When Hu Yuan squatted beneath the old locust tree and his fingertip first brushed the moss on the roots, the dew made him recoil slightly. Last night, he had buried the Primordial Fragment Stele beneath the tree—Hu Shouzhen had said that the fragment needed to be close to the earth to fuse more quickly. Now, the fragment had rooted half an inch into the soil, and its roots were intertwined with a faint golden radiance that was spreading along the tree roots into the spiritual veins of the Long Manor.
Outside the courtyard, Xiaobai's startled cry suddenly rang out: "Big brother! Someone from the Liǔ Family is here! They said they want to see you, and they even brought a wooden box, claiming it belongs to the Hu Family!"
The visitor was the old steward of the Liǔ Family, with snow-white hair and temples, holding a dark wood box in his hands, secured with a Hu Family stellar lock. When he placed the wooden box on the stone table, his knuckles were trembling: "I am an old servant of the Hu Family. Back when the family was exterminated, I was coerced by the Liǔ Family Patriarch and forced to stay behind in the Liǔ Family. This is something the former steward hid in the mining cave; he said that if one day the descendants of the Hu Family could return, this should be handed over to them."
Chapter 427