The Purpose 02

Chen Guan watched him leave, the sound of footsteps fading down the hallway.

The door closed.

Chen Guan sat back down on the edge of the bed, took out the wooden box from his storage ring, and opened the lid. The white jade lay quietly inside, its warmth seeping through the walls of the box.

He opened the system panel and switched to the shop page.

In the search bar, he typed three characters.

Soul Continuation Jade.

The item indeed existed in the shop, with a price tag clearly displayed.

[Soul Continuation Jade: Repairs soul damage, alleviates soul cracks. Price: 500,000 Popularity Points]

Five hundred thousand.

Chen Guan stared at the number for a moment, confirming that there were indeed five zeroes.

He currently had over one million five hundred twenty thousand Popularity Points, still short of the three-million milestone target by nearly half. Originally, he had thought he would need to save at least one million five hundred thousand to fill the gap.

An Changqing’s gift had directly cut a third of the distance.

Now, the actual Popularity Points he needed to gather was only around one million.

Still a lot, but compared to before, the psychological pressure was much lighter.

Chen Guan closed the box, put it back into the storage ring, and shut down the system panel.

The moon outside the window had already shifted westward. He leaned against the headboard, closed his eyes, and his mind churned with Baal’s words.

Su Yuehe was made up of two parts.

What exactly did that sentence mean?

…

The next day.

Sunlight streamed through the classroom windows, and the hallway was bustling with people.

The day’s schedule was packed, and the three of them managed to sit through all the classes quietly for once.

As for why there were only three, it was because Su Yuehe had been called home by her mother.

Long Ao’s state during class was disastrous. He managed to keep his eyes open for the first two periods, but by the third, he was already slumped over the desk, fast asleep.

An Changqing, as always, sat upright, taking notes meticulously.

When the last class of the afternoon ended, Long Ao stood up and stretched, his bones cracking several times.

“Dinner at the cafeteria tonight, or order delivery?”

“You two go ahead. I’m heading to the library.”

Chen Guan slung the black coffin onto his back and walked out of the classroom.

Long Ao was a bit surprised.

“You’re going to the library?”

“Looking something up.”

“Studying hard, huh. Alright, we’ll grab food first.”

Long Ao shrugged. Chen Guan’s love for studying was nothing new to him, so he didn’t think much of it and walked off toward the cafeteria with An Changqing.

Library.

Chen Guan pushed open the door and stepped inside. The main hall was quiet, filled only with the rustle of turning pages and the occasional footsteps.

He went straight to the special collections section on the third floor.

This level housed academic materials that were not publicly circulated, requiring a student ID card to access.

Chen Guan swiped his card and entered, walking along the bookshelves to the very last row.

He knew exactly what he was looking for: any records of dual soul composition or similar cases.

Since Baal hadn’t said that line casually, there should be some trace of it in this world’s literature.

That demon of amusement had lived a long time and had seen a lot, but this was still human culture. It was only natural that a demon wouldn’t know much about it.

After all, Baal didn’t exactly seem like a demon who enjoyed studying.

Chen Guan pulled out a thick, hardcover book with the title Introduction to Abnormal Pathology on its cover. He flipped to the index, his finger sliding down entries like soul symbiosis, soul parasitism, and soul split.

He read through each entry, but the content was either too shallow or didn’t align with what he was searching for.

Chen Guan put the book back and grabbed the next one.

After flipping through four books in a row, he still hadn’t found the information he wanted.

He crouched in front of the bookshelf, looking up at the spines on the top shelf, wondering whether he should try a different keyword direction.

Footsteps sounded behind him.

Soft, but loud enough in the quiet special collections area.

Chen Guan didn’t turn around. Someone in the library was nothing unusual, so he continued flipping through the book in his hands.

“Chen Guan?”

The voice came from behind him, tinged with a hint of surprise.

Chen Guan turned around.

Su Yuehe stood at the corner of the bookshelf, holding two books in her arms. Her hair was tied back with a simple hair tie, and her school jacket was draped over her arm.

She hadn’t expected to run into him here either.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking up some materials.”

Chen Guan stood up, brushing the dust off his pants.

“What about you?”

“Same as you.”

Su Yuehe shook the books in her arms, walked over to the bookshelf beside him, slid one book back into place, and kept the other.

“I thought you went home?”

“Yeah, I just got back to school. But the last class was already halfway through, so I decided to skip it.”

Each of them grabbed several thick volumes of literature and walked along the towering shelves to a spot near the window in the special collections area.

A long, solitary table stood there, with four wooden chairs that looked a bit worn under the dim light.

That was just how Tsinghua was—modest to the point that even the principal’s office didn’t have gold bars.

Su Yuehe pulled out a chair and sat down, casually flipping open the yellowed pages of the book in her hands.

Chen Guan sat across from her, leaning the black coffin against the table leg. The sound of their page-turning echoed alternately in the quiet space.

This silence lasted a long time.

The light outside the window shifted from warm yellow to orange-red, the shadows of the blinds stretched longer and longer across the table.

Su Yuehe turned the last page. Her fingertips lingered on the cover for a moment, then she looked up, just in time to meet Chen Guan’s gaze.

Their eyes locked in the dim lighting, neither looking away first.

Su Yuehe broke the silence.

“Do you still remember that Yue Teng?”

“Of course I do.”

Chen Guan leaned back in his chair and nodded, pushing the literature aside. “Why bring him up all of a sudden?”

“There’s something I’ve never told you all.”

Su Yuehe smoothed the closed book into a neat rectangle, stacking her hands on the cover, and leaned slightly forward.

“Back in the underground temple, I insisted on handing things over to the council and having him turned over to the association. Changqing asked me why at the time, but I didn’t tell him the truth.”

Chen Guan didn’t interrupt, just listened quietly.

“I wanted Yue Teng himself.”

Su Yuehe’s words came quickly, clearly something she had rehearsed.

Just then, the dull thud of a librarian closing a bookshelf echoed from a distance, making her voice stand out even more.

“What I want is what’s in his head.”

Su Yuehe stared at Chen Guan.

“The history of the Black Wind civilization.”

“The lineage of the Chosen clan.”

“And that Void Lord.”

Hearing the words Void Lord, Chen Guan’s fingers, which had been idly moving, suddenly froze, but his expression remained as calm as ice.

“You’re interested in the Void Lord?”

Whether Su Yuehe was interested or not, Chen Guan truly was.

“I’m not just interested.”

Su Yuehe shook her head, her voice dropping to a whisper. “The scale of that underground temple was nowhere near something Yue Teng could have built alone.”

“It had been there for at least a few hundred years, maybe even longer.”

“Turning that level of intelligence over to the association for bureaucratic processing would be a waste. It would just end up locked away in a classified database, gathering dust. Then by the time the next Yue Teng pops up, we’d still be in the dark.”