Han Yu had been enjoying a relatively peaceful month. After laying low and abandoning his ridiculous disguises—no more wandering cultivator hats, fake beards, or nas like "Master Gulu the Sword Potato"—he’d gone full undercover mode.
He’d cleaned swords with dignity.
He’d read scrolls like a sage.
He’d even nodded politely at every elder who passed by.
In short, he had been the perfect picture of a humble outer sect disciple.
The chaos he once sowed had begun to fade from mory.
Han Yu was just starting to think he might finally get a break when...
"Where is the Talent Seeking Tablet!?"
The bellow shook the inner sanctum of the sect.
Inside one of the central vaults, Elder Xiang stood with his beard trembling in rage, glaring at the empty ground before him.
Dozens of other elders and senior disciples had gathered after hearing the outburst, only to be t with an even more dire truth.
"It’s not just the tablet!" shouted Elder Rong, pale-faced and clutching a scroll. "The Appraisal Crystal is gone too!"
"Impossible! Both were stored in the inner vault!"
"Check again!"
"I’ve already checked thrice! And that’s not all—other items are missing. Spirit-grade pills, body nurturing herbs, two Enlightennt Pearls... and more... a lot more..."
A dead silence spread among the assembled elders.
This wasn’t just a theft.
This was a violation of the sect’s most secure treasure vault.
And it had sohow gone undetected for weeks.
Soone had robbed them.
anwhile, in Han Yu’s Courtyard
Han Yu was sipping tea when the ripple of alarms hit his soul like a punch.
He stiffened.
Birds scattered from trees.
Elder Qi’s loud voice echoed across the mountain range.
"Activate the sect-wide lockdown. No one enters or leaves until this matter is resolved!"
Han Yu’s teacup slipped and cracked.
"...They found out."
Full Lockdown
That evening, under a crimson sunset, the sect was crawling with movent.
Guard patrols doubled. Formation barriers flared back to life around every entrance and exit. Senior disciples stood watch over storage halls. Even the outer sect was being combed thoroughly by inspection squads.
At the center of it all was a private ergency gathering of the highest-ranking elders.
"This isn’t a coincidence," Elder Xiang said, gripping his jade staff tightly. "First, the return of a supposedly dead disciple. Then rogue cultivators wandering around the sect, causing chaos. Then the alchemy lab explosion. And now we discover the vault has been robbed blind?"
"The question is..." Elder Rong said grimly. "Who could’ve done this without triggering a single alarm?"
They all turned toward the protective formation blueprints spread on the table.
"Could it be a spy? An infiltrator? Or... soone from within?"
None of them said it aloud, but the implication hung in the air like fog.
But Han Yu’s was panicking.
Back in his modest quarters, Han Yu was pacing in circles, sweat on his brow.
"This is bad... this is really bad."
He had absorbed the Talent Seeking Tablet.
And the Appraisal Crystal.
And like a starving beast, his newly forged body had hungrily devoured anything with high soul resonance during that strange, miraculous rebirth in the vault.
He didn’t even know what half the items were.
Now it turned out so of them were irreplaceable sacred tools of the sect.
"...I’m so dead."
He wanted to run. Escape. Disguise himself again.
But no one was allowed to leave the sect now.
And with security tighter than Elder Rong’s back muscles, he wouldn’t make it ten steps past the main gate without getting his soul ripped out by a formation array.
He slumped into his bed.
"I didn’t ask to be reborn this way, okay?"
Han Yu lay flat on his back, staring at the wooden ceiling of his small courtyard room as if it held all the answers to life’s mysteries.
The sect was in lockdown. He couldn’t disguise himself anymore. And the vault he had miraculously revived in had just been declared robbed by the highest elders of the sect.
And he... he was the walking, breathing loot bag.
"Alright," Han Yu muttered, "let’s take stock of this flaming ss."
He tried to calm himself. Panic wasn’t helpful—at least not when you were trying to figure out how you might’ve accidentally committed what was arguably the most high-level cri in sect’s recent history.
He thought of a dangerous question.
Why was I revived there in the first place?
The vault wasn’t just a random place. It was the most secure part of the sect. Even elders had restricted access. So how could the Undying Life Charm—sothing even Han Yu barely understood—choose that place as the revival spot?
"Was it fate? Luck? Dumb coincidence?"
Han Yu shook his head. "No... there must’ve been a trigger."
He thought back to everything he had learned so far. The Undying Life Charm didn’t just randomly revive soone. It required a mark—a specific location or artifact attuned to the person who activated the charm. That was how the charm knew where to revive soone from death.
"But I never placed a mark..." Han Yu whispered. "Right?"
He furrowed his brows, struggling to rember.
Then it hit him.
The Appraisal!
Weeks ago—before all the chaos—Han Yu had been brought in to be appraised, back when the sect was evaluating the talents of new recruits. He rembered stepping in front of the Appraisal Crystal, hesitantly pricking his finger, and dropping a single bead of blood onto the stone.
It had shimred faintly.
Then the Talent Seeking Tablet had lit up and barely managed to evaluate him as a red ranked talent.
"I thought I just embarrassed myself..." Han Yu muttered. "But wait..."
The Appraisal Crystal read a person’s soul and body through blood.
The Talent Seeking Tablet then ford a spiritual color light based on that reading.
If the Undying Life Charm had sohow interpreted that process as an intentional mark, then...
Han Yu sat bolt upright.
"That damned crystal linked my blood to the vault!"
In essence, the mont he bled on the Appraisal Crystal—and it resonated with the Talent Tablet—it created a pseudo-mark, embedding a link between his soul and the vault where the tablet was stored.
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