Zhang Chengling looked at Wen Kexing in shocked amazement. He was finding this Senior Wen even more incredible, because he had been right about even this. The old man continued, “I promised Yu Zhui to raise that little beast properly, but he was born unable to stand. So I imparted to him every drop of knowledge I had, my life’s worth of it, thinking that even if he could not master anything else, he could still have had the ability to support himself, ai!”

Ye Baiyi asked, “If it was so, why did he want to imprison you?”

The old man’s whole frame started to tremble. After a long while of silence, he finally murmured, “It was for the Yin Yang Manual.”

Other than Zhang Chengling, the gazes of the other three people grew serious as they stared unblinkingly at this half-dead old man. Zhou Zishu asked in a soft voice, “Is it...Madam Rong’s Yin Yang Manual?”

The old man nodded, and said slowly, “New flesh regrows on dead bones, as Yin and Yang are reversed--”

There was no intractable disease in the world that the legendary sacred artefact of the Healers’ Valley could not treat. Even the Green Vixen wished that it could heal her face; who would thirst for it more than a highly ambitious man who had been born paralysed?

Zhou Zishu thought quickly, and asked, “Wasn’t the Yin Yang Manual sealed within the Lapis Armour together with the Fengshan Sword Manual and the Six Harmonies Cultivation Mantra from the very start? Did he think that the Lapis Armour was with you?”

“Lapis Armour?” That old man scoffed. Shaking his head, he said, “You all, are wrong. I was the one who crafted the Lapis Armour all those years ago, but it’s only a lock. If you want to obtain the things sealed within it, the five pieces of Lapis Armour are useless. Even six pieces, seven pieces, eight pieces are useless. It still lacks a ‘key’.”

Ye Baiyi raised an eyebrow. “The key is with you?”

The old man said woodenly, “I don’t have it.”

Ye Baiyi chased him for answers. “If it’s not in your hands, whose hands can it be in?”

The old man laughed almost self-deprecatingly. “Yes, you don’t believe it. He didn’t either.”

Zhou Zishu regarded him closely for a long while, then suddenly asked, “Senior Long, you do know whose hands the key is in, don’t you?”

The old man turned his head to face Zhou Zishu as if he could see him. Nodding, he said, “You’re correct, I do--I made a vow back then. No one could reveal where it was, and no one could be told of the key’s whereabouts. Long Xiao...Long Xiao’s insane.”

Ye Baiyi narrowed his eyes, and pressed on, insistent. “So, you’re someone who knows about what happened between Rong Xuan and the others thirty years ago?”