31: Heavenly Treasure

Just as the two were eating with gusto and the atmosphere was reaching its peak, the voices of several middle-aged men at the next table, their faces flushed from drinking, grew louder and more unrestrained as they bragged and shot the breeze.

"I'm telling you, Old Li, what does that project of yours even count for!" A fat man wearing a floral shirt with a thick gold chain hanging around his neck shouted indistinctly. He was rapidly fishing out a piece of tripe from the boiling red oil pot with his chopsticks and stuffing it directly into his mouth before he even had time to blow on it.

He grimaced from the heat and gulped down a mouthful of ice-cold beer. Only then did he recover, wiping the oil from his mouth as spit flew everywhere.

"If you want to talk about getting rich, you've got to dig for treasure! Don't you know? Our Sichuan is a land of treasures!"

"Here he goes again, Fatty Zhang is bragging again!" The people at the same table immediately started heckling, and the entire table erupted in laughter. "Are you thinking about that ancestral treasure map of yours again? The one that looks like a bunch of ghost scribbles?"

"Treasure map my ass!"

The fat man in the floral shirt slammed his glass onto the table with a 'bang.' The alcohol was going to his head, his face turned even redder, and his voice rose an octave, drawing the attention of several surrounding tables of diners.

"That's a rumor passed down through generations in our hometown! A huge secret! It's about the Taiping Rebellion Leader!"

"The Taiping Rebellion Leader?"

As soon as this name came out, it was as if a pause button had been pressed in the noisy hotpot restaurant. The people at the surrounding tables subconsciously quieted down, and even the sound of finger-guessing games stopped.

Wang Dalong also stopped stuffing tender beef into his mouth and pricked up his ears, looking like he was ready to listen to a professional storyteller.

"The Wing King, Shi Dakai!" Seeing that he had successfully attracted everyone's attention, the fat man lowered his voice smugly, his face full of mystery.

But that voice of his, even when lowered, remained clearly audible in this steaming hotpot restaurant.

"When he was defeated at the Dadu River back then, did you think it was all over just because he died? He hid all the mountains of gold and silver plundered by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom right here in our Sichuan! It's been over a hundred years, and no one has been able to find it!"

"Is that for real? You've watched too many movies, haven't you?" someone asked skeptically.

"Of course it's real!" The fat man stiffened his neck and argued heatedly. "Do you know about the sunken silver at Jiangkou? Zhang Xianzhong's treasure was hauled up by the archaeology team, so why wouldn't the Taiping Rebellion Leader's be found? I'm telling you, it's not that it can't be found, it's that people haven't looked in the right place! Back then, the Chuan Army General Liu Xiang sent an engineering regiment to dig. They dug for so long and only found a tiny bit! The bulk of it, the real treasure, is still inside!"

The fat man grew more excited as he spoke, leaning forward with his small eyes wide open as if that mountain of gold and silver treasure was right before his eyes.

He wobbled as he extended a finger and pointed it in mid-air, keeping everyone in suspense.

"Back home, we have a mnemonic that's been passed down for several generations. Just eight words—"

He paused intentionally, enjoying the pleasure of being the center of attention, and then enunciated each word in a strange, theatrical tone:

"Face—the—water, lean—on—the—mountain; the—trea—sure—lies—be—tween!"

These eight words, as if carrying some strange magic, pierced through the din of the crowd and the rolling steam of the hotpot, drilling accurately into Lin Feng's ears.

He was currently picking up a piece of duck intestine. Those hands that had steadily held guns and dismantled bombs countless times now froze in mid-air, with red, bright soup still dripping from the duck intestine on the tips of his chopsticks.

The surrounding diners were stunned for a moment, then burst into even louder laughter.

"Hahaha, that's it? Face the water, lean on the mountain—isn't that just describing a place with good Feng Shui? There are plenty of such places all over China!"

"Exactly, I thought it was going to be some shocking secret!"

"Fatty Zhang, you've had too much to drink. Hurry up and eat!"

Everyone treated it as drunken bragging and a bit of fun. They laughed it off, and the hotpot restaurant returned to its previous clamor.

But in Lin Feng's mind, at this very moment, a bolt of thunder exploded.

*Ding—*

A cold, emotionless mechanical prompt suddenly rang out in the depths of his consciousness.

[Key information detected: Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Treasure... Cipher...]

In the next second, a faint blue translucent panel, visible only to him, abruptly floated above the nine-grid hotpot that was bubbling with beef tallow and chili peppers.

The high-tech interface formed an utterly absurd contrast with this scene full of the mundane atmosphere of daily life.

[Main Quest Triggered: The Wing King's Legacy]

[Quest Description: Before his defeat, the Wing King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Shi Dakai, buried a vast amount of wealth carried by the army in the land of Sichuan and left behind an eight-word cipher: 'Face the water, lean on the mountain, the treasure lies between.' Please find this lost treasure based on the clues.]

