The Penglai Inn was ultimately just a temporary stop, a place of mixed company, not a long-term solution.

Su Ming took the first salary issued by the Ministry of Personnel and, instead of buying any new outfits, poured all of it into rent.

He found a small single-courtyard house. The alley was quiet, the bluestone path worn smooth by time, flanked by gray, dusty courtyard walls. The courtyard wasn’t large, but its advantage was being self-contained. Once the gate was closed, it became his own private world.

Xu Qing had specifically taken leave to help. The moment he entered the courtyard, his eyes lit up.

“Brother Su, you… you’re really willing to spend!” He touched the half-withered old locust tree in the yard, his tone full of envy.

“For the sake of peace and quiet.” Su Ming carried an old wooden chest into the main room, his reply brief and to the point.

This courtyard had cost him most of his salary. The remaining money had to be stretched thin.

But Su Ming felt it was worth it.

He needed an absolutely safe space, a place where he could shed all disguises.

“True.” Xu Qing nodded, then became excited again. “The Hanlin Academy is prestigious and refined; it’s only right to live a bit more respectably. Not like our Ministry of Revenue, dealing with money, grain, and account books every day, reeking of copper all over!”

He complained with his words, but his eyes and brows were brimming with energy.

Su Ming poured him a cup of cool tea, quietly listening to Xu Qing’s grumbles.

Xu Qing’s world was concrete numbers, complex entries, and tangible, touchable official connections.

But his own world was a mist-shrouded swamp that needed to be explored with extreme caution.

The two ate a simple meal in the courtyard before Xu Qing hurriedly bid farewell and rushed back to the Ministry of Revenue.

The spacious small courtyard instantly fell silent.

Su Ming closed the courtyard gate and locked it.

He stood in the yard, taking a deep breath.

The air carried the smell of earth, the scent of the old locust tree’s wood, and a faint, elusive sense of home-like peace.

“Master, now we can finally relax a bit.”

“Indeed.” Lin Yu smacked his lips. “It’s still better than that Hanlin Academy. The Dragon Qi there is as dense and solid as an iron plate; I didn’t even dare poke my head out inside.”

Every day at the Hanlin Academy was like a cup of tepid, plain water.

Su Ming entered the Wenyuan Pavilion punctually every day and sat at the desk by the window in the corner.

His job was to copy books.

Stroke by stroke, as neat as if carved by a printing block.

Reader Guo would occasionally stroll past behind him, hands clasped behind his back, his gaze lingering on Su Ming’s paper for a moment before letting out an inscrutable snort and walking away.

Qian Bin and his few followers, however, made “caring about” Su Ming’s copying progress a daily pastime.

“Well, well, Compiler Su, which volume have you copied up to today?” Qian Bin’s voice always carried a hint of sarcasm.

“Your handwriting is truly improving. In a couple more years, you might be able to write couplets for people at the street corner.”

Suppressed snickers came from the surroundings.

Su Ming would always look up at such times, wearing an honest and earnest expression.

“Thank you for your guidance, Brother Qian. My brushwork is still shallow and requires diligent practice.”

His response was always this line.

Neither subservient nor arrogant, yet carrying a touch of “dense” dullness that left Qian Bin’s prepared bellyful of sarcasm with nowhere to go.

After several attempts, Qian Bin also found it boring.

A bookworm who only buried his head in copying, a dull stone that made no sound when struck, simply held no value for teasing.

In this way, Su Ming made himself a blurry background figure.

But his silence didn’t mean he wasn’t observing.

His eyes recorded everything within the Wenyuan Pavilion.

Several elderly Hanlin scholars with white hair and beards held ancient texts daily, turning a deaf ear to the wind and rain outside the window, forming their own faction.

The rest were a few young men, like Su Ming, with no solid backing, marginalized.

They were either resentful or overly cautious, trying to find a patron.

Su Ming relied on no one.

He relied only on the never-ending *Da Xing Compendium* on his desk.

The days of copying were tedious, but they also gave Su Ming a perfect excuse.

“Lord Guo, while copying the ‘Ritual System’ volume, this student discovered some discrepancies between the ceremonial records from the previous dynasty and those of our current dynasty. I wish to go to the underground archives to consult some original materials for verification and correction.”

Su Ming stood respectfully in Reader Guo’s study, his posture extremely humble.

Reader Guo was savoring a cup of fresh tea, not even lifting his eyelids.

“Noted. Go yourself. Don’t mess with things.”

He waved his hand as if shooing away a fly.

The key to the underground archives hung on the wall by the gatekeeper’s room, available for anyone to take.

This place was clearly somewhere no one wanted to come.

