Is Fourth Grandpa actually a grenade spirit?
My first reaction was this: back when the Buddha was preaching, a grenade was buried in front of the altar, and after listening to the sermons day and night, it surprisingly became a spirit. Now, after death, it reveals its true form, and all I have to do is pull this pin, and I would be blown to smithereens.
It seems unlikely, though; if he had implanted a grenade in his own nostrils during his lifetime, and when caught, pulled the pin under the pretense of picking his nose, that would be a rather tragic end.
I pulled the copper wire, and Fourth Grandpa’s entire body started convulsing. It felt as if I had dug up my grandfather’s grave to sift through his ashes, decapitated Old Lady Huo, and smashed Chen Pi A Si’s face. Truly, a misfortune for the family with such descendants.
Suddenly, the copper wire loosened, and something deep in the nostrils was pulled out. The sensation of extracting something from a cavity was truly awesome.
It was covered in mucus, slippery and gross. I wrapped it in my underwear and examined it closely with a gas lamp; that thing was something I had seen before—a copper key with beads on the handle. Almost simultaneously, I saw Fourth Grandpa’s corpse begin to shrink, convulsing continuously, with the flesh emitting a foul odor.
I covered my nose and stepped back a few paces. At the last moment, I grabbed the object hanging from his neck and yanked it down.
Fourth Grandpa’s corpse rotted and collapsed, sinking into the stone. I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked at the two items in my hand.
I had seen this key in the Qixing Lu Wang Palace, in the mouth of a female corpse by the side of the Qingyan Fox. It was said to have preservative properties. When I took it out back then, I thought it was for opening a maze box, but later the key went missing. I never expected it would end up in Chen Pi A Si’s hands, embedded in his nostrils.
Little Brother is one of Chen Pi A Si’s men. At that time, my Third Uncle borrowed someone from Chen Pi A Si, trading a black gold ancient knife for help from the Muffled Oil Bottle. Could it be that Little Brother took the key in the chaos and gave it to Chen Pi A Si?
Afterward, Chen Pi A Si, at over 90 years old, risked everything to search for the Heavenly Palace in the deep mountains, with the Muffled Oil Bottle assisting him.
I slowly began to see parts I hadn’t noticed before. I had been focusing on my Third Uncle’s motives and what the Muffled Oil Bottle was doing. Now it seems more important to clarify Chen Pi A Si’s relatively simple objectives first.
Chen Pi A Si participated in the largest joint tomb robbery in history. Given his character, he would likely have personally taken risks during that operation. Afterward, he was active in Guangxi for a long time, and eventually, he found Little Brother, who had lost his memory.
Chen Pi A Si must have had a purpose in mind while searching for the Muffled Oil Bottle because Guangxi, for the generation after the liberation of the Nine Gates, is a place filled with too many stories and secrets.
After that, Little Brother, who had lost his memory, continued to work for Chen Pi A Si. Chen Pi A Si is a very clever person; perhaps he didn’t want to know the truth, only to solve his own physical problems. Maybe after he obtained the ancient text from the Warring States period, he disseminated it in the martial world, and ultimately, my Third Uncle unraveled the secret of the text.
When my Third Uncle saw this ancient text, based on what I later learned about him, he must have devised a large trap from it. But Chen Pi A Si was unaware of this; when he heard that my Third Uncle would search for the ancient tomb mentioned in the text, he lent Zhang Qiling to him.
The “Muffled Oil Bottle” completed his task in the Seven Stars Lu Wang Palace. Even now, I still don’t know what he did. As it stands, he took the Ghost Seal, swapped the silk book, snatched the Immortal Transformation of Iron Face, and brought this anti-corrosion key to Chen Pi Ah Si. All of this seems to have been prepared for Chen Pi Ah Si at the Cloud Top Heavenly Palace.
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