One dared to ask, the other dared to answer — the exchange between these two had left everyone else in the room utterly bewildered.

They had all been holding their breath, waiting for Mr. Li’s question and Cao Ziluо’s answer, yet what they received was a claim of a hundred thousand heads.

Fortunately, Mr. Li was not entirely unreliable, and his second question cut straight to the heart of the matter.

He asked, “The Shanhe Seal wasn’t founded by your Cao family, was it.”

Upon hearing this, Cao Ziluо visibly froze for a moment, his gaze flickering with uncertainty. He did not answer immediately. Instead, he instinctively glanced toward his son, Cao Lie.

In that instant, his expression was complex — within it lay both guilt and a tender ache for his son.

Cao Lie gave him a slight nod, signaling that he should simply speak freely.

Cao Ziluо slowly exhaled.

“In truth, I don’t know how the Shanhe Seal first came into existence.”

That was Cao Ziluо’s answer.

He had not offered anything substantial, yet whether it was Mr. Li or Li Chi and the others — every face in the room bore the same expression: *just as I suspected.*

Cao Ziluо continued, “The leadership of the Shanhe Seal was originally meant to rotate. In the past, within the Shanhe Seal there was an Elder Hall — also known as the Decision Hall. The Decision Hall had seven elders in total, and my grandfather was one of them.”

“Every three years, the seven elders would take turns serving. Once the three-year term was up, the incumbent would step down and another would take his place. There had never been any problem with this arrangement, and no one ever clung to their seat. That is what my father told me.”

Upon hearing this, Mr. Li furrowed his brow and murmured to himself, “A rotating presidium?”

No one caught what he said clearly — his voice had been far too soft. And even if someone had heard, they likely wouldn’t have understood the reference.

Cao Ziluо went on, “However, approximately a hundred or perhaps two hundred years ago — my father could no longer remember precisely, so when he told me, he was uncertain as well —”

“— the other six members of the Decision Hall departed without a word, leaving my grandfather alone. From that point on, the Shanhe Seal came under the Cao family’s control.”

“Yet in my grandfather’s generation and my father’s generation, neither of them dared to claim the Shanhe Seal as private property. They continued to uphold the original method of governance, bringing in a few others to serve as elders and participate in deliberations.”

“The only difference was that my grandfather no longer followed the old custom of rotating leadership and passing the position of head to someone else. My father said that his entire life, my grandfather never appropriated a single thing belonging to the Shanhe Seal for the Cao family — and my father actually thought his own father was foolish for it.”

“Before my grandfather passed, he told my father: once they return and discover that the Cao family has seized the Shanhe Seal for itself, the Cao family will face utter annihilation. He warned my father never to turn the Shanhe Seal into Cao family property. Perhaps that was my grandfather’s only act of goodwill — toward the Cao family, toward his own kin.”

“My father honored that final wish his entire life, never once harboring designs on the Shanhe Seal. He simply kept it running — until the moment he himself lay dying…”

Cao Ziluо raised his head, but his gaze was not directed at Li Chi or Mr. Li. He was looking at his son.

“Your grandfather — my father — told me on his deathbed: they have been gone far too long. They likely will not return. So go ahead and do as you will.”

Upon hearing these words, Cao Lie immediately asked, “Who exactly are *they*?”

Cao Ziluо shook his head. “Not ‘they’ — to be precise, it should be ‘we’… Your grandfather was one of them. So in the end, we are part of them as well.”

These words struck Cao Lie like a sudden blow to the chest.

“I simply don’t know why, back then, those six people left without a word and chose to leave my grandfather behind alone. Perhaps they had discussed it with him beforehand. The pity is…”

Cao Ziluо looked toward Cao Lie again. “My grandfather never told my father who they truly were.”

Cao Ziluо sat down and drew a long, deep breath.

“Perhaps it was deliberate. Even though we are his direct descendants, he still chose not to share these secrets with us. Even now, I find myself wondering — did my grandfather truly die, or did he merely fake his death.”

Mr. Li let out a quiet sigh. He was calculating timelines in his mind.

The moment those six members of the Shanhe Seal had vanished without a word — that was roughly the same time he himself had arrived in this era.

Which meant it was entirely possible that the moment he appeared, all seven of them had known. Perhaps they possessed some kind of special ability to sense such things.

Then the seven of them had reached some kind of agreement: one would remain behind to keep the Shanhe Seal running, while the other six disappeared without a trace.

Whatever the terms of that agreement were, the Cao family’s descendants had no knowledge of it.

And Mr. Li was now certain: if Cao Ziluо’s grandfather had come from the same place as himself, then he too must have faked his death.

Mr. Li was still alive — which was sufficient proof that those individuals possessed an equally long lifespan.

But how had those people known he had arrived? And why were they hiding from him?

Whatever the reason, the very existence of those people was an injustice to this world.

They fancied themselves gods, pulling the strings of this world from the shadows while keeping themselves hidden — ordinary people had not the faintest idea.

Nor could common folk ever know that their daily lives — food, clothing, shelter, livelihood — might all be bound up with the machinations of these people.

More terrifying still: even the nobility and high officials had no idea that their own lives — their meals, their wardrobes, even the ebbs and flows of their careers — were being silently controlled by others.

Noticing Mr. Li had fallen into a daze, Li Chi asked, “What are you thinking about, sir?”

