The mountains were silent, and the bright moon hung high in the sky.

"I'll take you back," Bai Jing offered, heading for the Brabus G500.

Everything here was an illusion, except the car.

Ning Tao didn't bother to talk about it. It was enough that he got it. He also had secrets that he couldn't tell anyone else. He had reached the white snake slough, and it was really time for him to go back.

Waiting by the side of the car, Wei Bai opened the door on the driver's side, and then quickly walked around to open the door of the pa.s.senger's seat.

Ning Tao looked back. The white lanterns swayed in the wind, and the old buildings were magnificent. Looking back on his previous experience, Ning Tao felt as if he had had a dream.

"Are you loath to leave?" Bai Jing laughed and teased him. "You can stay here with my sister and then leave with her when she gets well."

Ning Tao gave an awkward smile, not wanting to talk nonsense. Then he looked in the direction of the pool and changed the subject. "There's a pool down there, and I want to see it."

Bai Jing stared at Ning Tao and asked, "Why do you want to go there?"

"You said Qing Zhui had to live where there's a lot of spiritual energy, and the source of spiritual energy here is in that pool. I want to go down and have a look." Ning Tao told her the truth because there was no need to hide it from her. If Bai Jing could find here for Qing Zhui to recuperate, she must know the secret of the pool.

Bai Jing was silent for a moment before she said, "All right. Come with me."

Ning Tao followed Bai Jing to the bottom of the cliff.

The pool was small, oval and bottomless in the center. The small waterfall formed by the mountain spring fell from the cliff and poured into the basin below. The weird thing was that the water kept coming in without going out.

Ning Tao stood at the edge of the pool and looked into the water. As the center of the lake was bottomless, he could not see what was at the bottom at all. Then he changed his way of observation and quietly awakened the skills of looking and smelling. Then he saw something different. As far as he could see, the pool wafted out wisps of spiritual energy, as if it was a hot spring.

"The spiritual energy comes from below. Have you seen it?" Ning Tao inquired.

"I've been down there," Bai Jing replied. "But as you can see, this pool is always filled with water, but no water comes out. Below this pool is an underground river, a tiny one. The water of the pool communicates with the underground river, and I cannot enter it." Then she made a pause before she added, "But I guess there's a spiritual vein down there, so you can't take it even if you find it."

"A spiritual vein?" Ning Tao first heard of the word.

"I don't know how you came to be a pract.i.tioner. Don't you even know the spiritual vein?" There was a hint of teasing in Bai Jing's voice.

Ning Tao shook his head and said, "I specialize in medicine."

Bai Jing let out a sigh. "Well, I'll tell you. Mountains and rivers have spiritual veins, just like rivers connecting the earth, so that the earth has vitality, and then creates all natural things. Spiritual veins are the essence and spirit of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. Sometimes they are hidden in rocks and sometimes in the silt of the underground rivers. They cannot be collected at all."

"I see." Ning Tao kind of got the idea of a spiritual vein.

"But as humans have destroyed the environment, spiritual veins have become increasingly rare. At this rate, after some time, pract.i.tioners and demons are likely to perish. Spiritual energy is the most important practicing resources, so pract.i.tioners and demons now have a strong sense of territory. If you stray into someone else's territory, they might attack you," Bai Jing explained.

"So this is you and Qing Zhui's place, right?"

"Yes," Bai Jing replied. "We've only been here for over a month."

"The mustached vendor probably got the fragments in the pool before she and Qing Zhui moved in, or Bai Jing would have found it," Ning Tao a.n.a.lyzed mentally. "If the spiritual energy here comes out of the spiritual vein, what about that broken inkstone?"

"Well, let's go. I have an early morning meeting at the office tomorrow," Bai Jing stated.

"I want to go down and have a look. May I?" Ning Tao asked her permission.

"What are you doing down there? I told you, there's nothing down there, just an underground river."

"I still want to check it out," Ning Tao insisted.

Bai Jing frowned. "You are really a stubborn man. All right, you go down. I'll wait for you on the sh.o.r.e."

Then she stared at Ning Tao straight.

"I'm going to take my clothes off," uttered Ning Tao.

"Then do it," Bai Jing responded, still fixing her eyes on him.

Ning Tao had no words to contradict her.

Two minutes later, Ning Tao, wearing only a pair of underwear, jumped into the pool.

It was cold and dark below. But when his eyes were in the state of looking, Ning Tao saw wisps of spiritual energy rise up from under the water. Based on it, he had a rough idea of what was going on underwater.

There were several small holes in the bottom of the pool from which spiritual energy emanated. Some holes were fist-sized, while others were as big as a basin. The sound of the water flowing in the underground river could even be heard.

Ning Tao dived down quickly, and when he reached a certain distance, he heard a buzz in his ears. His ears ached from the water pressure, and his head was heavy from lack of oxygen. It was at this moment that his Niwan acupoint shook, and the spiritual power spread like ripples through his body and mind. Like the tide over the beach, his every cell was infiltrated by his spiritual power. Then his ears stopped ringing, and he didn't feel dizzy anymore. More importantly, he didn't feel deprived of oxygen.

