Perhaps a very long time passed, perhaps only a moment, but the snake demon finally finished feeding and dissipated back into the hot spring mist. Only then did Tang Yuan recover his voice, stammering: “What… what just happened?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just a medicine snake I used to keep. It has resumed cultivation, so its mind is a bit unclear,” the young Taoist said.

The young Taoist’s face was somewhat pale, but he paid it no mind. With a casual wave of his hand, the trampled flowers and plants in the garden bloomed again, and the disturbed artificial mountain was reconstructed, as if nothing had happened.

A medicine snake? Then why was the upper half the body of a stunning beauty? Tang Yuan felt his legs going weak – he was just a normal ten-year-old child! He couldn’t handle such dramatic ups and downs in life! Tang Yuan supported himself against the stone table and sat back down, beginning to seriously consider whether he should find a way to attend elementary school or something, even though he had finished reading those books years ago.

“Sigh, where were we just now? Oh right, the universe-stabilizing formation. Do you know why Emperor Qin Shi Huang toured the realm back then? Because there was imperial qi in the southeast, so I set up the universe-stabilizing formation. If the formation had been completed, the entire Central Plains would have been under Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s control, and the Great Qin Empire would have stood for ten thousand generations without falling.” The young Taoist sighed with emotion – those green years that would never return! He had once been so passionate too.

“That’s such an exaggeration, completely over the top…” Tang Yuan found fault. “Didn’t the Qin Dynasty fall after just the second emperor? And you say it would stand for ten thousand generations?”

“That’s because Emperor Qin Shi Huang died before he could finish erecting all the stone tablets! At first I also felt it was a pity that the universe-stabilizing formation wasn’t completed, but later I discovered that my eldest disciple had evil intentions. You see, it’s normal for a Zhao person lurking in Qin to plot Qin’s destruction, but there was no need to make all the people under heaven suffer, right?” The young Taoist shook his head in strong disapproval, patted the pastry crumbs off his hands, and said helplessly: “But his cultivation was already high. Even I couldn’t be certain of killing him then, so later I modified the universe-stabilizing formation, using the remaining eight of the Nine Tripods to create a god-sealing formation to imprison him. I lured him to the death gate of the formation, and finally… the world was at peace.”

Tang Yuan looked at the relief on the young Taoist’s face, and couldn’t help but feel his hair stand on end. This method of cleaning house was truly ruthless! Making someone unable to live or die for over two thousand years? Tang Yuan immediately felt that acknowledging this master carried far too much risk. He licked his lips that had gone dry from nervousness and asked uneasily: “Then when you said the universe-stabilizing formation was changing just now… what’s that about?”

The young Taoist knitted his brows tightly, and the scar between his eyebrows became even more hideous. “How strange… If one wanted to break the god-sealing formation, one would need to gather twelve top-tier imperial antiques to suppress the array points. These twelve imperial antiques aren’t easy to find! Just who could it be…”

The Taoist’s words stopped abruptly. Tang Yuan immediately looked toward the outside of the pavilion with a sense of foreboding, only to see that the swirling snow and thick dark clouds from before had completely stopped, as if Heaven had instantly taken them away. Only the white snow on the ground remained, along with brilliant sunlight streaming down from the sky.

“That formation… was really broken…”

Tang Yuan was dumbfounded. Didn’t this mean that some killing god who had been trapped for over two thousand years had now been released by someone?

The boss and Fu Su stood side by side at the peak of Mount Yi, watching the mountain mist completely disperse and the fierce winds suddenly stop, revealing a scene of peace and tranquility. In the distance, there was even a magnificent rainbow.

Fu Su closed his eyes. He should have been accustomed to standing in high places, but now looking at this beautiful mountain and river scenery, he actually felt somewhat dizzy. After a moment, he reopened his eyes, gazed for a long time, and finally sighed softly: “Bi Zhi, with this matter concluded, no matter how unwilling I am, I should return this body to its rightful owner.”

The boss’s body trembled slightly. He wanted to say something but only opened his lips.

