Bone

At midnight, the palace banquet will be over.

Seeing the emperor left the table surrounded by his attendants, some officials and distinguished guests who were not able to drink well stood up, hiccupped and said goodbye to others, and walked out of the hall in groups of threes and twos. If there are those who are still awake, don’t forget to talk to the prince and the national teacher again; there are also servants and eunuchs who have collected the mess in the hall in an orderly manner; Taifu Tan and his wife also left the hall first——

Tan Fengyue folded her arms and leaned on the thick red porch next to the gate of the palace, her eyes pierced through the chaotic crowd, looking straight at Ji Zhuoran who was chatting with people with a smile.Standing by his side, Qin Nianjiu put back the paper crane whose aura was fading in his hand, breathed a sigh of relief, turned to him and said, "Sanjiu and they retreated completely. According to the original plan, we will be in the garden for a while. meet."

Still looking at the prince from afar, Tan Fengyue nodded, "Yes."

Seeing that he didn't intend to move, Qin Nianjiu guessed that he was still thinking about the snake soup, so he gave him a light tug, signaling him not to procrastinate, it's important to find Sanjiu and the others quickly, and said indifferently: "Hi , people’s hearts are changeable, it’s normal to be afraid of things when you are young, and not to be afraid when you grow up..."

Is it.Tan Fengyue didn't respond directly to his words, she just said "maybe" lightly, then looked away, and instead clasped his hand hanging under the sleeve, "Let's go."

Grand Tutor Tan and Mrs. Tan should wait for them by the inner city gate, they both staggered into the crowd leaving the hall, and walked out slowly.

There were many people who came to the banquet, and the bustling crowd spread from the main hall all the way to the palace gate, and the voices of people were also noisy.Whenever he is crowded by the crowd like this, Tan Fengyue's complexion will not be very good, especially at this moment he still remembers what the national teacher said——

Blame him for not doing anything, blame him for not knowing...why?

Why blame him, why would he not act, why would he not know? ...

The banquet was full of delicious wine, and along the way, there were many drunken ministers with frivolous footsteps, swaying left and right.Qin Nianjiu didn't know what the ancestor beside him was thinking about with downcast eyes, he was only focused on preventing someone from bumping into him, and complained to him in a low voice, "Such drunks...drink like this at night, how can they go to court in the daytime?"

Thinking is always useless, Tan Fengyue came back to her senses, glanced coolly at the few ministers who almost bumped into him, and then looked at the few calm and brisk walking, all of them sarcastically clicked, "Isn't this Are there any other good drinks?"

Wouldn't this be ruling the country by drinking?Qin Nianjiu followed his tut and shook his head, thinking that the court was really doomed. Suddenly, he saw a red-faced noble lady tripping suddenly and was about to fall to the ground. Fortunately, the personal maid helped him in time. It didn't make her fall out of good or bad.

Drunk and embarrassing, the lady stood up embarrassingly, bit her lip, stared at a man with a broad back and waist who was walking by himself with complaints in her eyes, and called him twice, "General !”, but saw that he was still walking on his own without looking back, so he hurriedly stepped on to follow.

Seeing the calm-faced, steady-footed general, who didn't seem to be drunk at all, Qin Nianjiu clicked his tongue again, and said coolly, "Okay, at least the general is a good drinker, so it's not too bad."

In this imperial court, there are emperors at the top who continue their lives with the common people, officials at the bottom who run the country drunkenly, and teachers next to them who kill the princes... If this is not the end, I really don't know what to do.Tan Fengyue shrugged noncommittally, and walked with him to the soft sedan waiting beside the inner city gate.

……

Leaking night, at the garden in the suburbs.

Ji Zhuoran had already stepped back and rushed over, listening to Fu Duanshui's brief description of what he had seen and heard in the National Teacher Tower in the hall, Ye Jinzhu and Ye Yunting both looked a little depressed, and they were sitting by the side looking through a case book Later, Sanjiu waited by the door, and when he saw Tan and Qin approaching, he rushed over, "Xianjun! Ghost——"

Qin Nianjiu covered his mouth, so that he didn't let him reveal his identity, hugged him again, and asked him: "How is it?"

