Book 2: Studying for the Rise to Prominence of the Human Race - 91: Assumptions
At that moment, he felt like a person who had been sneaking food but was caught by his wife. There was some panic, restlessness, and melancholy.
But an instant later, that feeling disappeared.
Because Gu Qingluo turned away.
She didn’t look back at Su Chen when she left.
Su Chen felt his heart sink.
He felt a bit of liberation and comfort, but he felt more grief and indignation.
Zhu Xianyao was unaware of Su Chen’s emotional turmoil. She pulled on his arm and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing.” Su Chen seemed to snap out of his daze. “Let’s keep going. We can talk about it as we go.”
The three of them left, and the students who were surrounding them slowly dispersed when they saw that nothing exciting would happen.
After everyone had disappeared, Gu Qingluo reemerged from the small forest.
She stared at Su Chen’s departing figure, tears rolling down her face.
She cried for a long time before leaving on her own.
However, she didn’t know that not long after she disappeared, the beautiful woman from the Zhu Clan, Yanniang, suddenly reappeared.
Zhu Yanniang gazed at Gu Qingluo’s fading figure and laughed, “Interesting. It seems that we’ve discovered a hidden clue.”
A voice coldly harrumphed, “She’s just an insignificant lover. What use could she possibly have?”
“Who can say what will happen? If everything goes according to plan, this kind of discovery naturally won’t be of any use. But if......” Zhu Yanniang stopped speaking.
The cold voice said, “You think that something might happen? He’s just an insignificant junior. If it weren’t for the fact that we need him to take down the notice, we would have wiped him out a long time ago.”
“This is still the Hidden Dragon Institute. It’s better to remain cautious.”
“Don’t worry about it. There are people who will deal with the Hidden Dragon Institute, and I will take care of Shi Kaihuang. All you need to do is focus on dealing with Su Chen.”
“But even so, I still feel like the matter is not as simple as we think it is for some reason,” Zhu Yanniang said, her eyebrows knitted together in deep thought.
“You’re overthinking things. There’s no point,” the cold voice said before it slowly disappeared.
Zhu Yanniang sighed and didn’t say anything.
High-level troubles would be dealt with by high-level people. Her main mission was to deal with Su Chen. If she couldn’t do that, it would be considered a failure on her part.
As she thought of this, she began to walk lightly towards the Origin Energy Tower.
At that moment, Su Chen, Zhu Xianyao, and Zhu Chen had already entered the Origin Energy Tower. They laughed as they talked, and it seemed like all of their previous discord had disappeared like a cloud of smoke. After Zhu Xianyao had agreed to Su Chen’s conditions, the situation had stabilized.
“So can we go to the Dreamrealm now to take down the notice?” Zhu Xianyao asked as she wrapped herself around Su Chen’s arm.
“Are you in that much of a hurry?” Su Chen asked.
“It costs my mother tens of thousands of Origin Stones every day the notice is up. Becoming a Tier Five Dream Official is quite impressive. A single Adamantine Battle Body ruined all of our plans,” Zhu Xianyao replied. At the very least, the words she had just said were sincere.
Although both the Horizontal Mountain Zhu Clan and their businesses were large, allowing them to afford this price, losing tens of thousands of origin Stones every day was not easy to endure.
“Okay. Please wait for a moment.” Su Chen nodded in agreement.
Just as they were about to enter his room, however, they were suddenly accosted by a loud noise.
The three of them turned around in shock to find that a person had suddenly charged into the room from a side door. It was Iron Cliff.
Iron Cliff stumbled forward, his body covered in blood. He yelled, “Master!”
“Iron Cliff!” Su Chen rushed to his side. “What happened?”
“Someone barged into the library and took......took......”
“What did they take?” Su Chen hurriedly asked.
“They took the manual for Kaihuang’s Heaven,” Iron Cliff loudly replied before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and fainted.
What?
Zhu Chen and Zhu Xianyao also felt their vision swim.
