Chapter 138 Truth

A room filled with scarlet light, stimulated by the ancient glyph array, radiated outwards in layers.

The three people at the center of the array seemed to have become one in a formless mental link.

At this moment, they should have been immersed in "ancient glyph comprehension"...

But Gu Shen opened his eyes.

Hu Po stared blankly at this scene. He didn't understand why Gu Shen had awakened.

At this time, Gu Shen should have been comprehending.

Even the fastest comprehension required time.

Unless... there was no comprehension at all.

"Actually."

"I felt something strange when we first met."

Gu Shen, standing at the center of the array, slowly lifted his palm from "Ian's" palm.

The old man and Chu Ling were still in a state of mental link-induced slumber. Comprehending ancient glyphs wasn't inherently serious; this mental link was like the transmission and exchange of knowledge, so the mental aura emanating from the two of them was still gentle.

"You should only be thirty years old, the prime of your youth... Why do you exude an aura of twilight?"

Gu Shen looked at Hu Po and calmly said, "Although the twilight aura on you disappeared after I presented the 'letter' and we met again, a mental-type transcendent's intuition is never wrong. If you had consistently maintained the 'gloomy and沉沉' aura, perhaps I wouldn't have been suspicious, but because of its fleeting nature, I paid special attention."

Hu Po was silent for several seconds before saying, "Mr. Gu, I don't understand what you're talking about."

"At this point, there's no need for such titles."

Gu Shen spoke indifferently, tearing away the pretense: "Think carefully about the 'things' that have happened since we met. Haven't you noticed the inconsistencies yet?"

Inconsistencies?

Hu Po's pupils contracted, and he desperately began to recall everything in his mind.

Where were the inconsistencies...

The previous story should have been without problems. This young man had only lived for so many years...

"An old man whose age has withered him to the point of being unable to speak, confined to a wheelchair, only able to transmit a wisp of his own thoughts by wearing a specialized mental link device."

"Can such a person truly be considered 'alive'?"

Gu Shen glanced back at the old man in the wheelchair.

He said softly, "In this situation, the description 'living dead' would be more accurate. His every move is like a marionette, a puppet, with you being the one truly in control... Even things like wearing the device require you to do it. He can't even say a word; he can only sit there."

With such a stark contrast in mental strength, completing all of this wasn't difficult.

"You're saying I'm controlling 'Ian'?"

Hu Po seemed to have heard a joke.

"Yes, and there it is again... The second inconsistency is here."

Gu Shen said, "When we first met, you directly refused to let us enter the courtyard, and at that time, you directly called 'Ian' by his name... Although you haven't called him that since, I'm still curious. Your teacher is a renowned scholar of Zhongzhou; why would you address him in such a way?"

"Later, 'that person' reminded me."

Hu Po was once again stunned: "That person?"

"The test subject who escaped from the 'Ancient Glyph Society experiment'."

Gu Shen paused, then said faintly, "He told me not to make assumptions about people I've never seen with my own eyes... Before setting off for Zhongzhou, I hadn't even seen 'Ian' in person. The information about this scholar was kept by the Upper City, and because he had lived for too long and secluded himself too deeply, even I couldn't find any information about him in recent years. No one knows what 'Ian' looks like."

When seeing a young man pushing a wheelchair with an old man paralyzed to the point of helplessness sitting in it.

Everyone would subconsciously assume that this old man was the scholar Ian.

But perhaps the truth was the opposite.

"Don't you think what you're saying is too absurd?"

"Reality is often more absurd."

Gu Shen said calmly, "I believe you are the real 'Ian Leonard'."

"You lied the first time we entered the cellar. The research on 'forbidden ancient glyphs' didn't just study a wedge, as you said. It was because you deciphered the correct 'ancient glyphs' that the stack of drawings you took out at the time could so perfectly lack key information."

"You also lied about the story of Holing. The old story of the laboratory is impossible to verify, but you concealed the real reason why he buried himself in studying at the Holy Cross Academy."