"Ah!—" Sanjiu sighed with a puffy face, and didn't talk too much nonsense, just picked the most important thing to say, "There is a dark room in the National Teacher Tower, and there is a casting furnace hidden in the ashes. All the bones...and some traces..."

While talking, he gestured, and told them how he discovered the imprint, and finally he lowered his head, ground his toes on the ground, and said with some guilt and depression, "It's... that's the secret box... …We were unable to find…”

I think they searched the inside and outside of the National Teacher Pagoda, and almost dug the ground three feet, but they still couldn't find the so-called "secret box"...

If there is really the gate of life of the national teacher hidden in the secret box, how can it be easily discovered by others.Qin Nianjiu pinched his cheek lightly without any surprise, and asked him to relax before stepping into the hall, "It's all right. If you tell me more about the bones, do you know who the deceased is?"

Sanjiu was about to speak, when Ye Jinzhu slapped the armrest of the wooden chair angrily, and said angrily: "Brother tested the bone age with the bone residue, and the deceased were only twelve or thirteen years old, presumably they were called into the pagoda by the national teacher Those little eunuchs... This national teacher is really vicious!"

Qin Nianjiu frowned when he heard the words, "Didn't you say earlier that those little eunuchs came and went, and they were not folded in the tower?"

"Then who knows what is going back...!" Ye Jinzhu couldn't hide his anger when he thought that the national teacher almost killed himself and his younger brother, and said like a cannonball: "Isn't he good at forbidden techniques?" Well, maybe some kind of blindfold was used to pretend to be a living person with paper figurines, or—”

Tan Fengyue thoughtfully interjected into his words, "...a ghost?"

Qin Nianjiu was startled for a moment, and the few ghosts that he had met in Qingyuan by chance appeared in his mind—behind the dull faces, there were lumps of bloody flesh, twisting and wriggling from time to time.

If the lumps of flesh and blood were covered with human skin——

Sanjiu also saw those ghosts in the talisman, and exclaimed, "It's really possible!"

"Oh, no matter what it is, it's all weird anyway! In short, if this is the case, then the national teacher will have more helpers in the palace!" Ye Jinzhu said in a rough voice, "Need to think of a way to deal with it!" Method..."

Ye Yunting raised his head, clicked on the booklet spread on his lap, and continued his words, "So we are looking up the spells that can teach strange appearances."

"..." The strange Qin Nianjiu laughed dryly, and took a half step back, "...that's fine, that's fine, you guys continue."

Tan Fengyue hugged his back reassuringly, then turned to look at Fu Duanshui, "——The imprint on the table?"

"Hmm." Fu Duanshui took out the gray-stained white silk from his sleeve, got up and handed it over, "There are mostly meaningless writing marks on it, presumably the traces left by the national teacher when he practiced calligraphy. Besides—"

He paused for a moment, "There are still some more coherent strokes, which look like some scattered spells."

Without listening to him continue to speak, he knew that the incantation on it should not be within the scope of his cognition, Qin Nianjiu hurriedly took the white silk from his hand, spread it on the table beside him, and began to look at it carefully, talking about Fengyue He also moved closer and glanced at the white silk.

Just as Fu Duanshui said, the gray marks on the white silk can be dark or light in color, the darker ones are the words that overlap each other, and the lighter ones are like a few lines of chaotic and coherent mantras that also overlap. Together, and they are all intertwined in one place, so it’s not chaotic——

However, after a cursory glance, he knew that this spell was somewhat similar to the spell mark on Qingyuan Formation, and it was probably out of his range of cognition, so Tan Fengyue simply moved his eyes away, Qin Nianjiu focused on removing the curse mark, while he focused on the overlapping characters, trying to recognize what characters they were.