[Quest Rewards: Reputation +100,000, Skill - Combat Mastery (Intermediate)]

Lin Feng's pupils constricted sharply.

Combat Mastery!

Intermediate!

These words were like a red-hot iron, searing into his nerves!

Beneath the azure waters of the Caribbean Sea, when facing those ferocious modern pirates armed with sharp blades, that feeling of powerlessness and being on the brink of life and death still haunted him like a nightmare.

He understood deeply that in this increasingly crazy world, no matter how clever the mind or how powerful the genetic medicine, one needed sufficient violent means for self-preservation as a foundation.

Otherwise, everything was just a castle in the air!

And now, this opportunity was placed before him so abruptly and without any warning.

It was simply like someone handing him a pillow just as he was getting sleepy! No, it was like an oasis appearing out of thin air before someone dying of thirst in the desert!

Unknowingly, his breathing quickened slightly, and the heart in his chest began to beat wildly out of control, like a drum.

"Brother Feng? Brother Feng? What are you thinking about? Why are you dazing off?" Wang Dalong nudged him with his elbow, his mouth still full of meat as he reminded him indistinctly, "If you don't eat that duck intestine on your chopsticks, it'll get so tough it'll turn into a rubber band!"

Lin Feng snapped back to his senses.

He glanced at the piece of duck intestine on his chopsticks that had already cooked a bit hard, stuffed it into his mouth expressionlessly, and chewed mechanically.

But his taste buds had completely failed; he couldn't taste any of the spicy or savory flavors, nor could he feel the crisp texture.

All of his attention and all of his senses were deadlocked on the fat man at the next table who was still talking incessantly.

"...So, this treasure must be near the Dadu River! As long as you find the right place, you won't have to worry about food or clothes for the rest of your life! Come, come, enough talk, let's drink!"

That table of people returned to their previous clamor, and the topic quickly shifted from Shi Dakai's treasure to recent stock market trends and which foot massage parlor had better technicians.

Everything seemed like nothing more than drunken nonsense.

Lin Feng, however, could no longer eat.

He put down his chopsticks with a 'clack.' His eyes, which had been enhanced by genetic medicine, were now like a precision scanner, sweeping inch by inch over the fat man in the floral shirt at the next table.

The shape of his face, his accent, his habit of tapping the table while drinking, his animated expression when bragging... every detail was rapidly captured, analyzed, and stored by Lin Feng.

Wang Dalong finally noticed something was wrong with him.

The aura around Lin Feng had changed.

Just a few minutes ago, he was a vacationer rarely relaxing and enjoying good food, but now, his whole body was tense, like a lone wolf that had locked onto its prey.

That familiar feeling was back. In the darkness of the Qinling Grottoes and amidst the waves of the Caribbean Sea, Wang Dalong had seen it too many times.

"What's wrong, Brother Feng? Not to your taste?" Wang Dalong asked cautiously.

"Dalong," Lin Feng's voice was low, as if he were suppressing something, "would you believe that the destination of our next stop has just been decided?"

"Huh?" Wang Dalong's chopsticks, which were holding a piece of tripe, paused. His face was full of question marks. "Where to? Jiuzhaigou or Mount Emei? Didn't we agree to come here purely for a vacation? No trouble, no adventures, just being ordinary tourists."

Lin Feng didn't answer, but simply tilted his head, gesturing for him to look at the next table.

Wang Dalong followed his gaze and saw the fat man who was already so drunk his tongue was thick, playing finger-guessing games with his companions. Then, thinking of the brag he had just made about Shi Dakai's treasure, an utterly absurd thought suddenly welled up in his heart.

His mouth slowly fell open, and his eyes grew wider and wider.

"No... no way, Brother Feng?" Wang Dalong's voice changed pitch. "You... you don't actually believe that drunkard's words, do you? To go look for Shi Dakai's treasure? Bro! Those are all legends! They're for tricking kids!"

Lin Feng didn't argue or explain.

Because he knew that explaining the existence of the System to Wang Dalong would be even more difficult than explaining the reality of the treasure.

He just calmly picked up a tissue from the table, wiped his mouth unhurriedly, and then stood up.

"Check, please."

Two simple words, yet they carried an unquestionable decisiveness.

Inside his body, the string that had finally loosened with great difficulty at the Panda Base was not only tightening again but was even starting to burn.

A long-lost, searing sensation mixed with danger and opportunity surged through his blood once more.

Wang Dalong looked at his straight back and let out a long wail in his heart.

It's over.

He was all too familiar with this state of Lin Feng's.

This meant that their 'Chengdu Slow Life Trial Card' had expired before it even got warm in their pockets.

Forget the rolling pandas, forget the hotpot and skewers, forget the beautiful women giving ear cleanings—it was all going to vanish like bubbles.

What followed would likely be trekking over mountains and rivers, sleeping in the wild, and pitting wits and courage against who-knows-what kind of monsters and demons.

His long vacation was officially declared over.