"The real reason that drove Holing to devote himself to studying wasn't anything else, but the 'ancient glyphs' collected in this basement... These are forbidden ancient glyphs containing 'ultimate power', which is why Turing ordered them to be destroyed, but you were unwilling to part with them. The reason is probably that you have already tasted the sweetness of these ancient glyphs."

A long pause.

Gu Shen said, word by word, "If my guess is correct, if you are truly Ian, who has lived for one hundred and twenty-one years, then the power corresponding to these forbidden ancient glyphs should be the 'art of longevity', changsheng shu."

Something that could be called the "most powerful" forbidden art by Owl, something that would drive a creature like him to such madness.

Perhaps only immortality could do that.

Owl wanted to defy the transcendent iron law of "eternal life".

And similarly, Holing, who made a big mistake in the experiment that year and caused the death of his fiancée, if he wanted to make up for his regret, the only thing he could see was the legendary "art of longevity", which could create miracles.

And the most important evidence to support this guess—

Is the "lifeless" young man in front of him.

The scarlet light in the room all came from his "handiwork". He had bled himself more than once, carved glyphs, and his recovery speed was astonishing. This was no longer the power possessed by a normal transcendent.

"All of this... you guessed?"

"Hu Po" quietly listened to all of this, and he earnestly looked at Gu Shen and asked.

This question was equivalent to an answer.

"Sort of."

Gu Shen silently took out a broken pendant and shook it in front of him. "Hu Po" didn't know what this pendant meant, but he vaguely guessed that Gu Shen had probably also used some divination techniques.

"Worthy of being the key."

The young man's voice returned to its vicissitudes again, and he complimented, neither warmly nor coldly.

Unexpectedly.

The other party didn't deny anything.

Gu Shen raised an eyebrow.

The young man put his hands in his pockets and quietly watched the scarlet light fluttering around the room. Perhaps because he had lived for too long, he was too lazy to fight for many things. Since it had already happened, he might as well accept it.

The longer a person lives, the more they will understand a principle.

Everyone has their own view of the world, and this view will gradually solidify with age and eventually no longer change. The set of views that belonged to "Ian" had already settled more than twenty years ago and would no longer change.

"This room contains the ancient glyph drawings of the 'art of longevity', changsheng shu."

Ian said calmly, "However, they are incomplete."

He casually picked up a thick stack of drawings from the table, and his eyes became somewhat mocking, "These drawings have cost me countless years of my time... I have deciphered them all. Every piece of paper, every word in this room, I have deciphered, but piecing them together only yields incomplete power."

He spoke with anger, and at the same time, he threw the stack of drawings up.

"Alan Turing took away the key drawings! He went far away to the frontier, and even took away the secret of 'longevity'!"

Scattered pieces of paper danced wildly in the air, stained with a layer of blood.

This time it was Gu Shen's turn to be silent.

After revealing the truth, the young man said in a low voice, "Do you know how Alan Turing grew up? Do you know how his whimsical ideas were able to be realized one by one? Do you know who supported the Ancient Glyph Society in the beginning?"

"It was me!"

He slapped the table hard and questioned, "I gave him so much, I gave the Ancient Glyph Society so much... At the last moment of my life, he took away the 'lifesaving' thing. He once said that I was the best teacher to him! Look, this is how he treated me!"

The room was filled with a bloody mist.

Gu Shen asked coldly, "Then how did you treat others?"

The young man was stunned.

If... the "Hu Po" standing in front of him at this moment was actually Ian, who had lived for one hundred and twenty-one years.

Then the one sitting in the wheelchair was the student who served him.

Everything made sense.

The words he subconsciously said when pulling weeds in the yard.

Were from Ian's own perspective.

"I have to survive."

The young man quickly regained his composure. There was no pity in his eyes, and he affirmed the previous sentence with great certainty, repeating, "To survive, I always need to do something."

