Next, Xiao Yuan reached out and picked up the neatly bound stack of the “Sheng Clan Fragment Translation” that Xiao had recorded and printed.
The fragment was not very long, but Xiao Yuan had only flipped through a few pages when a cold, icy sharpness gradually gathered between his originally calm brows.
“The person who wrote this book was no ordinary person,” Xiao Yuan said in a deep voice.
Su Mu-chen raised his head from his notebook, a trace of confusion in his eyes.
“This person knew far too much.”
Xiao Yuan’s slender fingers slowly brushed over the translated pages.
“If he had merely been a Sheng clan ancestor who traveled to another world, there would have been no way for him to know with such precision the duties passed down through the Su clan from generation to generation, the secrets of the two worlds, and even the untouchable boundary of causality. He did not deduce these things through superficial observations… Rather, someone once personally taught him the core secrets, hand in hand, without holding anything back.”
Xiao Yuan lifted his eyes, his deep gaze fixed directly on Su Mu-chen, a light of penetrating insight flickering within them.
“More than four hundred years ago, the Sheng clan ancestor once received the true, wholehearted trust of the direct line of the Su clan.”
Su Mu-chen’s heart jolted violently, and almost at the same time, the face of Sheng Cheng-xiu—refined yet sinister—flashed through his mind.
In the modern world, that man had advanced step by step, constantly trying to approach him through all kinds of respectable-sounding reasons, even medical charity projects.
If Sheng Cheng-xiu had not revealed his fangs from the very beginning, using the disgusting and despicable methods of kidnapping and threats…
If Sheng Cheng-xiu had disguised himself flawlessly from the start and presented himself as a sincere partner seeking cooperation…
As an ordinary doctor who knew nothing about his family history, Su Mu-chen might truly have lowered his guard and chosen to trust him.
But now, by a twist of fate, he had turned around and ultimately entrusted his back to the Da Sheng Prince Su beside him.
It turned out that at the very beginning, hundreds of years ago, the Su clan and the Sheng clan had not been sworn enemies at all.
They had even once been each other’s most steadfast and trusted allies.
Then what exactly had happened back then that caused these two great families to turn against each other, eventually developing into the irreconcilable blood feud they had today?
“This is not a fragment at all.”
Xiao Yuan spread the translated volume open again, his gaze accurately stopping at several deliberately blanked-out gaps.
His tone was calm, yet carried a weight as heavy as a thousand jun.
“This is more like… ‘filtered information’ deliberately left behind for someone to see.”
Su Mu-chen frowned slightly, his voice carrying a hint of confusion. “Filtered information?”
“Correct.” Xiao Yuan nodded and analyzed, “If this damage truly resulted from the merciless passage of time, wars, and chaos, then the missing sections should be disorderly and random, broken apart without any pattern. They could never be missing so cleanly and neatly. Look. These damaged sections appear scattered, but in reality, they all revolve around the same few matters.”
His distinct knuckles pointed in succession at three breaks in the pages.
“The Su clan’s true duty.”
“The rules governing the Door.”
“The price of the imbalance between the two worlds.”
Xiao Yuan paused, a trace of coldness flashing through his dark eyes.
“All secrets capable of shaking the foundation or endangering the core of the ‘Door’ have been erased.”
“But conversely, information concerning the existence of the Door itself, the golden road leading to the other side, and the broad trajectory of the intersection between the two worlds has all been preserved intact.”
Xiao Yuan pondered for a moment before reaching his conclusion.
“So, I do not believe this was a coincidence. It seems intentional. Whoever left it behind wanted the descendants who obtained this manuscript in the future to believe that the ‘Door’ truly existed, while ensuring that they could never truly reach its core or control it. He left behind enough enticing clues to lure them deeper, yet firmly severed every truly dangerous fuse.”
Xiao Yuan raised his eyes, his gaze sharp as a blade.
“This is not a fragmentary scroll unintentionally left behind by an ancestor. This is a piece of ‘false history’ that someone deliberately ‘castrated,’ designed to make future generations blindly believe in it.”
His deep eyes stared fixedly at Su Mu-chen.
“It is as though he was protecting something.”
“I don’t know what the original intention of the person who left these writings was, but I can be certain of one thing.” Xiao Yuan’s voice lowered slightly. “He did not want to leave the Door to his descendants. He wanted future generations… to never obtain the true Door. The person who left this manuscript behind had a terrifyingly deep mind.”
Su Mu-chen listened blankly, momentarily somewhat dazed.
