School Beauty's Personal Crazy Young Master

Chapter 691: Chapter 767: Waiting for Your Return in the Red Dust

”Come out!”

Chen Nan quickly channeled his Mysterious Skill, invoking the Power of Splitting the Sky, as Xuanhuang Battle Qi enveloped his body like a suit of armor.

He remained vigilant of his surroundings, abruptly turning to look behind him, but found no trace of the corpse.

Could she really still not be completely dead?

Chen Nan was taken aback, a person reduced to skin and bones, long devoid of any moisture, how could they possibly still be alive?

After a careful examination behind him, he found nothing; however, when he turned back around, he discovered that the corpse had returned to its original position, at the very front of the right row.

”This...”

Chen Nan took a few steps back.

He heightened his vigilance to the extreme, as his Xuanhuang Battle Qi surged across his body, approaching the corpse step by step.

But as he came closer for a thorough investigation, he found that the corpse showed no signs of life whatsoever, like a lifeless object placed there, without the slightest hint of vitality.

If it was indeed dead, how did it vanish all of a sudden and then reappear in its original place?

Chen Nan’s eyes were fixed on the corpse, staring intently for a full five minutes without even blinking; yet the corpse showed no further movement, as if it had always been standing there, never having made any movement.

”Could it have been my eyes playing tricks on me?”

Chen Nan scratched his head, feeling somewhat bewildered. In theory, with his current level of Cultivation, it was impossible to experience illusions.

Perhaps it was the nerves, truly an illusion then!

That’s what Chen Nan thought, but he still couldn’t understand why he had suffered a Spiritual Attack when he was examining the woman in red before.

After a moment’s hesitation, detecting no anomalies, Chen Nan once again walked towards the woman in red.

Looking at the nine Flying Swords embedded in her body, Chen Nan was well aware that each was an Evil Weapon, far beyond the Cultivation Treasures ordinarily seen. Otherwise, they couldn’t have killed such a world-renowned master as the woman in red.

”Drip...”

Chen Nan reached out and grasped one of the Flying Swords.

Channeling all his Inner Strength, Chen Nan exerted his utmost force to pull it out, but the Flying Sword did not budge, as if it had become one with the body of the woman in red, impossible to extract.

”Damn it, this can’t be that freakish!”

Chen Nan scratched his head, somewhat incredulous, a sword stuck in flesh and bone that couldn’t be pulled out.

He glanced at the remaining eight Flying Swords and tried to remove another, but it was just as immovable.

Having tried the remaining seven swords as well, the outcome was as expected. Each was rooted in the woman’s body, immovable despite Chen Nan’s best efforts.

What was even stranger, under Chen Nan’s forceful pulling, the woman in red’s body still stood firm, without even a wobble.

Reluctant to give up on extracting such Divine Artifacts, Chen Nan was somewhat unwilling to capitulate.

But with his current strength unable to do the job, after watching helplessly for a while, he could only turn away, his gaze shifting towards the chair behind the woman in red.

This chair was entirely crimson, the main seat of the great hall.

Chen Nan didn’t know whether it was a spur of the moment decision or some subconscious impulse, he actually sat down on the chair with a plop.

”Hum...”

The moment Chen Nan sat down, the entire great hall trembled.

Then, with a ”whoosh” sound, a cylindrical tube fell from the beams of the great hall and rolled to Chen Nan’s feet.

Chen Nan frowned, bent down, and picked up the cylindrical tube.

The tube was a light yellow color, appearing to be made of paper, yet it seemed not to be, and a red string was tied around its middle, as if it were made from a rolled-up paper material.

Out of curiosity, Chen Nan forgot to stand up, remaining seated in the chair as he untied the red string.

As Chen Nan unrolled the paper scroll, he was so startled that he abruptly stood up.

Once opened, the paper scroll turned out to be a painting, a portrait of a woman in white who looked exactly like his junior fellow disciple Ye Yiyi, even their gazes were strikingly similar.

”This...”

Chen Nan was dumbfounded.

The painting in his hand was something from thousands of years ago, or even older, but how could the person in the painting be his junior fellow disciple?

Could it be that in that era, there was a woman who looked exactly like his junior fellow disciple?

Su Qingqing resembled the Immortal Spirit Saintess Sculpture because she was a descendant of the saintess, but what about his junior fellow disciple? Could it be, like Su Qingqing, that the woman in the painting was his junior fellow disciple’s ancestor?

Chen Nan felt that things couldn’t be such a coincidence.

Because even if they were descendants of the same lineage, after thousands of years of propagation, the bloodline of the ancestors would have become extremely diluted, and the probability of producing a descendant with an identical face was incredibly small, absolutely not such a chance occurrence.

But if it was not the ancestor, what other reason could there be for the two to look so alike?

Chen Nan was baffled, and in a casual glance, he noticed a few vertical lines of tiny characters written next to the right side of the figure in the painting.

However, these were ancient characters, completely different from the contemporary script.

Thankfully, Xuan Tianji was not only a martial arts expert, but he also had deep knowledge in other fields. When Chen Nan was on the mountain, he was forced to learn some of these ancient characters.

Unfortunately, Chen Nan hadn’t been diligent back then and wasn’t very proficient.

Among the lines of tiny characters on the painting, there were many he did not recognize.

”...thousand disasters and difficulties...struggling against heaven...soul...scattered...red dust...waiting for your return...”

The fourteen characters that Chen Nan recognized didn’t make much sense on their own.

But based on the meaning of the sentences before and after, and the words Chen Nan could guess, the earlier sentence should be ”thousand disasters and difficulties,” there should be a sentence in the middle that read ”soul scattered,” and the last sentence should be ”in the red dust, waiting for you to return.”

”Thousand disasters and difficulties, struggling against heaven...soul scattered...in the red dust, waiting for you to return.”

Based on the general meaning he guessed, and by disregarding the unrecognized characters, the sentences pieced together like this offered no clear meaning to Chen Nan, but the last sentence appeared to anticipate the return of a loved one.

The reason he said a loved one,

was because, in the calligraphy of these characters, Chen Nan felt a deep sense of longing, which could only be the emotions between a man and a woman.

As for whether it was the woman in the painting who was waiting for her lover to return, or whether it was her lover, waiting for the woman in the painting to return, Chen Nan couldn’t tell.

However, looking at the painting, he felt the latter was more likely; the lover missed the woman in white so deeply that he painted her portrait and wrote the lines of characters beside it. If it was the woman in white who missed her lover, then the person in the painting should be her lover, not herself.

”Thud...”

As Chen Nan pondered, a heavy footstep suddenly echoed, filling the entire great hall.