Essence The Prohibition Code: Revised, Chapter 9 – A Complete Mess…

Sunset, darkness fell, and Long Qian no longer had the strength to run. Pretending to be a child had numbed his face, and his legs gave way as he collapsed to the ground. Somewhat weakly, he straightened up and looked into the distance. When he saw the massive mountain like a pillar less than a mile or two away, he was somewhat surprised that he had run so far.\ This mountain is called Hanzhu Mountain, the tallest mountain near Qitan Town. Although it is nearby, in reality, it is separated from Qitan Town by dozens of miles. Therefore, Long Qian's current location is at least thirty miles from Qitan Town.\ Though he was afraid, Long Qian was, after all, not really a five-year-old child. He knew clearly that merely escaping like this was in fact a form of self-deception, with the sole effect of temporarily relieving the pressure in his heart. He needed to calmly think about certain matters and rationally examine the whole sequence of events.\ “That guy appeared very suddenly and seemed extremely urgent. Then, he couldn't have stayed in Qingrong River for long. Since I risked pretending to be mute without being detected, it proves that he has no idea about the relationship between me and Shouzi.”\ Long Qian easily reached his first conclusion, which was very advantageous for him. Although it was possible that the man was pretending to trust him, based on Long Qian's careful observation of the man's expressions from beginning to end, that person would not take such a risk, at least not handing something that seemed extremely valuable to a lying child.\ “He can't keep that stone; he must transfer it to someone else, possibly even to a child as young as four or five, like me. Then he must be fully confident that those chasing him can only track him but cannot find the stone.”\ Thinking this through, Long Qian recalled the explanation he had read in that tattered booklet about people possessing Beast Mysterious Energy, and muttered to himself: “Those who have Beast Mysterious Energy generally have the ability to track people by scent, often leaving a special scent on the person being tracked. That person is at least a Beast Lord, probably a super expert in this regard.”He was being tracked by someone, so he relied on the river water to conceal his scent. However, he gave me the item and asked me to return to the same place tomorrow. This proves that the scent he left on me is not difficult to remove and could easily be wiped away if I'm not careful. That's why he tempted me with gold coins to make me deliver myself to him tomorrow—it's probably just for insurance; otherwise, there'd be no need for such a redundant step. 'The reason it's tomorrow is that he must have already found a way to eliminate the scent on himself, so it only takes one day. After one day, even if I don't go near Chengjiang's shore, he can still track me by the scent, unless I remove this scent as well!'

Long Qian suddenly stood up and carefully recalled the places where the man had touched him. Besides the stone in his pocket, the man seemed to have patted his head before.

Long Qian hurriedly pinched the hair where the man had touched, and unexpectedly, he easily discovered something unusual. He felt some sticky substance on his hair, just a small drop, light green in color. When he held it up to his nose, it had a faint, difficult-to-detect fragrance, somewhat like sandalwood.

Long Qian quickly pulled open his clothes and took out a small tattered booklet from his inner pocket, flipping to the section explaining the owners of Beast Xuan Qi. He remembered seeing a list of special scents left by Beast Xuan Qi owners.

"Boro Grass Juice?"

Long Qian was slightly stunned. From the fifteen examples of scents in the tattered booklet, he easily found a matching one—the Boro Grass Juice.

It stated that Boro Grass Juice is one of the few liquids on the mainland with extremely stable scents that can be infused with the owner's Xuan Qi. Even if the carrier is thousands of miles away, they can still be tracked. This grass juice is quite expensive, with a small bottle selling for a hundred gold coins. Normally applied to human hair, it isn't washed away with water. If the Beast Xuan Qi owner is skilled enough, it's extremely hard for others to detect. As for removal methods, one is to cut off the hair where it was applied, and the other is to wait two days, after which the scent dissipates automatically.

Long Qian had no doubt about the authenticity of the explanations in the tattered booklet. In fact, right now, he could only choose to trust what was written in it. Recalling the man's crude method of leaving Boro Grass Juice, he couldn't help but question whether this person was truly a top-tier master.Actually, Long Qian also knew that if it were himself facing a child who was only four or five years old and probably didn't understand what beast aura was, he probably wouldn't have the leisure to show off any advanced juice-spreading techniques. Who would have thought a child could understand so much?

"It seems I underestimated him. He actually used such expensive Boruo grass juice. Is he afraid I'll shave my head?"

Long Qian couldn't help but bitterly smile. Now, besides cutting off his hair, it seemed there was no other solution. He wasn't particularly worried about whether the Boruo grass juice would stick to his scalp, because the broken booklet had stated that if the juice stuck to the skin, it would be directly absorbed. This grass juice was not only used by beast aura possessors to track people, but was also a very good juice for nourishing the skin... Taking out a small fruit knife he carried with him, Long Qian directly cut off the hair that had been touched, close to the scalp. Looking at the long black strands in his hands, he felt a bit upset, and with such a large patch of hair gone from the top of his head, he didn't know how he would explain it to his mom.

After digging a small hole and burying the hair, Long Qian began returning in the direction of Qitan Town. It was more than thirty li away, so he estimated it would be at least dawn before he got home. Fortunately, his dad had gone out yesterday, and mom went along with him. He was just worried that Uncle Qin and the others would be concerned, and he didn't know if they would be searching for him by the river, not knowing if it would expose his home in Qitan Town...

Thinking of this, Long Qian couldn't help but feel uneasy again, but then he felt relieved. That man couldn't stay in Qingrong River forever, otherwise he wouldn't have been looking for him.

Long Qian didn't dare take the strange stone home for the time being, so he found a place to hide it. By the time he returned to Qitan Town, it was already the next day's early morning. Unexpectedly, Shouzi was waiting right at his doorstep.

Seeing Long Qian appear, Shouzi suddenly burst into tears, crying and sniffling: "Wuwu... Long Qian, where have you been? You don't know, the whole town was looking for you last night. I almost got beaten to death by my dad. You're finally back. I thought those people had killed you. You don't know, there were so many corpses on the river. It was terrifying..."

Long Qian was greatly startled and hurriedly asked, "Corpses? When?""\ While wiping his nose, Shouzi said, 'When we were looking for you at night, something from above floated down. It seemed like people from the Xuanzong Hall. They directly drove us back and didn't let us continue there.'\ Long Qian was slightly stunned, murmuring, 'Xuanzong Hall?'\ 'Yes!'\ Shouzi nodded forcefully, stopped crying, stretched his neck to look around, and leaned toward Long Qian's ear, whispering as if very scared, 'I'll tell you a secret. Dad didn't let me say it. Not long after, the people from Xuanzong Hall were killed. It was an old man; he killed the people from Xuanzong Hall and then pulled out a person in red from the river and killed that person too...'\ Shouzi's story was all over the place, and Long Qian was very confused, but one thing was certain: if Shouzi wasn't lying, the person in red must be the one he had met by the river.\ --Chapter 9 End.