The teacher of the state is blind, and when practicing calligraphy, the brush strokes can be said to be very penetrating. Although the Sanjiu rubbings have been done very carefully, it is inevitable that many strokes are blended into a ball.He patiently discerned them carefully, and he could barely discern the words "meng" and "return" in one sentence.

"Dream, return..." Tan Fengyue caressed the folding fan, counted the intervals between the two characters, and said to herself in a breathy voice: "...Dream is far from returning?"

——Plum calyx is inserted into the residual branch.Drunken sober smoke breaks spring sleep, dreams are far from returning.

The melancholy and deep sorrow revealed in the poem can almost rush to the face, Tan Fengyue looked down at the words "meng" and "return", and pursed her lips slightly in displeasure.

I had a conversation with the national teacher at the banquet, and I got very little information. I only know that the national teacher seemed to be mocking him and complaining about him, and the ridicule, resentment, and sarcasm didn't seem to be all directed at him, it seemed more like he was laughing at himself , self-pity, self-irony...

——Dreams are far from returning.

For the time being, don't think about why he didn't know he was there at the time, and why the national teacher didn't stay in the "home" he wanted to return to, and didn't stay in Qingyuan with Gong Buwang to live a happy life, but instead hibernated in this sect. In the court that is despised, working for the emperor, secretly murdering the prince...

He paused in his thoughts for a moment, then frowned suddenly, and looked up at Fu Duanshui and Ji Zhuoran who were talking over there.

After visiting the National Master Pagoda at night, but failed to find the crucial secret box, Fu Duanshui looked condensed and asked Ji Zhuoran carefully, "Have you ever seen what kind of secret box it is?"

Ji Zhuoran looked solemn, and shook his head, "The secret box is placed in the pagoda, and no one has seen it for a long time. I only heard it mentioned by the emperor's grandmother when I was young, saying that it was a long wooden box with engraved There are some distorted characters, and there are a few gem-like bright stones embedded..."

Tan Fengyue listened attentively, and was suddenly taken aback.

A box full of spells and spirit stones?

In the Red Ridge sacrificial formation, there is a spiritual box with a pair of eyeballs as the eyes of the formation——

When he was stunned, Fu Duanshui was also stunned, and Ye Jinzhu, who was also distracted listening to their conversation, exclaimed in a low voice, "This, isn't this our sect setting up a spiritual box to form a formation?" How to do it?!"

Even Liu Feng seemed to have stopped at the end of his words for a moment.

In the elegantly decorated small hall, Qin Nianjiu was contemplating the white silk without hearing anything outside the window, Ye Yunting was concentrating on looking up spells in the file, Sanjiuquan couldn't understand what they were talking about, just Drowsy and dozed in the arms of the ghost king——

And Tan Fengyue just stared blankly.

If he was just skeptical before, then he can now confirm that there are indeed intertwined clues colliding with each other, leading to the same thing—then he was not present, he did not know, the Guanshizong people death.

——If it is said that this is "the will of heaven", then what is the intention of this "will of heaven"?

It was as if there was a pair of invisible hands pushing behind him, asking him to find out, to find out——

"Could it be that the spirit box was given to the imperial court by our sect to control the country?" Not knowing how his sect could be related to the imperial court, Ye Jinzhu tilted his head with a look of surprise and confusion on his face, "But We looked both inside and outside the tower, but we didn't see any formations... Could it be broken by the national teacher? Then why didn't I hear the elders mention it... No, no, right now is not the time to entangle this issue, if it is in the box It will be even more difficult if there is any spiritual object in it and the national teacher takes it for himself!"

The matter is so important, Fu Duanshui frowned slightly, and hesitantly took out the Sound Transmission Crane Talisman. He wanted to ask his fellow disciples for details, but Qin Nianjiu, who was digging into the white silk over there, suddenly let out a soft hiss, as if After finding some clues, he hurriedly walked over, "How?"

Qin Nianjiu did understand some things, but in terms of finding out, it was not too much...

