Chapter 60 - Search

“What the hell! Why is this building so moldy?”

“Hiss!” Christina’s whiskers twitched, and she tried to persuade him. “Zhou Bai! This house looks completely off. Let’s not go inside!”

Zhou Bai didn’t say anything. He just continued walking. As he walked, he said in his mind, What are you afraid of? The two of us have more than 300 points of Primordial Spirit Value combined. With my defense and your offense, if we meet another mutant like the old man or Sakurako, we’ll win them easily.

With Zhou Bai’s footsteps, creaking came from the floor. He looked down and found that all the flooring in this building was wooden. Because of the mold and dampness, the floorboards all stuck up.

Every step he took made creaking sounds, echoing in the darkness. Zhou Bai walked and inspected this building,.

This building was different from the previous building.

Zhou Bai manipulated the crystal to float into the rooms. He could see that the wooden beds, desks, chairs, and even closets were still present in the rooms, but they were all empty and looked uninhabited. They were also all moldy. Black mildew was everywhere.

Drip.

Zhou Bai looked up and found the ceiling leaking. Drops of water gathered on the ceiling. In the end, they either dropped to the ground or streamed down the wall.

“Why is there so much water?” Zhou Bai frowned. Donghua Tao Academy was 1,500 meters above Donghua City. The sky and ground around it were all man-made. Theoretically, it wouldn’t rain in any season.

Then where did this water come from?

Zhou Bai walked up floor by floor. The light from the crystal illuminated every room, but he found no other abnormalities. Looking at Christina, who shut her eyes and curled up in his mind, he said helplessly, “All right, aside from being a little damp, there’s nothing wrong with this building. What are you afraid of?”

Christina said, “It’s too dark in here!”

“You’re a cat. Why are you afraid of the dark?”

He walked back down the stairs. Zhou Bai teased Christina in his mind. Seeing how the dumb cat was trembling from fear, he couldn’t help chuckling to himself.

They exited building five, and Zhou Bai entered building four.

From the exterior, building four was already densely covered in ivy. Zhou Bai walked inside and found that some of the walls already had cracks where vines creeped out.

Zhou Bai looked toward the first room. He found the door closed.

He tried to push the door, then heard a thump. He had pushed the entire door to the floor.

Dense shadows in the room were exposed. They looked like thousands of hands that reached toward Zhou Bai.

When he saw this, Zhou Bai was shocked too. He immediately covered himself in primordial spirit power.

But the next moment, he let out a sigh of relief. The things that looked like thousands of hands reaching towards him weren’t actual hands. They were countless leaves that grew out of the cracks in the wall. They filled the entire room. If not for the fact that the door was closed, they would probably have grown into the hallway.

“They’re growing so quickly.”

Zhou Bai glanced around and didn’t find anything, then he walked toward the next room.

He found building four was different from the damp building five. There was still furniture in the rooms in building five. Most of it hadn’t been moved out.

Building four not only had furniture, but Zhou Bai also found that there were leftover tattered bedsheets, ragged clothes, even some old hangers, cups, and such.

It looked like people left a lot of trash behind while moving.

But this was a better situation for Zhou Bai. At least he had hopes of finding clues.

So he walked into the dorms, used his primordial spirit power to open all sorts of drawers and lift clothes, looking for anything of value.

After going through several floors like this, Zhou Bai finally found a notebook inside one dorm room.

He saw on the cover of the notebook:

“There’s not enough time. They’re about to come.

“I’ve hidden everything inside Tao Te Ching. If you find it, you will have the answer.

“Don’t hate me, child.”

Zhou Bai’s vision focused. He flipped through it and saw contents from the Tao Te Ching, from chapter 1 to chapter 40, whole and complete. Zhou Bai was shocked when he read them.

But he just glanced at them. He didn’t look closely, so Christina didn’t see the contents of the Tao Te Ching clearly.

How did this happen? he wondered. Why is Tao Te Ching here? Who is the person who left this note? Why do the others seem like they don’t know anything about Tao Te Ching?

Zhou Bai exhaled deeply, continuing to read the rest. He found there were many blank pages in the back. Suddenly, one page fell. Zhou Bai’s eyes lit up. He saw written on the page:

“16: Attain the ultimate emptiness, hold on to the truest tranquility. The myriad things are all active, I therefore watch their return. Everything flourishes, each returns to its root…”

“This is chapter sixteen of Tao Te Ching?” Zhou Bai was surprised. Looking at the page in his hand, his primordial spirit became restless again. Images flashed in his vision.

Zhou Bai quickly closed the book; only then did his restlessness slowly fade.

“Tao…Te…Ching…”

Zhou Bai continued to searching building four. He quickly found more pages. Almost every page was a chapter of the Tao Te Ching. He found a total of seven pages.

Sensing there seemed to be some secret hidden in this Tao Te Ching, Zhou Bai went down and left building four and headed to building three.

Christina’s curiosity was roused by what happened, “What is Tao Te Ching? This thing’s been inside this building for so long. Did the school not find it?”

“I don’t know,” said Zhou Bai. “Let’s just find it first.”

Stepping into building three, Zhou Bai felt a burnt stench enter his nose. He opened a random room and went blank for a moment, then walked toward the next room. He found that all the rooms in building three had bright red paper charms stuck on their walls.

They were bright red runes, as if written with blood. He could even see a red glow coming off them.

Zhou Bai went up to inspect them. He found that these charms seemed to not have any extraordinary power; they were just normal paper charms.

Suddenly, Zhou Bai’s vision focused. He lifted the paper charms on the wall and found there seemed to be something behind them. He directed his will and his primordial spirit power swept toward the entire wall. As the runes were removed, a page drifted down from the wall.

“1: The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth, the named is the mother of myriad things…”

Seeing that it had not only the line he wrote on the entrance exam but also the rest of the first chapter, Zhou Bai put the page into his pocket before his primordial spirit became uneasy.

Christina exclaimed, “Isn’t that what you wrote on the entrance exam? You copied this Tao Te Ching!”

At that moment, a light tap sounded in the hallway outside. It echoed throughout the dark abandoned building. Christina exclaimed, “Someone’s here!”