169: Chapter 169 Skin and Bone

Jiang Feng's index finger hovered, pointing directly at the motionless old monster on the grand tutor's chair.

Xun Bai didn't even change his sitting posture, leaning steadily against the back of the chair.

He rested both hands at the ends of the armrests, ten fingers hanging down, maintaining the air of a gold-plated clay statue in a temple.

"Taking two objectives in a row—one hex to strip the secrets of the Mutual Aid Society, and another to send off twelve soldier thugs who have been dead for over fifty years."

Xun Bai's eyelids drooped slightly, and the corners of his mouth twitched twice, squeezing out a dry smile.

"You truly have some skill."

Jiang Feng didn't respond, his finger still pointing.

Xun Bai raised his chin slightly and leaned deeper into the back of the chair.

"However, with that finger of yours, you've pointed at the wrong person today."

He raised his left hand, pressing his index and middle fingers together, and drew an imaginary circle in the air.

His movements were slow and deliberate, adopting the affected tone of a cultivator.

"This old man's life chart long ago jumped beyond the Three Realms and is no longer within the Five Elements."

"Using Zhou Tian Divination to calculate my karma is purely like trying to scoop the moon out of water with a bamboo basket."

He spoke with absolute confidence.

Behind him, over twenty Alchemist disciples listened, their backs straightening as the sharpened short staves in their hands rose two inches in unison.

Jiang Feng withdrew his index finger, shoved his right hand into his pocket, and used his left hand to brush off some mud clinging to his cuff.

"Fine, since you are so confident, Elder, then I'll get straight to the point."

Jiang Feng's gaze shifted, scanning the living and dead things around him.

He observed the sky, determined the orientation, noted the elm wood grain of the grand tutor's chair, and finally fixed his eyes on the half-exposed black-screen calculator in Xun Bai's sleeve.

Plum Blossom Divination—all things are numbers.

Jiang Feng began his reading, his pronunciation clear.

"You are wearing a blue-gray cloth robe; blue belongs to Wood."

"You have a plastic-cased calculator in your hand; plastic is derived from petrochemicals, which belong to Earth."

"The grand tutor's chair you sit on is elm, wood that carries decay."

Jiang Feng retracted his gaze and looked directly at Xun Bai's old face.

"Your eyeballs are bloodshot and red, suppressed with anger; red belongs to Fire."

Xun Bai's brow bone trembled slightly, but it was suppressed in an instant.

The Thin-faced Disciple behind him took half a step forward, holding his short staff across his chest, his eyes fixed on Jiang Feng.

The Round-faced Disciple was half a beat slower, moving his feet to follow; the two of them guarded the grand tutor's chair tightly, one on each side.

The formation of the twenty or so people in the back row contracted, their short staves lowered, the wooden tips pointing diagonally forward.

The hostility of the Alchemist camp was instantly maxed out.

Jiang Feng scanned the circle of staff tips, his expression showing no ripples at all, as if he were looking at weeds by the roadside.

"Subject Hexagram: Xun Wood. Object Hexagram: Kan Water."

"Water nourishes Wood; this should have been an omen of great fortune."

He paused for a second.

"But this setup is wrong."

"What is wrong?" Xun Bai asked back.

Jiang Feng reached out his right hand, spread his five fingers, made a grasping motion in the air, and then released it.

"The Kan Water is too heavy, and the Xun Wood is too decayed."

"When water is forced into wood, it isn't nourishment; it's soaking."

"You know very well what wood looks like after being soaked for a long time, Elder."

"From the outside, it's wrapped in bark, the color remains, and it can still stand upright."

"But as soon as you pull at it with your hand, the entire piece of wood is nothing but powdered dregs from the inside out."

He withdrew his hand and put both hands in his pockets.

"External water forcing its way in, guest wood rotting away—this is a formation that defies the natural order."

As this judgment fell, two people in the Alchemist line subconsciously swallowed their saliva.

Xun Bai's face didn't move, but the tips of his right fingers resting on the armrest contracted slightly.

Jiang Feng stepped forward, stopping less than three meters from the grand tutor's chair.

His gaze scraped down from Xun Bai's forehead, passing over the brow bone and the bridge of the nose, stopping at the chin.

"This face of yours, Elder—let me analyze it for you using physiognomy."

"The middle region from the brow bone to the tip of the nose has a very strong skeletal structure, with high cheekbones and a straight bridge; all your vitality and spirit are gathered here."

"But what about the lower region?"

Jiang Feng tilted his head to observe.

"The chin is recessed, the nasolabial folds are extremely shallow, and the philtrum is short and narrow."

