The Legend of the Condor Heroes: From Being Expelled from Peach Blossom Island

Chapter 69 Decryption
When he returned home, it was already afternoon. No one was home. Wu Chengyu went straight into the bedroom and took out Mu Qingyin's belongings from a hidden compartment.

Ignoring the other jewelry for the time being, he picked up the jade pendant and examined it carefully. Sure enough, the deer on the jade pendant was exactly the same as the one behind the tombstone. His guess was basically confirmed: Mu Qingyin was Murong Qingyin.

However, the numbers micro-carved on the back of the jade plaque are nearly a thousand, which is the so-called code. If it weren't for Wu Chengyu's extraordinary eyesight, ordinary people would not be able to see what is being carved.

To decipher the code, a codebook is necessary. I hadn't thought much about it before, but now I realize that Mu Qingyin would definitely leave the codebook behind.

He picked up the books left behind by Mu Qingyin, all of which were handwritten by her. There were more than a dozen books in total. Last time, Wu Chengyu had only glanced at them briefly. They were mostly poems, songs, and travelogues.

The only book that stands out is "The Chronicle of the Xining Era," which tells the story of Wang Anshi's reforms in the third year of the Xining era of the Northern Song Dynasty.

Wu Chengyu flipped through the first page and roughly determined that this book should be the codebook, because there was also a deer drawn on the back of the first page.

Wu Chengyu looked at the jade tablet. The first number in the first column on the right was 壹, with a tiny blank space to the right, followed by 贰捌. He figured it was the eighth character in the second column on the first page of the Xining Chronicle. According to the book, it was exactly the character 慕. Wu Chengyu was greatly encouraged and quickly continued to decipher it.

The number in the first column, second row is still 壹, followed by 叁六, but this time the corresponding character is 法. 慕法? What does this mean?
Wu Chengyu continued searching downwards. The first ten characters were Mu, Fa, Luan, Miao, Guang, Ma, Bian, Mu, Sui, and Hua. Whether written literally or in random order, they made no sense at all. He then deciphered a few more characters, but still could not discern any meaning.

Wu Chengyu was now in a dilemma, suspecting that the Xining Chronicles was not a codebook at all. However, he tried several different books but still found nothing, leaving him in a state of confusion.

He picked up the jade tablet again and carefully examined each number on it. Finally, in the last line of these rows of numbers, he discovered a completely different character.

This line contains only four characters: Zi, Yin, Si, You. These four characters are even smaller than the preceding numbers, and can be easily missed if one is not paying attention.

What does this mean? It's really just guesswork now. These characters seem to be four of the twelve Earthly Branches.

The so-called Rat, Tiger, Snake, and Rooster? Could they be related to animals?

Wu Chengyu was completely baffled and racked his brains trying to figure out what connection these four animals had with the Murong family.

This is where the bamboo slips come in handy. He posed his question to the bamboo slips, and after about three breaths, two words appeared on the bamboo slips: "Order".

Wu Chengyu muttered the two words to himself repeatedly, then looked again at the characters 子, 寅, 巳, and 酉 on the jade tablet.

The twelve earthly branches are Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, and Hai. Later generations used the Gregorian calendar to record years, and what they remembered most were the twelve zodiac animals. So Wu Chengyu's first reaction was to think of the zodiac animals represented by these four characters, but he actually went astray.

If we follow the order, Zi is the first of the Earthly Branches, Yin is the third, with one branch in between, Si is the sixth, with Mao and Chen in between, and You is the tenth, with three branches in between.

Therefore, the order stated on the bamboo slips should be the number on the jade tablet corresponding to the first character, so "慕" is correct. The second number corresponds to the character "容" two positions to the right, hence "慕容". Wu Chengyu immediately knew that he had finally found the right way to decipher it.

Following this pattern, he shifted each corresponding character a few positions to the right in the order of one, two, three. In this way, the characters he had previously found together finally formed the first sentence: "The descendants of Murong are unworthy and have moved away from Suzhou."

The martial arts world had suddenly turned into a spy drama, and Wu Chengyu shook his head and chuckled. However, he could not calm down. Even his breathing, which he had been maintaining with the Turtle Sun Technique, became out of rhythm, as if he could see that the Shifting Stars had already become his possession.

