As a thousand-faced demon who had roamed across the world for more than a century, Su Yuehan had been to many ‘forbidden areas’, mostly to become stronger.
Without a master or sect, Su Yuehan strictly wasn’t a pure demon or monster. She was just a mutant made by the King of Nine Hells, who had given her power. Since she was not satisfied relying just on one king, she infiltrated all kinds of sects and powerhouses to look for more methods to strengthen herself.
She had slipped into the Zhan family forbidden area too, under disguise as Zhan Qiyun. Her disguise was found out by Zhan Qitian, who then started his relentless pursuit to hunt her down.
Heavenly Scripture Platform was not the most tightly guarded forbidden area she had slipped into but… it contained the most books.
The shelves were so tall her neck could have snapped in half looking upwards. Staircases spiralled around the bookshelves, so far up that one could not see the end.
The entire library was divided into four regions: north, south, east and west. The eastern section contained documents related to every disciple in the four courts; the western section contained confidential information collected by Hidden Beauty Court about different sects, including private information on famous cultivators such as their habits, the magic types they excelled in, facts about their magical items etc; the southern section contained historical scriptures denoting the history of Daqi and various dynasties, including ancient historical records; the northern section recorded both major and trivial events that happened in Spiritual Mountain SEct.
Each section took up a large area, the documents on individuals were arranged in the order of character stroke number while the historical documents were according to the year.
Su Yuehan headed straight to the eastern section first to dig up information on Grand Senior Sister. When she arrived, her mind went blank- what was Grand Senior Sister’s name? What was her family name?
Oh no, I literally do not know her name!
Everyone in the Spiritual Mountain Sect habitually called her Grand Senior Sister, just like how they greeted Grand Senior Brother. After a long time, people forgot their real names.
Su Yuehan was going mad. Clenching her teeth, she started to flip through the first portion of the documents. She believed that when she arrived at Grand Senior Sister’s document, she would definitely recognise it.
Every segment on the shelves was a square of one foot by one foot, each box labelled with a serial number. A mechanical clicking sound could be heard when the segment was opened and soon, the mechanisms would deliver the corresponding documents from the storage through this box.
Su Yuehan flipped through documents quickly. In the beginning, she still had some patients as she skimmed through but after one hundred, then two hundred documents, she was in a meltdown!
The worst thing was that she had not even gone through one hundredth of the documents!
“This won’t do! If someone enters halfway through, all my efforts will be for nought!” After some thought, she decided to zoom out to look at the bigger picture-- she would start looking through Daqi’s history.
Based on Su Yuehan’s deductions, sixty years ago Grand Senior Sister’s family underwent a huge event, and then she hid her name and even changed her looks more than fifty years ago to enter Spiritual Mountain Sect. Here, she lay low until recently when she started to take action, first by releasing the Beast of War, King Zhuyan, then fanning the flames of a sect internal war.
The logical timeline assumption would be that this incident happened sixty to eighty years ago, which was the 12th year of the Tianqi era to the 2nd year of the Yellow Dragon era.
Going along with this thought, she ran to the southern section and searched for historical scriptures along these years. However, the process was even slower than looking for a specific person.
Looking at personal documents meant that the process of elimination was easier after skimming through a few points like age, sex and element.
However, looking for a historical event was different. She had to read through every event.
This process lasted until night time. She was reading through a record of the 30th Tianqi year about a treason case regarding the royal doctor and some poison pills when she paused. She had a faint feeling that this was what she was looking for!
In the 30th year of the Tianqi dynasty, Emperor Ping consumed some potency enhancing pills prescribed by the royal physician, Luo Zhenyang, and then died in the bed of Concubine Xuan. Investigations found that the emperor’s body contained poison and Luo Zhenyang was thrown into prison, his family soon executed. Only his little daughter, Luo Xiuxian, escaped this fate as she was out of town on vacation. She disappeared after this incident and never appeared again.
Usually, this case should not have attracted Su Yuehan’s attention as it was not particularly uncommon.
However, there were four key points to this incident.
First, the timing was right. The 30th year of the Tianqi dynasty was sixty-two years ago.
Second, the incident matched. This case was revealed to be a huge mistake. In the second year after Luo Zhenyang’s entire family was executed, Concubine Xuan was exposed as the true culprit who assassinated the emperor.
Third, the identity of the people matched. Luo Xiuxian’s disappearance and Grand Senior Sister’s sudden appearance at Spiritual Mountain seemed to coincide.
Fourth, and also the most important point- although Luo Zhenyang was the royal physician, both his sons and one daughter were all cultivators. One of his sons was a very advanced cultivator and escaped to an area near Spiritual Mountain, then was captured by Spiritual Mountain Sect’s scouts!
The combination of four points made Grand Senior Sister likely to be Luo Xiuxian!
However, Su Yuehan was still not confident enough to draw conclusions because it was the only evidence. If she could find information on the capture of Luo Zhenyang’s son, then she could match the incidents!
Su Yuehan dashed to the northern section to look through the scrolls from the same year.
This time, Su Yuehan had some direction and did not need to search through every year. She checked only the year of the assassination and quickly found all the documents from that year.
After a while, she found the historical records of the Spiritual Mountain Sect capturing Luo Zhenyang’s son, Luo Yu!
Most importantly, in this battle, the main forces of the Spiritual Mountain sect were made up of Hidden Brocade, Hidden Beauty and… Hidden Modesty Court!
“This is great!!” Su Yuehan rolled the scrolls up excitedly, her eyes shining. “Gotcha! Grand Senior Sister! No, or I should say, Luo Xiuxian!”
It looked like after Luo Xiuxian escaped this incident, she hid herself and somehow changed her looks and hair colour, finally entering Spiritual Mountain Sect to become a Hidden Beauty Court disciple. This coincided with the extraordinary story of Grand Senior Sister coming to seek a master with existing cultivation skills!
That was why Luo Xiuxian hated the Daqi palace, the emperor’s son killed her entire family. Although the son, who then became emperor, had already died, his son must pay the price. Zhao Bairen’s father was the one who gave the order, so now naturally the debt was Zhao Bairen’s to pay.
That was why Luo Xiuxian released King Zhuyan, who was capable of bringing war and tragedy to the world.
Similarly, she hated the three courts of Spiritual Mountain Sect for capturing her elder brother. That was why she wanted to instigate an internal conflict, to avenge her brother!
The entire logic flowed smoothly. As long as Su Yuehan could find evidence, then the truth would be out!
Su Yuehan whispered with a smirk, “Oh Grand Senior Sister, so what if you have mastered cultivation? You’ll still fall in the hands of Su Yuehan!”
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