"This is the skin of a face that has lived forty or fifty years at most."

Xun Bai lifted his right hand from the armrest.

That hand was extremely steady, fingers spread flat, palm facing down as he made a pressing motion, signaling his disciples not to move.

"I acknowledge that you have some skill in physiognomy."

"But to try to completely negate two thousand years of cultivation based solely on the age of a physical shell is simply too absurd."

Xun Bai's upper body left the back of the chair, and his hands slapped the armrests heavily, the elm wood emitting a dull thud.

"This old man personally witnessed the First Emperor's Fengshan Pilgrimage at Mount Tai to seek immortality!"

"I personally received the half-handful of residue left in the cauldron by Xu Fu before he sailed east!"

"Two thousand years of wind, frost, rain, and snow have slipped through my fingers grain by grain. You, a dying man who won't live past six months, what right do you have to challenge my years!"

These words were spoken with great momentum.

Stimulated by this aura, the Alchemist disciples raised their wooden staves in unison, and a fanatical light reignited in the eyes of the twenty or so people.

Jiang Feng stood where he was, letting him finish his roar.

He waited until the echo had bounced twice among the ruins of the Abandoned Well Square and completely dissipated.

Only then did he speak calmly, one word at a time.

"Your memories are real."

"The First Emperor's pilgrimage to Mount Tai is real, and Xu Fu's voyage to the east is also real."

"But memories are stored in a brain, the brain is tucked inside a skull, and the skull grows on a neck."

"What I'm analyzing today are the parts below your neck."

Jiang Feng raised his right hand, his index finger pointing directly at Xun Bai's hand resting on the armrest.

"From the web of your right hand to the base of your palm, there is a very thick layer of calluses."

"The distribution and direction of these calluses are clear as day; they weren't formed by holding a brush, nor by wielding a sword, and certainly not by rolling medicinal pills."

"Those are the calluses of a modern industrial machine tool operator, formed by years of gripping a metal handle—turner's calluses."

Xun Bai's fingers curled in half an inch.

The movement was minuscule, yet it was fully caught by Jiang Feng's eyes.

"What kind of calluses should a pre-qin Alchemist have on his hands? Marks left by grinding cinnabar, adding firewood to the furnace, or carving bamboo slips."

"That layer of hard calluses on your hand has absolutely nothing to do with the pre-qin era."

As soon as these words were spoken, the Thin-faced Disciple behind the grand tutor's chair looked down.

He stared fixedly at the web of his master's right hand; after looking for two seconds, the veins on the side of his neck began to throb.

He looked up and met the gaze of the Round-faced Disciple next to him.

There was an indescribable something flickering in both of their eyes.

Jiang Feng took in all these reactions and continued to strip away the facade.

"Now let's talk about that calculator in your sleeve."

"You take it out and press it a few times every day, putting on the air of a grand master before tucking it back in."

"Your subordinates all think it's a dharma tool, a peerless treasure forged from your two thousand years of cultivation."

Jiang Feng lowered his tone.

"But that is just a solar-powered calculator from the late eighties, with a street stall retail price of fifteen yuan at most."

"This thing is not a dharma tool at all."

"This is a personal item brought into the mountains forty years ago by the original owner of this body."

The lethality of these few sentences directly overshadowed all the previous metaphysical deductions.

On the left side of the back row of the Alchemist camp, the short staff in an older disciple's hand shook, its tip dropping to point at the ground.

The person next to him nudged him with an elbow, but he didn't react, his eyes fixed on Xun Bai's sleeve, looking at the exposed corner of black plastic.

Jiang Feng's voice dropped another half a degree.

"Xun Bai."

For the first time, he called him by his name, completely stripping away the respectful title of 'Elder.'

"You haven't attained immortality at all."

"The calluses on your hand are forty years old, the calculator in your pocket is forty years old, and your bone age is fifty-some years at most."

"What kind of two-thousand-year-old Alchemist are you supposed to be?"

"You are just a marionette whose body was snatched by an ancient ghost!"

As the word 'marionette' fell, the air in the Abandoned Well Square completely froze.

Xun Bai sat on the grand tutor's chair, his figure frozen in place.

Those old eyes were no longer cloudy; the emotions within them churned violently, a mixture of fear and rage, his defenses completely shattered.

The thin-faced and Round-faced Disciples both took half a step back, bumping into the shoulders of their fellow disciples behind them, who were also shrinking back.

Faith is something that takes over a decade to build, but only a single sentence to collapse.

As long as that sentence hits the mark hard enough.