In his impression, the Sheng family had always been synonymous with greed and darkness.
Whether it was Sheng Cheng-xiu, Sheng Wen-chang, or Sheng Yuan-li, each was more cunning than the last, each more unscrupulous in pursuing their goals.
Yet Xiao Yuan continued calmly, “If he had truly succumbed to greed back then and wanted to treat the Door as family property to pass down to his descendants, he would never have written down the true method of controlling the Door. Because as long as something is written down, there will always come a day when it leaks out and falls into an outsider’s hands.”
He lowered his eyes to the fragment.
“So, he only gave future generations a direction, not an answer. The person who left these writings behind was not passing down an ambition to inherit the Door. He was using the most ruthless method possible… to seal the Door.”
Xia Lan-shi, who had been quietly reading ancient texts beside them, slowly closed the heavy dossier in his hands.
“Your Highness’s deduction coincides with mine.”
He raised those translucent ruby-red eyes and gently continued.
“I have always been wondering: if I were that Sheng clan ancestor who traveled to another world, then having successfully crossed between the two worlds and possessing secrets capable of reaching the heavens, there would have been no reason for me not to take all the core techniques and intelligence with me.”
More than four hundred years ago, among the Sheng clan ancestors, there had been someone capable of becoming a Door Master and capable of traveling between the two worlds. Yet in the end, all that remained in his hands was incomplete information.
That itself was unreasonable.
If he had brought back all his trump cards at the time, the Sheng clan’s development in that other world would probably have completely surpassed all the others hundreds of years ago. There would have been no need to wait until today and go to such lengths to forcibly seize the Door at Gui Chen Zhai.
“Unless… he did not dare.”
“Not dare to bring it back, but dare not let future generations know the whole picture.”
“Therefore, I have a bold guess.”
Xia Lan-shi’s voice was soft, yet carried an insight that sent chills down the spine.
“Four hundred years ago, the Sheng clan had probably already split internally. One faction adhered to the ancient oath, advocating coexistence with the Su clan and choosing to bury the secrets of the ancient Door forever. The other faction, however, was devoured by insatiable greed and advocated ‘seizing the Door,’ intending to make this mysterious power capable of overturning the world their own.”
Such a division would have been an inevitable tragedy within any enormous clan wielding power over the world, even without the existence of the Door.
Just as within Da Sheng’s imperial family today, countless factions had likewise formed over the supreme authority, secretly slaughtering one another with blades to the bone.
The temptation of power and immortality was enough to twist human nature. Throughout history, there had been very few people capable of truly resisting such temptation.
And even more so among these powerful, ambitious great clans.
“That extraordinarily gifted Sheng clan ancestor may already have seen through the terrifying nature of human beings before setting out for the other world. He realized that the most dangerous thing had never been this Door, but those who ‘knew of the Door’s existence yet had no reverence for it.’ Therefore, he divided the complete records in the Sheng clan’s possession into two parts: one a fragment, and the other a broken chapter.”
“Then what exactly was his purpose in doing this?”
Su Mu-chen’s voice was somewhat urgent.
His impression of the Sheng clan was terrible. It was a cold-blooded family capable of scheming against even its closest relatives for the sake of profit.
Could that ancestor truly have been so kind?
“There may have been three purposes.” Xia Lan-shi extended three slender fingers, which appeared somewhat unnaturally pale beneath the dim yellow lamplight.
“First, to prevent either side from controlling the ancient Door alone. The Sheng descendants who remained in Da Sheng and those in the other world would each possess only half of the information. In this way, no one could truly control the Door.”
“Second, to prevent future generations from betraying the oath. He knew that greed could be inherited. He did not trust his descendants to maintain the same rationality he had when faced with such temptation, so he absolutely refused to leave behind a complete record.”
“Third…” Xia Lan-shi paused, a complicated sigh flashing through his eyes. “He did not want future generations to find the true Su clan.”
“He wanted to protect the Su clan?” Su Mu-chen looked incredulous.
“Whether it was to protect them cannot be stated with certainty. Or perhaps, more accurately, it may have been a helpless measure taken by the two ancestors at the time when they were driven into desperate circumstances.”
Xia Lan-shi leaned forward slightly and pushed several other newly organized ancient records from the northern border temples and old government archives toward the desk.
“I just compared the dates and historical records. Four hundred years ago was during the Jingtai era of Da Sheng. That year… there was a section of history that was completely erased.”
He raised his head, those thin-red, translucent eyes quietly looking at Su Mu-chen.
