Family.
In the central region of Murong City, this was originally the location of the Murong Family headquarters, but now it was desolate to the extreme; the gardens were overgrown with weeds, almost taller than a man, snakes, insects, rats, and ants everywhere, and many pavilions and towers were on the verge of collapse.
Right before such a desolate ruin of the Murong Family, on this day there stood an old man whose face carried a trace of great vicissitudes; in his aged eyes there was a faint glimmer of tears, as if he had recalled some bygone events.
Seeing that there was no one around, the old man’s figure moved slightly and he had already entered what was once the Murong Family headquarters, ghostlike in form, shuttling back and forth within, from time to time pausing at certain places.
Wherever this person paused seemed to be able to stir his memories of the past, until he came before a great hall that was slightly dignified and solemn, and only then did his expression turn serious.
This great hall was, in the Murong Family headquarters of those years, the most important of all; it enshrined the tablets of the successive Family Heads of the Murong Family, as well as the ancestral tablets of those forebears who had made tremendous contributions to the Murong Family.
𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶
Yet after a hundred years had passed, this ancestral tablet hall of the Murong Family was already dilapidated beyond repair, the ancestral tablets inside scattered all over the ground, many of them even broken in two.
"Honored ancestors, this unfilial descendant, Murong Sou, has come back to see you!"
The old man stood outside the hall for quite a while, finally steeling his resolve and stepping into the ancestral tablet hall with one foot; when he saw the chaos within, he could no longer hold back and knelt heavily to the ground, tears pouring down like rain in an instant.
From the way this old man addressed himself, it turned out he was precisely Murong Sou, whom Yun Xiao had searched for in vain in Drunken Immortal City, and who had once been a powerful figure in the Murong Family.
However, though Murong Sou’s strength was formidable, he was fond of wine and given to the cup; back then, the Murong Clan Patriarch knew his temperament and thus did not restrain him much. At that time, the Mu Family had no need for Murong Sou to do anything.
In the end, Murong Sou also made a grave mistake because of his drinking, and was expelled from the family by the Murong Clan Patriarch; if not for the Long Xiao Battle God in those days, his very life would likely not have been spared.
Ultimately, a sudden raid by the Emperor Canglong Palace caused the vast Murong Family to crumble, and when Murong Sou, drunk, rushed back upon hearing the news, what he saw was a field of broken walls and corpses, leaving him utterly stunned.
All these years, Murong Sou had been hiding everywhere, living a life of drunken oblivion in Drunken Immortal City, wishing to use alcohol to numb himself so he would no longer think of the calamity that had exterminated the Murong Family; though he had been expelled, he still regarded the Murong Family as his faith.
But the recent unrest of the Emperor Canglong Palace and the relentless pressure from the Emperor Palace made Murong Sou aware that he would soon be unable to keep himself hidden, so his thinking finally began to change.
Even though Murong Sou was a Holy Rank Expert, he knew that once his identity was exposed, the Emperor Canglong Palace would send people after him without end, and by then he would once again fall into a vicious cycle of fleeing and skulking.
Thus, before that session of the Drunken Immortal Conference began, Murong Sou finally made a decision, and that decision was to return to this Northern Domain, return to the territory that had once belonged to the Murong Family, and seek an opportunity to enter the Murong Tomb.
Returning once more to the Murong Family headquarters, although there were no longer any guards from the Emperor Canglong Palace here, those shattered ancestral tablets still filled Murong Sou’s heart with pain.
While tidying up these ancestral tablets, Murong Sou cursed the shamelessness of the Emperor Canglong Palace countless times, but he knew that with his own feeble strength, to seek revenge was unimaginably difficult.
For it was said that Emperor Canglong of the Emperor Canglong Palace had already surpassed the Holy Rank Peak in the traditional sense and was advancing toward another, even higher Realm.
Thus the Murong Tomb became Murong Sou’s final hope; yet as to how to enter the Murong Tomb, he currently had no clue at all, for it was said to be an absolute death ground that only the Murong Family Patriarch at the verge of death could enter.
"Hm?"
As Murong Sou’s thoughts were turning in his heart, his gaze suddenly hardened, shifting to the last broken tablet, his body also trembling slightly.
No one knew which ancestor of the Murong Family that tablet had belonged to, and at this moment Murong Sou did not bother with such trifles, for he had suddenly discovered that at the broken part of the tablet there seemed to be a faint glimmer of light.
Murong Sou could hardly restrain himself from rushing forward, picking up that tablet which only half remained, then narrowing his eyes to scrutinize it, and at last he discovered some clue.
"Honored ancestor, please forgive Murong Sou for this disrespect!"
Feeling the anomaly of that tablet, Murong Sou was not someone who stubbornly clung to rules; he had a faint feeling that this might be the key to his entering the Murong Tomb, so he no longer cared about such formalities.
Crack!
Murong Sou exerted strength with his right wrist, breaking off another piece of the already fractured tablet, revealing within a slip of snow-white paper, which both startled and delighted him.