After calming himself down, Wu Chengyu deciphered the remaining contents in one go. The entire message, a few hundred words long, was a letter left by the then-head of the Murong family for future generations. The gist of it was: After Murong Fu went mad, the Murong family withdrew from the martial world. However, their secret manuals attracted the covetous eyes of outsiders. At that time, Murong Fu's retainers Deng Baichuan and Gongye Qian were still alive. Feng Bo'e, who had left in anger after Bao Butong's murder, also chose to return after learning of Murong Fu's madness.

These three were incredibly loyal, silently protecting the safety of the Murong family.

Deng Baichuan was known as the second strongest palm striker in Jiangnan. Even Xiao Feng praised him highly back then. Gongye Qian's martial arts were slightly inferior to Deng Baichuan's, but he was also a top-notch master in the Jiangnan area. With the addition of Feng Bo'e, who fought without regard for his life, they quickly drove away the greedy people outside.

There was also Wang Yuyan, who had become the Queen of Dali. Out of consideration for their past relationship, she sent people to intimidate a group of people. At this time, Duan Yu was already a top master in the world, and he also had a sworn brother, Xu Zhu, who was also a top master. The power represented by Wang Yuyan made many masters hesitate.

So even though Murong Fu was insane, the Murong family was still able to live peacefully in the Suzhou area.

Murong Fu and Abi had a son named Murong He, and completely gave up their dream of restoring the Great Yan. Murong He was born weak and could not practice martial arts. Abi also did not want the Murong family to get involved in martial arts conflicts again. Thus, two generations later, the Murong family was no longer a martial arts family.

Who would have thought that with the passing of the three great generals, someone would set their sights on the Murong family's secret manuals? The Murong family head at the time made a decisive move to relocate the entire family, taking everything they could with them, and completely disappeared from the sight of martial arts practitioners.

According to the letter, the place where the Murong family moved to was actually not far away, somewhat like a blind spot in the dark, in Changzhou, near Suzhou, less than 100 kilometers away.

After that, the Murong family became the Mu family, focusing on farming and scholarship. No one practiced martial arts, and those secret manuals became useless. Until his mother, Mu Qingyin, had no male heirs, the Murong family line ended.

This jade pendant was made by Mu Qingyin's father and left to his descendants. If any of his descendants ever wish to learn martial arts, they can find the Mu family cemetery at the address in the letter. The tomb keepers there are descendants of the Mu family's generals. They can use this jade pendant as a token to obtain the old belongings of the Murong family from the past.

Now Wu Chengyu was completely relieved. His search had yielded the ideal result. Most importantly, Wu Chengyu was Mu Qingyin's only son, and legally speaking, he was the sole heir to the Murong family's possessions. Therefore, he could cultivate the Dou Zhuan Xing Yi technique without any guilt and it was only right and proper.

After all the details had been clarified, Wu Chengyu kept the jade pendant with him, put the rest of the belongings back in the hidden compartment, and turned to walk towards the council hall of the third branch.

He told Wu Zhengliang that he wanted to go back to his mother's hometown of Changzhou to clean up the Mu family cemetery and fulfill his filial duty.

Wu Zhengliang immediately said that the Wu family would be sending a caravan to Changzhou to deliver goods the next day, and Wu Chengyu could go with the caravan. He also gave Wu Chengyu instructions on what to prepare for tomb sweeping, and he even knew where the Mu family cemetery was.

It is said that he was the one who led the team to accompany Wu Zhengkang to Changzhou to welcome his bride.

It's true that life is unpredictable and fate is cruel. Some things were already within Wu Chengyu's grasp, but if it weren't for this time travel, the original owner would have died in Gushan, and everything about the Murong family would have been buried in the past and eventually vanished.

　I received a lot of criticism before, all kinds of criticism. Some people genuinely disliked me and left after a few words, which is understandable. But some people didn't even read the comments and just left negative messages to attack me. Their motives are self-evident.

　　Recently, fewer people have been criticizing me, but new forms of criticism have emerged.

　　Some people commented that I bought all my monthly votes. This is disrespectful to the readers who voted for me. I know perfectly well that those votes were cast by them, one by one, as encouragement. Only eight of those votes were cast by myself. I had no choice; as a struggling author, I naturally gave myself the few votes I had. Besides, from May Day until yesterday was double the monthly votes, so even with double the votes, I only just broke 1000, and I'm ranked 441st on the monthly vote leaderboard. Do you think I'm that short-sighted? If I bought votes, would I have reached 441st place?

　　
　
(End of this chapter)