Pei Mianman’s expression grew frosty. “I’ll bite my own tongue and end my life if you dare cut up my face! Let’s see what you’ll use to get the Phoenix Nirvana Sutra out of Zu An then.”

She could guess what Mosquito Daoist was thinking, and purposely said this to remind Zu An as well.

Mosquito Daoist froze. “Oh? Girl, you look pretty delicate and fragile, but you have a pretty stiff backbone. It seems like you care a little bit about this face of yours. In that case, you’d better cooperate obediently!”

“Enough, enough.” Zu An was worried that she might actually hurt Pei Mianman. “Let’s just go over there. Let her go first.”

“You first.” Mosquito Daoist wanted to be careful. She didn’t want to see anything else happen.

Zu An shrugged his shoulders and walked straight towards that stele without any further argument. Mosquito Daoist was quite surprised at how agreeable he was being.

He reached the stele and examined it carefully. It was entirely black in color and felt extremely ancient. He couldn’t figure out if the two symbols carved on its surface were words or decorative designs.

He stared at those somewhat familiar diagrams, and a pensive look appeared on his face.

“What are you dilly dallying for?” Mosquito Daoist said impatiently when she saw him standing in front of the stele like a statue. A massive meteorite had crashed in this area, and others might be arriving at any time to investigate. She was obviously in a hurry.

Zu An grunted in reply, then gently touched the stele. As expected, he encountered the same problem as Mosquito Daoist.

A transparent barrier formed in front of his hand, preventing him from touching the stele.

“Use more force!” Mosquito Daoist ordered, frowning. Were her suspicions wrong? Could it be that this wasn’t left behind by a powerful human?

Zu An could only brace himself and throw himself at the stele. However, he had seen what Mosquito Daoist had suffered earlier, so he didn’t use his full strength.

Sure enough, the instant he rammed into the barrier, it instantly became incredibly hard. He cried out in pain.

Mosquito Daoist was watching all of this closely. She noticed that the force of the rebound was clearly not as great as when she herself had charged at it earlier. The main function of this object was probably to absorb the energy of an impact and then reflect it back.

“I can’t break through either.” Zu An rubbed his shoulder as he crawled back to his feet. He had a hopeless expression on his face.

Mosquito Daoist proposed another idea. “Scatter some of your blood on it.” She had roamed the world for many years, and she knew that many restrictions used blood as a catalyst.

She wasn’t worried that this stele would recognize Zu An as its owner. After all, she had this big-chested woman as hostage, and she was confident that she could easily overwhelm Zu An as well, given the gap in their cultivations.

Even though it was unusual to be able to transfer a blood-bound treasure from one owner to another, it would be a different story once the original owner died.

She would get rid of him once she obtained the Phoenix Nirvana Sutra anyway. It took barely an instant to formulate her plans.

Zu An didn’t refuse her request. He was already riddled with wounds, so it was easy enough to draw blood from any of them.

He flicked a drop of blood at the stele. The blood disappeared after making contact with the transparent barrier, but there was no reaction.

“Was it insufficient?” Mosquito Daoist muttered. “Use more!”

“I don’t have much left, thanks to you!” Zu An berated her angrily. However, he still ran his palm across his body, coating it in blood, then reached forward to touch the barrier.

The barrier seemed to be able to cleanse itself somehow. His hand left a red stain on the barrier, but the red color quickly disappeared, and the patch regained its original transparency.

“Did it absorb it or not…?” Mosquito Daoist was confused. She pushed Pei Mianman forward. “You, go and give it a try.”

Pei Mianman was anxious to be away from her. When she reached Zu An’s side, she said through voice transmission, “Ah Zu, what do we do now?”

Zu An’s expression was a little odd. “Don’t panic. I think our luck is about to change.”

“About to change?” Pei Mianman was confused. She couldn’t see how things would get any better. Were they really putting all of their hopes on other people getting here in time?

“What are you two muttering about there? Hurry up and give it a try!” Mosquito Daoist shouted. She didn’t dare stand too close because she was afraid that there would be some other formidable defensive mechanism. However, she remained close enough that she could still react in time if something happened.