He took another piece of paper and put it in his hand, and separated the overlapping mantras with guesswork, and finally saw some of the content on it, most of which were useless There are only two more complete sentences about the residual curse.

Pointing to the two lines of incantation, he said uncertainly: "...but these two lines look a bit strange, as if they were drawn on a talisman. But I can only see that the function of the first half of the line is 'Yi Yang'. "Qi is leading", what is the effect of the second half of the sentence... I don't know."

"It's easy to say." Tan Fengyue, who had calmed down, pondered for a while, and took out the yellow talisman and cinnabar from his sleeve, "Just try it."

Ye Jinzhu, who followed, looked at him in surprise, "Try? How can I try... If this curse can split souls and summon thunder—"

"There's no such thing as using yang energy as a guide to split souls and summon thunder." Tan Fengyue glanced at him indifferently, then turned to Qin Nianjiu, "Take me for a try."

... How did this ancestor suddenly become so concerned about this matter?Qin Nianjiu looked at him puzzledly, thought for a moment, agreed, took the yellow talisman and cinnabar in his hand, and took the pen and inkstone that Sanjiu Xiaopao found, rolled up his sleeves and picked up the pen——

Put pen to paper and complete.

Tan Fengyue watched him draw a talisman, and suddenly realized that this was the first time he had seen this ghost draw a yellow talisman with cinnabar.

...I didn't think it before, but now I look at it, and I realize that the paper talisman drawn by this ghost is even more delicate than his own - it really made him regret why he didn't ask him to draw a talisman to relieve his worries when he was in Qingyuan.

Before he could look at the talisman a few more times, Qin Nianjiu flipped his hand neatly and raised his hand habitually to stick the talisman on his forehead, but stopped before he was about to put it on, hesitatingly said: "Is that how it's used..."

The moment he thought about it, Tan Fengyue suddenly froze and frowned deeply.

Sensing the change in his expression, Fu Duanshui put his hand on the hilt of the sword in time, and looked at him vigilantly, "What's wrong?"

Tan Fengyue frowned and didn't answer him, she just stretched out her hand and made a random decision.

Everyone saw the blue aura gathering from all directions, but it collapsed as soon as it got close to him, as if it was blocked from the outside, and it could not be used by him at all.

He loosened his brows, and said in a cold voice, "...I can't mobilize the spiritual energy to perform the spell."

Not only that, as if he had been completely cut off from the connection with the spiritual energy, the spiritual energy originally contained in his body was also stagnated for a moment, unable to mobilize at all.

When the three of Yuyan were stunned, Qin Nianjiu hurriedly threw away the paper talisman that looked like a hot potato, and anxiously took Tan Fengyue's hand, "Would it damage your meridians?!"

Tan Fengyue shook her head, and gave him a reassuring look, "It's just that I can't use the spiritual energy... um."

He paused for a moment, then frowned again, looked at his hand inexplicably, and tried to make a clear decision—"Now it's okay again."

Sure enough, as he expected, the magic technique using yang energy as a guide can't cause much damage, and according to the results of this "test", the effect of this magic technique can't last for a long time .only……

Ye Jinzhu strode forward in shock, "You only need to use Yang Qi as a guide to cast it, so it can be used by ordinary people?! Then—"

Ji Zhuoran's gaze landed on the falling thin yellow talisman, and then he looked at Qin Nianjiu with the same worried expression, "How did you use this spell just now?"

Realizing the meaning of the technique created by the national teacher, Qin Nianjiu gasped lightly, "I just had a thought..."

As soon as these words came out, all three of Yuyan present were silent, and their complexions gradually darkened.

Practitioners in the world all rely on spiritual energy to perform spells and practice. Even if they lose contact with the spiritual energy for a moment, they may put themselves in danger of eternal doom. What's more, this technique is simple to use and the cost is light. Even ordinary people can do it. Use, if the national teacher has developed a more powerful technique based on this...

Fu Duanshui didn't hesitate any longer, and took out the Sound Transmission Crane Talisman, "I'll inform the sect right now."