Transmigrated into a Grandpa, Embracing the Laid-Back Life

Chapter 416: Eyes in the Dark

The back courtyard secret chamber of Qingya Zhai felt completely cut off from the bustling, noisy capital outside.

For three consecutive days, Su Ming did not take a single step outside.

He sat cross-legged on that hard wooden bed like a stone statue. The dim oil lamp on the corner of the table emitted a faint crackling sound, its flame casting his shadow against the mottled wall, stretching it long and deep.

Before him lay two stacks of items. On the left was a thick pile of archives about the Yongchang Marquis Manor, gathered through the intelligence network Chen Mingyuan had painstakingly built over fifty years. On the right was the ancient jade slip, "Analysis of Ancient Runes," bestowed by his Master, Xuanheng.

Su Ming's right index finger unconsciously tapped against the tabletop, producing a peculiar, rhythmic beat. This was a habit he had developed at the Repair Hall—when faced with an extremely complex, bafflingly damaged formation plate, he would completely detach himself and use absolute rational thinking to dissect, compare, and synthesize the massive data.

And now, the intelligence on the Yongchang Marquis Manor appeared to him as a massive, intricate "Formation Corpse."

The information recorded in the archives was overwhelmingly detailed: how many catties of lean meat the manor had purchased, which brothel a certain steward had stayed at overnight, what quarrels had broken out among the Marquis's concubines... A ledger-like record that would make any impatient person feel overwhelmed at first glance.

But Su Ming did not. His divine sense, far surpassing that of cultivators at the same level, frantically sifted and extracted information from these seemingly unrelated trivial words.

"On the seventh of last month, the manor kitchen's bulk purchase of live chickens and ducks tripled the daily average, yet there was no grand banquet held within the manor."

"On the twelfth of the same month, the manor treasury secretly transferred a batch of high-purity cinnabar, destination unknown.""Within the last three months, the guards at the manor's back gate were replaced with the Yongchang Marquis's most trusted iron-armored personal guards. Every first and fifteenth day of the month, at the Zi hour, the street where the back gate is located would be inexplicably cleared for half an hour..."

Su Ming isolated these seemingly isolated pieces of information and quickly pieced them together in his mind. Fresh blood, cinnabar, midnight clearing at specific times.

thread surfaced from the

Yongchang Marquis Manor

Ming's gaze slowly shifted to the right, to the "Analysis of Ancient

stopped tapping his fingers on the

have to go and investigate

On the third night.

lost its daytime clamor, leaving only the drawn-out sound of the night watchman's clapper

a pool of ink as he silently

The liquid spiritual energy in his meridians didn't accelerate; instead, it became as stagnant as

of rooftops. With each landing, the tips of his toes barely touched the

and imposing complex of the Yongchang Marquis Manor appeared

from the manor, Su Ming stopped, pressing his body flat against the icy blue stone tiles, exposing only

sense, like an invisible

Ming's breath

moment it touched the manor's outer wall, his divine sense encountered an extremely faint but highly aggressive

aura of a cultivator! Inside the manor, a highly concealed warning

Survival: Never fight

wisp of probing divine sense and hid himself even deeper. Like a patient

the underground secret chamber of the Yongchang Marquis Manor, a different scene was

Several night pearls emitting a faint green

his back, he stood before a massive map of Great Xing nation's territory. His graying temples appeared somewhat aged under the ghostly light, but his sharp, chiseled profile still exuded an