Pei Mianman had no choice but to do what Zu An had done earlier. At first, the barrier remained intact, and showed no sign of reaction. However, as she wiped off the blood from her wounds and tried one last time, that stele suddenly trembled. The two diagrams on the stele flared with a burst of golden light. The symbols seemed to have come alive, flickering with light.

When this happened, Mosquito Daoist rushed forward to take a look. Unfortunately, aside from the golden light flowing out of the two diagrams, nothing else seemed to have changed. The barrier was still there, and they still couldn’t touch the stele.

“It looks like the key lies with those two symbol diagrams,” Mosquito Daoist said. “Do either of you recognize it?”

Zu An and Pei Mianman both shook their heads. “I’ve never seen it before.”

Mosquito Daoist was asking for the sake of asking. Even she, who had mountains of experience, had never seen these symbols before. There was no way that these kids would have either.

She fell into deep thought. “Does this seal need the blood of a woman to activate, or does it need a man and a woman to activate it together…?”

While she was still pondering this issue, Zu An suddenly grabbed Pei Mianman. He looked at the two strange patterns on the stele and said, “Yin… Xu!”

The strange symbols weren’t some random chicken scratches—they were ancient Chinese characters from his past world! These were oracle bone inscriptions!

A written language already existed during one of China's most ancient dynasties, the Shang Dynasty. These characters were usually carved on tortoiseshell and bones, and then used for sacrificial purposes. That was why they were called oracle bone inscriptions.

Even though modern china already deciphered most of these oracle bone inscriptions, these scribblings were incomprehensible to ordinary people. None of them would recognize these characters.

Zu An only recognized these characters because he had watched a documentary about archaeology previously, regarding this oracle script. The title of that documentary was ‘Yinxu, ruins of Yinshang’.

The Shang Dynasty had relocated their capital city many times. The most famous capital city was Yin City. That was why the Shang Dynasty was also called the Yinshang. This capital city was later excavated, but after a thousand years of erosion, this previously-prosperous city had been reduced to mere buried ruins.

That was why those remains were called Yinxu[1].

Zu A didn’t know why he would see these two characters in this strange world, moreover through the oracle script of the Shang Dynasty. Yinxu should have been a term later generations used when referring to the Shang Dynasty—there should be no way those actually from the Shang Dynasty would use this term.

However, this wasn’t the time to think about all this. When he heard Mosquito Daoist say that the key lay in those two characters, and seeing how the seal had clearly been triggered earlier, he had to give it a try.

The stele shook suddenly at the sound of his voice. The strokes of the two characters began to move, and then they began to swirl around the edges of the stele. The stele morphed into a portal the height of an average human. The borders shone with gold, while the inside was black.

Zu An was no stranger to these portals. He had seen similar wormholes in the science fiction works of his past world. The entrance to the Ursae dungeon was also a similar portal, although this portal was much smaller in scale.

Without hesitation, he held on tightly to Pei Mianman’s hand and jumped straight in.

“You little bastard!” Mosquito Daoist had been deep in thought, so the sudden developments left her rather stunned. The stele had been protected by the barrier just a moment ago, and the gate of light had formed almost instantly, so she was powerless to stop them in time.

She subconsciously reached out towards the two of them when she saw them jump through, trying to grab at least one of them, and managed to grab Zu An’s trouser leg. But Zu An was already prepared. His longsword sliced through his pant leg, cutting that section off.

Mosquito Daoist was left holding a pointless piece of cloth. From the time Zu An and Pei Mianman entered it, the portal had already shrunk to the size of a bowl, preventing any other humanoids from entering.

She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She had seen secret dungeons before, but she had never seen a secret dungeon that only remained open for such a short time.

There was no way that she would stand idly by as this treasure slipped right through her fingers, not after so much sacrifice. She would never accept this! She transformed into a Blackblood Mosquito and followed them inside the instant before the portal closed.

1. The character ‘xu’ means burial grounds.