Mr. Li shook his head. “Nothing. I was simply reflecting on what Mr. Cao just said.”

He looked toward Cao Ziluо. “Continue. Tell us what you know, whatever it may be. Don’t worry about whether it’s useful or not.”

Cao Ziluо gave a soft sound of acknowledgment.

“I once asked my father who grandfather’s companions truly were. My father told me: *Your grandfather never once spoke to me about them. From childhood to adulthood, he simply gave me orders. Nothing more.*”

Upon hearing these words, Cao Lie felt a grief rise within him unlike anything he had felt before.

The supposedly illustrious Cao family — his seemingly powerful father, and himself — they were nothing but pawns being used by others.

Even with ties of blood so deep, those people had not cared in the slightest.

If they could disregard blood, what would they ever care about?

Mr. Li, meanwhile, was thinking that what set those people apart from himself was this: they knew why they had come, what they had come to do, and how long they would live. And so they felt no attachment to their descendants — because they would have countless descendants across endless generations.

In their eyes, those descendants were the most loyal of subordinates. One might even call them willing instruments unto death.

“And after that?” Li Chi asked. “Was there ever any particular person who made contact with the Shanhe Seal?”

Cao Ziluо shook his head. “No… My father told me before he died: they are most likely all dead by now. After all, your grandfather is dead, and I am dying — can anyone truly outlive two full generations? So go ahead and do as you please.”

“After that, I took over the Shanhe Seal and gradually began removing the older generation from within it, replacing them with loyal men of the Cao family. I also searched the martial world for skilled fighters to recruit and buy over, slowly transforming the Shanhe Seal into Cao family property.”

“Once my younger sister married Prince Wu, the Cao family’s influence reached the height of its power. At that point, I told myself — whoever came next, no one would ever be able to wrest the Shanhe Seal from the Cao family’s hands.”

As he spoke these last words, his gaze drifted toward Li Chi.

In that moment, Li Chi actually felt just the tiniest twinge of embarrassment.

“Yet something wasn’t right.”

Cao Ziluо looked at Li Chi. “With the Shanhe Seal’s strength, even if His Highness Prince Ning already possessed considerable power at that time, it should not have been possible to uproot the Shanhe Seal so cleanly and completely.”

Li Chi gave a nod.

By Cao Ziluо’s account, even if the Shanhe Seal had not been founded by the Cao family, the Cao family had controlled it for three full generations.

Three generations — more than enough time for such a behemoth to become utterly devoted. Yet when the Shanhe Seal came under threat, it had mounted virtually no meaningful resistance.

It had been dismantled by Li Chi with remarkable ease, without even a chance to recover.

Li Chi said, “So it seems that the Shanhe Seal, which appeared to have no one interfering with it, was in fact still being controlled from the shadows.”

Cao Ziluо nodded. “Yes — that is what I believe as well.”

Li Chi looked toward Mr. Li, who said, “They were erasing their traces.”

After a pause, he looked at Li Chi and added, “They used *you* to erase their traces.”

Everything, on the surface, appeared to be Li Chi’s doing. There was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any other factor had played a role in the Shanhe Seal’s downfall.

Mr. Li drew a long breath.

He was thinking to himself: *I should not exist in this world. Those people should not exist in this world either.*

*So I should be erased — and so should they. But not in this manner, this hiding-away-while-pretending-to-be-erased sort of erasure.*

From every indication, whoever those people feared, it could not be anyone native to this era — not even Prince Ning, Li Chi.

Which meant the only one they could be afraid of was… himself.

With that realization, the conviction within Mr. Li’s heart grew firmer.

Since the day he had arrived in this era, he had never felt the urge to step forward as strongly as he did in this moment.

He had always been hiding, always retreating. His reaction when he first encountered Li Chi had been proof enough of his state of mind.

He had been hiding from anyone in this world who looked remotely like a protagonist — because he feared being erased without reason or warning.

He had kept hiding, changing his identity again and again.

Yet in some inexplicable way, as though fate had already decided, no matter how he hid, he always seemed to end up standing forward — though even he did not fully understand why.

Mr. Li also thought: *I have already taken enough from this world. It is time to give something back.*

Such as… peace and quiet.

Such as… fairness.

He had lived in this world with cautious, careful steps, and yet with a kind of unbridled ease. He was the venerable Songming — the man all revered. He was the one the jianghu spoke of endlessly: the greatest idle wanderer under heaven.

No one knew it but himself — that many great figures were his disciples, taught by him directly or indirectly.

Such as the great general Xu Qulu, who had once single-handedly saved the situation in a time of crisis.

Without Xu Qulu buying Dachu more than a hundred years of survival, the Central Plains might have suffered the ravages of foreign invasion long ago. Without quite realizing it, Mr. Li had already been shaping this world.

But what about those people? They did nothing. They only fed.

Was the purpose of their coming to this world truly nothing more than to feed?

To accumulate wealth — boundless, inexhaustible wealth — was that truly their ultimate goal?

Mr. Li turned his head toward the window. Qipan Mountain lay right before his eyes.

*Life…* he thought. *What a ridiculous thing it is.* It really was like a game of chess all along. Perhaps this too was destined — that here, in Qipan Mountain, he would come to understand the nature of the board.

Never mind.

Mr. Li smiled — a smile that to everyone else seemed to come out of nowhere.

*Including myself. We may as well all be erased together.*

—