Han Yu only half-heard her. His gaze was fixed on the five jade slips, his thoughts racing.

To have even a single one of these in his possession was fortune enough, but all five together… this was destiny.

Yet he knew better than to be reckless.

These slips were not his to monopolize. They would belong to the sect, and trying to hide them would only invite suspicion and disaster.

Still, as he carefully stacked them with the others, he reckoned he could keep them temporarily... at least until he could make copies and then pass on the originals to the sect.

That way, no harm would come his way.

The others, unaware of the storm of thoughts in his heart, continued to work. More books were pulled down, skimmed, and added to the pile. The rhythm of their search was faster than before, driven by the certainty that their elders were already on their way.

For the first time since they had entered the repository, hope and excitement outweighed fear.

Han Yu allowed himself a small smile. This place truly was the motherlode. And with every page turned, every scroll opened, and every jade slip pressed to the mind, he felt himself drawing closer to the alchemist he was meant to become.

As everyone continued to rummage through the shelves, Han Yu's fingers lingered on the five jade slips for a long moment. Thier contents, still resonated faintly within his soul, the aftertaste of the knowledge they had already shown him. He knew these belonged to the sect, and that trying to hide them outright would be courting disaster.

Yet the temptation was too strong to ignore.

What if he simply kept them for now?

He could study them, copy their contents into his own notes, and then return the originals later. No one would ever need to know. The sect elders would still receive the jade slips intact, and no suspicion would fall upon him.

He could already picture the frustration of having to wait months or even years for permission to study them once they were turned over. Why let that happen when the opportunity was right here?

'I need to be a bit selfish...' Han Yu thought to himself.

With this decision, a subtle sense of relief washed over him. He carefully slid the jade slips into a section of his storage bag that was shielded from spiritual sense with talismans. He would not keep them forever, only long enough to copy them.

Once his versions were complete, he would present the originals proudly to the sect. His conscience would remain clean, at least in part.

Having made up his mind, he returned to the shelves.

The others were still busy scouring books, pulling scrolls, and debating which ones were worth keeping aside. Fatty Kui and Wu Shuan were comparing two thick tomes that seemed to contain long-winded theories neither of them understood, while She Ming leaned against a shelf reading a small journal filled with notes about spirit grass cultivation.

Han Yu ignored them all, letting his instincts guide him.

He had always trusted his intuition in alchemy. Just as he could tell when a pill was close to forming in the cauldron or when a flame needed a slight adjustment, he could feel a faint tug in this chamber. Something here was meant for him.

Half an hour passed as he searched in silence, sifting through layers of dust, faded bindings, and brittle pages. Then his hand landed on a book that felt different from the rest.

It was old, far older than the others.

The cover was cracked, the leather dried and flaking, the stitching weak enough that a careless tug might have pulled the whole thing apart. Dust clung stubbornly to its surface, and when he opened it a puff of stale air filled his lungs, as though the book had not been touched in millennia.

The writing inside was inconsistent.

Some pages had neat, precise script, but many others were smudged, incomplete, or outright missing. Several sections had been reduced to nothing more than fragments where the ink had faded into obscurity. Despite this, what remained caught Han Yu's eye immediately.

The book was a collection of alchemical preparations.

Pills, elixirs, medicinal pastes, even poisons were listed here. Yet almost none of them were finished. The majority were half-complete formulas, outlines of ingredients without full refinement methods, or cryptic notes that stopped halfway through a recipe.

Some seemed like rough drafts, others like discarded attempts.

What fascinated Han Yu the most were the annotations. Here and there, in handwriting that clearly did not match the original, someone else had left footnotes and comments. These remarks critiqued the formulas, pointed out flaws, or suggested adjustments.

Some were curt, even mocking, while others were thoughtful elaborations.

From this, Han Yu could tell the truth. The first writer was an alchemist who had been working on these formulas but had failed to complete them. The second writer had come much later, studying the same material and leaving behind commentary on how it might be fixed. Two alchemists, separated by time, bound together in this book.

He flipped to the inside cover and noticed something that made his heart skip.

"The dates..."

The earliest notes bore the date '116th year of Yuan.'

Han Yu frowned. 'Yuan?'

He had never seen that calendar era before. The current world used the Zhang calendar, and before that, a few other naming conventions, but nothing that matched Yuan. It was as if the record belonged to a time so ancient that its calendar had been forgotten.

The annotations left by the second alchemist, however, were more recognizable. The notes were dated to the '87th year of Zhang.' Han Yu's breath caught in his throat.

It was currently the Zhang era, yes, but the calendar year was far beyond that. If he counted backward, that would place the annotations over three thousand years ago.

Three thousand years.

That was the same time frame the sect's elders had estimated for the creation of this tomb.

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