"So... he's just a pawn..." Gu Shen said, "You never cared about his feelings."

"You think too much. He has no feelings, so why should I take care of him?"

Ian said coldly, "After the life absorption, he has lost his hearing, sight, speech, and touch... He is just a puppet sitting in a wheelchair, and every word you speak to him comes from my 'spirit'."

He had placed the link device.

Because his memories were real, no matter how he was questioned, he wouldn't be exposed.

On the one hand, he played the role of Hu Po, a student who respected his teacher.

On the other hand, he played the role of Ian, a senile old man.

In this absurd drama of fate, he was playing tricks on everyone who came into contact with the courtyard...

But all the forbidden arts in this world require a price to be paid.

The more powerful they are, the more fiercely the price will backfire. The art of longevity, changsheng shu, would be no exception!

From the current situation, Ian had deciphered part of the "art of longevity", but it was incomplete, which required him to pay a more extreme and unstable price... And the old man sitting in the wheelchair, unable to speak, see, or hear, was one of the prices.

And the other price wasn't hard to guess.

"You're looking for the next 'life absorption' target."

Gu Shen looked at the dense blood color on the ground, and his eyes were somewhat sorrowful, "Your art of longevity is flawed. It needs to absorb the lives of others to replenish you... It’s just that the absorption and conversion ratio isn't one-to-one."

"One to twenty."

Ian looked at the old man in the wheelchair and said indifferently, "Hu Po is the best 'life giver' I've ever seen. He has provided me with more than three years of life."

"More than three years... So your time is running out. This time, letting Chu Ling and me into the courtyard was to find the next target." Gu Shen asked, "So, Mr. Ian, you want to use me as a 'life absorption' target, even... if I am the key?"

"After absorption, I will get the memories of the absorbed."

Ian said calmly, "At that time, whether you are the key or not will no longer be important. As long as I am willing, I can become the 'key' at any time."

That's right... Ian had a perfect "reputation", plus the memory of the "key". As long as he was willing, he could take over and reconcile the entire scattered Ancient Glyph Society.

After Gu Shen heard this, he looked at the man in front of him with a complicated expression.

He remembered that just before the ancient glyph inheritance was about to begin, Ian said in his spiritual sea.

"Life is a limited journey, and I have been walking for much longer than others. I am very content."

Looking at it now, how ridiculous was this statement?

"You can try to attack me. I won't defend... because all of this is meaningless. The more serious the injuries you cause to me, the more life consumption will be converted after your companion is absorbed by me."

Ian said in a very light voice, "I don't have much time left in this broken body. It doesn't matter if I get hurt, and it doesn't matter if I suffer. The spiritual sea inheritance I left for her is chaotic, disordered, and without logical knowledge. In the end, her comprehension will only open the 'sacrifice' of this array."

He spread his arms, offering no resistance.

And in the room, strands of dim blood light were burning.

Chu Ling, who was comprehending the ancient glyphs, was indeed heading towards the end of "thought".

Ian hadn't left her any truly useful information... The ancient glyph inheritance of these years had all been disrupted into countless fragmented meaningless characters in the mental link.

And at the end of the collection of all the information, the ancient glyphs converged into a vast ocean.

Countless blood colors gathered at the bottom of the attic.

Under Gu Shen's feet, ancient glyph symbols that had died seemed to possess life. At this moment, they actually came alive... The sea of blood rose in the narrow cellar space.

The white cat mask cracked with a snap, revealing the girl's confused expression.

Her spirit and soul seemed to be forcibly stripped away and leave under the action of the great array.

"I'm sorry... leave your next few decades to me."

A cold and ruthless, yet decaying and old voice rang out above Chu Ling's soul sea.

Above the young man's head, a withered and dying soul floated up.

"I will live for you."

That withered soul opened its arms and embraced Chu Ling's ethereal soul from afar.

Then it opened its mouth and bit down slowly on the soul's neck, as if savoring fish...