It was approaching lunchtime.
Lin Yu and Shen Buyao finally reached their destination.
In front of a large mansion located in the mountains!
They arrived nearly half an hour later than the time estimated by the navigation.
It wasn't that the road was difficult to travel on.
It was because Lin Yu was worried about driving smoothly, so he drove extremely cautiously.
Even so.
After the "Autobacs" on the Akina Mountain,
there were two more strange little driving incidents that almost hindered this journey.
Driving this car was really tiring!
Lin Yu didn't dare to let his mind wander for a moment and drove all the way to the door of Shen Buyao's hometown with full concentration.
Along the way,
he also saw quite a few tourist homestays and shopping spots.
It was true that the mansion was in the mountains, but it wasn't completely isolated from the world.
It's just that there were no other households around her home. It was like "occupying a mountain peak" alone.
Lin Yu looked at the old mansion with high walls from the outside.
It seemed that this big house and the large yard should have been renovated in recent years.
Shen Buyao waved a bunch of keys at Lin Yu.
With an expectant look on her face, she smiled and said,
"Come on, Lin Yu!"
"Let me show you the place where I lived when I was a child. There are a lot of fun things inside!"
"Hehe, there's also a special... treasure - hunting activity this time!"
Shen Buyao was really looking forward to the "treasure - hunting activity" she mentioned.
Little did she know,
Lin Yu's "treasures" were already in his camera bag and backpack!
...
In a Chinese restaurant near the Ghost Market Street.
In a unique private room,
several dishes that Shen Jiuyi liked had been served on the table one by one.
Old Liang himself was holding a teapot and sipping tea, not showing any intention of picking up chopsticks to eat.
Shen Jiuyi, who hadn't had breakfast, was already starving by noon.
Without bothering to be polite and maintain her image, she quickly started eating.
At the same time,
Shen Jiuyi didn't forget to ask about what they had talked about in the car:
"Old Liang, tell me."
"What kind of obstacles did you set up for them?"
Old Liang poured the tea with a soft sound and then took on the tone of a profound and mysterious wise man:
"Miss Jiuyi, do you know why the Shen family's old mansion in the mountains has not been targeted by thieves for so many years?"
Shen Jiuyi nodded and said,
"I've heard my mother mention this. It's because the terrain where we are located is high, and the surrounding area is even steeper."
Old Liang nodded and analyzed,
"Miss Jiuyi is right. There is also a very important point..."
"The walls of the Shen family's old mansion are high!"
Shen Jiuyi paused with her chopsticks and waited for Old Liang to continue.
"There is no suitable point to borrow strength around. If you want to enter the mansion from the outside, there is only one way, which is to go through the door!"
"If the door can't be opened, not to mention getting in to steal, you won't even know what it looks like inside."
"Eventually, you'll have to return empty - handed!"
Shen Jiuyi grasped the key point in Old Liang's words and asked following his train of thought:
"So you tampered with the door lock?"
Old Liang turned the teacup in his hand and said in a deep voice,
"Miss Jiuyi, you must know the 'Kongming Lock', right?"
Shen Jiuyi: "!!!"
"You replaced the door lock with a Bagua Lock?"
Of course, Shen Jiuyi knew about this thing.
She used to play with it a lot when she was a child.
The Kongming Lock, also known as the Bagua Lock or the Luban Lock,
is a lock with a mortise - and - tenon structure.
Nowadays, it is basically used as an educational toy, and no one really uses it to lock the door.
Unless...
"To be precise, it should be the 'Twenty - four - column Lock' among the Kongming Locks."
"If you make a wrong move when disassembling it, you need to put it back together and start disassembling from the beginning again."
"And for each column you disassemble, it's easy to take it off, but difficult to put it back on."
"I spent a long time carefully carving this lock."
"I know Shopkeeper Yao..."
"She promised her friend to take him to the old mansion to play.
If she can't get in, she won't give up."
Shen Jiuyi: "..."
Old Liang was really perverse!
He actually spent time researching such things.
It sounded like an obstacle, but Shen Jiuyi always felt that something was wrong.
It was true that Old Liang knew Buyao.
But he didn't know Lin Yu.