"Why is there nothing on it?"
Murong Sou impatiently drew out that piece of white paper, only to see that there was not even half a character on it, which made him feel somewhat on the verge of losing his mind.
He could feel that he had already discovered something, but that sheet of paper with not a single word on it left him, for the moment, at a complete loss as to what to do; this feeling was truly hard to put into words.
"Right, the family’s Essence Blood!"
After a brief spell of melancholy, Murong Sou suddenly remembered some things his father had told him back then; a trace of joy finally appeared on his face, and he immediately raised his left hand, bringing his index finger to his lips and biting down hard.
A streak of Blood Light emerged, and under Murong Sou’s deliberate control, the red blood dripping from his index finger was no ordinary fresh blood, but the Essence Blood of the Murong Family’s direct descendant.
"It really works!"
When that drop of Essence Blood fell onto the white sheet of paper, there was already some change upon it, making Murong Sou both shocked and delighted, secretly thinking that he had indeed found the right method.
"This is... the character ’ape’?"
A single drop of Essence Blood could clearly reveal only one character, and when Murong Sou saw that slightly complicated Ancient Character, he managed with some difficulty to recognize it, yet no matter how he pondered he still could not make sense of it.
"There should be other characters!"
Since he had found the right method, Murong Sou no longer tangled himself up in guesses; he continuously offered several more drops of Essence Blood, finally causing eight small characters, lined up side by side, to appear on that previously completely blank white paper.
"When the White Ape reveals its sanctity, the mountain gate will open!"
On the small white sheet, the blood-red color at this moment was vivid, yet it displayed these eight small characters that seemed like a prophetic verse, plunging Murong Sou into a state of contemplation.
"The mountain gate opening should be referring to my Murong Family’s Murong Tomb, but what is that White Ape, and ’reveals its sanctity’? Could it mean reaching the Holy Demon Level?"
Murmurs slipped from Murong Sou’s mouth; he had clearly deduced some things, yet some other things remained unclear. At least in his memory, within the Murong Family there had never been any White Ape at the Holy Demon Level.
Boom!
Just as Murong Sou was lost in thought, he suddenly felt a heat in his hand; immediately afterward, that white paper bearing the eight small characters abruptly flared with a lick of flame and, in an instant, turned into a wisp of ash.
It seemed that the secret hidden within the ancestral tablet had been imbued by the Murong Family’s ancestors with some special means. If Murong Sou were not a direct descendant of the Murong Family, he definitely would not have been able to make the writing appear.
Now that the eight small characters upon it had been seen, the paper automatically burned itself away, obviously not wanting to leave any clues for the enemy. Such a miraculous scene also gave Murong Sou a few more degrees of confidence in this trip.
"Since I can’t figure it out, I’ll just go to the Murong Tomb and take a look first!"
Murong Sou was not someone who dragged things out. On this return trip, besides secretly paying respects to his ancestors, his greatest goal was to enter the Murong Tomb.
He knew that trying to raise his strength now was absolutely difficult to the extreme, but if he could truly enter the Murong Tomb, perhaps he might obtain some Creation; when that time came, to avenge the Murong Family’s extermination, he would at least have a sliver of a chance.
Murong Sou finally bowed a few more times toward the ancestral tablets of his many forebears, then left the Murong Family headquarters without looking back, leaving behind only those countless tablets in desolate silence, with no knowing when a living person would next enter this place again.
Boom!
Yet just as Murong Sou had barely slipped out of the Murong Family headquarters, from a very distant point to the north of Murong City there suddenly erupted a formidable wave of energy.
Only to see a pale blue radiance shoot straight into the sky and explode in midair; even from such a great distance, one could vaguely see that when that firework-like object burst open, it formed two blurry large characters.
"Mu... Rong?!"
At this moment, all the Cultivators in Murong City had shock written on their faces. They had clearly recognized the origin of those two large characters, though each one’s thoughts differed.
"Isn’t that place the legendary Murong Tomb? Could something have happened there?"
One Cultivator born and raised in Murong City suddenly thought of something; his expression instantly turned somewhat feverish, clearly knowing exactly where that energy fluctuation had come from.
For these Cultivators who had grown up in Murong City, as long as they were over a hundred years old, they would know what that so‑called Murong Tomb actually was.
It was said that back in the day it had been the absolute forbidden ground of the Murong Family; not only was it difficult for outsiders to enter, even the Murong Family’s Powerful Elders were not allowed in, not a single one.
Only the Murong Family Patriarch, who knew his own lifespan would soon end, could, after settling all affairs, enter the Murong Tomb on his own to wait for death. From this, one could imagine just how wondrous and how unfathomably mysterious that place was.
And now, at this very moment, at the location of that extremely mysterious Murong Tomb, such a surge of energy had erupted. What did this signify? All the Cultivators who thought of this could not help but feel somewhat excited.