For a pract.i.tioner, he was himself a well-stocked oxygen tank when he dived.

Ning Tao continued his dive and soon reached the bottom. He squatted in front of a hole and put his hand into it. He felt that the water in the underground river was colder than that in the deep pool, but it was not deep. He reached down 10 inches or so and touched the bed of the river. Yet, there was nothing in it but sand and pebbles.

"Are they all the fragments?" Ning Tao was filled with disappointment. The purpose of his diving down was not only to feel the spiritual vein personally but also to find other fragments of that incomplete inkstone. However, the bottom of the pool was dark, and he could see nothing but spiritual energy.

Bam!

There was a sudden noise overhead, and a rock fell, nearly hitting Ning Tao.

Obviously, Bai Jing was tired of waiting and urged him to go up in this way.

The fist-sized rock fell into the silt at the bottom of the pool, causing a ma.s.s of sand to raise. Then a faint trace of spiritual energy suddenly emerged from the mud.

"Gee?" Surprised, Ning Tao immediately swam to the rock. When he reached out to remove the stone, gouging away the silt, a fragment sending out spiritual energy came into sight. Ning Tao put out his hand to pick it up, and by the faint light which the spiritual energy produced in his eyes, he saw that it was a fragment of the broken inkstone!

Ning Tao, excited, immediately continued to dig the silt around with his hand. Immediately, pieces of fragments of the incomplete inkstone with weak spiritual energy exposed...

After waiting for a while, Bai Jing frowned and bent down to pick up another rock.

Splas.h.!.+

Ning Tao popped his head out of the water.

Bai Jing threw the rock back on the ground and asked, "What were you doing down there? What took you so long?"

"This is the first time I've seen a spiritual vein, so I want to observe it," replied Ning Tao. "You go first, I'll go back at once."

"Why bother? Why not go back together?" Bai Jing said.

Ning Tao's face broke into an awkward grin and said, "I need to change my underwear. You wouldn't be interested in watching me change my underwear, would you?"

Bai Jing smiled and replied, "Yes. Will you let me see it?"

Ning Tao didn't know what to say.

She was a demon, not an ordinary woman.

"Well, I don't flirt with you. If my sister knows, she will teach me again. I'm going back. You hurry up." Bai Jing turned and left.

Then Ning Tao climbed ash.o.r.e from the pool. The first thing he did on the sh.o.r.e was to put a dozen fragments of inkstone he had dug from the bottom of the lake into his medicine chest.

He wanted to tell Bai Jing about the fragments, but he remembered that Bai Jing hesitated when he mentioned coming to the pool. If she had been told about the pieces, she might not have allowed him to carry them away. Now practicing resources were scarce, and pract.i.tioners and demons had a strong sense of territory. In this case, she was really likely to confiscate the fragments of the inkstone.

But his action didn't count as theft, did it?

The pool had been there since ancient times, and Bai Jing and Qing Zhui had occupied it for just over a month.

With that in mind, Ning Tao was relieved to make such a decision. Only after collecting the fragments did he take off his underwear and put on his clothes and trousers. After he got dressed, he had wanted to throw away his wet underwear here. However, considering that this was Bai Jing and Qing Zhui's practicing ground, and it would be not good for him to throw a pair of underwear here, he packed his underpants into the medicine chest and left.

Then they turned back. Bai Jing dropped him off at the gate of Jiang Hao's neighborhood.

Ning Tao got out of the car, tapped the door and said, "Thanks for bringing me back. You go back."

Bai Jing looked at Ning Tao and said, "Be nice to my sister. I'll never let you go if you bully her."

"Rest a.s.sured, good-bye." Ning Tao turned away, not wanting to listen to her anymore. She had said the same thing several times on the way.

Bai Jing watched Ning Tao walk into the gate of the community and grinned until he was out of sight. "Funny guy. Qing Zhui has come out of her misery."

Instead of going back to Jiang Hao's house, Ning Tao came to the rooftop, opened the blood lock, and went back to the Sky Clinic.

As soon as he came to the clinic, he couldn't wait to open his medicine chest and take out the fragments that he had picked out of the pool. There were 16 fragments in all, the same fragments he had bought from the mustached vendor in Panjiayuan Market. They were all irregular in shape and indistinguishable in the material.

A few minutes later, Ning Tao pieced together the 16 pieces and got half an incomplete inkstone. He took the other incomplete inkstone that was barely bound and then carefully put the two parts together.

They formed a complete inkstone.

But since they were not really bound together, nothing special happened when the two parts came together.

Ning Tao stared at the inkstone, thinking, "What kind of magic tool are you? I hope I get the answer when you're fixed."

He wanted to repair the inkstone with the rotten broken tripod immediately, but he was too exhausted to fix it because he had burned himself out treating Qing Zhui. So he gave up. Then, he fell on the clinic floor and fell asleep, not caring if it was comfortable.