Su Ming pushed open the heavy wooden door. A turbid air, mixed with the smell of mold and dust, rushed to meet him.

The light was dim, with only a few shafts of daylight filtering in from the high ventilation windows, illuminating countless dancing dust motes in the air.

Rows of floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves were piled high with dust-covered archives and wooden boxes. Many were already rotting, emitting a smell of aged, decaying wood.

The management was extremely chaotic.

The materials Su Ming needed to find were haphazardly stuffed into a broken box in a corner.

He crouched down, patiently searching through it.

Besides yellowed archives, the box contained many miscellaneous items. Broken brush handles, dried-up inkstones, even a broken bowl from who-knows-what era.

Just as he moved aside a stack of discarded records of “auspicious signs” from the previous dynasty, his fingertip touched something cold and hard.

It was a small black seal being used as a paperweight.

The seal was only thumb-sized, topped with an endearingly naive turtle-shaped knob. The material was neither metal nor jade, warm to the touch yet carrying a metallic heaviness.

Su Ming turned it over. The seal face was carved with several strange seal script characters he didn’t recognize at all, their strokes complex, like ghostly scribbles.

“Master, look at this,” he called out in his mind.

Inside the ring, Lin Yu’s Soul Body opened his eyes. His spiritual sense cautiously extended from the ring. The moment it touched that small black seal—

“Hum…”

A faint, almost inaudible hum resonated directly in the depths of his soul body.

Lin Yu’s “gaze” instantly froze.

That small seal was no longer a simple, unadorned black stone in his “eyes.”

Inside it, an extremely faint yet incredibly pure stream of dark golden light actually seemed to flow! That light was tightly confined within the seal’s body by some powerful force.

“Don’t show anything! Put it away!” His voice carried a trace of barely suppressed excitement.

Su Ming complied, discreetly slipping the seal into his sleeve, then continued searching through the useless discarded archives.

“What is this?”

Lin Yu’s voice trembled. “There’s an aura of ‘sealing’ on this! It’s very faint, but the technique is extremely ancient! This thing… its grade might not be high, but it’s definitely a good item!”

“Heh heh, disciple, our hard labor wasn’t in vain!” Lin Yu was overjoyed. “What do they call this? This is called ‘Heaven rewards the diligent’! Those people who exiled you to this godforsaken place have no idea that the greatest treasures are often hidden in the trash heap!”

Su Ming’s fingers gently tightened around the small seal in his sleeve. Its cool touch slightly cooled his boiling blood. A heaven-sent bargain? In this abandoned archive room of the Hanlin Academy?

…

In the blink of an eye, Su Ming had been copying books at the Hanlin Academy for over two months.

The four words “diligent, earnest, dull, and silent” were firmly stamped upon him.

Direct provocations from Qian Bin and others gradually decreased, probably because they found it truly boring to pick on a stone.

Su Ming paid it no mind.

His daily life was clearly divided into two halves by a distinct line.

During the day, he was Compiler Su in the corner of the Wenyuan Pavilion, who only buried his head in copying, slow to react, speaking little, like a dull gourd fresh from the countryside.

At night, with the small courtyard gate closed, he was the true Su Ming.

He would sit cross-legged under the half-withered old locust tree in the yard, circulate the *Greenwood Longevity Art*, and use the sparse yet still pure spiritual energy of the capital to slowly nourish his Qihai.

Su Ming: “Master, that turtle-knob seal still shows no reaction.”

He would nurture the small black seal in his sleeve with spiritual energy every night, but it was like an iron lump, utterly unresponsive. Lin Yu had studied it for a long time and only concluded: The “sealing” power contained within this thing is very ancient, but without a specific incantation or formation, it’s just an ornament.

“Don’t rush. Treasures have their own temper.” Lin Yu was completely unconcerned. “Just treat it like polishing walnuts. Polish it long enough, and maybe one day it’ll work?”

Su Ming withdrew his spiritual energy, opened his eyes, and looked up at the patch of night sky framed by the courtyard walls.

The moonlight was cold, the stars sparse.

He knew he couldn’t wait like this any longer.

The Hanlin Academy was like an airtight iron box. He was locked in the lowest level, cut off from information, completely in the dark. Who was behind Reader Guo? What exactly was the Yongchang Marquis Manor’s attitude towards him?

These questions couldn’t be answered by copying books alone.

He had to break this deadlock.

The letter left by his teacher Zhou Wenhai, that wax seal impression, and the name Liu Wenyuan were the only lifelines he could currently grasp.

“Master, I plan to pay a visit to Director Liu.”