“What was erased was not merely people. There was also a surname.”
Outside, the wind and snow grew increasingly violent, howling like a trapped beast as they slammed against the carved wooden windows, producing a grating roar.
Yet inside the southern courtyard room of the Northern Border Administrative Office, it was so silent that one could hear a pin drop.
Su Mu-chen inexplicably felt a chill.
For some reason, his heartbeat began to quicken slightly.
Xia Lan-shi’s desk was densely covered with layers upon layers of various ancient documents.
From the rough, heavy Record of the First Military City of the Northern Border, Illustrated Gazetteer of the Northern Frontier, and Record of City Construction,
to the yellowed and damaged Record of Military Garrison Establishments and Record of Ancient Shrine Repairs,
then to the government’s most important household registers, the Yellow Registers, and the fish-scale land registers,
as well as mountains of criminal case files and the secret memorials that had just been delivered by the Imperial Guard Camp.
To outsiders, these dry numbers and place names would have seemed utterly dull.
But at this moment, within Xia Lan-shi’s translucent ruby-red eyes, they resembled countless interwoven spiderwebs, being slowly unraveled thread by thread, revealing a bloody truth buried for four hundred years.
Xia Lan-shi’s face was somewhat unnaturally pale, but the light in his eyes was sharp.
His lowered voice spoke into the night.
“Your Highness, Doctor Su, take a look at this Record of the First Military City of the Northern Border and the original Record of City Construction.”
He pushed several damaged gazetteers to the center of the long table, his slender white finger gently tracing across an ancient hand-drawn map.
“These records state that this First Military City of the Northern Border was established more than four hundred years ago. But before the city was formally built and fortified, this place was once an extremely small ancient settlement. And this settlement was built around an extremely mysterious ancient shrine in the southeast corner.”
Su Mu-chen leaned closer and looked at the tiny red dot marked in cinnabar on the map.
“That ancient shrine is the ruins of what is now Linbei City’s oldest structure. When the government rebuilt the city, they deliberately incorporated it into the southeastern corner. Beneath it lies the enormous three-level underground cavern where the ancient Door is hidden.”
Xia Lan-shi raised his eyes toward Su Mu-chen and said quietly, “This ancient shrine and underground palace are older than this city, even older than the founding of Da Sheng. And the villagers who first settled and multiplied around the ancient shrine were none other than the Su clan.”
Su Mu-chen’s breathing tightened.
“So, this place was originally a settlement spontaneously formed by members of the Su clan to protect the ancient Door?”
“Exactly.”
Xia Lan-shi opened another Record of Ancient Shrine Repairs and pointed to a page.
“Before its records were completely erased by the government, the earliest name of that abandoned ancient shrine was not ‘ancestral shrine’ in private local records, but ‘Shou Shu Yuan.’ A hundred years later, it was renamed ‘Shou Hu Yuan,’ and only after becoming abandoned amid warfare did it become the forgotten ‘ancient shrine.’ Its function and name had been deliberately altered and diluted by those in power throughout the generations.”
At this point, a cold smile gradually spread across Xia Lan-shi’s lips.
“Even more frightening is the discontinuity in history and the disappearance of the population.”
He pulled over a stack of yellowed population registers and rubbings of local surviving steles.
“I compared three different versions of the Northern Border local gazetteers and household registers. I discovered that before the Jingtai era of Da Sheng, there were traces everywhere on this land of the ‘Su clan’ assisting successive garrisons in guarding the frontier and even providing unusual medical knowledge and supplies. At that time, the Su clan had deep roots throughout the Northern Border. However—”
Xia Lan-shi’s fingertip scraped across the rough rice paper of the household register, producing a sharp sound.
“After the twentieth year of Jingtai, the surname Su suddenly disappeared in large numbers from all official government records throughout the Northern Border within an extremely short period of time, until it vanished completely. The official records left by the government are perfectly clean. There is no trace of anything unusual, as though this clan had never existed. Yet the surviving local steles, incense registers of old temples, and private merchants’ travel notes contain countless inconsistencies that cannot be explained away.”
A trace of an icy smile rose on his face.
“This was not caused by people scattering because of a natural disaster. Look at the handwriting and ink. Someone overturned the county gazetteers and recopied them from scratch, erasing everything. This was an extremely thorough extermination of a clan, personally authorized and carried out by the imperial court. Someone… deliberately rewrote this history four hundred years ago and concealed the truth.”
The temperature inside the warm chamber seemed to drop to freezing in an instant.
