A master of both medicine and martial arts, he picked up a beautiful CEO as his wife.

Ye Feng placed the two files together.

A document detailing the "sudden death" of Madam Zhao, Lin's mother, twenty years ago!

A report on the owner's activities at Nirvana Mountain over the years!

The warehouse was very quiet. Apart from the occasional low murmur of the evening breeze blowing in through the window, you could hear nothing at all!

Two files, from different times and about different things, how come they have no connection at all? But the two numbers, the notes in the files, and the name that kept appearing in those lines of secret words all fit together so perfectly.

Ye Feng moved his finger inch by inch across a row of identical numbers, then compared them, and did it again and again.

With each comparison, the coldness in his heart intensified!

They come from the same person!

They're from the same network!!

Ye Feng stood in front of the table, not saying a word for a long time. The small oil lamp in the storeroom illuminated his angular face clearly.

He always thought it was just three things.

One of the things he did was that Lin's mother was poisoned to death by the Li family twenty years ago.

He was facing a life-threatening crisis, and his master urgently summoned him back to the mountain; that was his own affair.

The fact that the Dong family recently surrounded Dongyang to seize Lin Yuqing is another matter entirely.

I can handle the three things separately; I never thought of putting them all together.

But now, the two rows of case files in front of me seem to be connected by an invisible hand.

The one who harmed Lin's mother was the one who wanted to seize Nirvana Mountain, and the one who surrounded Dongyang to snatch Lin Yuqing—it was the same person from beginning to end.

"So... it was a net!" Ye Feng muttered to himself, feeling a chill slowly creep up his back and up to his head.

He thought of the Li family's pursuit and killing of the Lin family's father and daughter in Volume One!

The meaning behind Zhao Hui's words, "Please ask that person to make a move!"

My master's letter, though vague, was urgent and sent by carrier pigeon!

What does Cheng Jiuyuan mean by "coming for that thing in her blood, coming for 'Yuan'!"?

Each and every one of these pearls, which were originally scattered, is now strung together by this net.

Each pearl bears the same mark of a person whose shadow he cannot see!

He even began to understand a mystery in Volume One that he hadn't figured out before: why the Li family committed such a heinous crime as poisoning Zhao's daughter, and why they were so terrified and concealed the truth when they heard about "Nirvana Mountain".

At the time, he thought the Li family also had some guilt in their hearts that they dared not speak out, but now he realized that there was another meaning to it. The Li family was just a knife that others handed to them and then used to kill. The deep-seated fear and the murderous intent hidden for more than 20 years did not originate from the Li family themselves.

"Twenty years ago, they harmed Lin Ma; twenty years later, they snatched Yu Qing; and in between, they were still eyeing Nirvana Mountain..." Shen Yu said from the side, his face equally grim. "Junior Brother, the mastermind behind this is definitely not an ordinary hermit force! The 'mastermind' who can weave so many things into a web and plan for twenty years without revealing a word is not as superficial as we think."

Ye Feng nodded, his eyes filled with turmoil.

Shen Yu's words struck a chord with him. Ordinary grudges and feuds were nothing more than greed for money and lust, fleeting impulses. But this web of grudges and feuds spanned twenty years, and contained secrets she was unaware of. This patience and shrewdness were unmatched by anyone he had ever fought in Dongyang.

Twenty years.

How many twenty years does a person have?

But this web has survived for twenty years and is still not finished!

An opponent who can remain calm and patient is more terrifying than any ruthless character.

He finally understood that for the past six months, he had seemingly been in Dongyang, putting out one fire after another: saving the Lin family, saving the Zhu family, fighting the Li family, fighting Tianheng, fighting Zhao Hui, fighting Zhiwei Pavilion... but in reality, none of these incidents existed in isolation. They were all lines in the same network, and where was the heart of this network? Who was the mastermind hiding in the shadows? Even now, he still couldn't figure out its outline.

It's like a reckless little tiger crawling into a spider web, biting and tearing at it, tearing one thread after another, but it can never catch the big spider hiding in the shadows controlling everything.

The harder he tore, the more he realized he had only torn the edge of the web. The spider had been there all along, lying where he couldn't see it, coldly watching him.

What alarmed him even more was why?

Why did they try to harm Lin Ma more than twenty years ago? Why are they trying to take Lin Yuqing now? What is it about these two generations of mother and daughter that would allow a force to plot against them for twenty years, one after the other?

The questions "Why?" remain unanswered on the exam paper. The page ends abruptly there, as if its tail had been cut off.

It seems that when I got to this point, that person also had doubts and didn't want to write any more.

But the tail he left behind was clean and clear.

Ye Feng turned to the last page of the Nirvana Mountain Secret Records, his fingertip landing on a line of small print: "...All cause and effect lies at the foot of Nirvana Mountain, and she is among them..."

The ink on this line of small characters is still fresh, and the strokes are heavy, as if the man who wrote this line had already made a conclusion: the source of all the secrets in this web lies with "her".

"she".

Ye Feng's fingertips paused for a moment.

This "she" is Lin Yuqing.

In the master's own secret records, it is written in black and white: Lin Yuqing's essence, the secret that even Cheng Jiuyuan kept to himself, the source of the "millennial pure yin" that could drive the entire reclusive world mad—the answer lies in this mountain.

He originally thought that he had returned here to cure his death calamity and to investigate his master's whereabouts.

But only now did he realize that this mountain held far more than just these secrets!

Its core is Lin Yuqing.

Its centerpiece is this net!

Is it an old grudge from twenty years ago that has never been resolved?

After a myriad of threads, going around in circles, they all ultimately converge on the same place?

He thought he wanted to go back to cure his death calamity and find his master.

But now he finally knows that it's not like that at all!

Mountain!

That's where the truth lies.

"Senior Brother Shen," Ye Feng put away the files, looked up at the window—to the north, towards the misty Nirvana Mountain—his voice resolute, "The matter in Dongyang is settled. It's time... to return to the mountain."

Shen Yu nodded solemnly: "The pass at the foot of the mountain is fraught with unpredictable dangers. If we don't go, this net will never be untied."

Ye Feng gazed at the deep night outside the window, his eyes gradually hardening.

A net from twenty years ago, a mystery in a mountain, and a secret about her that even she herself doesn't know.

This time, he's going to go himself and uncover it.