The tip of the Chengying Sword flipped open the rusted iron cabinet door, and a smell of mildew mixed with the scent of preservatives hit the face. The organ specimens floating in glass jars had long since withered, and the date on the bottle labels was frozen at the Awakening of Insects twenty years ago. Sheepskin scrolls scattered across the workbench recorded shocking data—the survival rate of experimental subject number three hundred and seventy-two was 0.03%, with a scrawled note in the margin reading "Nangong Bloodline resistance abnormal."
Shards of broken porcelain scraped a harsh sound across the blue bricks. Zhang Ming's boot tip kicked against a bronze box, its Taotie pattern heavily smeared with dried blood and grime. When he pried open the latch with a gold needle, the entire subterranean palace suddenly trembled, and the dark red liquid in the brick crevices flowed backward into a spiderweb.
Wrapped in brocade inside the box was an infant-sized mummified corpse. The curled phalanges tightly grasped a Twin-Crane Jade Pendant, and the ice-variety jadeite inlaid in the crane's eyes was exuding a pale cyan mist. Zhang Ming's temples throbbed violently; the Nangong clan crest on the surface of the jade pendant actually overlapped with the phantom image of the Yinyang Hall in his sea of consciousness.
Chapter 126