“Mm, it’s time.” Lin Yu’s tone was uncharacteristically serious. “Your ‘wooden man’ image is now firmly established. Suddenly visiting an elder to seek scholarly guidance is perfectly reasonable.”

“I understand.”

Su Ming had long prepared the Gift of Respect.

An old-pit She inkstone from Huizhou, its ink color warm and moist, not particularly valuable but elegant. Two volumes of rare ancient texts he had personally copied by hand: one was *Zhong Ding Kao* on the study of ancient bronzes and stone inscriptions from the previous dynasty, the other was *He Luo Gu Yun*, recording the evolution of ancient music theory.

These gifts were not ostentatious, carried no taint of money, and exuded the refined elegance between scholars—the safest choice.

On his day off, just as dawn was breaking.

Su Ming changed into a slightly worn blue Confucian robe, wrapped the gifts in a clean piece of blue cloth, carried them in hand, and left the small courtyard.

The morning capital was not yet fully awake.

He didn’t hire a cart but walked step by step through the crisscrossing streets and alleys towards the western part of the city.

Director Liu’s residence was completely different from the high-ranking official mansion he had imagined.

It was located in a quiet alley, far from those vermilion gates and high walls symbolizing power. The courtyard walls were gray, the plaster peeling, revealing the color of the rammed earth beneath.

There were no stone lions in front of the gate, no mounting blocks, only two faded black lacquered wooden doors. One of them was slightly ajar, and a thin layer of dust had accumulated on the door knocker.

Compared to the bustling, crowded scene at the Yongchang Marquis Manor, this place could only be described as desolate.

“This… seems a bit down on his luck.” Lin Yu clicked his tongue inside the ring. “Zhou Wenhai praised him like a blooming flower. How come he lives like a down-and-out family? Disciple, are you sure you haven’t come to the wrong place?”

“Should be correct.”

Su Ming stepped forward and gently knocked on the door knocker.

“Knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock.”

After a long while, slow, dragging footsteps came from inside, accompanied by an old, raspy cough.

“Creak—”

The door opened a crack. A wrinkled head poked out from behind it. It was an old servant with sparse, graying hair, wearing a faded gray cloth garment. His eyes were cloudy, and he had to squint for a long time to focus on someone.

“Who are you looking for?” The old servant’s voice was hoarse, as if rubbed by sandpaper.

“This student, Su Ming, by order of my teacher Zhou Wenhai, has come specifically to pay respects to Director Liu.” Su Ming bowed in greeting, presenting his name card with both hands.

The old servant’s cloudy eyes swept over Su Ming, then looked down at the name card bearing the characters “Su Ming,” as if trying to recognize them.

“Wait.”

He didn’t take the name card, just coldly tossed out two words before slamming the door shut with a “bang.”

Su Ming got a door shut in his face but wasn’t angered. He simply stood quietly outside the gate.

He waited for the time it takes an incense stick to burn.

In the alley, occasionally, early-rising commoners would pass by, looking at him curiously with eyes holding a bit of sympathy and understanding.

“Another one coming to ask Director Liu for help.”

“Ah, this Director Liu himself is almost in dire straits; how can he care about others?”

Whispered comments drifted into Su Ming’s ears.

Lin Yu found it amusing: “Disciple, see that? The masses have sharp eyes. This Director Liu is probably being sidelined too.”

Just as Su Ming thought he had made a wasted trip today, that black lacquered wooden door creaked open again.

It was still the old servant.

He expressionlessly moved aside. “Come in. The master is waiting for you in the study.”

Su Ming followed the old servant into the Liu residence.

The courtyard wasn’t large. Moss grew in the cracks of the bluestone paving. The red lacquer on the pillars under the eaves had peeled off, revealing the wood’s original color.

The entire courtyard exuded a sense of chilly, forgotten loneliness.

The old servant didn’t lead him directly to the study but to a side hall.

“Wait here.”

With that, the old servant turned and left, not even offering a cup of tea.

Su Ming looked around. The furnishings in the side hall were extremely simple: a few tables and chairs, their lacquer surfaces badly worn. The air carried a faint smell of mold.

Su Ming didn’t sit down. He just stood quietly in the center of the hall, eyes lowered, observing his nose, nose observing his heart, patiently waiting.

Time ticked by.

The daylight filtering through the window lattice gradually changed from bluish-gray to bright white.

Nearly half an hour later, the old servant’s footsteps sounded again.

“Follow me.”

Passing through a dimly lit corridor, Su Ming was brought before a study.

The old servant pushed the door open, made a “please” gesture, then turned and left.

Su Ming took a deep breath, straightened his clothes, and stepped inside.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep