152: Chapter 152, Third Hexagram, Xun Bai

The old man wore a navy blue robe, his gray hair tied into a loose bun with a faded strip of cloth.

The wrinkles on his face were as deep as knife carvings, dense and numerous, yet the contours of his features retained the ruggedness of his youth.

His eye sockets were deeply sunken, but his gaze was not cloudy; instead, it was unnaturally bright.

Despite having a seemingly kind face, not a single person dared to approach him.

With his hands behind his back, the old man walked at a leisurely pace, every step falling in a steady rhythm.

His right hand hung at his side, holding a small, dusty, square object between his fingers, barely the size of his palm.

A solar calculator.

The buttons on it were severely worn, leaving only the protruding plastic skeletons, and the numbers had long since become unidentifiable.

The solar panel at the top was caked with dust, making it doubtful whether it could still charge in such a place.

The old man walked to the center of the clearing and stopped.

The clearing fell silent.

The two groups who had been fighting tooth and nail just moments ago now hardly dared to breathe.

The Crew-cut Young Man scrambled off the pudgy youth and stood respectfully to the side, his hands pressed tightly against the seams of his pants.

Even the modern thugs who had been beaten chose to remain face down on the ground, not daring to move an inch.

Jiang Feng sat on the blue stone slab, observing the old man.

Xun Bai.

A pre-qin Alchemists, a core figure of the most mysterious of the three factions.

He was also the old monster who had been peeping at him while clicking a calculator from behind the second-floor window in the alley earlier.

The old man came to a halt three steps in front of Jiang Feng.

The two stared at each other for a moment.

Xun Bai spoke first, his tone slow.

"Young friend, you just tracked the pig and identified the stolen goods. I observed this from upstairs and found it quite impressive."

He raised the calculator and pressed a sequence on the keys with moderate pressure from his thumb.

"However, there is one thing I do not understand. Was your divination obtained through numerology, or was it merely the result of opportunism?"

He spoke politely and his tone was gentle.

But Jiang Feng's perception told a completely different story.

The aura surrounding this old man was entirely different from anyone else in the town. It wasn't gray or dark, but a muddy deep brown that had been stirred countless times, containing things that had settled for far too long.

Dangerous.

Extremely dangerous.

Jiang Feng remained seated on the stone, hands resting on his knees, his expression not changing in the slightest.

"Elder, speak plainly. My time is precious, and I don't play riddles."

Xun Bai smiled, his wrinkles bunching together in a seemingly amiable manner.

"Then I shall speak plainly."

He brought his left hand out from behind his back and slowly clenched it into a fist in front of him.

"In my left hand, I hold an object."

He raised his fist to chest height, facing Jiang Feng.

"If you can divine what this object is, I will acknowledge you as a peer."

He paused.

"If you cannot."

The curve of Xun Bai's smile remained unchanged, but the warmth in his voice vanished.

"Then leave your life in this town to serve as a Medicinal Primer."

A few gasps came from the crowd.

The Crew-cut Young Man stole a glance at Jiang Feng, his face full of worry for him.

Jiang Feng looked at Xun Bai's clenched fist. Without wasting words, he directly shook out five coins.

A Karma Line extended from Xun Bai's left fist, but it was wrapped in a thick layer of energy interference, making it blurry and hard to discern.

The system provided only three descriptors.

Decayed.

Useless.

Residue.

The three words together pointed in an extremely vague direction.

Jiang Feng quickly calculated in his mind.

He couldn't guess it.

This old monster's cultivation was too deep; the item in his fist was shielded tightly by his aura. The three words provided by the system were at most adjectives and couldn't serve as the answer.

Trying to guess by force would be gambling with his life; if he guessed wrong, he really would have to leave his life here.

But Jiang Feng was never one to play by the rules.

He jumped down from the blue stone slab and walked two steps to stand before Xun Bai.

Then he extended his right hand and pointed directly at the calculator in the old man's right hand.

"Elder."

"Speak freely."

"Your calculator is out of batteries."

Xun Bai's expression froze on his face.

Jiang Feng's finger almost poked the calculator's screen.

"Look, the screen is black. You've pressed it over thirty times since you walked over, and not a single number has shown up. You're pressing it for nothing."

Xun Bai glanced down.

The calculator's LCD screen was pitch black, indeed showing no numbers, and the solar panel was caked with dust. Under this sunless sky, the charge was essentially zero.

He had been pressing it all this time, but he really was just pressing air.

Xun Bai's previously transcendent expert demeanor immediately cracked.

His thumb remained poised over the calculator buttons, his movement stalled.

Jiang Feng struck while the iron was hot.

"You, a Alchemists from over two thousand years ago, don't even know how to change a battery or that you need to wipe the dust off a solar panel."

His tone was full of mockery.

"Click-clacking away with a piece of electronic trash—what are you doing, acting out The Matrix?"

Someone in the crowd let out a laugh, then quickly stifled it.

The corner of Xun Bai's eye twitched.

Jiang Feng didn't give him a chance to breathe. He stepped forward and grabbed Xun Bai's left wrist.

The old man's wrist was far more powerful than expected, with a hidden resilience beneath the joints, but Jiang Feng wasn't trying to pry his fist open.

"What kind of good quality item could an antique who doesn't even know how to change batteries be holding in his hand?"

"It's scrapped."

"Expired."

"Useless trash."

With every word he spoke, the pressure in his grip increased.

Xun Bai's amiable face completely broke.

The curve at the corners of his mouth vanished, and in his sunken eye sockets, his pupils suddenly contracted.

"Young friend, is this your answer to the divination?"

"Yes."

Jiang Feng released his grip, stepped back, and smiled.

"My divination says the item in your hand is scrapped residue, a useless thing, worth absolutely nothing."

He translated the system's three descriptors into his own words and pinned them squarely on Xun Bai.

As long as it was useless trash, his divination wouldn't be wrong.

Xun Bai gave a soft huff and opened his left hand.

A small pinch of material lay quietly in his palm—grayish-black, coarse in texture, and finely granulated.

It was soil.

But not ordinary soil.

The surfaces of the grains were covered with extremely fine carbonized textures, suggesting they had been subjected to high temperatures and had all their energy drained away.

Completely inactivated, completely exhausted.

A pinch of dead, thoroughly carbonized soil.

Three words, a perfect fit.

Jiang Feng's expression didn't change, but his heart skipped a beat.

That pinch of grayish-black soil matched the material characteristics described in the Prophet's files exactly.

The soil of reshaping.

This was the residue left after the soil of reshaping had burned through its energy.

It exists; it really exists!

Somewhere beneath this town, there was a mass of unburnt, complete soil that possessed the power to rewrite causality.

His hope for survival was within reach.

Jiang Feng suppressed all his emotions. His expression management was flawless; from beginning to end, his face showed only one expression.

See? I was right.

[Ding]

[Three Divinations Task completed]

[Settling rewards...]

[Brain cancer cell activity reduced by 10%, remaining lifespan increased by 60 days]

[Received reward of 2 million yuan]

Xun Bai crushed the soil residue in his palm, and the ashes trickled down through his fingers.

The way he looked at Jiang Feng changed; it was no longer an elder looking at a junior, nor an examiner looking at a candidate.

It was an indescribable gaze.

"Interesting."

Xun Bai uttered those two words, tucked the calculator back into his wide sleeve, and turned to leave.

After taking just two steps, he stopped again and stared at Jiang Feng gloomily.

"Young friend, you have some skill."

"But I am no pushover either. I am fully aware of your every move."

"Tonight at the zi hour, I shall send someone to knock on your door with a grand gift."