Chronicles of Xuanwu

Yin Tianzheng pushed open the door, and the scent of sandalwood mingled with old timber rushed toward him.

The ancestral hall was far larger inside than it appeared from outside. Rows upon rows of memorial tablets stood in the center, densely packed from near to far. On the tablets at the very back, the writing had long since been worn blurry by the passage of time.

Yin Tianzheng stepped across the threshold and took an oil lamp from the iron stand against the wall. He struck a match and lit it.

“Come in.”

Chen Guan crossed the threshold, his gaze sweeping over the memorial tablets without pausing.

He was looking for something else.

Yin Tianzheng led the way with the oil lamp. “Take a look. There’s nothing particularly special here. It’s only that the symbolism is unusual, which makes it seem more precious.”

Chen Guan’s gaze passed over the wooden racks and settled on the depths of the ancestral hall.

A stone stele stood there before a cluster of memorial tablets, conspicuous among them.

Chen Guan walked over and stopped in front of it.

The lamplight fell across the surface of the stele. Under the wavering flames, the patterns alternated between light and shadow, taking on an eerie quality, as though they had come alive.

Just as he thought. The patterns were identical to those in the pictures on the forum, and to the ones on the stele in the Northern Frontier.

Chen Guan turned to Yin Tianzheng, who had followed him over, and feigned curiosity. “Old Master, why is there a stone stele here?”

Yin Tianzheng carried the lamp to the stele and sighed. “It was passed down by our ancestors.”

“The stele itself is older than the ancestral hall. Exactly how old it is was never recorded in the family genealogy, and has long since been forgotten.”

“What’s carved on it?”

“I don’t know.”

Yin Tianzheng’s answer was blunt. He truly had no idea what significance this incongruous object held.

“Whenever a new family head takes over, the previous head gives them only one instruction: guard this stele well, generation after generation.”

“He never said why?”

“No.”

There was no confusion in Yin Tianzheng’s voice. At his age, he had long since lost the curiosity of a child.

“They’re the Yin family’s rules. If our ancestors decided it, we follow it.”

“Still, there is a rumor about this stele. According to the rumor, it belonged to Yin Li, an ancestor who supposedly ascended and became a god.”

“Unfortunately, that history is too ancient. To our generation, it’s no different from Pangu splitting heaven and earth.”

Yin Li.

Chen Guan committed the name of this Yin family ancestor to memory.

Perhaps he could ask Baal about him. If Yin Li was truly a legendary figure who had ascended to godhood, he must have been someone of great renown back then. Baal should have heard of him.

“Yin Li? So this family is descended from him.”

Before Chen Guan could ask, Baal’s voice suddenly emerged.

“You know him?”

“Of course I do.” Baal began showing off smugly. “As a matter of fact, you and he have a bit of a connection.”

“You may not know Yin Li, but you’ve definitely heard another one of his names.”

“Black Tortoise.”

…

Half the lights in the hospital room had been switched off, leaving only the warm yellow lamp beside the bed glowing.

Chen Guan lay flat on the bed, his right hand resting on his abdomen and his left arm lying outside the covers. Beneath the bandages, his skin felt faintly hot and itchy.

There was nothing interesting to look at on the ceiling. A patch of white paint had peeled away, exposing the gray cement underneath.

It had been inconvenient to ask more questions earlier. Now, he could have a proper conversation with Baal.

“Baal, who exactly was this Yin Li you mentioned?”

Baal began pontificating smugly. “Yin Li was already a renowned figure before the Lost Era.”

“The world back then was different from the one you live in now. Humans and demons ruled the world together, and demon beasts could also serve as humanity’s guardians. Yin Li belonged to the Black Tortoise clan and was the clan head of one of its branches at the time.”

“Like Beidou, whom you know, he survived from the Lost Era into recorded civilization. Unfortunately, unlike Beidou, he wasn’t immortal. As for whether he’s alive or dead now, I have no idea.”

“He’s probably dead. Unless you become a god, there’s no way to achieve immortality. Unfortunately, the divine thrones of humanity aren’t anything worth coveting.”

“As for the Black Tortoise I mentioned—yes, it’s the one you’re thinking of. He should have been the original Black Tortoise, probably earning the name because of his family.”

“However, there were two Black Tortoises back then. The other was a woman from another branch of the Black Tortoise clan.”

Chen Guan’s curiosity was piqued. “What was the woman’s name?”

Baal answered with complete confidence, “I don’t remember.”

Chen Guan rolled over and tucked his right hand beneath his head. “You’re a demon god, and your memory is that bad?”

“Do you know how many years ago the Lost Era was?”

“How many?”

“I don’t know.”

…

“Then what was the point of saying that?”

Sensing Chen Guan’s disdain, Baal immediately defended himself. “Even Lord Bael can’t remember it, which proves it happened an incredibly long time ago.”

“Besides, Lord Bael was still a child back then, all right? You can’t expect a child to remember that much.”

“The reason Lord Bael can’t remember is that the woman wasn’t very famous. She wasn’t the head of that branch. She was apparently some kind of wandering heroine who longed for freedom. All I know is that her surname was Wu.”

Afraid that Chen Guan would keep pressing him, Baal quickly changed the subject. “But the interesting part is that the codenames used by the Origin Group weren’t chosen at random. Take Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise, for example.”

Chen Guan rolled onto his other side and patiently asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, when the Origin Group chose those four codenames, there was a reason behind it. I don’t know exactly what that reason was, though. The minds of those people have always been strange.”

“Listening to you is like listening to nothing at all… You always go blank right when it gets to the important part.”

“Hey, Lord Bael isn’t a member of the Origin Group. How could I know everything?”

This time, Baal readily admitted it, pretending to be carefree.

Then, while Chen Guan wasn’t paying attention, he vanished at lightning speed. No matter how Chen Guan called out to him, he refused to appear again.

It seemed there was no more information to be had.

Chen Guan closed his eyes and went over everything he had learned that night in his mind.

Yin Li was the original Black Tortoise, and the Yin family were his descendants. The patterns on the stone stele in the ancestral hall were identical to those on the one in the Northern Frontier. The Origin Group also used the codename Black Tortoise.

And judging from White Tiger’s actions earlier, it seemed he had taken over the position that originally belonged to Yin Chen.

Chen Guan’s expression grew strange. If that was the case, then Hong Yuan was probably the other Black Tortoise, and was connected to the woman surnamed Wu.

After all, he had never asked Hong Yuan for her real name.

And with the Turtle Chancellor thrown into the mix, that possibility seemed highly plausible.

It was late at night. Outside the hospital room window, the streetlamp cast a crooked sliver of light across the floor.

Chen Guan narrowed his eyes and habitually opened the forum.

He typed Yin Li’s name into the search bar.

There were no results.

Although he had expected as much, he couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

Chen Guan closed the empty search results and returned to the main page.

The title of the pinned post immediately caught his eye, bolded in red and sitting at the top of the popularity rankings.

“An Exhaustive Review and Power Analysis of the Recent Astaroth Incident (Long Post Ahead)”

It had been posted two hours ago, and the number of replies had already surpassed ten thousand.