Lin Yu didn't seem like the kind of person who would be easily stopped!
...
Meanwhile,
in front of the old mansion in the mountains.
"Come on... Eighty! Eighty! Eighty!"
"Thud!"
"Thud!"
"Bang..."
Lin Yu was holding a wrench for car repair and only struck three times.
The wooden Kongming Lock was smashed into a pile of large wooden strips.
Lin Yu was very cautious when he made his move.
He only smashed the lock's structure and pulled the wooden strips off without damaging the door at all.
"Yaoyao, has your family's old butler got senile dementia?"
"What kind of normal person uses a wooden lock to lock the door?"
"It was so easy to smash!"
Shen Buyao put away the phone she was about to dial and picked up a wooden strip to try to break it.
Although it was wood, its texture was very hard.
Why did it seem so easy for Lin Yu to smash it just now?
Shen Buyao grumbled crossly:
"Who knows which wire in Old Liang's head is misconnected!
Instead of using a normal chain lock, he's always tinkering with some useless things.
Does he want to keep me outside? Huh?"
Lin Yu never thought that this was an obstacle aimed at him.
Instead, he subconsciously felt that
it was like the old butler was targeting the antique - loving older sister.
Anyway, he had asked for Shen Buyao's opinion before smashing the lock.
With the permission of the owner, he made his move.
It couldn't be counted as breaking into a private house, could it?
Led by Shen Buyao, Lin Yu followed her into the mansion.
However,
just as they entered the door,
a black shadow fell from the sky and rushed straight towards Lin Yu and Shen Buyao.
"Lin Yu, be careful!"
Shen Buyao shouted nervously.
...
In the private room of the Chinese restaurant on the Ghost Market Street.
Shen Jiuyi shook her head and said calmly,
"Old Liang, you still don't understand that man.
If it's him,
maybe he has a way to open the Twenty - four - column Lock.
Just this obstacle may not work at all."
Old Liang took a sip of tea and said confidently,
"Miss Jiuyi, do you want to hear about my backup plan?"
Shen Jiuyi didn't answer.
Indeed,
based on Shen Jiuyi's understanding of Old Liang,
once his perverse interest kicked in,
it wouldn't be as simple as just leaving a lock.
There must be a backup plan!
Old Liang continued,
"If he can successfully enter the door, it means that young gentleman has some skills.
I think he should be a young man with a sharp mind, calm and wise.
When outsmarting doesn't work, breaking through by force becomes particularly important.
When I went out, I accidentally unlocked the chain of the 'Flying Dragon'..."
Shen Jiuyi: "!!!"
"Old Liang, are you crazy? The Flying Dragon will attack people!"
"What if it hurts the guests... It'll be a problem with our way of hosting guests!"
Old Liang: "..."
Miss Jiuyi was someone he had watched grow up.
No matter what emergency happened, she had never shown a panicked look.
But today, she was so anxious because of a man?
Something was not right...
(Here's an extra chapter. I hope you all can support me with your love. Let's go again tomorrow!)
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
rowess are unmatched, commanding a million-strong army! Yet, the Emperor wants to depose him for the sake of a false prince? Hold on, are you throwing me into some female-oriented romance plot? How can I tolerate this? With a grand wave of his hand—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! Slander the Emperor? Very well, all of you shall die! ... The False Prince: "Although I am not the biological son, Father and Mother love me more. The throne should be mine!" The Female Lead: "Qin Xiao, you are the Emperor, and I am a commoner. If you wish to marry me, you must abdicate. Otherwise, you will never have me!" The Empress: "After we divorce, you must give me half the empire!" The Transmigrator Consort: "You worthless Emperor, why should I kneel to you? All men are equal—I advise you to be kind!" The Great General: "The enemy general is my childhood sweetheart. For her sake, I willingly abandon the frontier defenses!" The Retired Emperor: "Although Yu'er was adopted, I prefer him. Qin Xiao, you should abdicate and let him become Emperor!" ... Very well! So this is how you want to play? Facing this twisted world of female-oriented tropes, Qin Xiao grins and raises his hand to unleash—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! I am the Emperor. Why would I bother reasoning with you? Seal the gates! Leave none alive!
