I'm Already the Richest Man, Why Did My System Just Arrive?

"Are you serious?"

Zheng Xiu glanced back at Xie Luohe.

"You think I'm not?"

Xie Luohe retorted, her fingers tracing the mural. "Zhu was a figure from nearly a thousand years ago," she said with a smile.

Zheng Xiu said, "Weren't you the one who said you thought Zhu was still alive?"

Xie Luohe pointed to the "coffin" in the last mural and gave a faint smile. "But my words alone are no proof."

Zheng Xiu fell into deep thought.

'If…'

'If Zhu, as a Mystic, possessed the ability of Immortality and had been hiding in the cracks of history, even living into the era two hundred years later that I'm from, then his true identity could only be that one person.'

'The founder of Ye Weiyang, the Night Lord—the one who emerged two hundred years later because of my unintentional actions in Baili Village.'

Countless threads of clues tangled in Zheng Xiu's mind. He felt he was just one step away from understanding everything.

The truth about Zhu's Immortality, Zhu's purpose in founding Ye Weiyang, Zhu's reason for moving against Feng Bei.

All of it seemed to be hidden within these seemingly crude murals, the secrets buried so deep that Zheng Xiu couldn't decipher them.

Zheng Xiu paced back and forth on the altar, scrutinizing the murals.

He looked at them again and again.

The murals recorded the life of the Mystic, Zhu, and the journey of the Sun Chaser in pursuit of the Scorching Sun.

The second-to-last mural depicted Zhu's exaggerated facial expression, his eyes eerily filled with "little suns."

Xie Luohe quietly watched the pensive Zheng Xiu, a faint look of loneliness gradually appearing on her face.

The bright moon began to set.

The night sky faded from pitch black to deep blue.

Zheng Xiu had actually spent half the night staring at the murals.

In the distance, as the night receded, the town's clamor faded back into silence.

Just then, Xie Luohe couldn't help but break the silence. "We should go. If we stay any longer, the people of the Sun Tribe will get suspicious."

"Is there a possibility…"

Zheng Xiu, who had been staring at the murals for half the night, finally spoke, his brow furrowed. "That what's recorded in the murals isn't the path Zhu walked?"

Hearing this, Xie Luohe's expression faltered slightly. "You mean…"

"I should have noticed sooner." Zheng Xiu pointed to the last mural and said calmly, "All the murals depict a 'sun,' except for the last one. I don't think that's meaningless. It must be trying to tell us something."

"The 'Scorching Sun' wouldn't just vanish into thin air."

"The Scorching Sun is gone from the mural. I'm thinking that the 'Scorching Sun' in the paintings might not be referring to the one in the sky, but is a symbol for something else."

"It's likely something intangible, something you can't see or touch, which is why the ancients used the 'Scorching Sun' as a metaphor."

"Like… the Path."

"This road isn't about Zhu's journey through the world, but the 'road' he traveled as he went deeper and deeper into the Path."

Hearing this, Xie Luohe stroked her delicate chin, pondered for a moment, then nodded. "That makes sense. But in reality, he did come here. Otherwise, the ancient people of this place wouldn't have recorded Zhu's life in murals and worshipped him to this day."

Zheng Xiu smiled and shook his head. "Sometimes, the symbolic and the literal don't conflict. He did indeed come here, but what happened along the way was also his process of delving into the Path. In other words, that 'Scorching Sun' could very well represent Zhu, as a Mystic, finally glimpsing the end of the Path after untold hardships and pushing open the final door."

"But in the end…"

Xie Luohe pointed weakly at the last mural.

Zheng Xiu said, "I speculate that those three Pillars have a special meaning. There are residents of the Great Desert worshipping around the Pillars and the coffin. This is likely some kind of 'Ceremony.' Through this 'Ceremony,' Zhu succeeded in extinguishing the 'Scorching Sun.'"

After a moment of thought, Xie Luohe shook her head. "That doesn't add up. If Zhu desperately pursued the 'Scorching Sun,' why would he destroy it in the end?"

"Because… he was melting? It's possible even his name, Zhu, is symbolic. A candle, fire, melting away. It implies that in the end, the Sun Chaser realized what he was chasing was no good, so he found a way to destroy it, using precisely those three Pillars."

The more Zheng Xiu thought about it, the more he felt this had to be the case.

'Now this is the caliber of a top-tier Painter.'

Xie Luohe pursed her lips in a smile, not denying Zheng Xiu's speculation.

As dawn approached, Xie Luohe pointed toward the mountaintop. "Actually… the coffin from the mural has been sitting up there the whole time."

"Huh?"

Hearing this, Zheng Xiu was stunned for a moment, then didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Why didn't you say so earlier?" The moment the words left his mouth, his brow furrowed as he realized something. He fired off three questions in one breath: "You've been up there to see it? What's inside? Are outsiders allowed up there?"

Xie Luohe was silent for a long moment before answering each question in turn: "I have. I don't know. No."

Zheng Xiu couldn't understand her answers and stared wide-eyed at Xie Luohe.

"Fine. Seeing that look on your face, I'll just take you up to see it, so you can finally give up." Xie Luohe could tell from his expression that he suspected her of lying. Annoyed, she stomped her foot. The hard rock let out a dull THUD from her half-petulant stomp, and a crack shot out from under her small foot all the way to the mural.

With that, Xie Luohe moved to grab Zheng Xiu and take him up the mountain.

"No, I'll do it myself!" Having been carried around by Xie Luohe like a little piglet the whole way, Zheng Xiu was terrified of repeating the experience of being bounced around with his warm face pressed against her cold backside. He quickly waved his hands in refusal, took out the Luohe Brush, made a small cut on himself with a pocket knife, and in the blink of an eye, drew a massive, lifelike bird on the ground.

The blood-red bird spread its wings and soared, its broad back carrying Zheng Xiu high into the sky.

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