Fu Su smiled self-mockingly: “I’m not afraid of Bi Zhi laughing at me, but actually, as soon as I understood how this era truly operates, I abandoned the idea of using the universe-stabilizing formation. But dragging it out for this year was, in fact, also due to my attachment to the prosperity of this world.” He paused, and though it was difficult, he continued: “But what doesn’t belong to me ultimately isn’t mine. Please tell him I’m sorry…”

Seeing that he was about to turn and leave immediately after speaking, the boss instinctively grabbed his sleeve: “Eldest Prince…”

“Bi Zhi, you’re finally willing to call me Eldest Prince…” Fu Su didn’t turn around, sighing with nostalgia. Since he had awakened, the boss had always distantly addressed him as “Your Highness.”

The boss was startled, then said quietly: “This servant can find other compatible bodies for you.”

Fu Su’s body stiffened, but then he merely said indifferently: “No need to comfort me. My soul is unstable. If I were to transfer bodies again and there was even the slightest incompatibility, I would immediately be scattered to the winds…”

The boss lowered his eyelids and said softly: “This servant’s body would be suitable.”

Fu Su slowly turned around. His handsome face showed no expression at all. He stared at the boss fixedly, and after a long time finally uttered two words: “Truly?”

The boss smiled again and nodded solemnly: “This servant has lived over two thousand years. That’s enough.”

This time Fu Su made no sound.

No agreement.

Of course, no objection either.

The doctor opened his eyes, looking somewhat puzzledly at the pure white ceiling. Hadn’t he been happily riding the little crimson bird in the sky? He had even wanted to pull the little crimson bird’s feathers to make it fly lower, preferably so he could secretly eavesdrop on what Fu Su and the boss were talking about. How had he suddenly changed locations with just a blink?

The next second, the doctor suddenly flipped up from the bed, looking at his hands in shock.

They were human hands – no longer the soft, undivided paws of a doll, and his right index finger had an old callus, precisely the mark left from frequently using a scalpel.

These were his hands!

After the doctor realized this, he hurriedly looked around and discovered he was actually in his own home. He rushed to the bathroom and found he had indeed returned to his own body, immediately grinning widely. But this joyful emotion didn’t last three seconds. How had he suddenly returned to his own body without knowing anything? Where was the boss?

He quickly grabbed his clothes and rushed out the door. Seeing the Mute House in the distance, the doctor’s uneasiness grew even stronger. He stumbled as he pushed open that heavy carved door, but breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the situation inside.

The furnishings in the Mute House hadn’t changed at all – the colorful terracotta warriors at the entrance, the ever-burning Changxin Palace lamp, the gold-inlaid flying dragon Boshan incense burner that constantly emitted agarwood fragrance… Everything was there, and not a single item had been moved even slightly from its position. The doctor had run too urgently all the way here and could only collapse on the chicken wing wood reclining chair, gasping for breath. Only after a long while did he notice something was wrong.

If it were any other time, the boss would definitely have sensed his arrival and should have come out from the inner room no matter how busy he was. The doctor straightened up and called out: “Boss? Boss! Where are you?”

Apart from his own echo, the Mute House was completely silent.

The doctor was nearly driven mad by the uneasiness in his heart. Just as he was about to turn around the jade screen to look for someone in the inner room, he heard the creaking sound of the carved door. The doctor immediately turned around.

“Boss, you… huh? Why is it you?” The doctor looked in surprise at Lu Zigang, who walked in from outside carrying a suitcase.

Lu Zigang removed the scarf from his neck and smiled: “The boss sent me a letter asking me to help him mind the shop.”

The doctor was thunderstruck, standing in shock for a long time before squeezing out a sentence through gritted teeth: “Then did he… say… how long you should mind it?”

Lu Zigang shrugged: “He didn’t say, so I quit my job at the National Museum.”

The doctor’s heart plummeted into an icy abyss.

In some unknown underground depths, in a magnificently luxurious tomb chamber, air that had been still for over two thousand years began to flow again. The massive coffin enshrined in the center suddenly began to stir…