“The entire Su clan was wiped out?”
Su Mu-chen clenched his fingers tightly, his nails digging into his flesh. His voice trembled.
“Four hundred years ago… did the Da Sheng court purge the Su clan?”
“No. They failed to kill them all. Some people survived.”
From a pile of old government land-deed remnants, Xia Lan-shi pulled out a thin, withered sheet of paper.
“This is a private land deed from the twenty-third year of Jingtai for land in the eastern outskirts. It bears an official seal, and the location is recorded as ‘East Su Village.’ But I searched through every map of the Northern Border today. Within five hundred li of Da Sheng, there is not a single place called East Su Village. This means that this was a village that was completely erased and disappeared. This village was very likely where the Su bloodline resided.”
His clear, calm voice fell into the room.
“The imperial court probably became fearful of the Su clan’s power and carried out an inhumane purge. The surviving descendants of the Su clan, in order to stay alive, would inevitably have to conceal their surnames and disappear into the masses.”
Xia Lan-shi’s gaze slowly fell upon Su Mu-chen, his tone calm yet extremely certain.
“The number of people surnamed Su decreased in the official registers, but other surnames suddenly increased throughout the various villages. So… the ‘Door Key’ that currently exists in Da Sheng and can resonate with Sheng Cheng-xiu may very likely no longer have the surname Su.”
Those words were undoubtedly a heavy blow.
A Door Key that no longer bore the surname Su, hidden among the countless people of Da Sheng, would be no different from searching for a needle in a vast ocean.
And Sheng Cheng-xiu might already have set his sights on him.
Xiao Yuan was seated at the head of the table. Cold light flickered in his dark eyes as he spoke in a deep voice.
“Huaiyu, you said just now that the truth behind that purge four hundred years ago was far more terrifying than what we know. Are you referring to collusion between the Sheng clan and the imperial family?”
Very few people knew about the Door. Even Xiao Yuan himself had only gradually learned about it after accidentally opening the Door.
The other princes, and even the Crown Prince, might not know about it.
But the emperor at the very top might know something.
If someone had purged the Su clan because of the threat posed by the Door, perhaps it had been an imperial order personally issued by some emperor.
“At present, I can only confirm that the imperial family of that time did indeed carry out a purge against the Su clan.”
Xia Lan-shi raised his ruby-red eyes slightly, his expression extremely solemn.
“I examined the secret criminal case memorials and military mobilization orders from the Jingtai era. Four hundred years ago, an extremely brutal conflict once erupted between Da Sheng and the Su clan. As for whether the imperial family and the Sheng clan were the instigators, accomplices, or merely dragged into it against their will, there is currently insufficient evidence.”
Xiao Yuan gave a cold laugh. He could imagine what that emperor had been thinking at the time.
“The Door Master was not part of the imperial family, but the Sheng clan. The Door Key belonged to the Su clan. To the emperor, this was the most intolerable situation.”
Under the emperor’s nose, there were people capable of appearing and disappearing without a trace and producing objects from another world capable of changing the balance of power. This was undoubtedly a provocation to the realm and the emperor’s authority.
Perhaps the Sheng clan did not even need to stir things up. The emperor himself might already have intended to eliminate these uncontrollable and potentially threatening existences.
“The emperor developed murderous intent, and the military order for the bloody massacre was issued. When that oath-keeping ancestor of the Sheng clan learned that the Su clan was facing disaster and that the ancient texts and the Door in Da Sheng could no longer be protected, he finally made that decisive choice that would earn him infamy for generations—he voluntarily became the apparent ‘traitor,’ carrying the mutilated ‘fragment’ through the Door. He deliberately ensured that future generations would never obtain the complete records.”
Xia Lan-shi said, “Four hundred years ago, that ancestor used this almost self-destructive method to prevent future generations from approaching the truth again and repeating the same history, caught between imperial authority and ambitious schemers.”
It was as though they had traveled through four hundred years of time and could smell the charred stench from when the Su clan village had been consumed by fire and blood.
Xia Lan-shi and Xiao Yuan exchanged a glance, understanding each other without words.
Xiao Yuan said, “Perhaps even the imperial family’s knowledge concerning the ‘Door’ is incomplete.”
Otherwise, how could they have been foolish enough to personally destroy the Su clan, which could have caused the world to flourish?
However, most of the evidence from that time had been destroyed, and it was now difficult to piece together the complete truth.
Xia Lan-shi nodded.