The manual for Kaihuang’s Heaven had been taken? What was happening?
The two of them simultaneously stared at Su Chen, whose expression also changed. “How could this be?”
Evidently, he was completely ignorant of what was happening as well.
“Su Chen, you’d better give us an explanation. What exactly is going on?” Zhu Chen said angrily.
“That’s right. Why can others enter your Origin Energy Tower?” Zhu Xianyao said impolitely.
Light flashed across Su Chen’s eyes. “There is an Imaging Disk in the library that records everything that happens. We’ll know what happened as soon as we look at it.”
He charged into the library after he had said that.
Zhu Chen and Zhu Xianyao glanced at each other. All they could do was chase after Su Chen.
When they reached the library, they found it in a complete mess. It was as if a tornado had swept through the room.
Su Chen was pulling out an Origin Formation Disk from a corner of the room. It was the Imaging Disk.
After activating it, they quickly saw a person covering their face barge in. After turning the library upside down looking for something, they finally found a thin manual with the words “Kaihuang’s Heaven” inscribed on it.
The black-clothed, masked person stuffed the manual inside their clothes before attempting to run away. Unexpectedly, however, the person had just reached the room’s entrance when they ran into Iron Cliff.
Iron Cliff yelled and charged forwards, but he was very clearly not the black-clothed, masked person’s opponent. He was sent flying with a single blow, passing out immediately, and the black-clothed, masked person took the opportunity to escape.
“How could this be!? How could this be!?” Zhu Xianyao was so angry that her entire body was trembling.
They had finally convinced Su Chen to take down the notice after so much effort, but now a masked person had appeared and stole Kaihuang’s Heaven.
All of their plans were ruined in an instant. Zhu Chen cursed, infuriated, “How could this be? How many people knew that you invented Kaihuang’s Heaven?”
Su Chen replied, “Quite a few people. We never kept it a secret in the first place.”
“What? Why didn’t you?”
Su Chen stared at him, somewhat baffled. “Because we were planning on selling it publically in the first place. It was only because you concealed our sales notice that we were delayed slightly.”
Zhu Chen froze. He suddenly remembered that Su Chen never planned on keeping Kaihuang’s Heaven for himself in the first place.
Because of this, it was not surprising at all that people knew Kaihuang’s Heaven was within the Origin Energy Tower.
If it weren’t for the Zhu Clan’s interference, the other party probably wouldn’t even have needed to forcefully seize the manual – they could have bought it from the Dreamrealm for a hundred Dream Droplets.
The Zhu Clan’s interference had restricted Su Chen’s distribution plan, but it also caused people who were interested in the skill to misunderstand.
They did not know of Su Chen’s and Shi Kaihuang’s plans to distribute the cultivation technique publically. Thus, they had probably analyzed the situation based on common sense and concluded that anyone who possessed the technique would treasure it highly and try to keep it for themselves, hidden and locked away so that it would be a secret. If they were to offer rare treasures in exchange for the technique, let alone money, it would profane and debase the secret technique, and if negotiations fell through, it might even create enmity. Thus, the people longing after the secret technique did not plan on purchasing it from the very beginning. Instead, they chose to steal it.
This was not very surprising at all.
Zhu Chen and Zhu Xianyao reached that conclusion in an instant. No matter how they thought about it, they couldn’t find anything wrong with that logic.
The benefit of them reaching such a conclusion themselves was that it was much more convincing than if Su Chen had explained it to them – after all, they had come to that conclusion on their own, and who ever doubted their own reasoning?
Zhu Chen and Zhu Xianyao were vexed to no end.
Just when they were sure that they had missed their opportunity and that Kaihuang’s Heaven was gone for good, Su Chen suddenly let out an exclamation of surprise as he continued to watch the Imaging Disk.
“What are you so surprised about?” Zhu Chen said without any hint of goodwill.
“I think that I can find them,” Su Chen replied.