He paused for a while, and nodded his head. “Indeed, the bamboo grove on Fengya Mountain is the Ghost Valley. Until today, no one knows why the Ghosts back then had stood with Rong Xuan. That battle was fought over countless days and nights, until Rong Xuan committed suicide in the end. The number of heroes under this sky was halved, and the five major clans never recovered. It was because of this battle, where both parties suffered heavy losses, that the rule that once one enters the Ghost Valley, they can never leave was set, earning us thirty years of peace.”

Here, Zhou Zishu frowned. He had gotten to know of this story through hearsay, and did not embellish it with his own guesses. Narrating it like this, there were actually many parts he did not understand, such as what had truly happened at Fengya Mountain back then, or how Rong Xuan’s wife had died. How did such a genius, who should have rightfully become a grandmaster of his era, end up in the Ghost Valley, and fall in with those people? Thankfully, Zhang Chegling was not a smart child, and only listened, befuddled, without understanding much.

The happenings within this affair were buried by the passage of time. How much of it was scandal-free enough to be exposed?

Those who were participants were either dead, or dared not to speak of it; not even Tian Chuang had unravelled the truth. Zhou Zishu suspected that...the Lapis Armour was a relic of the battle at Fengya Mountain all those years ago.

In the evening, Zhou Zishu finally pried off the hand of Wen Kexing’s that had a death grip on his clothes, and hunted some game to roast for dinner. He mused that he could go anywhere without issue, but bringing this little tyke with him would be a burden.

Yet he didn’t want to force him either, but would rather let Zhang Chengling decide his own path.

Wen Kexing was quite heavily drunk; even as night fell, he was still lying there like a pile of mud, unable to get up. Zhou Zishu taught Zhang Chengling a few more lines of the rhyme, told him to understand it by himself, then leant against the wall to the side, closing his eyes to recuperate. He didn’t know how long had passed before he dozed off, but he suddenly felt a hand find its way onto him, craftily unbuttoning his top.

Zhou Zishu grabbed the person's wrist and opened his eyes.

The Wen Kexing of this moment had not the slightest bit of drunkenness; seeing that he had been caught, he didn’t panic, only smiled at him in the dark, and still said, reasonably, “I just wanted to see what the legendary Three-Autumn Nails of the Seven Acupunctures looked like, I wasn’t about to do anything to you, neither was I going to make any moves on you.”