“I examined the relevant records from the Northern Border and Chenjing. After that purge four hundred years ago, there were no more traces of unusual medicines or supplies appearing in the world. This also explains why His Majesty and the Crown Prince have yet to take greater action.”
At present, the emperor and the Crown Prince had merely adopted passive measures against Xiao Yuan: cutting off grain supplies, delaying military provisions, and sending spies to monitor him.
If either of them discovered that the Northern Border possessed unusual medicines and supplies, they might deduce that the Door Master had emerged and connect it to Xiao Yuan.
At that point, it would no longer be limited to this.
After hearing this shocking history, Su Mu-chen said with emotion,
“It’s just a pity. That Sheng clan ancestor calculated everything, yet ultimately failed to account for the mercilessness of time. Four hundred years have passed, and the descendants he left behind in the other world have ultimately gone completely astray. They forgot the suffering and original purpose that forced their ancestor to leave his homeland and travel to another world. All that remained was the most primitive and greedy desire for the ‘Door’ and its power.”
“Objectively speaking, his final choice preserved the last bloodline of the Su clan in Da Sheng and also prevented the Sheng clan in either world from obtaining the Door.”
Xia Lan-shi reached this conclusion in a calm manner, without any personal subjective judgment.
Xia Lan-shi gave them no time to dwell on their emotions.
He slowly spread out the latest secret population report from the Northern Border that the Imperial Guard Camp and Listening Snow Pavilion had sent back tonight.
“This is the final matter I wanted to discuss, and also the most important and urgent clue.”
Xia Lan-shi pointed to the name of a remote village, heavily circled in cinnabar on the secret report.
“When the Imperial Guard secretly searched the barren mountains southeast of Linbei City, they discovered a strange hidden village.”
“That village has only a dozen or so households. It is extremely remote, and the residents all bear the surnames Wang, Zhang, Zhou, Shen, Han, and Lin, seemingly unrelated. But after the Imperial Guard investigated their genealogies and records of marriages outside the village, they discovered that all of them had settled here together four hundred years ago. Moreover, several families have an ancient family precept in which they do not call themselves farmers, but refer to themselves as ‘Shouhuren.’”
Xia Lan-shi slowly said, “Shouhu does not mean guarding the village, nor guarding a residence. It means guarding the Door.”
“Guarding the household… ‘Hu’ means Door.”
Su Mu-chen’s heart began pounding violently.
“Da Sheng doesn’t merely have the Door Key bloodline. It even has the bloodline of the Door Guardians!”
He realized that his voice had become somewhat louder and immediately covered his mouth, glancing toward Xiao in the room.
After confirming that there was no movement, he lowered his hand again.
“Yes. But the crisis lies here.”
Xia Lan-shi raised his head. The warmth normally present in his eyes had completely disappeared, replaced by a tremor that seemed to reach the depths of his bones.
“The Imperial Guard followed this lead and originally intended to secretly take control of the people of suitable age. However, this secret report arrived two shichen ago—”
Xia Lan-shi’s fingertip landed on the secret report.
“There is currently only one young person in that village. He is a twenty-three-year-old man surnamed Han. He left the village a month ago and is now missing.”
Su Mu-chen: “A month ago?”
He sucked in a breath.
That person was very likely connected to the Door, yet he had already disappeared without a trace.
This lead had just been severed.
Xia Lan-shi nodded, then said, “There is one more thing.”
Xiao Yuan and Su Mu-chen simultaneously looked toward him.
Xia Lan-shi said, “This person did not leave alone. The villagers said that when he left the village, he was accompanied by a young man who had lost his memory.”
Su Mu-chen thought of how, if Sheng Cheng-xiu had been transported by the Door to one month ago, or even two months ago…
That amount of time would have been enough for Sheng Cheng-xiu to do many things.
In an instant, the warm chamber fell into complete silence. They could hear even each other’s breathing.
He had left a month ago.
That meant Xia Lan-shi’s theory about the “distortion of time” was correct.
Sheng Cheng-xiu had fallen into Da Sheng far earlier than Xiao had.
What was despairing was that before the Prince Su and Listening Snow Pavilion had even had time to cast their inescapable net, Sheng Cheng-xiu, who understood the Door’s operation thoroughly and possessed ruthless methods, had already gained the advantage through that lead in time.
They were still pursuing Sheng Cheng-xiu.
But Sheng Cheng-xiu might have already begun pursuing the Door.
Su Mu-chen pressed his lips tightly together, desperately turning his mind over.
Suddenly, he said seriously,
“—We need to catch up with ‘time.’”